“Which three fingers do you want me to cut off?”
Unknown woman

Wednesday night, 6 April 2016, PM

Support: The wake-up comes so suddenly that Victoria isn’t even certain when she went out. Some kind of chemical in the hood? Hard to say.

She’s handcuffed to a steel chair at both the wrists and ankles. The chair is appears to be bolted to the floor. She still has her clothes, for what it’s worth.

The room is almost painfully bright. It’s the kind of corporate LED ceiling lights that fill the entire room with multiple banks. The polished white tile floor does nothing to help with brightness, nor do the plastic sheets hanging from each wall.

And she’s still there. The blonde. Her makeup isn’t even smeared, or maybe she just had time to reapply it.

Either way, she looks like death.

Her skin is paler than any Victoria has seen, an effect made all the starker by the bright lights and black sweater she now wears. That’s the only thing Victoria can directly put her finger on directly against the obscenely white skin, makeup, and hair. Victoria can’t understand how she didn’t see the woman this way, at first. She looked normal at the front door. Here, there’s a terrible darkness in her eyes. A cruel cast to her porcelain features. The sharp hint to her smile that promises only one thing:

Pain.

“Welcome back, Ms. Wolf.”

Victoria: Confusion claims her first.

Body and mind.

She recalls the words, and now she’s…

Bright lights. Cold steel. Plastic sheets.

You don’t need plastic sheets to hold someone prisoner. She swallows.

Fuck.

“Where is Anna?” she snarls.

Support: The woman rolls her eyes.

“Adorable, if childish.”

“Let’s go ahead and put a pin in the heroic declarations and childish threats, now.”

She gives a savage smile.

“Would you prefer I cut off Anna’s ears or her nose in front of you?”

Victoria: She snarls back at her.

“Leave her alone! What the fuck is this even about?!”

Support: The woman smiles again.

“Both it is.”

She walks over to knock on the clinical white door twice.

Victoria: “W-wait! Wait! What do you want from us?!”

Support: There’s another poisonous smile.

“I want you to understand how serious I am. Don’t worry, there will be opportunities to save the rest of her. I’m told modern plastic surgery can be quite good.”

The room’s lights suddenly dim. Everything is blanketed in shadow. The door opens after a moment to admit two large black men leading in a diminutive female figure from either side. Victoria can’t clearly see her face. What she can see looks like hell. The figure’s face is already bruising from what might be… a few blows? Many blows? One lip looks grossly overlarge. It has to be swollen and split. Victoria smells blood. She’s been stripped of her pajamas and wears a straitjacket with nothing else.

Victoria can’t make out her full face. Or see her eyes. Not beyond terrified glints in the dark.

Perhaps that is a mercy.

The men walk the figure into the room and force her to her knees in front of Victoria. One man produces a serrated knife for the blonde.

She takes it and pauses before Victoria.

“We tried a straight blade for a while, but I won’t lie to you, it was a mess. You have to work so hard. If you’re trying to muscle it, half the time you take part of the lip with it. That’s just sloppy.”

“Serrated takes longer, but the knife does most of the work for you. The key is in holding the subject steady.” She pauses, then shrugs. “Why bother, a picture is worth a thousand words.”

The blonde turns to face Anna. “I want you to know: she brought this on you.”

Victoria: The beast inside Victoria compels her to rage against her bindings. The chair creaks. Her knuckles turn white. Her teeth bare, glinting in the light. The spirit inside her could render every creature in this room to ash, but she’s only human.

Helpless.

When it matters most, helpless.

“I’ll ruin ALL of you!” she snarls, the cuffs bruising her wrists in her struggle.

GM: “STOP! PLEASE! I’LL DO-” the bound figure screams, only to be suddenly cut off by a hand over her mouth.

The blonde nods to the two men. The second one also grabs Anna’s head.

Support: “This may hurt a little.”

Victoria can’t see what happens. Not clearly, in the poor lighting. It looks like the woman is grabbing Anna’s right ear. Pulling. Stretching flesh tight from the skull. Then there’s a flash of steel, against the room’s remaining light, and the woman sets to work with all the hesitation of a butcher slicing a piece of meat or a mother cutting the crusts off a child’s sandwich.

