The Gift

The Gift

February 14th, 2007

“Again!”

Blood seeps into my eyes, temporarily blinding me. Instinctively I drop to the ground, but not quickly enough that I don’t feel a stunning blow to the left side of my head. I swipe the back of my hand against my eyes in a futile attempt to restore my vision and get back on my feet, only to be tackled back to the padded mat by a tiny blond tornado.

She straddles my hips, one hand gripping tightly around my throat. The other curls into a fist and crunches mercilessly against my chin. Stunned that I’ve let this dreadlocked Romanian devil of a woman get the best of me yet again, I simply lay on the floor, accepting defeat as she brutally pummels my face.

“Tell me, Nikoletta. Why did Dante choose Virgil to guide him through Hell?” she asks between punches to my head.

I reluctantly put up a fight and block her swings, half-heartedly protecting myself. “Who gives a fuck? I prefer Milton,” I growl, knowing this will only incite her rage.

She delivers a punishing blow to my stomach, taking the breath out of my body, before gripping the curls on top of my head. “You are distracted, draga mea,” she says, her words are a soft whisper, a stark contrast to the violent grip she has of my hair, yanking it at the roots.

“Get off of me, Desi,” I snap through clenched teeth as she rolls her hips over mine, leans closely and licks away a bloody trail mixed with my tears. Her matted bleached-blond locks scrape against my neck; the multi-colored cowry shells clipped to the bottom of her dreads are stained crimson with my blood.

She loosens her grip but doesn’t completely let me go. “Your pain tastes sweet, Nikoletta. Like maman’s Joffre cake.” Desi’s sapphire eyes roll in the back of her head and she moans, losing herself in a memory. “Chocolate ganache and buttercream.” The diamonds pierced into her dimples catch what little light fills the room as she smiles and looks back down at me. “You remind me of home, draga mea.”

My right hand flies out, making contact with her neck, crushing against her windpipe. Wide-eyed, Desi grabs her throat and falls backwards, struggling to force air into her lungs. She scrambles across the mat, flopping wildly on the floor, throwing daggers at me with her stormy blue eyes.

It takes me longer than I would like to pull myself to my full height and I catch a glance at myself in the long wall of mirrors. Blood and sweat cascade down my battered body and drip onto the floor. My face is swollen and blotched with fresh red bruises, along with some fading blue and green ones.

Broken, beaten and bloody. It is in these moments that I feel most beautiful.

“You do not fight fair, draga mea,” Desi wheezes, then swears in Romanian before angrily kicking an aluminum chair. The CD player placed onto of it skips, then crashes to the floor, plunging the room into silence. Trent Reznor’s haunting voice no longer pierces the air with his woeful tale of Hurt.

Grabbing a towel from the floor in front of a mirror, I attempt to wipe some of the blood and sweat from my face. “There is no such thing as a fair fight, Desdemona.” I catch her watching me in the mirror and I hold her gaze. “And stop calling me ‘your darling’. I am not yours, Desi.”

She pushes herself off the floor and rolls her eyes, her hand still clutching her throat. “You will always be draga mea, Nikoletta. You will always be mine.” She moves close, stopping just a few inches from me and lifts my chin with her bloodied knuckle. She studies me for a moment, examining the cuts and bruises that she’s left on my skin and shakes her head. “You easily could have taken me, Nikoletta. Eşti frumoasă. Why did you let me tarnish your beauty? What kind of darkness has settled into your soul to allow me to inflict such pain?”

I turn away from Desi and pick up a bottle of water off of the floor. She waits patiently as I empty nearly half the contents down my throat before passing the bottle to her. “The masochistic kind, I suppose,” I mumble glumly.  “This is not my best day, Desi.”

She finishes the water and tosses the empty bottle onto the floor. Reaching down and pulling a black sweatshirt over her head, Desi flashes me a dimpled smile. “But it is about to get better. Get dressed, draga mea. I have present for you.”

