Dead Dove

CW: it's in the fucking title.

He's late, which means there's a decent chance she's going home within the hour to finish her
book in a more comfortable, less public environment. She usually waits twenty to thirty minutes
before assuming her date isn't showing up: most were just fantasizing, some enjoy wasting her
time and on rare occasions she gets a funny text message like "mom had a car accident, can't
come" or the more plausible, slightly uncomfortable "got ran over by a car, at the ER right now"
with an even more uncomfortable picture attached she's learned to ignore. This time she paid
for the hotel room hoping to get more bookings through the day and nobody showed up yet,
which means she will have to come to terms with the fact that she wasted fifty bucks lest this
one shows up. So she's been waiting for forty minutes and keeps glancing at her phone for a
text, then back at the book (it's not that good), then back at the reception desk and lounge,
hoping for the next lone man wandering in is her client. The receptionist is smiling at nothing -
he knows she's looking at him cause she found him cute and does not mind objectifying boys as
eyecandy when bored, and she knows he's actively ignoring her not just because of the staring
but because she is obviously a whore.

You can tell she's a whore because her whole look screams queer alt slut, what with the dyed
hair, edgy makeup and tight-fitting leather pants, the tank top that stops short of showing
cleavage with perky tits underneath, the black fur coat? No one her age wears fake fur unless
they're trying to make turning tricks into a fashion statement. It fits her too - she looks
professional, like she knows what she's doing (she does), but knows to de-tooth that with eyes
open a bit wider than she normally would and puckered lipstick'd lips that say "kiss me" at a
glance if you fancy yourself a gentleman and "fuck my mouth" if you're being honest with
yourself. When he shows up on the hotel's threshold they just mouth a silent "fuck" cause his
whole look screams "I will murder you and ejaculate on your corpse."

He's big, more fat than muscle but strong-looking, she doesn't feel like she could sucker-punch
him and run past. Wearing a bomber jacket and working pants, dark brown, plus worn out
sneakers. Receding hairline, dark hair, pale complexion, might be eastern european, or
somewhere Caucasia-related. She realizes the red flag that popped up in her head when he
passed the threshold doesn't come from his looks - she's fucked uglier men who were totally not
murderers - it's that the picture he sent is 100% not him. Not a trick of the light, it's literally
another guy, which means he is smart enough to think about her saving a picture and sending it
to her backup in case he's a murderer, or a rapist, or a serial murder-rapist.

And of course he saw her - he looks at her, bushy eyebrows furrowing as he connects the dot
as to why she's in the hall: oh, safety measure of sorts, though it makes it harder for you to just
leave now doesn't it? He smiles and his teeth tell her he has very poor hygiene and will, best
case scenario, be a horrible time. Someone she'd turn away if he was down her old street not
knowing the number to her flat. She can't do that now though.

Tactical considerations: if she tried to just leave right now, it'd most likely mean being stalked
and-or chased after once the coast is clear, it's 8PM in November so it's dark and cold outside
and people are home from work already. It was supposed to be her last booking and she would
normally go home earlier but as you know, as it stands it was a waste of fifty bucks. Parts of her
is still very sad about that despite the unease and tempered adrenaline of trying to decide how
to deal with this guy. He walks towards her, she gets up a touch faster than she could have, she
acts like she's seen an old friend she's been expecting a while now. She won't look to the
receptionist for help because she knows he does not give a fuck and would not help should she
scream upstairs. And the rooms probably have decent soundproofing. He says hi, her work
name, sorry for being late he had some errands to run. His voice is sweet and soft, somewhat
high pitched, like a middle school teacher or a kindly veterinarian on the verge of retirement
who's genuinely sorry he has to put your dog down. Shall we go upstairs, he asks and she
notices he took a mint. At least her murderer knows common courtesy. Or he's used to this and
has done it many, many times.

She cannot for the life of her find the mental fortitude to just tell him the booking is off, sorry,
something came up, she doesn't feel like it, she's not comfortable getting up to a room where
they'll be alone together, she thinks he looks like a serial killer, and she has a loving girlfriend at
home who needs her very much to stay alive and well. Nah, she smiles her charming, demure
good girl smile and says Fake Name, don't worry about it, so glad you're here now, let's. And
she walks in front of him. Normally she'd walk behind or besides him but he's got that predator
aura that makes her his bitch and she feels the fear sort of dwindling down as dissociation takes
over. She's not really there, she's just telling a story to someone. It'll be over before she even
realizes what's happening. Probably.

The elevator ride is suffocating, as his smile takes over all the air. She doesn't ask about the
road or what he does, she's choking and smiling back and trying to find some humanity in his
eyes. She's pleading to something deeper that may or may not reside somewhere behind this
guy's eyes, and she is finding nothing but nonchalent, ordinary cruelty. She's meat.
They pass a cleaning lady in the corridor.

There's no keys anymore, it's just a keycard, she slides it in, opens the door, closes it behind
him and he just starts undressing as he gets to the bed. She reminds him a bit too firmly than
what she was aiming for of her rate, and he says after.

She feels a rush of anger, and fear again. She knows what's coming either way, but she is not
adding months of therapy to her homework and a day at the LGBTQIA+ sexual health center for
nothing. Not when she had to pay for the hotel room. Somewhere in there there's a part of her
that isn't sure whether this being her main concern right now is sad or funny.

