Currency in Flesh

Chapter 17

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

K nock, knock, knock.

The sound was so unexpected, it took me a few moments to register what it meant. I sat up abruptly, pushing my blankets off and heading toward the noise. The door was precisely where it had been, and the knob was warm and smooth against my palm. Bleary-eyed, I greeted Lady Cora clad only in a lace robe which hung from my shoulders and barely covered my chest.

“Good afternoon,” she said, her amusement evident.

I rubbed at my eyes. “Afternoon?”

“I did not think it necessary to wake you from sleep you so clearly required. I trust you are feeling better?” Yawning, I nodded. “Well, then. I am needed in the pit, and I may be unreachable for some time. I came to see if there was anything you might want to do today.”

Another yawn forced its way through me and I covered my mouth, hoping that morning breath didn’t exist in the Underworld. “I—” I wasn’t sure what she was asking. This was new, an interest in how I spent my time? “I hadn’t thought about it yet.”

Lady Cora’s eyes flicked away from mine briefly and she smoothed an imaginary wrinkle in her dress. The same small black snake emerged from behind her neck and twined its way down her arm. I felt a measure of pride that I didn’t even flinch. “Very well,” she replied, voice suddenly cool and detached. “I trust you will behave?”

I reached for her without thinking, the urge to make sure she wasn’t displeased with me taking over. She stilled, fingers like polished marble against the warmth of my touch. The snake’s tongue flicking the air was the only sign that time itself had not frozen. “Did you want company?”

She scoffed and I regretted saying anything. Lady Cora wasn’t a sullen, dejected boyfriend. I needed to stop attributing emotions to her that I’d been trained to anticipate from Sean, but it was hard. It was hard not to read every tiny flicker of expression, each twitch of a muscle, as something personal. I’d spent a decade learning to analyze breath patterns and the length of pauses between words. But, she wasn’t him, and frankly, I highly doubted it would even cross her mind to care.

Yet, her fingers softened, and I could have sworn her weight shifted from her back foot to the pointed heel nearer to me. Even the snake seemed to move with less tension. “As I said,” she reiterated, “I have business to attend to in the pit. However, your darling Sean is always available to you.”

I pulled back. The visceral reaction I felt at hearing his name twisting my face into something ugly, riddled with disgust and contempt. “Thanks for reminding me,” I intoned flatly. “Do I have to? Can’t you just, I don’t know, set him on fire?”

Lady Cora laughed. “I certainly could, but where would the fun be in that? I only wanted to offer. I thought—” she seemed to second-guess herself, but went on after a quick breath. “Last night, an experience such as yours can sometimes bring up latent emotions. Your husband” —she sneered the word—“would be an excellent repository for any unrestrained, lingering anger.”

I allowed myself to remember the previous night—the way I had sobbed in her arms and the tender care she had provided in kind. It was a facet of her I had not anticipated, and I hadn’t yet given myself time or space to process my feelings around it. But alongside the sense of profound peace I could recall, I also saw the terrible burden she had helped to ease. What kind of woman had I become that being tied up and whipped had brought me peace?

When Her Highness had struck me, it had freed me from all the hurt Sean had buried me beneath for so many years. I found permission to let go in the pain she had given me—devoid of any anger or malice. I felt the throbbing of my pulse between my thighs and realized what I really wanted was more. More opportunity to let go, to shrug off the life I no longer was beholden to. But could I? Was I even able to walk away from something still unresolved? It would be a coward’s choice to ask her to do it for me. Sean had been my problem, my captor. He hadn’t chained Lady Cora to an impossible promise—it had always been me. To have and to hold, for better, for worse… til death do us part.

Maybe it was time I completed our vows.

I blinked away the barrage of memories and thoughts that swirled through my messy brain. I didn’t have Donna the therapist down here to light lavender candles and encourage me to take deep breaths and journal. I had Lady Cora, and she encouraged an entirely different variety of therapy.

“Let me get dressed,” I said, my heartbeat stuttering when the edge of her lips tilted up infinitesimally. “I’ll be right back.”

When I stepped out from my door, I was clad in the same black jeans, a loose, lace-trimmed charmeuse camisole, and the black boots I had worn for my last trip to the pit. My hair was pulled back in a thick ponytail, a few unruly curls framing my face. I’d taken a moment to swipe on some mascara and eyeliner I found tucked into a box in the wardrobe. I wanted to look good, healthy. I wanted Sean to see a woman who was doing just fine while he languished in purgatory, awaiting my judgment.