I am exhausted and am in no mood for whatever “present” Desi has in store for me. I would prefer nothing more than to curl up in bed and forget this day ever existed. “Can I take a rain check on that, Desi? I’m really not in the mood tonight.”

Desi grabs my discarded t-shirt off of the floor and shoves it violently over my head. “Twenty years ago, the gods blessed the Earth by placing you here, Nikoletta.” After smoothing the wrinkles of the plain white t-shirt over my body, she interlocks our fingers and squeezes my hand. “Please allow me the pleasure of honoring this blessing.”

With a nod of my head, I allow Desi to lead me out of the gym. Instead of returning upstairs to the opulent beauty of Club Olympus, she directs me down a flight of concrete steps that descend to the basement of the previously abandoned embassy. We maneuver through a labyrinth of stone hallways until we reach an ornately carved cherry oak door.  Desi turns to me, her teeth tugging at the piercing on the corner of her lip. “La multi ani, draga mea,” she whispers. “It is a good gift.”

Stepping in front of the wooden masterpiece, I notice there is no knob on the door. Bracing both of my hands on the polished wood, I have to push hard, forcing the door to open. My breath leaves me before I can enter the room. “Christ. Desi, what did you do?”

I can barely feel her warm hand on my lower back, gently ushering me into the room. “Happy Birthday, Nikoletta,” Desi repeats in English, the excitement in her voice barely contained.

It should be shock that flows through me, muting my sense of sound, numbing the sense of touch as I desperately clench Desi’s hand in my own. It should be shock that dries my mouth and wracks my body with involuntary shudders. It should be shock…instead, it’s anger.

“Why the fuck is this thing here?”

Senator Virgil Hawthrone III manically spasms in a plastic chair, his wrists and ankles bound by heavy electrical tape. His bloated, greasy frame is coated with sweat and grime, his signature handlebar mustache smeared with caked blood. His chins violently undulate up and down, his screams muffled by the multiple strips of silver duct tape pressed against his lips.

“He is your darkness. Use him to bring you back into light.”

I unconsciously drop Desi’s hand, allowing an invisible pull to guide me towards the pathetic mass of flesh of blood that twitches before me with every step I take. “She said he was ‘the next best thing’.” Desi’s strange accent brings me out of my trance. Standing next to me again, she threads her fingers through what’s left of his silver mane and yanks his head upwards—hard, exposing his fleshy neck folds. “Is this not what you desire?” Desi’s voice hitches with surprising insecurity. “If you do not want him, it would be my pleasure to take him.”

My stony gray eyes don’t leave Hawthrone’s. They haven’t since we’ve entered the room. “And you’ll do what with him?”

Desi tugs my hand to bring my attention back to her. The irises in Desi’s eyes widen, the twin sapphires of her orbs are reduced to mere rings around a cesspool of darkness.

“Play.”

It is only then do I truly open my eyes and examine my surroundings. The concrete floor beneath our bare feet is cracked. Broken pieces of brick have crumbled from the wall and lay in pieces, scattered along the walls of the dungeon. Despite the conditions, the room appears to be more of a make-shift emergency room than the torture chamber it resembles.

A gurney with leather wrist and ankle straps is placed six feet away from the Louisiana senator. On the table behind him is a medium sized toolbox, partially open to reveal wires and random electrodes. Various x-ray machines, defibrillators and refrigerated carts full of medicine and blood take up the majority of the space.

A sick rush of pleasure floods through me because I know that I will not allow a single one of these life-saving devices to be used on Hawthorne tonight. I shouldn’t want or need this, but it brings me a certain sense of gratification that I can’t explain.

Desi was wrong.

This isn’t simply a “good gift”. At this moment in my life, this is what I can control. This gift is everything.

I smile.

“Ah. The Lady of the House was correct. You are pleased with this gift, no?” Desi’s dimples glean as she leans down next to his ear. “The goddess delights in her present, Senator.” Her tongue darts out to taste a fat, sweaty trail of moisture, catching it before it gets lost in the folds of his skin. Desi’s eyes glisten as she looks at me. “Do you know what fear tastes like, draga mea?”