The blade nosily slices—tears, really—into the flesh. There’s an overpoweringly coppery smell. Anna’s screams are almost inhuman.

It lasts for maybe four or five seconds.

Then the blonde walks back to Victoria and holds up a grisly, red-stained piece of flesh and cartilage like a trophy.

There’s no mistaking what it is.

Anna’s ear.

“She was prettier with both, honestly,” says the blonde.

Victoria: The bindings tear into Victoria’s wrists in all the burning rage.

“I’LL FUCKING KILL YOU! I’LL END YOU! ALL OF YOU! EVERY LAST ONE!”

She struggles as if the knife were at her own throat—and, really, it’s so much worse than that. She bucks and heaves, a mixture of tears and rabid saliva spilling down her face. If not for the chair being secured, she’d be sobbing into the floor.

“Let her GO!”

Support: The blonde doesn’t even acknowledge Victoria’s helpless fury.

She just repeats the process.

Victoria has only a moment to see the flesh pulled taunt again before the knife comes down a second time, sawing through skin. There’s no scream this time, but another light comes on. Anna’s face is a mask of terror and agony, her head held stable by the two strong men on either side. She brokenly sobs and wails. Tears run down her cheeks. Saliva leaks down her chin.

There’s four, maybe five seconds of wet tearing and bubbling coppery crimson. No longer. Halfway through, Anna’s cries cease.

Then the blonde hoists the second ear. She drops it in front of Victoria next to the first with a smile.

“Two down, one to go.”

She looks back to Anna’s now-motionless form and scowls.

“I guess we’ll have to wait until she comes to.”

Victoria: Her fury rises. Blood drips from her wrists. Victoria Wolf is an animal. Caged. Restrained. Taunted.

She roars.

“AGH! STOP! Stop. Please! Please.”

Her rage falters.

“Please, no more to her. I’m who you want. You have me.”

Support: The thugs drag Anna out.

“Do I? Do I have your undivided attention now, Ms. Wolf?”

The blonde says the name as if it’s a joke.

She stalks towards Victoria’s bolted chair.

“Every time you lie to me, every time you insult me, every time I don’t like the look in your eye or think you’re telling me anything but the complete truth… I’m going to cut off another part of your little friend in front of you.”

“The nose is still gone, by the way. This little delay didn’t buy it back for you. Next up will be fingers. To save time, we’ll sell them away three at a time. Lips. Nipples. Womanly bits. We learned to save the eyes for last so she can see what’s being done to her as you sell her off piece by piece like a piece of meat.”

“Are you ready to cooperate?”

Victoria: She simply jerks her head in a nod, the rest of her shaking like the last leaf holding against winter.

Support: The blonde pulls a second chair up in front of Victoria and lazily sits across it, facing backwards towards her.

“I suppose you’re worried about your little girlfriend. That she’s going to bleed out.”

The blonde smiles, then shakes her head and waves a hand dismissively.

“Don’t worry about that. We learned that lesson a long time ago. By now they’ve already cauterized those wounds. It might have even been enough to wake her up.”

“We definitely want to make sure she’s completely awake and aware of every single thing that happens because of you.”

“I give you my word, she will not die tonight.”

Victoria: She believes her.

Immediately.

This vile creature before her—this ‘once a woman’—hasn’t lied to her.

Not once.

She knows better than to talk back. She knows better than to speak unless bid to. She knows better than to let that rage show.

She nods again.

Support: The woman smiles.

“Now, let’s start with the obvious. Why did you have a priest beaten, raped, and framed?”

Victoria: She parts her lips to speak, pauses long enough to bid the instinctive lie away, and answers.

“His family had Anna’s life ruined; had people killed. All for a fault not their own.”

Support: The blonde breaths in deeply. She gives what might be the first genuine smile of the night.

“Ah, I do so love poetic justice. For a wrong against an innocent, you wronged an innocent, and in turn have had an innocent wronged.”

“Who can deny the hand of God in the world?”

The question sounds rhetorical.

“Who were your conspirators?”

Victoria: The defeat on Victoria’s face could tarnish God’s own sense of confidence.

