Drop Dead Pet

JournalWord: Imagining perfection.

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Aiming for the bathroom to inspect my hungover condition, I shuffle down the hallway and turn left, thankful that I don't feel nauseous. The eastern skylight catches the last few color pitches of sunlight and I realize how lucky I am only a few hours have passed. 

Already demoted, I know if I am late or miss a day, my reputation would get much, much worse. And now I have all the evening to unravel this male mystery with casual interrogation. 

He follows me like a puppy to the bathroom. "Do you have somewhere else to be?" I ask at his reflection after I splash freezing water onto my face.

"Hmmm. Not really. Lately I've been staying here and there, you know." He jumps up onto the counter beside me, the sink basin between us as I pat my face dry with a towel.

"Are you some kind of stray?" I tease.

"I guess so. I was staying in this garage for awhile, then a tree fort, then I found a man who let me stay on his couch for free but he tricked me and said I had to pay him back with my body. I couldn't bring myself to do that so I ran away as fast as I could but the guy chasing me was really persistent. I was hiding in that pile of trash. Before I knew it,
 I fell asleep."

I remember the bruises. His story is impossible. Yet it is told with the same sincerity he has said the hour and admitted homelessness. "Who are you?" I ask.

"Are you frightened?"

"No," I say automatically. The thought had never crossed my mind. Concerned? Yes. Confused? Deeply. But this man could do nothing he hadn't already had a hundred chances for. "Why would I be? If you wanted to hurt me you would've done so by now."

The friendly atmosphere is sucked from the small room. "I've met all sorts of people," he admits, suddenly dark and raw, hopping from his perch. There is little distance between us and his encroaching prowl forces me backwards until my spine bumps against the wall. His smile is unholy. I hear the shower curtain jingle and bend to my weight before I realize I've grasped it for balance. 

He breathes into my hair as his hands grip my hips. "But this is the first time I've ever met someone as trusting as you—"

I pull on the shower curtain, taking it down along with the steel bar its metal rings held firmly. A good whack across the head sends him back to the hallway where he topples over.

"I don't wanna get the wrong idea but that stung."

"Get the wrong idea." I stomp over and dig my shoe heel into his shoulder. He yields with a grimace. "I found you hurt and felt I had to help you but if you're healthy enough to get frisky, you're healthy enough to get lost."

"But I don't have any money!" He clutches my calf with a whine, abruptly a new person. It's too late; I know which persona is the act.

"I'll give you money."

"But... I don't feel so good..." He crosses his arms over his stomach, performing with all the candor he can manage with my heel still sticking into his shoulder. I merely tap the pipe against my shoulder for emphasis. He and I both see the head-shaped depress on its smooth surface.

"I want to eat first!"

"I didn't ask you for tonight's dinner menu! Get out!" I snarl and assault him with the pipe again, this time impacting his left shoulder just as I move my leg. Without a brace he bounces against the ground like a dog toy.

His hands catch my third strike. I am shocked when he holds firm, my strength matched pound for pound in a stalemate. "I'll have sex with you."

"What the hell?" I fluster, offended. I am ready to crush his nuts with my foot. I would've tried if he wasn't curled up on himself, smartly blocking access.

"Why not? Do you have a boyfriend?"

"That's none of your business! And I'd never be interested in a pervert like you!"

I wrestle the pipe away just as he gets to his feet. Without a shirt it's hopeless to get a hold on him for long. 

He ducks beneath a few more blows but I manage to sink my free hand into the crest of his blonde hair. I instantly yank him up. He yelps and bows forward with the momentum. His distress is muffled in the valley of my breasts. I jerk his head down and away from me, but the damage is done.

"Small..."

"Fuck you."

With the pipe in one hand and his hair in the other, I drag him all the way to the front door where he renews his pleas. "You're a great lady! Your refrigerator has food! I think we'd get along great— do you know how cute you are when you're asleep? And when you woke up, I felt so happy! Your sweet smell—"

"Don't go smelling me!" It is regrettable that I have to drop the pipe in order to open the door. He senses the lost advantage and immediately thrashes like a shark on blood lust. But he hasn't laid a hand against me. Despite my animosity, he fights like I am his only lifeline. His eyes promise so.

"Let me stay with you! Please, please, let me live here! Anything, I'll do anything—" He isn't even halfway out the door before I begin to succumb. 

I have to; my energy is teetering on absolute depletion from drinking and his strength is insane, probably greater than my own. I realize that even on my best day I'd be hard pressed to force this stubborn man out the door and nothing said he wouldn't force his way back in. My only chance of success is to fight him on other terms.

"Fine," I say. "You can stay on one condition. Agreed?"

"Yes! Oh, thank you!" He bounds away from the door and tackles my couch like it's a gazelle under the kill. "I'll do anything. I can pose as your cousin, your bodyguard, a masseuse, you name it."

"Become my pet."

He falters in bouncing against the plush cushions, dropping to his rear like concrete in water. "Your... pet?" he squeaks.

"Yes. If you're good I'll take care of you and cook for you." Crossing my arms not unlike a prison warden I eviscerate his simplistic fantasies with the clause, "But you won't have any rights and you'll have to do everything I say."

