Page 19 of Serpentine Valentine
I leaned forward to paint a red mouth on the silver adhesive. “That’s so much better,” I said with a happy sigh.
And I was happy. That chasm inside my chest Morgan had left me with was filled with heat and crackling flames like the forges of Mordor. Fire licked through every inch of me, erasing my numbness and burning so brightly that I finally felt alive again.
“I’m sorry, you asked me a question, didn’t you?” I asked pleasantly, running the talons at the ends of my gloves over his chest in two diagonal lines so that he was marked by a big red X. “You want to know what we’re doing? ‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?’” I paused to lean in, wrapping my hand around his strong throat finger by finger, then holding tight until his face purpled. “‘And if you wrong us, shall we not get revenge?’”
I released him when a blood vessel in his eye burst, flooding the white with a red stain. My laughter felt painful in my hot, tight chest. “You probably haven’t read Shakespeare to know the quote, have you? It’s fromThe Merchant of Venice. It’s applicable to our situation because you wronged someone I know, Jerrod. Do you remember Rhea?”
His bloodshot eyes widened before he could curb his surprise.
“Oh yes, I know all about that night you spent with her,” I continued conversationally as Juno handed me a large pad of poster paper and a pen. I uncapped the latter with my teeth and started writing. “Look at me, using euphemisms. I meant to say I know all about the night you hid in the girl’s locker room after softball practice and waited until she was the last girl there. The night you hit her over the head with her own bat and sexually assaulted her.”
Finished with my poster, I ripped the sheet free of the pad and slapped it against the middle of Jerrod’s bloodied, overly muscled chest.
“You probably thought you were clever. No cameras in the girl’s locker room. Late at night with no witnesses. I bet you thought she would be too embarrassed to tell anyone, especially after you made her feel like a slut for leading you on.” I leaned close, my words sharp as the talons I dug into his pectoral, blood beading from the broken skin. “Was she just so pretty, you couldn’t help yourself? Did she smile at you that one time right here by the lake after watching you row, and you thought that was her asking for it?”
His voice was a hoarse mumble behind his tape-closed lips, but I hushed him again as I held my free hand out to Juno, who handed me a staple gun.
“I don’t care about your excuses, Jerrod. No explanation can erase what you did to Rhea, how you scarred her and scared her for life. Every time she goes into a locker room, every time she’s faced with sexual desires, every time she is even alone with a man, what you did will haunt her. The fear you gave her will possess her like a demon.Youdid that to another person.Youmade a decision that took her ability to choose away from her. And me?”
I pushed the end of the staple gun to one corner of the poster I had slapped to the center of his chest and pressed the trigger, shooting the metal clamp deep into paper, skin, and muscle. He made a garbled cry, jerking in his bonds.
“I’m going to make you pay for it.”
Click.
Another staple. Another muffled scream.
“I’m going to make sure everyone knows exactly what kind of animal you are.”
Click.
Staple. Cry.
“I’m going to teach you what it’s like to be hunted and haunted. You’re going to walk away from tonight a changed man. Every time you come into this watershed for practice, every time you have your perverted sexual desires, every time you even see a woman, what I’m going to do to you will haunt you. Hopefully, it will make you think twice about ever touching another woman again.”
Click.
Staple. Cry.
Tears slid down his cheeks, over the square of silver tape so his drawn-in red mouth leaked ink onto his chin, red ink mixing with red blood.
Satisfaction warmed my blood like arousal. My heart beat too fast. My mouth watered. My stomach felt achingly empty. I wanted to devour him. Break this predator apart piece by piece and eat him. Something about taking him into my body against his will felt like dark poetic justice. If he wanted to violate women so much, we would violate him.
It was such a small consequence of his actions.
The image of Rhea, sobbing and shaking, curled up like a fetus and just as vulnerable in my arms as I held her, flashed across my inner eye. She’d known what was done to me, but we were also friends. After what happened to her, she’d dragged herself to my apartment last week. Gracie and I took her to the emergency room, but Jerrod had worn a condom to forcibly take her mouth when she was passed out, so no genetic evidence was left behind. Only a bruised jaw, a swollen, split scalp oozing blood, and the start of bruises in the shape of fingertips on her throat.
But she knew who’d done that to her.
And then, I did.
And now, everyone would.
“It’s over,” I whispered to him through hismuffled tears. “You can tell your friends, your bro/frat dude besties that the Man Eaters are patrolling campus now, and if any of you assault a female student inanyway––verbally, physically, sexually––we will come for you. And this is the least we’ll do.”
I stepped back, and Gracie laughed manically beside me before explaining to Jerrod, “We’re starting small.”
And we were.