“You already know Jordan. I’m sure he’s—”

Stay on topic, Victoria.

I’m sorry.

“Christina Roberts.”

Support: “Who else?” the woman asks, tracing a finger across Victoria’s bound, bleeding wrist and bringing it to her lips.

Victoria: She feels Victoria trembling beneath her.

“Some of Jordan’s associates. I don’t know their names. I wasn’t supposed to know.”

Support: The woman wipes Victoria’s blood off of her finger against her teeth and pauses in thought.

“You wouldn’t be lying to me, Ms. Wolf, would you?”

Victoria: “You are threatening the only thing that matters to me. Why would I lie?”

Support: “What a fascinating question,” the woman asks in turn.

“Why did you target the priest?”

Victoria: “A fool’s errand in revenge. He seemed like a good idea at the time; to tarnish image and c-career. That’s what matters to the el-lite, doesn’t it?”

Support: “How brave and powerful you must have felt, sending men to attack a servant of God. Did you have any direct evidence he was involved in the ‘ruining’ of your little friend?” the woman probes.

One hand reaches out to caress Victoria’s cheek, lightly, almost like a lover.

Victoria: She rests her cheek against that fetid palm.

“No. It didn’t matter. It was stupid.”

In retrospect, it was stupid.

GM: Victoria immediately regrets it. There’s no warmth or assurance at the contact. Just a cold, skin-scrawling shiver up her spine, like she might get from touching a snake.

Victoria: She knows better than to apologize, too.

She doesn’t pull away, despite the revulsion.

Support: The hand cups Victoria’s face and brings her eyes to meet her interrogator’s eyes. The dominatrix feels goosebumps along her skin.

“Oh, darling, spare us both the sob story. Like all victimizers, you regret getting caught and being made to pay for your sins. Not the sin itself. Left to your own devices, you’d be happily planning your next attack.”

“Let’s stick to facts: whose idea was it to target the priest, yours or Ms. Roberts’?”

Victoria: Her expression doesn’t change.

“Everything was my idea. The only input Christina provided was advice.”

Support: The smile vanishes from her interrogator’s face.

“There’s the lie. I knew it was coming.”

Her voice remains soft.

“I suppose we should get your friend back in here to remind you what you’re playing with. Which three fingers do you want me to cut off?”

Victoria: “N-no! It’s not a lie! She w-wouldn’t help me! Said it HAD to come from me! P-pl-please! I’m being honest! You’ve made your point—I have NO reason to lie to you!”

Defeat returns.

“Why would I lie to protect an accomplice when you have everything in my life bleeding in front of me?”

“She validated my plan. Her only input beyond that was to disseminate to media.”

She draws a breath, trying to calm herself enough to think their way out of here.

“I wanted revenge. I wanted to give life back to those I love. I didn’t care who got in the way to do it. I used Christina to validate and execute my plan.”

A pause.

“Both pinkies. Left ring finger.”

Support: “And all you gave her was suffering,” says the woman.

She snaps her fingers.

The men half-drag, half-carry Anna back into the room. She looks delirious. Barely aware of her surroundings. She has no ears. Just ugly, pungent-smelling burns where they used to be, over the holes.

“By that I also mean you, specifically,” says the woman. “Obviously, it’s inadvisable not to keep you restrained right now—for your safety more than mine—so we’re going to do the next best thing, to you actually wielding the knife.”

She lifts up the earlier knife and strides up towards Anna. The woman barely seems to register her presence. Her face is smeared with coppery-smelling half-dried blood. Especially down the sides.

“If you want those fingers gone? Tell me. And tell Anna. Do your best to get through to her. Dictate the entire thing, from start to finish.”

Victoria: It hurts her more than anything. She’d rather that drunk client of Émelise’ have taken her and left her dying on the floor.

This?

This is suffering.

She lifts her jaw, weighed by anchors, and speaks with a resolute steel. Not defiance. No, only to date their captor.

“Take her left pinky and ring finger, and her right pink. You’ll find the joint, and slice through cleanly. And you’ll enjoy the feel of her flesh as much as you enjoy hearing me will it.”

GM: The woman snaps her fingers in front of Anna’s face. The woman’s eyes sluggishly follow them.

