The Tao of Sacrifice
Steven’s particular aberrance had not manifested itself immediately. But there were signs and Shela had studied them.
Shela had wondered at many a charged sideways glance. Steven always adamantly denied that he was looking at her strangely, but there was a certain and distinct heat in his gaze. Shela followed his fiendish fixation and found him starring frequently at her fingers.
They had been together just about a year when further revelations were made.
In fact, they had been together a year, a month, and a day before Steven acted on his desire and placed of Shela’s long flinching fingers into his mouth.
Shela herself didn’t flinch but her fingers did. Steven gently lifted her hand and watched with pleasure as he began to curdle her milky hands in his warm mouth. Shela didn’t flinch when Steven lifted her hand to his mouth. But her hand did. Her forefinger flinched ever so slightly. The hands are very sensitive.
She watched his face; she watched his pleasure. It was her pleasure too, and he began to bite.
Not hard at first. Good things come to those who wait. He had waited a year and a month and a day for the taste of her and he savored the layers of taste: salty, and then spongy with the promise of blood beneath. He switched his focus to the soft flesh between her thumb and forefinger. His tongue lapped at the spot, curving under and flicking her palm. Shela made a small sound of pleasure. She held her hand up to him, like a present, Steven thought with a shudder of realization that was like bliss. He sucked at the skin, his eyes closed and Shela watching intently all the time. Steven had ceased thinking and his mind consisted of only the few words necessary for his enterprise: lick, flesh, and the strongest word of all, bite. It was so easy to slip his teeth into the wet willingness of her hand. He drew blood.
Shela’s eyes were now closed. She didn’t draw away her hand. Steven lapped at her most fundamental self and the unfamiliar waves of pain left her immobile and light-headed.
Steven’s mouth had a curl of blood in its corner. He released Shela’s hand but she continued to hold it up mutely. He lowered it gently onto her lap. He was glutted with her blood and he licked the corner of his mouth with absent rapture. Shela felt a kind of returning as she focused on his face. Her thoughts of the last few minutes were lost as her hand began a less than ethereal throb.
She laughed, slightly, and she felt something like unbearable pain, not in her hand. Steven took her hand again and kissed it and placed it back in her lap. Her hand felt good. Hot and bloody and used.
The biting became a routine fulfillment. Sometimes Steven would take her hand and sometimes she would offer it, but either way blood was drawn.
Eventually, Steven began to focus on a single finger.
Within a month, her finger was covered with tiny welcome lacerations. Subtle bite marks, filled gently with blood and lapped clean. But the subtle bite marks became more painful with time passing and soon it was obvious they were infected.
Steven glanced at Shela’s hands fearfully now and to Shela the infected finger had become a monstrous worry. She wanted it gone. She wanted to cut it off. She considered doing it herself with the brown handled knife from the kitchen.
Eventually, the doctors did it for her.
Shela was fortunate that she got to keep her hand, the doctors said, and she would get used to having only nine fingers.
Recovery was several weeks and Shela found herself well adjusted and adequately fingered for routine tasks. Steven had taken to starring nearly constantly at her mutilated hands. He was morose, confused by a plethora of dehabilitating words. Guilty, responsible, sadistic. He thought her hands were more beautiful now and he wanted them. The desire had not gone but was strengthened with guilt. The thought that he was responsible for that disfigured nub filled him with a perverse arousal that horrified him.
Shela could feel his division and his guilt was left splattered around the house like blood from a gaping wound. You couldn’t ignore a gapping wound, Shela knew. Infection was a danger.
Steven was by a closet, guiltily picking out a shirt, dangerously close to a mirror. Shela made a small noise of greeting. Steven’s response was sedate, apologetic, and nearly non-existent.
“Steven,” she whispered, and she put her hand up to his mouth. He looked at her with a horror-filled longing and she nodded, desperate for him to take it. His guilt drowned in his desire as he took her hand, gently at first. Her blood was sweet and healing and it would revive him. He bit eagerly and Shela did not flinch but watched him and smiled.
She would give him as many fingers as he needed.
She would give him every single one.