"... I wouldn't have any rights?" He drags a pillow over his lap, an emotional safeguard to my harsh criteria.

"No. Because you'd be a pet." I remain steadfast in body and voice but for however stern I sound I feel an uninhibited smile cross my face. His troubled visage spells victory. He has fallen into this agreement like a fool. "Take it or leave it," I sing.

I watch him worry a thumb between his incisors while his other hand tugs the roots of his hair, silently and dejectedly going back and forth between the benefits and provisions of servitude. 

I am a lion on the plains. My kills come from diligence and wit, so I am perfectly patient to let him corner himself into my trap. I know no man would degrade themselves to my standards. Their honor would drag them out the door and to some other sap's doorstep. His morose nod accedes the same conclusion. I copy him, smiling. He wouldn't comply to my terms.

And then things change.

I watch anxiously, feeling my own eyes widen as I decipher the slight nuances of his true feelings. He shows bewilderment, but not humiliation; unease, but not opposition. It takes my full concentration to pick out what is underneath the underneath and by then it is too late.

"Woof!"

I trip backwards and that asshole laughs at me.

"A pet? That's it? Man, how lucky!"

"What do— just a second— by pet you understand that—" I cut off as he launches himself across my living room's wood flooring and slides on his knees right up to my waist.

"Thank you master! Woof!"

I feel lightheaded. I think it might be delirium. "Wait... you... weren't supposed to..."

"Are you a person that talks a lot to themselves?" He blinks and even tilts his head to the side like a curious Corgi. "There are weird housewives that do that, mutter about husbands coming home late and single women..."

"Shut up! You're the one who's not normal! Don't you have any ounce of pride?"

He taps his chin with a finger in thought then smiles. "Mmm, none."

I clench my teeth and look away to keep from screaming. He sits there with nothing, not a lick of integrity. I've stripped away the very valor of his masculinity and thrown him into this inane subservient responsibility. Calling him 'compromised' isn't even close to accurate; he's been castrated. And he let me do it. That's how men are. All of them. Not a single one care about character, about superiority, dignity, anything. Just like Lee. Now this.

I look back when I feel his touch firmly grab my wrists, lifting my palm to lay kisses in its center. The unanticipated sight of lips against skin is hypnotic. His beryl blue eyes gaze up at me unabashed, so honest with his display of wanting that my breathing balks and I pray for a sense of how and why he belies nothing but true desire.

Then, there unstoppable, kneeling before me he whispers in the manner a proposing man reassures and promises a woman 'I'll love you forever', "I'll become your pet."

I rip my hand from his and slap him across the cheek.

"I'm sorry!" he cries and clutches his cheek. "What'd I do? Don't send me off to the shelter!"

I hate him. I hate all of them. I am sick of their selfishness. The thoughts and images of Lee assault me, all his little pieces I want to crush and grind in my hands. The deformed legs I'll happily rip away, along with his deceiving lips. I'll burn away his arms, the same arms he held me with only to wrap around someone else. Most of all, I want to fry his brain with boiling acid until his ears bleed and mind melts. Or do it to myself. It seems like the only way to relieve myself of his memory.

I stomp to my bedroom like Athena, bitter and vicious and shrewd, wishing to be a reborn virgin purified from the infection of weak males. The idiot had the audacity to come after me and even more balls to look confused.

I stop as he is about to pass the threshold of my room and snap an arm against the frame to block him. "What do you think you're doing?" I am clenching my teeth so hard my jaw begins to hurt.

"You look upset... and I... I want to make you feel better..."

"In my bedroom? Just because you're living here now, don't get stupid ideas. I'm not going to have sex with you. In fact, I want nothing to do with you outside of our agreement. Got it?"

"No, I mean— I am concerned—"

"I don't want your concern," I turn around to see him looking surprised and I start to really seethe. "What's that face for? Of course I wouldn't! You're a pet. You're nothing."

"Ah, yeah..." His timid smile is stricken in anxiety, unsure if I am going to do worse than a slap with my clenched fists. To placate me he backs down the hallway and lowers himself to the hard floor like I'd told him to sit by command. 

A sudden wave of apathy doesn't surprise me. This man is pathetic. No thought of resistance cues his mind, not even the inkling of being stubborn. The smallest hope is dashed and I am defeated.

He lays onto his back and paws the air.

"What're you doing now?" I sigh and lean on the door frame with arms crossed.

"The pose of submission. I," he touches his chest, "submit to you." He expands his hands as a welcoming gesture to me and smiles. "I won't do anything inappropriate. But if you say you want me to... then I can do that for you too."

I shut the door when he winks at me. It seems the peon is delusional as well because there is no way I would ever ask for something like that. Slapping my face, I attack the blush that threatens to blossom on my cheeks. "Ice your cheek before it becomes inflamed," I yell before tossing myself into my pillows.

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A sadist looking for perfection when her world is crumbling down and a masochist who doesn't mind a new role.

I'm quite interested in the characteristics of a masochist and sadist. So drop me a comment on what you think :P

Bear with me and my strange interests,

-mera.