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I scream and plunge the knife into his belly, startled by how much resistance his muscles put up, like his body is trying to fight back against me. He howls and kicks outward, and I leap to the side to avoid getting hit, dragging the knife sideways in the process. A terrible, musty-copper-sewage odor floods through the bomb shelter, and something dark and ropy bulges out of the cut I made.

I gag, stumbling backward. Judith, though, is completely unbothered. She gazes coolly at her husband with an expression of utter disdain—an expression I’m used to seeing directed at me instead of the husbands who did the betraying in the first place.

It’s refreshing, that Judith breaks the pattern.

“Judith,” he whimpers, his voice small and pitiful. He pushes at the cut like he’s trying to shove his insides back in, but they just squelch between his fingers. Blood splatters against the cement and steams on the cold air billowing in from the open shelter door.

Judith ignores him. She turns to me, her gaze soft. “Are you all right?”

“Bitch!” her husband croaks out. She rolls her eyes.

I nod, even though I’m biting back nausea. The smell is awful, and his blood is hot and sticky on my skin. I don’t know how she can stand it.

“Do you want me to kill him?” she asks gently.

I swallow and take a deep, long breath. Then I let myself look past her, at him. The man who tortured me for three days. He looks like meat.

“Judith, please,” he begs, and Judith’s eyes glint a little, almost like she’s having fun.

“Shut up,” she says, looking at me but talking to him, a coy smile on her lips. It should be disturbing, but honestly—it’s kind of hot. Especially with the way her green eyes shine against the blood smeared across her pretty face.

I can’t let myself think on that, though.

“Judith!” he moans.

“Stop saying my name.” She whirls around and plunges her hand into the cut in his belly, burying it up to her wrist. Then she looks him right in the eye, twisting her arm a little as awful wet squelching sounds come out of his body—sounds I can barely hear over his screaming or my own heartbeat.

Judith wrenches her hand out in a spray of blood, and she’s holding a shiny pink rope, which she pulls and pulls, dragging it out of him. “I never told you how I learned to gut pigs when I was growing up,” she says calmly.

Her husband screams in agony. Just like I screamed when he would chain me to his work table and thrust himself inside me, laughing and grunting the entire time. Judith does neither. She just drops his intestines with a splat and then, with a slow deliberation, brings her hand up to her mouth and slides one finger between her lips.

I stare at her, a bizarre, terrifying fire surging between my legs. She glances over at me and drags her finger out, still streaked a little with blood. She licks her second finger, dragging her tongue around, and I can suddenly imagine all the things her tongue can do.

“I always liked the taste of fresh blood,” she says, eyes fixed on mine. “It’s—well, it’s a delicacy in my family.”

She turns away from me before I can respond, not that I even know what I would say. Her husband hangs slack on the hook, head lolling.

“Is he dead?” I whisper.

“No.” Judith walks over to where I dropped the kitchen knife and picks it up and looks me right in the eye. “It takes a lot to kill a human being.”

As if on cue, her husband whimpers and jerks, making the chains rattle.

“He’s close, though.” Her eyes sear into mine, and I drop my gaze down to her lips, smeared with red blood.

“What does it taste like?” I ask hoarsely.

Judith tilts her head, and it’s clear she knows what I mean. “Like nothing else on Earth.”

She steps closer to me. I can’t stop staring at the blood on her lips.

“Do you want to try it?” she asks, holding up her blood-streaked hand.

I do want to try it. But I don’t want to lick it off her fingers.

I move before I can stop myself, taking two steps to clear the distance between us and then pressing my lips against hers.

For a moment, Judith goes still. Then she tilts her head and parts her lips and brings up her clean hand to cup my cheek. And then we’re kissing, slow and soft. I lick the blood from her mouth, the salty tang of it surprising. Then I slide my tongue between her lips, drawing her into me—and into a real kiss.

When I pull away, all I can see is her.

Then her husband ruins it by screaming. We both look over at him, where he’s dangling from the hook, his belly gaping open, blood and tears streaming down his cheeks as he unleashes a long, wordless wail. Then it tapers off, and he sags forward, swinging on the hook.

“He’s close,” Judith says. “Do you want me to finish him?”

She’s still holding the kitchen knife. Shaking, I reach over and take it from her.

“Tell me what to do,” I say.

Judith nods, then smooths my hair away from my face, a gentle gesture that makes me shiver. She wraps her fingers around mine so we’re both holding the knife. Her body’s warmth is so close, drawing around me like a blanket, as she guides me forward, lifting my hand toward her husband.

He lifts his head, his one remaining eye unfocused and dazed. I’m not sure he sees us, not even as Judith guides me closer to him.

“Cut his throat,” she says softly. “Just like I did with the livestock back home.”

“Livestock,” I mutter, looking at him, bloody and pale. It’s hard to believe I was ever afraid of him.

“Mmhmm.” Judith smooths my hair out of my eyes again, her breath warm on my cheek. “I can even cook him for you if you want.”

