Jack: Guilt
I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve Riley Lark.
I want her, but to have her as she is, I would have to break myself. To have her as I am, I have to break her. There’s my problem.
I'm standing in my bathroom staring at the mirror. It's strange that, for all my scars, the world has left my face untouched. I don't have any modest delusions about my looks. Or any delusions about what I am underneath them. I'm a monster with the face of a movie star. I have a strange urge to smash a fist into my reflection and draw a deep line down my visage with one of the shards. I don't deserve this. I deserve to be dead, but instead, I'm enjoying myself with the most beautiful girl in the world.
Why toy with Riley? Why do I deserve the delight of interacting with her? I don’t. It doesn’t matter what you deserve. It only matters what you can take, I try to tell myself. It feels hollow, though. For some reason, ever since I laid eyes on Riley, it feels like things matter.
I don’t deserve this.
It’s 1998. I’m in a small, stuffy room in a ramshackle house in Montana. Everything is dull brown colors. My mom lies in bed, covered in mismatched blankets, dying. She has a fever. She’s shivering and cold even though it’s summer and too hot out. I’m reading to her out of an old book. It doesn’t do any good. Nothing I can do does any good.
It’s 2001. A man is hitting me again and again. My face grinds into the dirty floor of a bar at the end of nowhere. The man is my father. I can’t make myself fight him back. Wyatt throws him off and stands over me, fear in his eyes. I can’t understand why it matters whether I’m beaten or not.
2009. I’m huddled behind some rocks in a barren, forgotten piece of land very far away—a remote part of the old world that people have been fighting over for eons. There’s a little village across from me. Someone is shooting at me and my friends from somewhere inside of it—hot lead being flung into the sparse rocks we’re using for cover. I don’t know who is in the village. I lift my gun and hurl fire back.
2012. I’ve finally been to the last of my friends’ funerals. The war has killed them one by one—if it didn’t get them over there, it got them once they tried to come home. I had dreams before the war, and before my mom died. I wanted to be a politician. I wanted to be a good man. But those dreams are impossible now after what I did over there. If anyone dug up my crimes—what I was ordered to do and did—my attempts at a public life would be crippled as soon as they began.
I don't see the point in any of those dreams anymore, anyway. The world is too broken to be made right. I resolve to drink myself to death. That seems like a nice way to go. I'll throw in all the drugs I can find along the way, too. Out with a bang and very far from this reality. I go on like that for a year, but the chemicals I put into my body can't quite kill me. I need more money to pay for my substances. I have a lot of useful skills for the drug business—namely, the ability to break men's bones if they don't pay their dues.
2013. I start working for a small crime syndicate—the Amontillados. It's run by a man about my age, Daemon. He's a monster—the primordial thing that lurks in the shadows at the edge of the woods, watching you just beyond the reach of your house lights. He's the beast that comes to feed when you're weak and broken or the thing that breaks you in the first place. But he's calculating and efficient—a pragmatist. He sees the world and all the people in it as a pile of atoms and nothing more.
And I see the world the same way, now. All my principles have been killed and stripped away and there's nothing in me left to protest against joining Daemon and his vile efforts. The world is full of monsters. They do their work whether I join them or not. His cold efficiency appeals to me because that's the only part that I have left. I'm a calculating mind and a heart of stone. My dreams are gone. My heart is cold. I'm a machine that can be pointed at goals and grind towards them. And I yearn for something, anything, to do. The drugs can no longer distract me enough—even their strange, psychedelic world has grown stale for me. Something deep inside of me yearns for activity, and Daemon gives a chance at the greatest activity of all: conquest.
We work together to build an empire.
Someday, I know, Daemon and I will try to kill each other. Daemon knows this, too. But for now we’re each too useful to the other, so our partnership holds.
It’s 2018. I stand in the dark bathroom of my sublime penthouse atop the city. That damn girl’s enormous eyes haunt me from the deepest parts of my soul, and somehow, against all odds, a dream wakes up inside of me. Somehow, against all odds, I can feel my heart again.
I don’t deserve this.
I look in the mirror, take a deep breath, and try to calm myself down. I'm nearly shaking with arousal. I feel like I'm going through withdrawal being away from her. I want her body more than I've ever wanted anything in the world. I want to possess her completely. I want her soul.
This doesn’t make any fucking sense. She’s just a girl. I try to convince myself to go and pick up any of the numberless, perfect women I could have in this city, but it’s no good. They hold no interest for me. I can only think of Riley.
