by Patricio
(05/26/04)
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Chapter 7
It's impossible to anticipate where he'll be waiting for her. Now that he's invaded her apartment, her life, her imagination -- now she doesn't expect him on the bend in the road, on her way home, where she first saw him -- so of course there he is, the next Friday evening. On the edge of the precipice. Hitch-hiking. He holds up an elegantly hand-written sign: VIOLET.
"What if someone else had stopped?"
"They did." He's smiling at her through the wound-down window. His voice is insistent, though. "I'll drive."
"Are you insured?"
"Yes."
He isn't, he isn't, why is she so worried about this as she slides over into the passenger seat?
"No," he says, "no, Violet," and she pushes her hand through her violet hair, "please, I want you in the middle of the back seat, so that I can see you in the rear-view mirror."
He starts up the car again. She believes she knows what he's going to say. It transpires that she does: "Lift your skirt," his voice says slowly and gently, "pull down your panties, just show me your cunt. Hold it open so I can see." It's only now that he surprises her: "Tell me some names for your cunt."
He is driving through familiar places that are wholly strange. She holds open her sex. His eyes keep flicking to the mirror like a lizard's. "Violet," she says. "Flower. Violet. Gash. Violet. Moon. Violet. Mouth. Violet. Maw. May I...may I...?"
"I want you to."
He has slowed. They're a few blocks from her home. Anyone she knows might pass by. He stops the car altogether. He has a digital camera. He's taking pictures of the image of her in the rear-view mirror. No he mustn't. No. "Violet," she keeps saying, with the other words, until she cries out for him.
And he thanks her, and asks her to cover herself, and drives her home. He simply gets out, and hands her the keys, and the digital camera, and says he'll see her soon. He disappears while she's still in the back, trembling, fighting back tears.
Two days later, Sunday late afternoon, she gets home from a day of family duty. She closes the front door and exhales in relief. How quiet it is. Soon she can look at the pictures again. She has hidden them on a CD in a secret place. At her computer, she keeps expanding and contracting the images. It's like looking in a distorting mirror.
Soon, Violet, soon. First she must, as usual, go to one of the places where he has installed hidden rings in the fabric of her home -- today, the bathroom -- and chain her ankle to the ring.
She floats into the kitchen, chain clanking behind her, ready for a glass of wine and soon, soon --
He's sitting there. As silent as a demon lover. Smiling. Sipping from a mug. Something's different about the room. The marble slab where she cuts and chops and makes a mess: it's cleaned up, there's a pillow there. He begins with his usual indirectness: "I'd like to take your clothes off. Would you like me to take your clothes off, Violet?"
I need a shower. I'll stink. I need to prepare myself for this. "Please strip me."
"Hands up."
She's shaking. Not like a leaf but like a tree, in this position: a tree to be stripped of her fruit.
Don't be silly, you're a flower. "Lovely," he's saying, his hands just brushing against her as he goes about his task. Soon her clothes are a puddle at her feet. She is nude, her hands on her head, and he stands back. He wants her. His green eyes say so. Her shaking doesn't seem to be diminishing. Please --
"Here: up. Then lie down." There's a stool to help her. Awkwardly, she does as he asks: she lays down on the kitchen slab, on her back, the pillow under her head, the marble cool beneath her back. She parts her legs a little.
He has collected together her sharp knives. He lays them on her body, the two sharpest up between her breasts, the others in a pattern on her belly. "Stroke your cunt for me. Where's the camera?"
She can smell the sweat on her. The knives on her flesh. She could scream out at any time. She must stop shaking. The knives. "Beside the bed."
She could get up while he's gone. Run. Fight.
Instead, she begins to fondle herself, and when he returns with the camera she smiles towards him, Tableau with Knives. Yes: her shaking is diminishing. His voice is so gentle: "I'm keeping your face out of the frame. I have to go away, you see. While I'm gone I want you to cook a lot. Keep caressing yourself."
He puts on a pair of thick gloves. Soon she understands, though she wants to laugh, and denounce him, and hug him, and run from him, and come to orgasm for him, all at once. While she caresses her clitoris he fucks her vagina with everything he can find. He fucks her with the handles of her favorite pans. He fucks her with the spatula. He leaves it in her and takes a picture of her cunt. Then he hits each of her nipples with the wet spatula. He fucks her with the handle of the fish-slice. Photographs it. He fucks her with the cold handle of an aluminum spoon and photographs it. He fucks her with the handles of the ordinary knives from her drawer, four at a time, and photographs them, and with the handles of her forks and spoons, and all the time he's quiet, smiling, saying only "Lovely," until he comes to the knives on her body. He takes the most vicious, sharpest one from between her breasts, takes hold of its blade in his thick gloves. "Of course," he says, "I'd like to carve your name on your body with your knives, but that's one thing I must restrain myself from doing," and he plunges the knife-handle into her, and she's crying, wanting his embrace, caressing herself, as he plunges each knife-handle in turn into her cunt, plunges and photographs, plunges and photographs, plunges and photographs in an endless spiral of tears and fear and desire...
Well, it ends. It must have ended. Perhaps days ago. For here she is, at her computer, and here is a message from him: I'm sorry I have to go. When I get to England I have something I'd like you to do for me. Cook well. Your Villain.
She is nude at her computer. She keeps looking at the pictures. A faceless woman is invaded, again and again, by kitchen implements. Knives like sharpened phalluses at her crotch. She does laugh: it's funny, and she's grateful for his sense of humor. She does touch herself fondly: it's erotic, and she's grateful for his desire.
She does shiver: it's fearful, and she's scared of his desire to hurt. Isn't she?
She makes herself stop looking. It's time she went and did some more cooking. Using as many instruments in the kitchen as possible...
