Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55109 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 220(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Cosmos is not looking at me. His eyes are fixed on the man with the knife, and his expression is terrifying. It is vicious and unfathomably evil. There is anticipation there, a thrill at having an excuse to do something truly terrible.
“Take that knife off her neck now, and I will kill you quickly. If you don’t, I will kill you painfully.”
The man doesn’t take the knife from my neck. He presses it in harder. I feel a trickle of warmth. That’s my blood again. Then I feel hot breath and a wet tongue. He’s licking my blood from me. It is a grotesque intimacy that makes me shudder.
Cosmos turns his gaze to me. “Ready to admit you might be targeted by a blood-obsessed cult of messianic scientists?”
I nod as much as I dare, which is not much at all, but he picks up the gesture, and the room explodes.
He moves much faster than anybody should be able to, turning to a blur of man and tattoo. The knife clatters onto the table. The man who was holding it hits the wall, cracking the plaster.
Then things get messy. I look, and then wish I hadn’t, and then I look again, and then I look away. What Cosmos is doing is wrong and nasty, and entirely what he promised to do. He looks up, catches me looking, and shakes his head curtly.
“Go into the bathroom,” he says, “and put the complimentary earplugs in.”
“Cosmos…”
“Do it. Now.”
I do as I am told.
Earplugs don’t cut out enough sound. So I run the shower, and I turn on the complimentary radio, and I try to pretend that the discordant shrieking coming through the bathroom is just some new kind of music. In a way, it is.
I’m still trying to come to terms with the events of the day, but no sooner do I process one thing than something else even more terrible happens. I am in the company of a man who knows how to torture and kill, and who has done both in my presence. I am the target of people with some mad delusion. I have been ripped out of consensus reality, and I do not know what to do with myself.
I have another shower. I need to clean myself in a way I have never been cleaned before. The filth of these deeds is clinging to me on the inside, as if it penetrated my skin and got into some ephemeral part of my being.
Some time later, Cosmos opens the door to the bathroom. I am naked in the shower. Mist might hide me but probably doesn’t. He’s seeing me naked for the first time, but he doesn’t stop for long to take the sight in. He is too busy stripping off his own blood-soaked clothing. I see him come into view through the haze. Tattoos truly do cover most all of his arms and his powerful thighs. They range across his chest and just barely take a break down the muscular plane of his abdomen. His cock is thick and heavy, hanging semi-erect from a pelt of sleek black hair. Every part of him is incredible, but it is that cock I can’t keep my eyes off.
He washes his hands in the sink, and I am treated to the rear view. His ass is devoid of tattoos, though most of his back is a canvas of what looks to me like mythological stories. When his hands have been cleansed of the sanguine essence of the attacker, he turns to me. “Mind if I get in?”
“I’ll, uhm… can you pass me a towel?”
He pretends to preserve my modesty, as if he hasn’t seen absolutely everything already, holding a towel out for me and enveloping me in it before taking the shower himself. I stay and watch him as he showers. Partly because his tattooed musculature looks very good under water, but mostly because I don’t want to go out into the hotel room and see what he has done. I know it was bad.
My bag is still in here from the first shower I took, but I’m even further down on clothing now. I don’t know what I was thinking when I packed. Maybe that I was going to go to work? I find some underwear and a lab coat. I don’t have anything else.
“Well,” I say. “Fuck.”
3
We leave the hotel room full of blood, viscera, and pancake syrup.
“That’s a real fucking downer,” Cosmos sighs as he bundles me into an expensive-looking black sedan. I wonder what happened to the van.
“Which part, the trail of bodies, or the fact you never got to eat your pancakes?”
“Pancakes, of course.” He smiles at me and I feel like laughing. I shouldn’t be laughing. I think I’ve seen two men die today. I’ve been stabbed. I’ve had someone else’s blood cover me. I’ve ruined two sets of clothes. I think I might be going slightly mad.