I see her laying out on display for me on that table in the poker room. I think of how wet she was from being forced to obey my commands and of how her perfect body trembled at my touch. It takes every scrap of self-control I have to not storm into her room and take her as hard as I can right now. No. Even you have standards. I won’t force her—not that far, at least. I’ll make her admit that she yearns for me—I’ll make her beg for it. Then I’ll take her.
I know she’s going to struggle to take my size—I’m far bigger than anything she could possibly be used to. She’s going to be overwhelmed—stretched and penetrated more deeply than she’s ever been before. But I’m going to make sure she loves it.
I'm erect and throbbing just thinking about her now, alone in this bathroom. I take my thick length in my hand and slowly work myself with full, luxurious strokes while I think about her lovely, soft body. Vivid images flood my mind. I'm back in the poker room with her before me. But then it fades away and I drift into another world. Riley is dressed in a pale gown and sitting on a throne—she's regal, a princess in her tower. Flickering torchlight illuminates the darkroom in my imagination.
I move towards her. She’s defenseless against me. I’ve broken down all barriers and guards between us. I take her into my arms. She tries to pull away—tries to resist. But I can feel her heart hammering—can see the blush of arousal in her cheeks and across her pale chest—can see her bosoms heaving. Anger and defiance flash in her bright eyes.
“I’ll never give in to you!” this dream Riley spits out at me. But I know she will. In my dreams, I'm free to do whatever I want to her. In this dream tower, there's a large stone altar. I tear her from her throne and lay her out on it. She struggles and resists and I rip her dress open, letting her naked breasts tumble free. Sweat quickly covers her body and I press my mouth to her, first to her lips and then all down her body, savoring her taste.
I reach her throbbing pussy and bury myself between her legs, feeding on her passion. She moans and gasps in shocked ecstasy and her body trembles and cums from my passionate assault on her.
I climb onto the table and press her legs wide apart. My enormous length breaches her and I press deep into her throbbing, aroused, soaking wet pussy. Her body betrays her. She bucks and opens herself to me, wrapping her thighs around my waist. I pin her arms above her head and passionately kiss her as I take her.
Back in the bathroom, I stroke myself harder and harder. I'm drawing in ragged breaths. Sweat slicks my naked muscles. My heart hammers with the thought of her.
My dream Riley moans so sweetly, writhes, and releases in a second intense orgasm. I throb and swell inside of her, then fill her—deep inside of her, deeper than she’s ever been taken—with a giant wave of my seed. I take her as mine.
Warmth has filled me. The tension builds and builds and then finally releases. It wracks my body there, alone in the bathroom, to the thought of Riley. Every part of me tenses—slicked muscles flexing and straining—and then releases. My passion erupts out of me, a demonstration of my lust for her.
I draw shuddering breaths. Masturbation has never been this intense before. It’s different, thinking about Riley as I stimulate myself. I’ve never had feelings this powerful before just from fantasy. It feels really, really fucking good, but it only makes me want her more. I expected relief, but in moments desire has already flooded back. I still want her just as badly.
What is it about this girl? Why do I want to do these filthy things to her? I disdain her and crave her at the same time. Part of it is that even under my control she’s still defiant and disdainful of me. For some reason her disdain only makes me want her more. I guess I disdain myself. I wouldn’t want a woman who accepted me as I am now. It would be someone who accepted a monster. Many women I’ve met do—they fawn over me, desirous of my power. But Riley doesn’t care about my power. She fears me, yes. But it doesn’t stop her from seeing the wrong in me and resisting it. I think her idealism is foolish, but I can’t help but admire her for it. I want her for her pure, defiant heart—that’s a rare thing to find in my world. Or any world.
But I despise her defiance, too. Her idealism is delusional to me. And it’s an assault on my own worldview. If Riley Lark is right about the world—right about there being a right and a wrong—then I’m wrong. And I’ve been living my life in terrible error for nearly a decade. That makes me want to break her. It makes me want to show her that all of her ideals and beliefs are just lies. Maybe that’s why I want to humiliate her, break her down, and make her beg and submit to me.
But still, I love that she resists me, even here at her lowest point. She’s completely powerless yet still defiant. I love that about her. I’m infatuated with her. And that’s a weakness. It opens me up to a million points of attack and puts a crack in the armor that I’ve formed my personality into. Yet…just to feel again. To yearn for something so pure and good. To yearn for anything aside from calculated conquest. It’s a sweet and new taste for my soul.
Riley Lark is mine now, and I’m going to torment her sweet, delicious body until she breaks down and admits it. She needs release, but I won’t give it to her. I’ll make her so desperate that she’ll have to admit that she wants me, too.
I don’t deserve her. But I’m going to take her anyway.