Wordless: I’m choking on writers block at the moment…

Brad: Can you actually choke on writer’s block?

Wordless: *stomps foot* Why do you guys always have to ruin everything! I’m choking I tell you, choking!

Brad: Gee. Calm down. I was just asking.

Wordless: Well, don’t. I’m getting sick of all of you and your little irritating comments. You’re just a fictional character I created instead of the actually Brad who declined to appear.

Brad: *mutters* I wonder why.

Wordless: *growls* Go away.

Brad: Fine. *goes*

Wordless: I don’t own anything. By the way, for anyone that cares, I'm going to add a third chapter to Make Courage in a day or two. It’d be really nice if you read and reviewed it. And there’s a new authors not posted on my bio, which if you care about my writing, you might like to read.

Brad: Doesn’t sound like writer’s block to me.

Wordless: *puts hands on hips and glares* I thought I told you to vamoose.

Brad: Vamoosing…

You always feel something is missing without him. You can feel the emptiness, the very lack of him, in you flesh and bones. It is a hunger, desperate to be feed. You’d give anything, everything, to feel his arms around you, his head against your shoulder.

You’re a junkie and he’s your very favourite fix.

It’s raining, but that’s not going to stop you reaching him. You remember the nights you would steal from your parents house to meet your dealer in some dark alley or club. The only difference now is that you slide from the loving arms of your beautiful wife and creep out so as not to wake the son you adore.

Truth is, you’re his whore and you couldn’t care less.

The door’s not locked when you get there. He’s stopped locking the door, knowing that you never knock. He’d found you on more than one occasion shivering with cold on his doorstep.

Pushing open the door, you notice something’s wrong. The house is cold. It’s never like that. He hates the cold just as he hates the dark. Personally, you like the dark and the shadows have always been your friend.

Hearing something crunch beneath your shoe, you glance down. The vase that once sat on the hall table has been reduced to tiny shards of clear spun crystal, the white flowers it once held spilled across the floor as if in some sort of offering to a dark god.

“Mike?” you venture his name into the stillness, afraid to wake some malignant force.

“Mike?” A little stronger, a little more afraid.

“Here.” A hoarse, rough voice is your only reply. It’s not his voice, the soft, smooth caramel voice you love, but a gravel version of it. The sound makes your skin crawl as you move towards it.

Mike is in the living room, slumped low in the couch. A bottle is clutched in one hand, knuckles white around the rim. The amber liquid is almost gone and an unopened bottle waits by Mike’s bare feet, like a dog sitting by its master. Only you know enough about that particular poison to know that Mike is too innocent to be the master.

The victim, perhaps, but never the master.

It’s really the only sort of innocence Mike has left.

“Mike?”

He glances up at you, eyes red rimmed and bloodshot. “What?”

“What happened?”

He smiles, showing more teeth than mirth and returns his focus to the opposite wall. He should have touched you by now. Mike always touches you when he sees you. He likes to feel you; likes to own you. Only this time, he hasn’t moved and the unexpected lack of contact makes your skin burn.

“She left me.”

“She left you?”

“She said she knew she wasn’t the only one. She said that she wasn’t going to be second.” There was a dark, unfamiliar humour in his voice. “I never told her that you were always second.”

A knife twisted in your chest.

Stomach a churning wreak.

The truth is a bitter tonic to the sweetness of dreams.

It was always a secret dream, that Mike really loved you. That when he was with you, his eyes open wide, he was really seeing you. It was a dream that as he muttered curses, he was thinking of someone else.

You always knew dreaming was a waste.

You already knew you were nothing to Mike. He tells you so often.

You trust him. You always have. If he says your nothing, then that’s what you are.

“Mike…” you try words, but you always needed his help to give your words meaning.

“Just shut up, Chester.”

“Mike, I…”

“Leave.”

“But I…”

The bottle leaves his hand and slams against the opposite wall, shards embedding themselves in the plaster. Golden brown liquid forms a gentle waterfall until it pools on the carpeted floor.

You swallow once, twice.

He could have thrown that bottle at you.

You wish he had.

“I’m sorry.” you hope the insincerity doesn’t ring as loud in his ears as it did in your own.

“No you’re not.” He murmurs, reaching for the second bottle of poison at his feet.

Daring to step closer, you reach out to place hands against her broad shoulders. He shrugs your hands away, but it’s only half-hearted. He knows what you can do with those hands. You had to learn what to do fairly quickly, in your life.

You learnt how to make your lovers scream and beg for you.

Does Mike know he’s different? Does Mike know he’s the only one you ever wanted to make scream? That you lived for it?

Of course he does. He’s not stupid.

You try again, running a hand up into his hair and massaging his scalp. He leans back into your hand, a sigh breaking free.

Removing your hands from his hair, you move so that you stand in front and straddle him. His eyes stare up at you defiantly, but only a blind man could miss the lust there.

Of course, even a blind man could feel the lust.

Bracing your hands against the back of the couch, you lean forward, capturing his full bottom lip between your teeth and suck.

He still hasn’t moved, hasn’t even touched you.

Moving your mouth down along his collar bone, you bite down hard and hear him gasp while your hands run under his shirt and across his chest. You feel him shiver as your subtle fingers work their magic.

His neck has always been his weak spot and you go for it now, running your tongue across his smooth skin. He growls and grabs your hips, holding you tight. You’ll have bruises, but you don’t mind. They’ll be his hand prints. You’ll stand in front of the mirror and admire them, knowing shenever saw this. She never saw part of him on her skin.

“See,” You whisper, voice husky. “You can’t get rid of me.”

Another growl.

“You need me.”

You fly backwards, head connecting with the coffee table. Blackness encroaches on your vision but you struggle to see, to see Mike leaning over you.

His hands are around your throat.

“I never needed you, Chester. Never. You’re nothing!”

Reaching out a hand, you wrap it around his neck and pull him down. He kissed you like you’re not nothing, like you’re everything. Everything he loathes and desires and needs.

His hands move from you neck to your pants, undoing them and then his own. He is in you, hard and excruciating. You scream for him.

He loves it when you scream.

He told you once that she would never let him do this. She always insisted he be gentle.

Mike had never been gentle.

Well, maybe once. Before you knew him. Long before. You’ve never seen any traces of it.

You’ve always taken pride in letting him express him sadistic fantasies.

At least there’s something of his that’s really, truly yours.

“You’re better off without her.” You gasp as he forcefully slams into your body again.

He bites down on your lip and you can taste blood in your mouth and his. He licks at the blood, then draws back.

“I loved her.”

“You have me.”

“I hate you.”

You remain silent as he comes, although your whole body shakes. He’s the one that screams this time. His nails tear at the skin on your back. Your back arches to give him a better hold, loving the site of your blood under his nails.

Just like you are. Always under his skin, no matter what he says.

"I love you."

You mean it. You've never meant anything more. In a life of your lies, he is the truth. He is real. You can't control Mike.

"I hate you, Chester."

The room lapses into silence as he rolls off you, stands up and leaves the room, his clothes scattered on the floor around you. A few seconds later, you hear the shower start.

Your head pounds furiously, blurring your eyes and ringing in your ears. When you reach behind your head, your fingers come back sticky with crimson blood.

You wonder suddenly if Mike would leave you here to die, if you’ll bleed out across his cream coloured carpet.

Will he let you die?

Knowing he would, the world fades away.