“I said get through to her, Ms. Wolf. She needs to understand who this is coming from. I’m not convinced she will.”

Victoria: “ANNA! Anna! Fucking wake up. Look at me, baby. You need to do this, okay? This is my fault. You can blame me. You can hate me, but you need to do this. Okay?”

Her nerves are beyond frayed. She’s back to trembling. Her words become more and more feeble the more she forces out.

GM: Anna’s eyes blearily meet Sylvia’s.

“Do… wha….?”

Victoria: “ANNA. Wake UP! Stay. Awake. Do you hear me? Did you hear what I said?”

GM: The ear-less woman just stares at Sylvia deliriously.

Then, after a moment, she starts sobbing.

Support: “Perfect,” the blonde purrs. She slides in beside Anna, knife in hand.

Victoria’s girlfriend screams and feebly thrashes.

The blonde nods again to the men on either side of Anna. They wrap their meaty hands back around her head.

Anna screams louder. It’s a pleading, almost childish wail of abject terror. When her torturer places the knife under her nose and begins to saw, it gets worse.

This isn’t as quick as the ear: there’s just so much cartilage to saw though. Anna screams with every drop of blood, and there are so many of those too. Maybe it’s for the best that the men holding her look fairly strong. It’s gruesome enough to watch the blade saw through flesh.

Blood flows down Anna’s face and soaks her throat red. There’s so much that it chokes off her screams as the blonde finishes her terrible task. The ruined piece of cartilage and flesh hits the floor with a wet splat. Anna’s ruined face is a hellscape. It’s a human’s face with a skeleton’s empty nasal cavity. She looks like a freak. Some monstrous, abominable unfortunate, caught between worlds, neither living nor dead. She looks like a monster that makes children scream. She looks like something no one could love.

Yet, she remains awake for what comes next.

The blonde frees one arm from the jacket and has her companions hold it straight. She produces a pair of pruning shears and teases one tiny finger away from the next. The shears line up around it. Anna’s screams hit a new high note.

Then it’s over, suddenly. One swift crunch of steel against flesh and bone, and a small finger hits the floor. Blood wells, but there’s scarcely time to register as the blonde moves the garden tool to the next finger. Her ring finger. There’s another snap. Steel sheers through flesh, glances off bone, and cuts through gristle. A second finger hits the ground.

If there’s something to be said for it, at least these actions are faster than the knife.

The second hand is teased free with a quickness as Anna’s eyes begin to glaze over once again. There’s another flash of steel. A third jet of blood joins the first two.

It becomes obvious why the blonde is rushing when Anna mercifully slides back into unconsciousness.

“Damn,” the blonde curses. “Three on two different hands is always a challenge.”

She sighs and waits as the men gather Anna’s severed nose, severed fingers, and what’s left of the woman herself, then carry her out of the room. Blood runs from her mutilated hands and face until the door closes.

“Let’s start over,” says the blonde. “You were telling me about how you and Ms. Roberts conspired to harm a priest because of the part others played in ‘ruining’ your friend.”

She pauses. “I suppose that word takes on a different meaning now. Do you still want to sleep with her? I thought I was doing you a favor by keeping her tongue, but we’ve only gotten started on her new look.”

Victoria: Victoria knows better than to look away. She knows better than to even blink; to zone out; to show any indication that her attention wavers for so much as even a moment.

This is your punishment, Victoria. This is your doing. This is your folly, and you are to reap every ounce of what you sowed.

She watches every schlick of the blade as it saws through her girlfriend’s nose. She listens to her fingers hit the ground with the unceremonious clack of thrown dice. She never leaves Anna’s eyes. Not once.

Her expression, though, morphs. By the time Anna is drawn away, the wolf is more—less?—than defeated; she’s beaten and battered, more than if the blade had been taken to her own face. She’s chained without the need for chains. Beaten without the need for further abuse. She’s sitting outside Death’s door, waiting to be let in, both patient and impatient.

When she’s addressed, those lifeless eyes shift up to the blonde.

Words are a foreign concept, and it takes her a moment to answer.

“Please,” she begs, for the first time in her life. “I’ll answer anything—do anything—if you let her go.”

