limerence. like a nurse, like a father, like a priest, like an angel.
୨୧ i'll take the baby boy you once were in your mother's arms, thumb open his ribs and stomach like a clementine, tear his heart and entrails out with my teeth, and eat the deep red cerise insides. you'll cry out in a whimper as death fills your brain, realize what it's like to be something broken.

୨୧ staring up at the bathroom ceiling, his lips parted, slightly, in a prayer, or something similar, in a soft, husky murmur, like the crisp kiss of cold air penetrating his ribs. his head leaned back against the cool tile of whatever bathroom he was in, his strong brow furrowing slightly, trying to focus on that glowing lamp above his head. his forearms twitched and shifted as his arms stayed tied up on the metal bars on the window of the bathroom. cold sweat kissed his chin and jaw, caressing down his throat. he swallowed hard, trying to twist his hips up. his waist spasmed with effort, hopeless, and then settled back against the cold concrete of the bathroom.

he sighed, his brow creasing as he craned his neck against the soreness of his body. he could see the toilet of the stall sitting there in the corner, half sprayed with dried blood. he groaned, shutting his eyes tightly as he tried to pull down against whatever tied his hands up above his head, his stomach lifting and tensing the muscles as he strained. no use. the air smelled of old disinfectant long gone expired, and the smell of sweat and burned clothing. the man shook his head softly, and tried to relax into this restrained position.

"Hey doll face." a voice, cool and temperate ribboned and sutured up into his chest. his eyes flit to the stall door, which swung open slightly, a feminine figure leaning against it.
"found you again." the woman said, placidly, her voice coated with the film of smoke you get on your teeth after a midnight smoke break.
the man looked at the feminine figure, as she moved, her body hard and almost too real in the haze of the empty moon bathroom. the man said nothing, eyeing her, her face.

she looked like she was made of velveteen, her eyes too dark for her face. if she stood still and stared, the light seemed to swim hopelessly and drown in the harvest moon. she was a girl who'd only look good in an open casket. her hair, poorly dyed over thick bristling curls, bleached pale like camera flashes, untoned and sick veins of yellow. her eyes sunk with heavy eyebags, deepening the sputtering dark of her eyes.

she moved to him, her hips roughly moving against the joints of her pelvis, too sudden, too jittery. like she was only moving half speed. she kicked at his shoe, moving his foot aside so she stood between his legs as he sat, his arms above his head.

the man looked up at her, his eyes blinking, swallowing again as his lips stay parted, not to say anything, but to only seem placid. the woman helps him stand, scruffing the back of his hair, which made him choke out a soft cry as he followed her fingers clutched on the back of his hair. she eyes him. his hands now at his chest, and he can see his arms are restrained with some belt. he looks at it curiously, and sees a small lock of his dusky hair fall into his eye.

"don't worry. it wasn't me." the woman mutters, her eyes moving over the musculature of his forearms. "Can i touch you? i'll help you out of those." the woman murmurs, her eyes flitting up to his face, and she examines it over. her fingers reach up, grasping his jaw, as she tilts his head side to side, her fingers digging through the soft belly of his cheek and against his teeth, forcing his jaw to part slightly. her fingers run up his cheekbone, and he pants slightly, his eyes trying to follow her fingertips, as she thumbs his strong brow, dragging her fingers down over his eyelids and the bridge of his nose, like putting a puppy to sleep. he opens his eyes again, half lidded, and his brow furrows.

"you're a beautiful man, i'm surprised they abandoned you." she notes, the woman tilting her head slightly. he can see her face up close, just how unsettling and empty her eyes seem, somehow her expression is warm underneath them. the curve of her lips, the smell of strong menthol on her breath. her hair, like sun eaten linen, has been curled and straightened down over her forehead and eyebrows, and it sticks slightly to the smooth skin. she examines him closely with her eyes.

"are you damaged?" she murmurs, smirking at him slightly, flashing slightly crooked teeth, her canines taking the first bow before any of her other teeth. her lips seem to crash into her smile like a chandelier, bringing some sort of animation and gas-lantern glow to her face, as if finally giving her some sort of soul. the man breathes deeply, drinking in the smell of her menthol breath and apple mint perfume. the man doesn't answer.