Lady Cora’s eyes moved from my boots up my body until they met mine. She said nothing, but I watched the way her eyes narrowed slightly, her cheeks lifting in a secret smile before she spoke, “Good girl.” I didn’t try to repress my answering smirk. With the wave of a hand, she gestured forward. “After you.”

Her graceful fingertips slid through reality, pushing aside the view outside my room and revealing a low-lit orange sky. The hot breeze smelled of smoke and the strange, sharp scent of overheated metal. My skin immediately felt tight, stretched too thin over my bones. It was like the summers I’d spent in Southern California—the Santa Ana winds seeming to suck the moisture from my very flesh. She stepped around me, heading down the paved path to the pit.

Grains of sand and tiny bits of gravel scraped beneath my boots, the only sound as we walked. Lady Cora’s steps were silent, and I wondered how she managed to always move through this place with such elegance. I guess it made sense, she could do whatever she wanted. Why would she want to stomp around like livestock when she could instead choose to exemplify perfection? I was sure the sight of a perfectly pristine woman, dressed in impeccably cut designer clothing, without a single hair out of place, was an absolutely terrifying thing to witness for those who bled and burned in the pit. She was a sinister angel, retribution wrapped in silk and sin.

We reached a fork in the path, and she stopped. “This is where we part ways, pet.” She raised her chin toward the right. “You will find the entrance to your destination that way. I trust you recall the cabinet and how to make your way back? ”

“Do I use the cabinet door again?” I asked, uncertain if she meant the path we had just taken.

Lady Cora’s eyes flared, the shade a vibrant lime. “I suppose that is up to you.” She flashed me a wicked grin. “I have taken the liberty of leaving you some fun things to play with.” She turned, taking a step down the other path, but stopped at the sound of my voice.

“Lady Cora?”

“Yes?”

“It’s okay if you, um, if you listen to my thoughts today.”

The plush ruby of her lower lip disappeared between her teeth and the hand at her side clenched. “As you wish.” she winked, and was gone.

It was less than a five-minute walk before the staircase came into view. The black steps led down into what looked like pure darkness, but I was sure she would have made sure I had adequate light to make my way below. The acrid smell of struck matches and scorched earth was strong, wafting up from below in occasional gusts of sweltering air. I took a final, deep breath and began my descent.

My body reacted before my mind had time to think—my chest tightening and heartbeat accelerating as though it anticipated Sean on its own. When I stepped down into the dim space, the light brightened and I could see the cabinet clearly. This time, the frame did not occupy the platform. Instead, what looked like a narrow bench sat in the center, beside a simple chair. There was one of those medieval apparatuses attached to the bench with a short beam. Stocks? A pillory? I tried to remember my European history class, but huffed a little laugh. It didn’t matter in the slightest what the damn thing was called, I knew what it was for. There was also a small table, and from the way the light glinted off its contents, I surmised it was an assortment of things that would hurt. Again, my pulse sped up. I was understandably nervous at the prospect of inflicting some variety of archaic torture on my husband, but beneath the anxiety I could sense a ribbon of anticipation, maybe even excitement.

Who are you, Grace?

I shook off the voice in my head. Fuck that, I wasn’t going to let my own questionable morals talk me out of showing Sean his mistakes. The cabinet door opened easily, once again filling the room with the agonized cries of the souls suffering within. The flame-hued light illuminated the rope, and I tugged as Lady Cora had. This time, the bench was placed beside where Sean’s bound body came to an abrupt stop. I watched him swing for a moment, noting the metal cuffs at his wrists and the chain wrapped around his ankles.

It took some maneuvering to get him astride the bench, but the chain came undone at my touch, and the cuffs separated in the center, allowing me to slip his arms into the bottom portion of the restraint and latch the top part down without any fuss. There was an opening for his head, but I wanted him to see me, so I opted to secure only his wrists and ankles, leaving him to slump over the hard lines of the black steel uncomfortably. When I knew he was safely locked up, I pulled the small table closer. A few little white packets caught my eye and I picked one up.

Ammonia inhalant—Respiratory Stimulant for inhalation only.

I smiled, looking at Sean’s unresponsive, slack form. Cracking one open, I wafted it below his nose and he sat upright with a wild jerk, the apparatus clanking as he strained against it.