She doesn’t remember when tears began streaming down her face, but the river is flowing with no sign of abatement.

“You have my life. We both know that. I have nothing to bargain with, but I can promise willing service if you just let her go.”

She pauses, knowing that if she doesn’t answer the question, it’ll be more fingers.

“Anna was fired and blacklisted from teaching as a scapegoat for the events of the LaLaurie House. Christina Roberts’ niece was killed for it. I am protective of my own—you know that—and so I schemed revenge.”

The pause that follows is frigid.

“I do still want to sleep with her, yes,” she forces out. “I am s-s-sorry for my transgression. H-how can I make it right?”

Support: Does the blonde take pleasure from Victoria’s surrender? From her tears and begging? From seeing her broken like no one else has broken her before?

If she does, she gives no sign.

Perhaps that’s more galling, in its own way, than gloating.

Perhaps that’s worse for Anna.

Because all the blonde does is keep questioning:

“Who approached whom?”

“What is your past relationship with Ms. Roberts?”

Victoria: Victoria’s expression is pleading. Begging. This woman has everything she is, and is pulling it apart as easily and carelessly as a child eating string cheese.

She scrambles for thought.

“I—I met her. I was upset. I learned the circumstances of Anna’s blacklisting. She raised her niece’s fate. We broached the s-subject together: revenge.”

She swallows.

“The plan was mine. She wouldn’t provide, only advise.”

She addresses the second question.

“Acquaintances in related businesses.”

More information, Victoria.

“She…”

Is the room spinning?

Why can she hear the ocean?

“She owns a… an escort agency. I provide related services.”

She adds, “That’s how I met Jordan. He’s… one of mine. Was.”

He isn’t here anymore.

She knows that.

Is Anna?

She promised she wouldn’t die.

Does this woman lie?

She’s been honest so far.

So honest.

“I knew of his… connections to the Mafia. I hired him. I…”

She considers asking where they went wrong.

She already knows the answer she’ll get.

Answering the door.

Thinking they were more than goldfish in a bowl adjacent to an ocean they’d never know.

GM: The blonde cracks a smile at Victoria’s haggard expression.

If she’s being pulled apart like string cheese, the blonde is the child gulping down the pieces.

It’s gone after a moment, though.

“You what?” the woman prompts.

“You’ve been doing so well. Don’t stop now.”

Victoria: “I… I… I thought it was enough. I thought I was clever. Using Jordan.”

The implication is written on her face: she had no idea how deep the water went.

Support: “If it’s any consolation, no doubt Ms. Roberts thought the same,” answers the blonde.

Victoria: She almost cracks a smile. A dead, broken smile.

Almost.

As if afraid the moment’s silence between them might set off a bomb, she stammers, “Wh-what else? What else do you want to know? Anything. Anything at all. I won’t lie.”

The blonde knows she won’t lie.

The blonde knows how serious Victoria knows she is.

Support: Her interrogator, as it turns out, has a great deal she wants to know.

She probes into how and when Victoria and Anna met. When and how Victoria learned of Anna’s woes. When their relationship became sexual.

She wants to know about Victoria’s clients of interest. Their fetishes and desires.

She wants to know details on how the priest was singled out. Why not a Devillers sister? Why not someone more directly involved in what happened? Why not the Whitney family?

Victoria: She shares the story of how they met; of their quick, easy friendship, and Victoria’s protective nature. She recants the story of the golf club, knowing it’ll make it more painful—and give her torturer more pleasure—when they bring Anna back in. She tells the story of their relationship, and of Anna’s ex-fiance, and what Victoria did for her. She shares the story of their first time, and how much she loves the woman.

Victoria thinks for a moment on her clients. She has a fair few clients, and though they’ve become ‘more’ interesting over time, she’s yet to have the level of ‘interesting’ she’s dreamed of. She shares that, too. She shares those she considers the most interesting:

Jordan, and his mommy obsession.

Hugo Cleveland, and his penchant for being dominated by wealthy women.

Lucky Cardona, and his love for innocent interns; and, his true stories of defiling them.

Russell White, and his need for tender touch.

