Page 186 of Let the Game Begin

And, of course, that satisfaction was immediately followed by the dissatisfaction of realizing that body was still attached to me. And I, better than anyone else, knew how she was feeling.

***

Hours later, I lounged restlessly on the waiting room sofa at the psychiatrist’s office where I had once again brought Chloe. There was a woman, approximately my mother’s age, who wouldn’t stop staring atme. She was wearing a form-fitting pencil skirt that emphasized her body and a fur-collared coat was draped open over her delicate shoulders, leaving her large breasts exposed. She leafed through a magazine, legs elegantly crossed, and every now and then, she’d toss a quick glance in my direction.

She had short, bright hair—a shade of blond that particularly appealed to the Boy in me.

The familiar sick machine had been triggered.

The woman before me continued to give me heated looks, fluttering her eyelashes. I saw a shrewd gleam in her chocolate-brown eyes, so I adopted a predatory posture of my own.

I made myself comfortable on the sofa, spreading my legs, leaning my left elbow on the sofa’s arm and letting my right hand fall to my crotch. I touched myself. Or, more accurately, I palmed myself crudely before rubbing my cock through the material of my jeans, showing her just how big it was. I enjoyed the expression of shock that instantly flashed across her face as she glanced around in alarm, making sure no one else was there.

My clear and unequivocal signal had made her uncomfortable. I was, after all, extremely good at creating sexually provocative situations.

Kimberly had taught me how to be perverse, filthy, and libidinous. She had likened our relationship to the love affairs among the Olympian deities. There were plenty of myths, she said, where various Greek gods fell in love with humans due to their great beauty and then simply abducted the mortals to do with them as they pleased.

Thus, I learned from her that beauty was a powerful tool for predicting and influencing human behavior. It was at the root of so many choices people made or actions they performed. Kim herself had always told me, “I use you because you’re beautiful.”

Like the child-eating witch she was, the quest for beauty was the universal driving force behind her frequently disgusting and immoral behavior. She didn’t care how old I was; she didn’t care that what she was doing was a crime, she didn’t care that she was damaging my mind, body, and spirit. She had reduced me to an object. An object that she claimed to love.

So, from a yen for beauty, we moved on to violation, justified with an “Ilove you.” All that it really meant was:I love that you are beautiful, and I’ll fuck you for the same reason. But remember: this is our little secret.

In fact, a declaration of love invariably followed each abusive act. An attempt to soothe the victim’s soul. Kim felt entitled to seize and possess me, because she felt a desire for me that she wasn’t willing to control. And so the child-eater tried to make me feel guilty for my beauty and her violence because, in her depraved mind, I was the one who had offended first, not her. I was the one who exerted an irresistible power over her, and Kim could not accept being at the mercy of anything, least of all the way I looked.

It was exactly the kind of insane justification sexual predators—men and women—typically offer their victims and the people around them. I had experienced it firsthand, years before…

I was naked, sitting on the edge of the bed.

I didn’t move except to rub my forehead and wipe away the sweat.

Kim stood in front of me, getting dressed again. I stared at her with contempt, the way I always looked at her.

I hated her.

I hated the things she made me do. I hated her abuse. I hated the way she reached inside me and ripped out my soul without ever even bothering to ask permission.

I was a happy kid before she arrived. I laughed a lot. I loved playing basketball in the backyard with Logan. I loved racing him to see who could get to the swing first.

I loved life.

But ever since Kim arrived, everything had changed.

“You need to take a shower and get dressed right now,” she said, taking a long look at my body. I lowered my head, overcome by a sudden feeling of shame that I had been experiencing more and more frequently. I could still feel her hands on me. The agony, the rage, the inability to fight back and stop all the disgusting stuff.

I was too little, and she was too big.

“It isn’t normal, what we do. Mommy will be mad,” I whispered, rubbing my knees nervously. I still didn’t really understand sex. Perhaps because I had neverdone it voluntarily. But I knew enough to realize our relationship was wrong. Still, I had to go along with her and keep my mouth shut.

“And whose fault is that? You’re the one who’s wrong, don’t you see? You want a woman so much older than you,” she accused, like she always did. Kim said that if I told anyone about what was happening, people would think that I was sick in the head. Naively, I believed her and had started avoiding people’s eyes so I could hide my sickness and keep from getting locked up in some mental hospital.

“That’s not true! It’s disgusting when you touch me!” I screamed and Kim slapped me, enraged. Then her face softened, and she kneeled before me to touch my injured cheek. She always alternated moments of kindness with those moments in which she became the worst sort of monster.

“I don’t want to hurt you. Stop making me angry,” she murmured so softly. She pushed a strand of hair away from my left eye and smiled at me.

“You always hurt me,” I answered miserably.

“You enjoy it. Your body reacts when I touch you.” Her hands brushed against my chest, and I leaped up, getting away from her as fast as I could. I looked down at her and shook my head. I felt weak and muddled. I looked around, memorizing every detail of the room. There was a weird smell in the air. The sheets were crumpled up. My clothes were scattered all over the floor.