I look over at her. “You mean to eat?”

The question doesn’t exactly repulse me.

“If you want.” She gives me a dazzling smile. For a minute, she really is the pretty housewife I thought she was.

Her husband whimpers softly. Judith lets go of my hand.

“Press it in deep,” she says. “And then keep going.”

I turn toward her husband. Toward the livestock. The pig .

His mouth moves like he’s trying to speak. Trying to beg, I think, but all that comes out are small, miserable noises. His good eye weeps desperation. His other weeps blood.

When I step toward him, he jerks his head no.

“ You were going to do the same thing to me,” I tell him flatly, which isn’t true and we both know it. He was going to do worse.

Then I stab the blade into his neck. It goes in easier than it did his stomach, and his eye widens and he tries to thrash on the hook. Tries to escape.

“Keep going,” Judith comes up behind me, her body warm and flush against mine. “Unless you want him to suffer.”

I consider this, just for a moment. Then I jerk the knife sideways, splitting his throat open. Blood gushes out like a waterfall, streaming over his ruined torso, splattering across me and Judith both. I slump back, but she’s there to catch me.

“It’s over,” she murmurs.

I tremble against her, staring at the man who tormented me for three days. I do feel a kind of strange freedom, something I haven’t felt since Judith found me. And I know that if I pulled away from her and walked up those stairs and kept going, Judith wouldn’t stop me.

But I don’t want to.

I press against her, sighing, and she buries her nose into the crook of my neck and kisses me there, soft and hesitant. “Keep going,” I whisper.

And she does. Her kisses deepen into sharp, nipping little bites. Her hands creep up to squeeze my breasts through the thin, flimsy negligee. I moan softly, shuddering with pleasure, and Judith turns me around with a surprising strength and kisses my mouth. I slide my hand between us and push up her skirt until I can press my fingers over the silky fabric of her expensive panties. And then she’s the one shuddering with pleasure.

“Did he ever make you come?” I ask, shoving her panties aside so I can slide one finger between the soft lips of her pussy.

“No,” she gasps.

“What a piece of shit.” I push her backward until she’s pressed against the wall. For a moment, I massage her pussy, sliding my fingers in and out of her wetness. Because she is very wet.

When I find her clit, a hard little nub amongst her softness, she jerks against me and gives a soft whimpering cry. I kiss her and rub her at the same time, making her quake against me.

Then I drop to my knees in front of her. Judith stares down at me, dazed, blood still streaked across her face.

“I bet he never ate you out.”

Judith shakes her head no. Big surprise.

I push up her skirt and peel her panties away and prop her leg on my shoulder so I can admire the dark triangle of neatly-trimmed hair framing her wet, glistening pussy.

“Gloria,” she breathes, her fingers tangling up in my hair.

In response, I thrust my tongue between her cleft, making her cry out, her voice echoing through the shelter. I kiss her deeply, lapping up the wetness seeping out of her pussy—she’s so unbelievably wet, and I know it’s from the violence and the blood and I don’t care. Because she saved me. She helped me get my revenge.

I drag my tongue upward until I find the tight, throbbing nub of her clit. Judith groans, rocking her hips against my face, and I keep devouring her, stretching her thighs as wide as I can until her whole body trembles.

“Come for me,” I breathe against her cunt, working a finger inside to stroke her walls. She keens and bucks, her thighs trembling. “You deserve it.”

She gasps breathlessly and grinds her pussy down on my face, and I respond in kind, swiping my tongue between her folds and over her clit. I’m half-aware that I’m touching myself through the thin fabric of the negligee, my pussy slicked with her husband’s blood.

Judith’s hand pulls tight on my hair, her cries more desperate. She needs a little push, I realize, and so I scrape my teeth gently over her clit?—

That’s all it takes. Judith screams and fucks my face, her hips rolling with the frantic pulses of her orgasm. I keep licking her through it, my face smeared with her arousal, my fingers flying over my clit.

When she’s done, she slumps against the wall. I sit back on my heels and peer up at her, flushed and gorgeous in her aftermath, and keep touching myself, slow and teasing. Judith drops her gaze to watch me, her breath deep and shuddery.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says shyly.

“You didn’t have to help me.” The concrete is cold on my ass, and the drying blood makes the negligee stick to my skin. But I keep rubbing my clit, and Judith keeps watching me, her lip caught between her teeth. “Besides,” I say, the words coming out jagged. “I wanted to.”

Judith lowers herself down to the floor and crawls toward me, her eyes big and glassy from her orgasm. “Can I help you with that?” she asks softly. “I’ve never done it before, but?—”

I smile and crawl to meet her.

“I’ll show you what to do,” I purr, pulling her into a kiss so she can taste her pleasure on my mouth.

And then I guide her hand down to my own soaked pussy, and I teach her how to fuck me in front of the fool who thought he could trap us both.

The End