“The priest was singled out because he was accessible, and his reputation would be easy to tarnish at a time when it mattered,” she answers. To the rest, she offers an admission of her own weakness. Kidnapping and ruining lives are not her strong suit anywhere near as much as holding a knife herself.

It doesn’t matter what she asks. Victoria answers everything. Her mouth tries. Her eyes stream. She spills her innermost secrets—her most protected clients—as if her mind is an open text. All for Anna.

What’s left of her.

Support: The blonde listens as she spills every name and secret. She asks probing questions here and there with each topic.

By the end, she doesn’t look gleeful or sadistic. She just looks tired.

“Do you believe in God, Ms. Wolf?” she asks.

Victoria: “I… do, yes. Since I was little.”

She sounds as if she’s talking to her therapist.

Maybe she’s making her peace.

Support: She nods.

“Then you’re fortunate.”

That statement hangs pregnant in the air for a moment.

“Because I believe in God too, Ms. Wolf.”

She pulls up the chair before Victoria again, straddling it and leaning over the back.

“You hate me. Think I’m a monster.”

“Do you believe me a liar?”

Victoria: She looks up to her, death embodied in her eyes. The soul is dulled. The heart is a hole.

“I… believe that you’re doing what I wished I could do; what I would do, if we were switched. No, I don’t think you’re a liar. Not now.”

Support: “And if I told you this,” she gestures to the room, to the blood staining the floor, “was the lesser of two evils, for you?”

Victoria: “I would ask what you saved me from, and why you saved me.”

“Me, who gave you a reason to do what you are.”

Support: “I likely saved you, and your girlfriend, from getting beaten to death with a baseball bat by the side of the road and buried in a shallow grave.”

“I saved you because I needed to question you myself. I had no intention of helping you, after what you did, but I do find a strange providence in how this worked out.”

Victoria: Victoria doesn’t understand, and it’s written on her face as plain as graffiti.

“Why did you need to question me yourself…? What providence…?”

Support: She raises her eyebrows, looking up.

“I’m in the unusual position of having a better understanding of His sense of humor than most.”

Victoria: “Why? How?”

Support: “It usually starts with a terrible mistake that you don’t have enough sense to regret at the time.”

She lets out a long breath.

“So, what do I do with you,” she muses.

Victoria: Victoria almost smiles. Almost.

“You… have everything I’ve ever wanted. What do you want to do with me?”

Support: The cold hand returns, tracing Victoria’s bruised jaw.

“A pretentious assumption,” she laughs.

Victoria: A mask of confusion slips into place.

“Pretentious?”

Support: “That you know everything you desire.”

A strained smile slips in before she continues,

“Tell me, Wolf, what is it you desire?”

Victoria: “My wife,” is her answer. “Whole. Unharmed. Sane.”

But she can’t have all of that, can she?

And that’s not all, is it, Victoria?

Is it, Sylvia?

“Revenge.”

The word isn’t spoken harshly, nor is it an afterthought. It’s a simple statement. Weak. Unsupported.

She can’t have that either, and it shows.

Support: “And you think that’s what I have?” the blonde asks.

Does she look sad?

Victoria: Victoria stares at her.

Is it not?

“Not… anymore.”

Now she’s sad.

Support: “If I let you go tonight, Ms. Wolf, what would you do?”

Victoria: “Would Anna be given back to me?”

Support: “Let’s assume so.”

Victoria: “What state would she be in?”

Support: “Meaning what? Are you asking if I’ll send you home with a corpse in some twisted mockery of your wish?”

Victoria: “If you hand me a noseless, earless, seven-fingered, cauterized, broken woman, then I would go to the hospital.”

It almost sounds like a joke.

It isn’t.

“You promised she won’t die, and I said that I don’t believe you’re lying to me.”

A pause.

“If you let me go tonight, I would try to learn who you are.”

Thoughts strain her face.

“Not for revenge.”

For what, then?

“Not yet.”

Support: “Why does it matter who I am, Ms. Wolf?”

Victoria: “Because you’re better than me,” she answers both simply and immediately.

“And I want to know how you’re so much so.”

All of that—all of tonight—and her answer has nothing to do with Anna at all.

Support: That seems to spark her interest.