“What the—” His eyes swept over his surroundings with the feral instinct of an animal caught in a bear trap. When they landed on me, his features twisted and morphed into the hideous mask of rage I recognized so well.

“Good morning!” I chirped. “It’s a lovely day to be alive, don’t you think?” I tapped my index finger against my chin. “Well, I suppose ‘alive’ isn’t really the right word, but oh well!”

His head lolled forward, intentionally looking anywhere but my face. “I keep thinking I should just be done with you, slit your throat or something, let you burn in whatever comes after. But that would be so easy. I never had it easy, and there’s some part of me that really wants you to understand.”

Sean’s voice sounds like a rusted hinge. “Yeah, it must have been so hard for you to drive a Porsche, wear designer clothes, live in a fourteen million dollar house. Poor Gracie.”

I hadn’t realized my fingers had clasped around the scalpel until I swung it through the air. The surgically honed blade slid through the flesh and sinew of his cheek like a hot knife through butter. The skin parted, and a vibrant torrent of red emerged, streaming down his neck and soaking into the filthy clothing he still wore. He roared, fighting against the restraints and thrashing his head wildly. Blood splattered the floor, my chest, my cheek, and the small instrument clattered to the floor. I reached for a hand towel atop the table, doing my best to clean myself while Sean continued to shout and curse.

His words sounded slurred, and when I had finished rubbing at my skin with the dry terrycloth, I looked closely at his face. I must have severed a nerve or muscle or something, judging by the asymmetrical tilt of his mouth and the way his lower eyelid sagged, exposing the bloodshot white of his eye. The cut had been a clean one, a perfect, arcing line running from his cheekbone nearly to the corner of his lips. Unwelcome nausea roiled deep in my gut—guilt trying to make a home where it didn’t belong. No. I was not allowing myself to feel a single second of guilt in this. Lady Cora had orchestrated his reckoning, and laid the duty of its execution on my shoulders. It had been a gift, as well as a lesson.

“Oh, shit,” I said flatly. “Did I get you with that? Sorry, I don’t know what came over me.” I stood, walking slowly to the discarded scalpel and retrieving it. Dropping it into a convenient sharps container, I sat back down. There was an impressive array of tools laid out before me—Sean should be grateful my fingers had landed on something so kind.

“Do you remember my mom’s funeral?” I asked without bothering to look, still perusing the selection of things Lady Cora had chosen.

I heard the wet slap of spit on stone, and turned to see Sean’s lopsided mouth struggling to free itself from a dribble of bloody drool. His eyes held pure hatred, and I knew if he could, he would have killed me. Ignoring him, I went on.

“Oh, no. You wouldn’t remember it. You were in Dallas and it would have been easy for you to fly to Chicago, but instead, you went home. I stood alone in that church for four hours, surrounded by strangers who thought I was the villain for not remembering the fucking prayers. She died alone , because you canceled my flight the week before.”

I let my fingers trail along the handle of some kind of hooked pliers. “The hospice nurse told me she asked for me, that they tried to call and it went straight to voicemail. Your number was listed—” my voice cracked. “ You didn’t even fucking tell me she called!”

My scream echoed across the room, drawing out my long-overdue admission. I hadn’t even found out until the following morning, when the charge nurse found my number in my mother’s phone. I remembered throwing up, my knees falling to the hard tile. I remembered how every inch of me hurt, and how much of that pain had been at Sean’s hands.

A dark, frenzied need for action seeped into my muscles, pushing me forward. I stalked around the room, hands clenching and unclenching at my sides as I struggled to contain all the regret and shame and pain coursing through me.

But I didn’t have to contain it.

My eyes settled on a foot-long, black metal flashlight. I picked it up, feeling the weight in my palms. It felt good. The wound on Sean’s cheek had stopped bleeding freely, coagulated blood holding the edges together. Though his right side still hung lower, slack pulling down the fine wrinkles at the corner of his eye, he looked more like the Sean I remembered. He looked like the man who had held me down and violated me while my mother lay dying alone halfway across the country. He looked like a man who hadn’t yet grasped what was coming.

I slammed the heavy flashlight against his hands, feeling the fine bones shatter. It wasn’t enough. Raising it over my head, I struck again and again, the percussive beat making music of my husband’s blubbering sobs.