"i'll check." she nods, and her hands move down to his slender waist. she tucks her fingers down his belt, and pulls up his shirt, and examines his physique. he tries to look down at what she's doing, not resisting. he can see his abdomen stitched together, in what seemed to be frenzied sutures. they wrap and snag at his bones and muscle structure, stringing together his abdomen and hips. he makes a soft breath of confusion, and fear, and tries to back up further against the wall of the bathroom.

"shhh, no one's going to hurt you." she lifts his shirt further, revealing more scrawled suturing, ribboning and nestling at his form.
"they really hated you huh, probably because of that pretty face. too easy on the eyes i bet." she chuckles, grinning sadly, the way a beaten dog does.

the woman takes out a small pink compact, bright and reflective against the warm carousel yellow of the overhead lamp. she gently opens the compact, and shows the man his reflection.
he's got heather brown hair, flecked with flash-bulb pale streaks and speckles. his eyes are washed out, hazy, soft and dream-like brown. his brow is strong, facial structure threading the line between demure and disturbed. she snaps the compact closed, and her eyes are smug, the twinkle in them almost unrecognizable, like that of a half-roadkill rabbit, dragging itself against the pavement in a frenzy.

the woman draws her fingers over his knuckles, feeling at them, her eyes half lidded as she feels at the bone beneath the skin. she then shifts the belt restraint on his forearm, revealing another stapled stitch along his skin.
"don't be cruel to me" the man finally murmurs, his voice soft and almost pleading, if it wasn't so deep, the words coming out like trying to eat dirt. her eyes flick up to him, and they flash with a soft recognition, widening like the flick of a lighter, like the first inahle of a cigar.
"cruel, no, i won't be cruel to you. i fear you'd unravel in my arms if my touch was any softer than the fog seizing over the thunder of a dark morning" she says softly, her lips moving with little effort, her words slipping out like the end of fornication, as her hands move down his waist, and her fingers stagger over the sutures and staples, feeling at the prowess of his physique, and the kisses of life breathed into his surgical stigmata.

his breath catches, his chest stuttering as she gently cradles the life in his ribs and abdomen, feeling at his musculature and form, her fingers pinching and almost sculpting along how his body breathes and moves under his pulse and life.
"i wonder how much time you have left..."
her face is somber, her eyes searching the color of his irises as his pupils dilate, the color of a cobweb cradled and muddied wooden vanity, its paint already peeled and clipped and stripped off, violated from flooding. she grasps the collar of his shirt, cupping the back of his head gently, and pulls him down to brush his cheek against her's. she feels at the spine that sits under the muscle and skin of his neck, and then draws him into a soft kiss, her lips curling into his, her tongue like a dandelion being wished on. he can feel her menthol taste bloom and seed all over his mouth, and she can feel the texture of the stitches on the inside of his cheeks and under his tongue.
she breaks the kiss, her fingers cupping his cheek, staring up at him with wide eyes, her eyes staggering all over his face, as if to press his face into the mud of her memory, and watch the indent of his silhouette stiffen for a moment before sinking back into nothingness.
her fingers feel down his jaw, over his brow, thumbing it gently, pressing at the skin to make his brow crease for a moment, and she lets out a sad chuckle, mimicking the expression she's sculpting onto him. his breath is shallow, his chest and stitches expanding and contracting, the muscles in his forearms and biceps spasming slightly, the urge to reach out, to touch her cold and lifeless form, to feel at her too-hard body, her bones too full of form, her muscles and flesh and fat that would spill from her if he could thumb her abdomen open like a sore, it would be cold to the touch, yet so solid. he knows if he could feel her insides, he'd find her pit in there somewhere, like the umber of october, dark and endless, yet so sound it would press and swell against his hand, unwavering, until it would tear apart his fingers, knuckles, palm and wrist.

