Page 7 of Violent Possession

The air smellsof cheap incense. Cinnamon, vanilla. Myrrh, I think. Used to embalm the dead years ago, a gift to the baby Jesus, between the cross and the cold body. The smell of death disguised as ritual, of a sacrifice that was never worth it. And here I am, breathing it in, in some whore’s room—because it’s red. Or purple? Fuck it. It’s the way the light hits my eyes.

I lay my head on the pillow. The bed sinks beside me as my company for the night collapses onto the mattress. I don’t even remember her name. Or maybe she never told me. But I think she did. It sounded like a name.

I reach into the pocket of my pants, thrown on the floor. I feel for the crumpled pack of cigarettes.

TOXIC PRODUCT

This product contains toxic substances... blah, blah, blah, death.

QUIT SMOKING: 1-800

Fuck it. I flip the box over, tired of the picture of rotten teeth. After a while, you get used to seeing it and accept that one day they’ll beyourrotten teeth,yourerectile dysfunction,yourfucked-up lungs; and one day it’ll beyouwasting away until you die. It’s always been like that for me.

The bed creaks when I move. There’s music in the hallway. An electronic beat, thump. Thump. Thump. Like a dying heart. Nice place, they say.

She says something. I don’t hear it. She’s some woman who watched me and lost her money betting on Rat. She calls me a“hero”, a “savage”. I don’t know which is worse. Said she bet on me, lied right to my face.

Sex is just another way to shut off the brain. It’s like pain. Like adrenaline. It works.

I distance myself from this reality because my head is stuck in the now. Used to the idea that my actions dig my grave little by little, and my future self won’t be alive to deal with the consequences. I run my hand through my own sweat-damp hair and choose to blow smoke and just enjoy the nicotine. My fingers brush against the chain around my neck, and I push the thought of Seraphim away.

“You’re not from around here, are you?” she says.

I exhale smoke toward the ceiling. “Does it matter?”

“No... it’s just... you fight differently.” She props herself up on an elbow to look at me. I don’t look back. Rule number one: eyes have people inside them. And people feel things, want things. I don’t want to know what she really wants. “It’s brutal, but it’s... beautiful. Your body... it looks like it was sculpted for this. For war.”

I remember the first time someone told me the body was a temple.Seraphimtold me that, with blood in his mouth and his eyes burning. “Every temple needs a sacrifice.” It was before he stuck the knife in someone. Or was it in me? Sometimes I get this confused.

She looks at me. My face, my body. My shoulders. I know where this is going.

“Must’ve been fucked up, losing that,” she says. “Your arm.”

She touches my shoulder.

I pull away.

Everyone thinks suffering is a turn-on. Some say it outright. Others hide it behind pretty words: overcoming, resilience, strength. But deep down, it’s all about getting off on watchinga tragedy and cumming to the idea that it produced something useful.

“Sorry. I just meant that...”

That the trauma made me stronger?

Go on. Say it.

“It’s just that there’s something about you... like... I don’t know. You have this... survivor thing. Like nothing can stop you. Like every wound just makes you more...”

“More what?”

She hesitates.

“More badass,” she says, laughing, embarrassed. “Stronger.”

I stub out the cigarette on the floor. I sit up. Look at her. She shrinks a little.

“You think that’s sexy?”

“That’s not what I meant?—“