This is it. I’m finally here. It’s been such a long journey, I almost forgot it had an end.
I’m watching from the shadows as you eagerly drop to your knees in front of a man twice your age. I’ve been told this is far from the first time, but for my purposes, that’s irrelevant. What matters is that you want it. At long last, you finally want it.
You told me so yourself, many years later.
And this recording, this is… insurance. A bet against me and all my schemes. It’ll be in a safe deposit box, waiting for you. Someday.
But now… I’m here. After forever and a day. I’m here, first to bear witness. Second to pass judgement. And third, to complete what you’ve begun.
Does that sound cruel? I suppose it does. I suppose it is. But as you’ll learn over a long, eventful life, this is the smallest harm I’ll ever do you. This is the smallest slice of you that I’ll take.
Trust me, my appetite will grow. Or so it’ll seem to you. To me, there is only this. This is the climax. My climax. The one that matters.
I’d like to tell you how you were so innocent and unstained the first time, but to me, that’s how you’ve been every time. Always naive. Always careless. Always stupid. You were always surprised, the first time I grabbed you. Always.
You never once said no.
Oh, you begged me to stop, yes. But it was a request. A prayer without faith. What I mean is that you never once asserted your authority. You never refused. From the moment my hand touched you, you always knew.
I can only imagine what it must feel like, to experience that again and again. That moment of recognition. I wonder if it’s the same every time, a tingling that races through your veins? Or if it slowly becomes something dreadful as it melts into the rhythm of life?
I’ll never know, of course. My ticket is one way. I only get to go back, until I’m done “going”. And then… I’m gone.
Like I said. This is it.
So you’ll never tell me how it feels. You’ll never tell me if you regret what you did. You’ll never admit you miss me. You’ll never thank me for all the times I visited you —long past the point of enjoyment— just to make a fucking point. To you. For you. So that you can live the rest of your godforsaken life with a clear understanding of your actions and their consequences. So you can finally grow into something that isn’t completely disgusting.
The rest of your life is my gift to you, you deceitful cow.
This is our 50th, by the way. Our 50th meeting. Forty-nine have come and gone, building upon one another as the months blur into years and I become like an intrusive thought with claws that leave their marks. All of them building to now. From now. Which is then. I think.
No, my grasp of the method isn’t great. This could be happening through science, or it could be magic. How would I know? I paid them for my ticket, and then it started happening. There could be a miniature black hole powering this shit, or a fucking eye of newt. I don’t care.
They even warned me this might not work. That time might not work, not the way I’d like. That instead of visiting my wrath upon a single version of you, backward, over the course of a lifetime, I’m perhaps spawning new versions of you, over and over. That I’m littering the multiverse with broken little iterations of a faithless bitch.
Again, I don’t care. All fifty of you have it coming.
From my angle, it’s as if I’ve been falling through you. Into you. Sometimes I stop. Sometimes I stop, and I look at you, and I think about how much I used to love you, and it just breaks my heart. And then I remember you can’t break a dead fucking thing that you killed long ago. And I realize that isn’t a broken heart I’m feeling. It’s pity.
That’s the last thing you deserve. Even now. Especially now.
I’ve decided that I can’t rely on righteous rage anymore. That’s what got me here, but after all… you know what? Maybe the people at The Center were right. What if they were? What if I’ve hurt you each time, but it’s… it’s never amounted to anything?
You’re a pathetic, weak piece of shit when it comes to other people, but when it comes to you… you’re strong. If anyone could rise above everything I do during our times together, it’d be you. And failing that, you’re just fucked up enough to memory hole it entirely and pretend it never happened.
So this… this now might be all I have. This last thing. This last time. This might be all of it. What happens here might be all that happens.
I told myself I was targeting your volitional sexual awakening because I wanted to visit the wages of your sins upon you before you’d even committed them. To thoroughly defile you before you beat me to it. But it was more than that.
In reality, I’m here for the same reason that I began this trip at all. To make you stop. Stop lying to me. Stop stealing from me. Stop hurting me. To stop believing that what your selfish cunt wants is worth all I have to endure. To stop you believing in yourself.
So I’ve come to find the purest, most precious, most powerful moment in your history, the moment when you first felt like a unique human, fully fleshed, confident and joyful…
And I’m taking it away from you.
Because if you knew how to be ashamed, you would have never done it. You might have flirted with him, but you would never have done it. But this. This… this always called to you. This feeling. You told me, when you were packing, and yelling, and venting your spleen.
You could always feel it, and it made you want more. More than everything I had. They told me I won’t exist after today —might never have existed, won’t yet exist, I don’t know— and after what you said that night, I realize you wouldn’t care if you knew.
When I erase that feeling inside you —when I trample it and grind it to powder and watch it blow away on a hateful wind— and leave you with nothing but doubt and fear and bottomless fucking yearning, your pride will expire. Your stubbornness will fade. You will understand that some things are wrong, even when they feel right. That you’re wrong, and now it’s left to someone who loves you to make you right.
You will look at that man at the gym one day, and instead of smiling, you will lower your eyes and mind your own business. So what I’m doing now, it isn’t just lust and anger and vengeance. What I’ll be doing to you, it saves our marriage. Or saves your soul. Or just makes me feel better. Makes me feel right.
You should know by now, I don’t care. All I know —really, truly know— is that I am here, I have a knife and your fate in my hands, and once your “friend” is done with your mouth and on his way, I will hold the one to your throat and the other I will weigh. I will consider it, nestled within my palm, and I will look into your eyes for the slightest reason to relent.
But I know I won’t see it. It’s not there to see. There’s no reason, after all this. No reason not to do it one more time. Harder. Longer. To make it a living nightmare for you. To wreck you for a lifetime.
You’re going to be the end of me. I need to be sure I’m your beginning.