“Does it bother you, or intrigue you, that I am?”

“Better.”

Victoria: “What is one without the other?”

Support: “And when you learned who I was?”

Victoria: “Find you. Find a reason for you to give me the time of day.”

Support: The blonde gestures with her free hand in a circular motion, up and down.

Get to the point.

Victoria: “I fucked up. You more than illustrated the point: I’m so far out of my depth that I’m not even in the same ocean. You saved me, and you won’t say why. You’re talking to me, not torturing me, and you won’t say why.”

Despite her words, she doesn’t sound hopeful that she’ll actually be going anywhere.

“I want to know how you became who you are. Normal people don’t do what you do. ‘Body and mind.’ I didn’t smell chloroform. I don’t know who you are—but I want to know, and you don’t seem the type to let people who know go free.”

A pause.

“You don’t seem the type to entertain a conversation with those you don’t find interesting.”

Support: “No. No, I’m not.”

It’s unclear which of Victoria’s statements that answers.

“What’s more important to you: your friend or knowing how deep the rabbit hole goes? If I made you choose.”

She leans closer to Victoria, over the chair’s edge, her face inches from the brunette’s.

Victoria: Her lip quivers.

The answer isn’t easy.

“I love her,” she answers meekly, as if the question provides only the illusion of choice.

“I can’t not choose her—and if I choose her, you’ll have to kill me now, because when I see her, I won’t stop until you have.”

She knows she won’t win the eventual attempt.

“You’ll make me choose?”

Please, don’t make me choose.

Support: “Are you asking me to choose?”

That seems to intrigue her.

“Kill Anna to save you? Kill you to save her? You’re a creature of such wild passions that you couldn’t bear what happened to her if you had to look upon her again?”

Victoria: She sniffs back a well of snot.

“I’m saying there isn’t a choice, because I will choose my family every time. I am loyal to those I love—until death. I could be loyal to you, too. If you spare her. If you help save her. I’m still yours—no matter what.”

“Unbind me. I’ll show you.”

Support: That brings a bittersweet smile to the monstrous woman’s face.

“I suppose you’ve made your choice, then.”

She stares for a moment, then the hand on Victoria’s face slides back to grab her by the back of the head. The woman pulls Victoria’s lips to hers.

The lips part and an ice cold tongue snakes past Victoria’s lips. But it doesn’t matter how cold the woman is. It doesn’t matter how monstrous she is. Because it feels so. Damn. Good.

There’s a thrill of pleasure that steals Victoria’s breath, and a taste on that tongue that is indescribable. Crisper than the crispest cocktails. Sweeter than the sweetest desert. It’s better than any drug.

Victoria’s heard heroin addicts talk about their first hit. The first taste. The first time. How nothing is ever as good as the first time, but you can’t help but chase it all the same. Chase it to the ruin of everything for the vain hope of recapturing that moment. She can believe it in this instant.

Victoria: She opens her mouth to answer—an acknowledgment, never given life.

The moment her lips part, that tongue coils behind her teeth, and in that moment: bliss. Sylvia St. George—thanks to her mother, and then her girlfriend—never fell hard into drugs.

This?

This makes up for it. This is the hit of everything she’s ever wanted, and everything she’s ever wanted to avoid. Her tongue is a vile slug, and the sweetest delicacy.

She resists, at first, her neck arching against that iron grip, her bleeding wrists struggling against her bindings, and then…

Why? Why try? Why does it matter?

Hungrily, she returns the kiss, her lips gyrating against her torturers, her own tongue wrapping that acrid angel as if she thinks she can hold it inside her.

She wonders what that tongue would feel like elsewhere. Her neck. Her belly. Lower.

A grunt passes her lips.

Support: The woman’s own kiss is eager, active. She pulls Sylvia to her, ebbing and flowing.

How long does it last? It doesn’t really matter, does it? It ends, and it’s like the setting of the sun. She wants to cry like she hasn’t since she was a small child.

The blonde withdraws.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Wolf,” she says, that bittersweet smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

“I’m afraid that I’m going to give you what you asked for.”

“I hope it’s what you wanted.”

One hand strokes the side of Victoria’s head.

“Let’s start with that name you wanted…”