Page 15 of The Last Feast

RAINING WOMAN

When they both manage to recover from the most life-altering orgasms of their lives, there’s an odd tension in the air.

Neither Hana nor Auguste talk. Neither acknowledge Odette’s severed hand lying mere feet from their naked, sweat- and oil-covered bodies.

However, he can’t take his eyes off her as Hana walks on trembling legs to retrieve his clothes.

Hana spirals into her thoughts. Now that he’s seen how intensely she was in love with life and the hope of a family, he’ll see her as weak. Like the others, Auguste now has the leash to control her, yet she can’t bring herself to lift the ax to remove the threat.

Instead, she keeps walking into the shadowed portion of the maze where she placed his clothes, phone, and wallet to help him escape her.

Odette’s shattered device is lying beside his things, but she kicks it under the fake trees instead of taunting him with the details she found on it like she originally planned.

Bloody splatters litter her skin, trailing up her thighs and around her hip.

It would usually bolster her confidence, but not now that she’s been exposed.

Her plan was to take everything she wanted; instead, Auguste has managed to gain control.

Hana knows the first mistake she made was allowing him out of the binding, because now, she craves his arms around her again.

Dragging footsteps soon follow her into the shadows as Auguste gently asks, “Where are you going?”

To kill your girlfriend.

She doesn’t tell him that as she lifts the clothes she carefully folded and blindly holds them out to him. “You might be cold.”

He follows the uneasy cadence of her voice then wraps his arms around her waist from behind. Pressing his lips to her shoulder, he asks, “Are you cold, baby?”

“No. I…”

Auguste patiently waits for her to gather her words as he continues kissing her shoulder, unaware it’s making it harder for Hana to understand what’s happening. Her earlier comment about being starved didn’t encapsulate the full spectrum of what she’s been denied.

Food isn’t the only thing withheld from her in her short life.

No, she’s been starved of care, affection, respect.

Any human need was purposefully absent in her life because those entrusted with her innocence stole it every chance they got.

Born into systemic objectification didn’t leave her with any other option but to disengage with herself, not when she would create voices for bottles of bleach and wood polish so she had friends during her chores.

She was forced to become just like them—an item on the shelf waiting to be bought and used up.

She’ll never know what it’s like to have a mother or a father.

Those were the people who abandoned her, but she looked for them in every man and woman she met.

Were their eyes the same color as hers? Perhaps they had freckles too?

But she was only met with stern features and perverted gazes that bartered over her.

And that hope she thought had died sparks to life again with Auguste’s unconditional care. He’s not the father she wanted, but he provides a gentle authority that fulfills that portion of her decaying soul.

Inspiring fear and watching him run from her was easier to deal with than this expectation of Hana being capable of anything more. She’s feasted, hurt herself with the knowledge she’s found, so she bluntly says, “I’m not cold. You should run away now.”

He ignores the clothes she attempts to pass to him again. With audible hope building, he asks, “What happens if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll make you kill the woman who was raining on our time together.” She looks up at him over her shoulder, expecting to see disgust.

Shocking them both, Auguste smiles. “As long as you’re with me.”

“Didn’t you say you’re studying medicine?”

He nods.

“So why would you kill someone?” Hana turns to face him. “Isn’t that the opposite of what you should want?”

The warmth of his palm sliding across her cheek distracts her. When his fingers thread through her hair, she finds some of the fear leaves. He leans into her like the darkness doesn’t prevent him truly seeing Hana for who she is.

“If death will give life to something between us, then that’s what I’ll do.

” He steps into her, covering her exposed body from the cold breeze drifting through the space.

“I don’t know what this is, if it’s some wild memory of a woman I’ll think about on my deathbed or if it’s more, but I want the opportunity to find out.

Break my heart, bite a chunk out of it, or mend it—I’m here to stay. ”

Hana can’t bring herself to imagine holding his heart in her hands. She doesn’t want to study it or taste it; she wants to mend it when the jagged shards of her childhood have only ever cut everything she cared for.

So, she reminds herself of her plan as she whispers, “There’s no tomorrow.”

“That’s fine.” Auguste wraps his arms around her and kisses the top of her head. “I’ll keep living today with you until you’re ready for the sun to come up.”