Page 85 of The Way We Rot
"I enjoyed myself," I murmured as the room slipped away, Adrian's face swimming in and out of focus, darkening around the edges.
My mouth stopped working; my eyelids grew heavy.
"Me too," I thought I heard him say, but then it all disappeared. Everything I anticipated might happen here, none of it did. There was just… blankness beckoning. I'd watched many others go through this, wondered, begged them to tell me how it felt.
But nothing. There was just nothing. I think Adrian's palm warmed my cheek; maybe he said something, maybe he moved me.
I let myself relax into it.
This was my death.
I sighed.
Thirty-Six
Adrian
Iknew Penelope was still in there, thinking and planning and plotting, drifting away to that place she must go to when her actions were no longer justifiable. But her body was still. Waiting. Patient.
Pliable.
I moved her arms to her sides, uncurling each of her fingers until her palms were flat. Then I ran my hands down her legs, making sure they matched up, dead straight, toes pointed up.
Shoulders pushed back, soft tits falling into her armpits, nipples pointed up. Her chin, I tipped, revealing her glorious throat in its entirety. There were beautiful bruises, purple and blue, marring most of her skin. Wounds, healed and unhealed, slices and slashes I’d caused, she’d caused, decorated her skin in a beautiful tapestry of pain.
Everything she deserved, everything I promised to give her.
I closed her eyes for now, so they didn’t dry out before I was ready.
Then I reached for my tools.
The first part of her I worked on was her hands. Her fingers bent and flexed independently of one another, and in all the puppets I’d seen, that didn’t happen. So, I needed to fix it.
I took the first long, thin needle from the tray beside me and pushed the sharp tip under her fingernail. Her body resisted as it drove all the way to her knuckle, nicking the bone. I had to reposition it, wiggling the needle point until cartilage gave way. I kept shoving the needle until it reached her knuckle, and her finger was pin straight.
On the second, the needle went all the way through, sticking out just under the pad of her middle finger, an ooze of dark blood tinting the metal.
“Fuck,” I grunted to myself, yanking the needle back out and trying again. It was tricky, but so fucking worth it to see her lose even more of her autonomy.
It took me almost an hour to do all ten fingers.
But it looked great, even with sweat on my brow from how much fucking effort it turned out to be. Her fingers, splayed out, unbending.
Satisfaction warmed my gut, and I carried on with the task at hand. Through all of it, Penny said nothing, did nothing. Unflinching closed eyes and a down-turned mouth with nothing to say.
It was almost too quiet.
With the small knife, the blade barely an inch long, I began to work, copying the joins on the marionettes hanging around the workshop, carving shallow lines along all her joints in jagged swipes. It was harder than I thought it would be, digging my blade around her elbows, her knees, her wrists.
Blood streamed from the wounds as I worked, slicing around her ankle bones, her hips, all rough, curved lines.
I almost missed her snarking, the way her breathing picked up and her eyes burned with anger, the sniping and teasing and pulling and pushing. Sighing, I looked at her face for a few moments.
Too calm. Too still. It itched under my skin, so incorrect.
I ripped into the carving around her elbow, the one on her arm littered with half-healed pockmarks, separating the skin until it gaped and blood seeped.
Nothing.