I’m dazed, nauseas by her actions. Why any person would willingly ingest this man’s fluids baffles me. I can only shake my head at her question.

Desi licks the side of his face again and moans as if she’s on her way to ecstasy. “It tastes like…cherries.”

I shudder.

“I’m allergic.” If I wasn’t before, I am now.

Desi’s brow furrows. “What did he do to you, Nikoletta?”

For the first time in six years, I willingly try to capture Hawthrone’s gaze, but he refuses to look at me. Desi yanks his head even further backwards, eliciting a muffled, guttural scream, hampered by the silver tape across his lips. Before I can respond, Desi’s fist pounds into his face, blood squirting from his nose, spraying the room. “I need you to say it, draga mea,” she demands.

Hawthorne tries to scream, but I can only hear my own, childish cries as the buttons are ripped from my dress. He screams again but I can only hear the ripping of my silk pantyhose. The air is cool down here in this room, but all I can feel is Hawthorne’s hot, acrid breath panting against the crux of my neck. My body starts to shake because even now I can feel the slime of his tongue on my shoulder, his perfect whitened teeth biting into my back. He screams and screams, but all I can hear is the sound of his gravelly voice when he tells me that I taste so sweet.

Like cherries.

“Nikoletta, what did he do to you?” The thickness of her accent increases with her anger.

The words fall from my lips before I have the sense to catch them. “He hurt me.” And had me sent away.  I can’t force the rest of it from my lips.

Desi backhands him across the face, spraying more of his blood onto my crisp white t-shirt. “How did he hurt you, draga mea?”

Thick, fat tears seep from Hawthorne’s flat, brown eyes, silently begging me for mercy. “He touched me,” I whisper.

In one fluid motion, Desi rips the tape from his lips, along with several hunks of hair from his moustache. “How old were you when he touched you, my love?” His mouth opens and I’m sure he screams in pain, but I cannot hear it.

I swallow thickly and take a step backwards, in desperate need to retreat from my gift. “Not old enough,” is all that slips from my lips.

Desi’s sapphire eyes have all but turned to onyx. Without taking her eyes off of me, she opens the drawer to the medicine cart placed behind Hawthorne and pulls out a pair of black rubber gloves. “I need you to tell me the truth. This man has a long list of sins. A list so long that under normal circumstances he would never be allowed within the walls of Olympus—except for you, Niko. I need to know—how old were you when he first touched you?”

It was only the one time. That was all it took. But it was enough. “He said I tasted sweet. Like…like cherry pie.”

The room is suddenly flooded with a grating wail from Hawthrone. He cries empty tears, blubbering for mercy.

But he does not apologize.

Desi opens the refrigerated door and withdraws a clear gallon jug of liquid. “How old, Nikoletta?” she demands again as she unscrews the cap on top of the bottle. The letters HCI are scrawled in blue across the jug.

“Fourteen.”

The words barely leave my lips before Desi snakes her fingers into his thinning mane and jerks his head upwards. “Open,” she commands.

I step backwards, watching in fascination as Hawthorne thirstily opens his mouth wide, his tongue waggling, silently commanding Desi to fill his mouth with moisture. I sigh in pleasure as she tips the bottle, flooding his mouth with the clear liquid.

Within seconds, Senator Hawthrone’s body begins to jerk and spasm in his chair. His oily face reddens, his skin boiling over as the liquid floods his lungs, sizzling and burning every exposed piece of flesh. Any cries muffled by the unyielding cascade of liquid pouring down his rapidly deteriorating esophagus.

Blood mixes with acid as soft pink bubbles protrude from his mouth and nose, sliding down his neck, getting lost in the meaty folds of his neck. Desi continues to pour, liberally covering his face, neck and torso. Almost instantly, the moment the acid touches him, his flesh swells and bubbles, only to pop and explode with the next wave of liquid that coats his face and neck.

Hawthorne is dead long before the gallon jug is empty.

“Tell me, draga mea,” Desi says as she removes her gloves. “How can prefer Milton over Dante?”