You tell me. She says no, not after, that's now how I work, we agreed on it in text too. And she
stiffens, like she's about to leave. All of her stuff is on her, and he's in the room. She's fully
dressed and by the door. She absolutely knows this moment is gonna be key to her own
victim-blaming brain rot when she wonders about what she could have done better to avoid
what comes next. She walks further in. He's naked now, save for his socks, comfy with pillows
behind his neck. From here? He looks diseased, like a grotesque hairy spider on its back with a
fat limp dick and the minty, shit toothed smile. He nods at his pants on the bedside table next to
him, says his wallet is in there. As in go ahead, take it. She knows he's toying with her, but she
wants this to be over sooner than later more than anything right now so she bites. She stands
by the bed, looks in his pants' pocket. It's empty - she could see that before she got closer to the
bed, too. He wraps his arms around her waist, like a lover would, and says: must have left it in
the car.

I wish I could tell you the rest is blurry but it isn't. She sits on the side of the bed, feeling herself
tense up as he starts undressing her. She gets her coat and bag off, doesn't remove her shoes.
He shoves her further in the bed, she's sinking in it, drowning in the mattress, quietly dying for
the umpteenth time. Thinking hey, not a serial killer, just your garden variety rapist! Nah, that's
not true, she's not thinking at all. Or if she is it's lost in translation as static and the patterns on
the ceiling of the hotel room blend together. She's here, she feels it all, she smells his unwashed
dick as he slaps her cheek and pokes her lips. She feels the hand on her throat which he'll
absent-mindedly put on her tits, uncomfortably pressing and malaxing the side of them like he's
handling dough. He fucks her mouth for a while and she occasionally goes we can stop anytime
if you're not comfortable, and he's like huhuh, and she's like I know how to defend myself you
know and he's like get on your stomach and part of her is happy cause she won't have to see or
smell him as much and she's like put a fucking condom on and he just grunts as he pushes
himself in her and she makes a mental note of getting the full battery of tests while she lets out
a muffled yelp of pain before gritting her teeth, cause you can like it as rough as it comes and it'll
still just fucking hurt when it's men like him doing you. And she doesn't want him to think she's
enjoying this, she wants him to feel bored, like he's fucking a corpse. At first at least. Cause it
doesn't seem to change much for him, he's having a grand old time, this is what he wanted. So
she starts panting and moaning like the slut she is, giving him a show to make him finish faster.
It works. Somehow his orgasm dispells part of the curse from her mind and she takes her shit
and goes to the bathroom to clean without saying a word. The static's still here but also cum and
a bit of blood and pain that's numb now that she knows will keep her from sitting or sleeping
tonight. She's angry at him and herself but most of the energy still goes into survival mode and
right now, as much as she'll regret later, cutting his throat with her switchblade won't help. Cops
don't care about rape but they care about murder. She comes out and asks again for her
payment, he stops smiling, the TV's on, she doesn't hear the show as the static in her head
blows up into a cacophony when he says, without looking at her:

Get out or I'll kill you.

And she believes him. She doesn't run but wish she could. She gets out the room, corridor,
elevator, lounge, the street outside. She's shaking. Gets to the bus station, blasting her current
songs, headphones beat the static, she sees an amorphous mix of bus and people and
concrete and trash and trees and she's home.Her lover is talking about a game she's been
playing, happily celebrating her return, her voice dies out as she sees her beginning to sob.
Another bit of her wilts and changes and dies when she sees the pain in her lover's eye - she
knows it to be compassion and care and love, and it hurts. Each time it hurts a bit more to be
loved.

It Slithers

Content warning for CSA, self-harm and mental health stuff.

4 AM

It slithers, oily serpent wrapped across my chest, nested in hollow skin. I am needled with holes, it got in through one without fuss, and now it sickens me. Part of it is lodged firmly at the edge of my throat so that my words can never reach my tongue without it first having a say in it. The pressure accumulates in my trachea and all the way down to my stomach so that I am constantly assailed by queasiness, nauseated by the alien weight that parasites my insides. Its fangs force my eyes open whenever sleep beckons, sleep is the enemy, sleep means dreams and dreams means doors open inside that may lead it deeper into my psyche, into my soul. Memories melt into nightmare and I've dreamed these dreams for so long I can never safely tell myself whether they are, in fact, memories or a most vicious fantasy, a disgusting and vile play of an inexplicably ill spirit; a fallacy that betrays its nature in the very fact that the serpent is not, as far as I can tell, an occurence common in all or even most of my kin. Fallout from disgusting memories buried beneath thin veneers of symbolism and the ever-powerful might of denial? Certainly. Never as obvious from the perspective of *I*, though, only you or he-she-they, and then only with a curtain of irony or the cacophony of doubt-seeding shaming and proxy re-enactments of violence unaffected parties spill with no regard whatsoever for the increasing weight of that mass of tar bubbling all the way up to my throat, threatening to ooze from my eyes. In my memory I see my own face distort as my jaw unhinges itself like that of a snake and out from me comes out a skull followed by a sharp, barbed wire spine that rips out everything in its wake leaving a paper-thin human suit that cannot walk or sit or stand upright, only dissipate into muddy waters. In my dreams I see blurry shapes in the bathroom mirror blissfully rendered opaque by the steam, I feel hands that hesitate only so much and slither, climbing and grasping their way across a child's body. I see dark eyes filled with confusion and misplaced anger and sadness targeted against themselves, for what horrible creature they must be to deserve this. For they must deserve this, to survive a world where it were simply an unfair possibility with no rhyme or reason, lest they would drown in these waters. Better then I do not dream. Better then I do not sleep. Eventually I will forget again. Doubt and shame will overtake my mind and odd responses with no rhyme or reason will be my daily routine again, I will not see or feel the serpent's burden on my organs and instead, only the anger and sadness will remain, to be transmuted into a broader kaleidoscope of selves, ideas, emotions.

Doctors will call it healing.

I know the cycle too well and doubt it will ever break before I do. Yet there is still so much I need to do.