the woman presses him down back into the floor, his wrists still restrained, and he looks up at the belt snapping into taut tension against his forearms. his gaze falls upon her, his hair gently swaying in a cool night breeze that comes through the bathroom window. his gaze is sober and mourning, almost pleading as his brow creases in a beg. she looks down at him, plain and soft face, almost an expression of sorrow, or maybe clemency for his existence, cradling his face between her fingers and thumb. his eyes are wide in some sort of reverence, watching her movements. she kneels around his waist, straddling his hips where he sits on the concrete floor of the bathroom building. she presses him into another kiss, his entire back rippling and pulling at the stitches and sutures as his muscles writhe and kneel against their boney pews in furor at the rebirth her touch is sending through his body.

the man lets out a soft groan of almost dread at the blood that rushes through him now, a shiver wracking through the muscles along his spine, and down through his stomach. he looks at the woman with half lidded eyes, his breath dragging and picking up randomly as his body struggles with the arousal of his senses.

the woman continues to kiss him, her hips rock slightly as she leans into the kiss over him, her fingers rushing up through his hair, gently caressing over his scalp and then crashing down to cradle the back of his head.
"it won't hurt. it'll be like when i do this..." the woman murmurs, her voice haunting and staining his senses in her whisper, a downpour of her wistful voice emptying his mind. she draws her fingers over his brow and eyes again, his eyes staying closed as his breath shudders, his hips stutter up in a numbed reflex. her fingers move to cradle his slender waist, feeling how his ribs expand his structure, draping the muscle and flesh over his hips.
she reaches up, kneeling to undo the belt buckle that keep his arms above his head, and his forearms gently fall to his sides, before he reaches out his large hands, scarred and calloused, over the dip of her waist, and then thumbs over her stomach. he makes a soft lament, his lips uttering no real words as he looks up at her, her dark eyes smiling cooly at him, like looking into a silent graveyard. he blinks, his eyes in worship and defeat. she examines his arms, her fingers feeing at the musculature, the structure, at the stitches and staples that spiral his arm and joints. she feels his palm, his fingers, and brings his hand up to her face nuzzling it slightly, her face almost mournful in how soft it is as she guides his hand to gently stroke her face.
"you would have been a gentle thing, wouldn't you?" the woman almost coos, her voice embittered and aching, like an undressed body hitting the snow in the dark, its heart pumping as hard as it can in the agony of the cold insipid night.
her hands trail down to his belt on his pants, cupping her fingers into the buckle, and unfurling it, until she pulls down the top of the pants, and see the small stitched and stapled heart on his groin. the hair and happy trail meet and cover some of it, but the bruising and sanguine flesh around the stitches on his pubic mound are obvious.
her fingers run over the bruised and stitched flesh, before twirling around one of the sutures that sticks out slightly, gripping it.
"goodnight." she smiles at the man. the man looks at her somberly, his expression thinking, before he looks down at her fingers, and he runs his fingers over the back of her hand, and gives her a soft, repentant smile, before he looks away, towards the blood spattered toilet in the corner of the bathroom stall.

in one abrupt motion, the woman arches her back and twists her hips, pulling the suture up and around her, and she twirls, the ribbon of the man's sutures pulls taught, then follow the course, and the interconnectedness of his body falls apart, the pulse leaving his eyes, limping from his body into the divine coil of defilement.

the woman kneels before his collapsed form, and watches his cold insides spill out, bloodless and fevered. she searches his body, feeling through his ribs, her eyes narrowing, one lid closing more than the other as she aims to find that heat in him. her fingers move through his entrails, searching each crimp and swallow of the tissue he held in him for that brief moment. her fingers wandering through his every muscle and tendon, feeling for the softness of his light. for a brief moment, her hand down inside some nerve bundle, she felt the slight flicker of sensation against her fingertips, like the end of a cigarette being penetrated into flesh. she panted, swallowing, and began to wail, crying, grasping at what was in him. she wailed, careening her hand to peel open and carve with her fingers his structure, gasping and sobbing, crying out for some saint in that bathroom, before his flesh and bone lay out upon the concrete of the bathroom floor like topography. the woman then gets up, and stuffs it all into a garbage bag, before going to the dumpster behind the building of the bathroom, and tosses it in.