Ruby red lollipop slithers against her tongue like a saccharine snake. Every few moments she looks in my direction and a slight chill of goosebumps and agonal pops dances underneath my skin. She tosses the brown duffel bag next to me on the bed and for a slight moment I only wonder where my life went wrong. Slight dewy breeze escapes from the smooth winter night, a collection of warm raindrops fizzing and dying on the rogue carpeted floor.

​I take a deep breath, study the sharp, pale center of her legs. They look like pastel knives and at any second I could shove my face in between them. She crunches on the final remnants of her treat, stands up and closes the window. “So your name is Kal, isn’t?” she asks, quarter inch of belly flesh peeking from beneath her tight black t-shirt. “I didn’t realize you’d be that much younger than me.”

​She thinks I’m younger than her and the man inside of my head laughs. If she only knew what twenty-nine years of life could do to a single person’s sanity. I politely nod and shuffle my thumbs back into their respective hands. Clammy rivers of perspiration boil between the crevasses of my palms and when I look to the ceiling I swear I see a ghost.

​I can remember the ad in the Boston Globe, the way its letters seemed to float off the gray newspaper and into the blues of my eyes. Getting to the next level is half the fun; the carnal desires of the heart are never as devious as the true perception of the mind. The person left a single phone number and after shooting up the last of my stash, I had absolutely nothing left in this life to lose except the blood pumping throughout my body. We met at the lobby of the Marriott only twenty minutes ago and I knew it was this woman sliding through the glass doors only by the crimson streaks in her golden blonde hair, tips as black as a raven night. Short glittery silver skirt, black t-shirt and eyes that could stop a man’s beating heart.

​Before my own thoughts can continue she straddles me, hard aspiration pushing against the very fabric of my worn-out jeans. Her tongue tastes like cinnamon and I imagine this is what the best part of Hell feels like. I slip off her t-shirt and bite the edge of her black lacy bra, cleavage as robust as an autumn moon. Small shriek and she pushes me onto the bed, white-painted fingernails crackling at my belt like living snowflakes. My jeans find their way to the opposite side of the room and when I focus my eyes to the living naked beauty in front of me every drop of breath cascades into euphoric dust. It’s right now that she grabs the duffel bag and slings it open. A quick flash of silver light and a jingling of metal.

​Her smile, two rows of perfect beaming teeth, can’t alleviate the fear quivering in my veins because she’s holding a knife and a gun. Twenty seconds of dreadful silence followed by hands digging into the faux velvet bedsheets that once comforted my body. She’s beautiful and dangerous and my flesh doesn’t know whether to be frightened or aroused.

​“What are those for?” The words escape my tongue like little lost children looking for their home.

​She removes her bra and slips out of her panties; she’s shaved and absolutely perfect. “These,” she says as she holds the knife and gun to the air, “are the reason why we’re here, handsome.” The dimples in her cheeks collude into rose blush and for all I know this woman could be a normal soccer mom outside of these four rented walls. I begin to reach for my jeans but she slips them away with her feet. She shakes her head and smiles again.

​“It’s my turn first,” she says, and sits on top of me. I can feel how wet she is and the tip of my hardness flirts with her in anticipation. She drops the knife to the side and her fingers find the tension in my chest. She slides over them, finds the stagnant muscle, and eases the fear out of my skin. “Close your eyes” is all I hear before the first scrape digs deep into the cavernous flesh below my thigh. I jet forward but I’m already inside her, slow pump as the blood cools the backs of my legs. I’m bleeding and fucking and not even an hour ago I imagined the regret I could feel after a night like this.

​Teeth grind and taste the whiskey I sipped this morning. Her lips find mine and my hands caress her hanging breasts while ignoring the shockwaves of pain radiating from my thigh. I could bleed out and not even know it.

​My vision fades into a fuzzy mess of purple and pink and when the rogue drops of sweat from her forehead drip onto my chest I’m rocked back into awareness. “Your turn,” she says, and slides off of me with a gentle bounce. The latter half of the bedsheets are now a nice mix of crimson and purple. She hands me the knife and pushes herself back into the corner of the bed, opens her legs in a violent invitation. The wooden handle is warm and comforting, like an old baseball glove.

​“Where do you want it?” I slide the tip across her legs, trace a pale line from hips to her belly, find a nice spot below her ribs and carve a circle while she moans with delight. One finger inside of her and the other hand on the knife, I can feel the urge for more. Her eyes glisten with a vicious sparkle and if I only had a diamond I’d propose to her here in a mess of sex, blood and violence. I force myself on top of her and she nods for me to push further until her mouth is agape with enchantment. When she finally comes, I’m already well past her.

​I release and lay next to her, throbbing wound in my leg now just a distant reminder. The walls start to melt and I might be dead. “More,” she says in an instant and this is where I’m finally scared of what may happen.

​She curls her blonde locks with one free hands and rubs the circular cut on her stomach with the other. “We’re not done yet.”

​I try to speak, but she’s already driven the blade deep into my side. I recoil in a vast jumble of pain and pleasure and my first reaction is to picture the look on my father’s face when he has to identify my battered body. “We’re almost there,” she says, and pulls out the knife from whichever organ was once resting comfortably.

​“Where else can we go?” My voice is small and withered.

​Bloody grin and a look that might have just sucked the breath out of my lungs. “Take off my face.”

​Something explodes outside and it could be the moon. Bright lights and a flicker of black fire illuminate the dying world outside the hotel. She rests her head in my lap and licks the plump mauve of her lips. “Please…”

​I take a deep breath and remember every rotten thing I’ve done over the past decade. Knife is an extension of my own fingers and the first cut into the base of skin under her chin is enough to provoke the warm flame in my heart. Long, slow graze of metal against flesh and blood and through every sullen crack of skin she drives her fingernails into my leg. My design is crude and imperfect but in less than two total minutes the red outline around her face drips dark fluid onto myself and the rest of her naked body.

​“Pull it, baby,” she says, wicked smile across her face like a beacon of rabid hope. I dig my fingers underneath the tracing, ignore the pulsating rounds of veins and arteries wrapped around my nails. I tug and pull until her head gyrates forward with my efforts. In almost slow motion the mask that was once her face is somewhere near the edge of the bed. Wet surface of blood and bone, the inside of gorgeous flesh. The muscle fibers sparkle like angel tears.

​Three strikes of my heart and uncounted breaths. A sweet bang at the door once, twice, maybe three times. The sky is purple and foggy. I fall off the edge of the bed and can still hear her voice. Her words are like architectures of panic, the syrupy residue of dying love.

​“I can see it now, I’m there,” she says. And a single click of the gun. A mulberry green supernova bursts the time space between my body and the bed, and when my vision finally fades into white, I’m left with only thoughts from a language I don’t understand, the remnants of moments lost forever.