Everything Burns

Time To Play

"Time to play, time to play, time to play."

Still shivering from the Joker's murmurings. Not groggy anymore. Wide awake and completely sober now. He carries me to another closed door, pushes out his lips and stares at it.

"Here," he says, overpronouncing the 'r' until it sounds like a growl. "Put your arms around my neck. Let's go, let's go." He lowers his head for me to oblige. "Come on. Hurry up."

I can't believe it. He's handing me my chance on a silver platter. I raise my duct-taped wrists above him, take a deep breath and head-butt him in the face as hard as I can.

Blinding pain short-circuits my senses. Time seems to skip a groove. "Oh," I say, swallow, and look at him. White, black and red swim in front of my eyes, slowly coalescing into a face. He waits with an unsmiling expression that suggests I have just been a supreme dumbass.

"Feel better?" he asks, pursing his lips.

I shake my head.

He raises his brows. "Done now?"

I nod.

"Good. Now do what I told ya."

I put my arms around his neck. His hair tickles my hands. Now that I'm supporting myself on him with my arms, he uses his right hand to dig in his pocket for a key. He has a pleasant, slightly musky smell, which I try not to think about.

On the other side of the door is a small bedroom containing a dresser piled with makeup kits, applicators and empty hair dye boxes from a costume shop. His closet doors are open, the floor littered with socks of various colors. The bed, a single, is unmade.

When he lowers his head again, I take it as a signal to unhook myself from him. He drops me unceremoniously in the middle of the floor, jarring my skull and hurting my butt. I groan in pain.

Before I have time to register the glinting blade in his hand, he drops to one knee and slices the tape around my ankles. He keeps his head bent to the task, but stretches his eyes to watch my response. He opens his mouth wide to runs the underside of his tongue over his bottom lip. Then he pricks the top of my foot with the point of the blade. I jerk away.

"Take it easy," he says. "I just wanna have some fun. That's all. I'm not gonna hurt ya...much."

I try to twist away as he grabs my ankles, but he is too strong. He lunges forward. I try to kick away, but he holds me still, positioning himself above me on all fours, holding the blade in front of my face.

It gathers the light in the room and hurls it into my eyes.

"Things will go a lot more smoothly if you stop struggling," he says cheerfully, straddling my hips and using his thighs to hold me in place. "Of course, I won't have nearly as much fun..." My gaze flitters between his face and the blade as he brings it closer to my mouth. He tickles my quivering bottom lip with it. The sensation is almost unbearably intense. Tears blur my vision.

When he slides his hand under my head to hold me still and inserts the sharp tip between my lips at the corner of my mouth, it's too much. My body starts to struggle on its own. I press my lips shut and turn my head, feeling the metal scratch over my skin. At first, there is no pain. Then the corner of my mouth begins to sting.

He stops in mid-lick and furrows his brow. It is the sort of expression that would draw nervous laughter from an audience. I just hold my breath. He sighs. "Great. See what you made me do?" he says, giving me a few light cuffs on the cheek with his gloved hand. I shut my eyes tight. "You see?"

I try to squirm away.

"Stop it," he says, grabbing my taped wrists in both hands. "Look at me."

I try to turn over, somehow convinced that is the path to freedom. He grabs my jaw and turns my face to him. I close my eyes tight and continue to struggle.

"Look at me," he says between clenched teeth. I scream and try to buck him off of me.

"LOOK AT ME!" he bellows angrily, his voice several registers lower.

I freeze and look at him out of the corner of my eye. Still holding my wrists and my face, he flares his nostrils and speaks between clenched teeth. "When I tell you to look at me, you look at me. Get it?"

I nod frantically. My heart is pounding so hard my chest hurts.

He lets go of my face, cuffing me on the cheek again whenever he wants to emphasize a word, a little harder each time. "You get it?" he repeats. "Just a little, tiny bit? No. I don't think you do."

The blows make me squeeze my eyes shut and turn my head, but I force them open and look up at his face, hoping each will be the last.

"Please..." I beg. "Please stop."

"Ohhh," he says. "We're just getting started. I haven't made you scream yet. And there will be screaming, soon." He leans down and places his cheek next to mine, smearing me with greasepaint, breathing into my ear before whispering, "I'm a man of my word."

Then he sits up and holds my hands steady to cut the tape from my wrists, rough and efficient, then makes a show of tugging the fingers of his gloves, one by one, and tossing them away. He reaches down and uses his thumb to wipe my cut, then shoves it into my mouth. He tastes of salt and sulfur. I try to pull away but he shoves it deeper, thrusting it over my teeth again and again until I want to gag. He licks his lips enthusiastically, exposing for a second the entire pink surface of his own tongue. I don't dare look away again.

"Oh yeah," he says. "Yes! Yes!"

He gives a few thrusts with his hips as well before taking his thumb out of my mouth and stretching his body over mine, using his knee to force apart my legs. There is something sobering about his weight on top of me. Excited, he licks his lips even more frantically. He pets the hair away from my face and twines his fingers in it, showing me the blade as he grinds his hardened groin against the seam of my jeans with enough force to cause some pain in my tender areas. He is too heavy. It's hard to breathe.

He bites his bottom lip and presses against me again and again, humping me through our clothes. He seems to forget about the knife, holding it upright in a fist beside my head. He rolls his eyes toward the ceiling and opens his mouth to give a deep, gutteral groan. He shudders all over, then drops his head forward, tickling my face with his hair. When he looks up, it is with a look of utter disgust.

"Damn," he says. "I was saving that."