M Sellars - Love Is The Bond

She rolled back and tossed her head against the pillow then let out a disappointed sigh before pouting at me and saying, “You’re no fun.”

I stopped in the middle of pulling a fresh t-shirt over my head and stared back at her. After a wordless moment, I proceeded to push my head through the neck hole in a quick motion and pulled the shirt on then regarded her seriously. I held out my hand and showed her the bright scratches where she had dug her nails into it.

“Okay,” I said. “While I’m certainly not opposed to spicing things up, this is a bit far, and I think you would have to agree. If you were yourself right now, that is.”

I watched her face as she looked at the deep marks she had gouged into the back of my hand. At first I feared that I might only be enticing her, but there was definitely a flicker of realization in her eyes, so I continued.“Look, we both know something ethereal is driving this, and…”

I looked up with a start as the sound of a fist pounding heavily against our front door set the dogs off once again. The raucous clamor served as a fresh reminder that I needed to get out there and answer it.

I looked back to my wife and appended my prematurely truncated sentence. “…The problem is that I just didn’t realize how far it had gotten into you, or I would have stopped this a lot sooner. Anyway, look, I need to go get the door. You stay in here and ground yourself, okay?”

The flicker had grown into a full-fledged glimmer, and she gave me a quick nod, which went a long way toward allaying my earlier fears.

“I’ll be back to check on you in a minute,” I told her as I started out of the bedroom then stopped and looked back, adding as an afterthought, “You might want to consider putting some clothes on.”

I pulled the door shut behind me then headed up the hallway and out into the living room. I stumbled around the dogs, commanding them to sit as I put my eye to the peephole on the front door. As I suspected, I caught the back of Ben’s head as he was starting down the stairs with a cell phone up to his ear. I shushed the dogs again then twisted the deadbolt and pulled the door open just as the phone began to ring.

My friend stopped and turned at the sound then thumbed off the cell phone and stuffed it back into his pocket. As he did so the ringing phone across the room cut off mid-peal. He started back up the stairs and pulled open the storm door as he gave me the once over. “I was startin’ ta’ get worried. I get ya’ outta bed or somethin’?”

I stepped to the side so he could enter, and as he moved past me, I noticed a manila envelope tucked under his arm.

“Actually, yeah,” I answered, punctuating my words with a nod.

“You sleepin’?” His tone was surprised.

“Not exactly.”

“Oh,” he replied, seizing immediately on the implication. “Sorry ‘bout that, white man. Uh, so you an’ Firehair were… Uh… Um, look, I can run down the street for coffee and maybe…”

“Don’t apologize,” I told him with a shake of my head, cutting him off as I pushed the door shut and motioned for him to have a seat. “You actually did me a favor.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

I paused then said, “It’s kind of a long story.”

“I don’t wanna hear it, do I?”

“Probably not.”

“Then don’t tell it.”

“I’ll try not to,” I replied. “Besides, I have a feeling you’ve got a story I don’t want to hear either.”

“What makes ya’ say that?”

“You told us earlier this morning you’d be calling this afternoon.”

“Yeah, so?”

“Yeah, so, you didn’t call. You showed up at the door instead. That always means something quite a bit more serious is happening… Or is going to soon enough.”

“I’m that predictable, eh?” he huffed.

“Let’s just say I’ve grown accustomed to the warning signs.”

“Well, speakin’ of signs,” he said, waving the manila envelope in the air. “Got some here I want ya’ ta’ look at. Might wanna get Firehair in here so she can check ‘em out too.”

I glanced down the hallway toward the bedroom then down at the back of my hand. A thin trickle of blood was seeping through my skin from one of the deeper scratches. “Don’t tell me,” I said without turning. “The coroner determined that several of the injuries on Wentworth’s body were consistent with intense sadomasochistic sex play.”

“Yeah,” my friend grunted. “How’d ya’ know?”

“Like I said,” I replied, a sullen melancholy taking over my voice. “I’ve seen the signs.”

“Looks like Wentworth was definitely a sick puppy,” Ben announced as he emptied the envelope of autopsy photos he had brought from the coroner’s office. As they spilled onto the table, he began systematically shuffling through them. After extracting several he felt would support his conclusion, he offered them to us. “Have a look at these.”

The three of us were gathered around the breakfast nook in the kitchen. I had started a fresh pot of coffee several minutes ago, and the maker was presently sputtering and steaming as it neared the end of the brew cycle. The strong aroma was filling the room, and it reminded me that I could really use a jolt of caffeine right about now.

“Maybe not sick,” Felicity countered, taking the 8-by-10’s from his hand as she slipped her reading glasses onto her face. “Just different.”

“Yeah, well, you say different, I say sicko.”

I glanced over at my wife and watched her furrow her brow as she began carefully scanning the images. That countenance was a drastic contrast to the one that had been staring back at me earlier, but it was welcome nonetheless.

As it turned out, she had been on her way out of the bedroom at almost the same instant I had started down the hall to check on her. She was already dressed and to my great relief, very much herself once again, albeit wearing a somewhat chagrined frown. Of course, such an expression was something you didn’t see very often where she was concerned, and in keeping with par, this one didn’t hang around for very long either.

The fact that she had brought herself under control so quickly had quelled some of my unease over what had happened earlier. I knew all too well that emotions pretty much always cloud judgment, and in the heat of lovemaking, passionate feelings run very high. In the final analysis, it appeared that this was exactly the case with Felicity. She had allowed herself to open up to the ethereal energy simply because it had been heightening her physical pleasure. Unfortunately, as that pleasure increased, so did her lack of control over the stimulus. In essence, it had become like an addictive drug, and she rapidly gave herself over to it.

While opening herself to an unknown energy certainly hadn’t been a wise choice on her part, given the circumstances, it was completely understandable. Besides, I was the last person with any right to pass judgment in that department.

In any case, what was most important was that the actual circumstances turned out to be far less heinous than the alternative I had originally feared, which was that something had forced its way past her defenses and taken over.

“Are these the marks we saw at the scene,” I asked, looking at the photo I had just been handed.

“No,” Ben replied. “That picture is of his back. But there’s a picture of his chest in here too. I want ya’ ta’ look at that one for sure.”

A group of lacerations were the focus of the particular shot I was currently perusing. A plastic photoevidence scale similar to Felicity’s was pictured along the rightmost side, showing the marks to be anywhere from three to five inches in length. The incisions were straight and somewhat evenly spaced. While they were thin, they were also deep enough to have drawn what must have been more than just a trickle of blood.