Fear Addiction

What the hell do you think it's like? You think it's fun? Have you seen the expression on my face? Is that the face of someone who's having a good time?

It's necessary. It's medicine. It's chemotherapy. It's a repulsive and stomach sick kind of high, like the euphoria after a near fatal car wreck.

First there's a cheap initial wash of fear, almost delightful, innocent in its depth, like when you realize the freezing water stream pouring over your hand is not cold but hot. But then the first real pain hits and a familiar dread seizes my spine and pulls my chest toward the floor. I don't want this, I realize- and simultaneously- I want to not want this. And for a moment I'm nearly convinced of that.

But then the pain is back and you already know I'm losing the courage of my convictions so you do the one thing I can't bully into a manageable state of panic; you twist my arm and pin me. The obligation to fight this fills me, and I do, but the scream from my elbow is no surprise- the one that says I will break, I will break and then you'll really be fucked, idiot. Now I know only two things in the entire world, because my universe has collapsed to the visceral- new pain is coming and I cannot escape it.

The chest hitches (instinct? pleading?) and already a small corner of my mind is considering the body from a distance. I've barely managed to begin the sound of regret before blinding lights go off; you've dug your fingers into the nerve you know hurts so badly, so much I couldn't possibly enjoy it, and that's why you choose it, and that's your sickness. That's really what I'm here for.

Then I'm screaming without vocal chords, just this desperate exhale of air, the quietest sound I'm capable of making in this moment.

Suddenly I can no longer tolerate it and barely do I register this fact before I have disconnected. The body feels everything, and it still twists and struggles, but my consciousness has rolled off the side of my brain like a bowling ball into the gutter. It is from this tilted perspective that I watch myself. There is no more narrative thought because thought is impossible.

Instantly the screaming lights recede and everything comes flooding back, gratitude and a shuddering fear that it's coming again, the suffering, that one or a new one? When and for how long? Please I can't take it again. I think thank you thank you I won't do it again, whatever it is, whatever makes you do this.

Consciously I decide to suppress the distressed breathing, the pleading whimpering, but it happens anyway. Systems are not responding. I want to push it down because I know it will only encourage you but I can't stop the instinct. The instinct doesn't know you are this kind of monster, the way I know, and with the next wave of agony comes the laugh. You fucking laugh. You fucking prick. That condescending laugh that makes me want to bite your cheek off your face, or dig my thumbs into your eyes, the one that draws in thoughts of homicide. Every time I hear it I worry what I would do to you if I could but you only bring it out when I can't.

By this time your weight is bearing down on me, a new kind of pin, an adjustment I have not missed, the one that means you might rape me up the ass. And it's not until this particular flavor of sinking dread hits that I am pulled fully into my body, every nerve lit up and measuring. My heart in my chest feels like a tangled mass of fish hooks. I cannot see you but this heightened awareness means I still know where every part of you is, up to the sweat on your chest dripping on my back, and I don't want to beg- don't want to give you the satisfaction of my failure- but I do because I need you to stop because I can't take it I really can't not tonight please don't do it.

Then I realize- I can tell from the stiffness in your fingers and the cautious readiness in your arms, like the arms of a morbidly curious child holding a rabbit, on the brink of a revelation about his own innocence- that you're going to do it this time. You're a predator in an indulgent frame of mind and you're going to do it. I feel compelled to take gulping gasps like I'm going underwater. I'm pleading please please please please and you say, please what? You actually pause, but meanwhile you're bending my arm further, too far.

I want to say please something please something but I don't know the something, there's dirt on the lens. You decide you don't want to hear about it and wrap your hand around my mouth, shifting yourself over me.

Finally you're pressing into me, into places that shouldn't be pressed, and a unique pain starts to wake up, knife-like in its edge. The pleases stop. Now I think. Stay calm. Relax. It really hurts. It'll hurt less if you relax. Move. Scream. Don't scream. Get out of there. Relax. It hurts. You can stop it. He doesn't have you, his grip is...

The last thought is not a word but a sensation, a map of my escape illustrated in nerve endings.

You sense the instant I birth this idea, moving ahead of me, one hand applying a suffocating pressure to the middle of my back. Pain is delayed for a quick inquiry about air. The body, so pure in its chain of command, so deadsure, banishes more ambitious plans and only breathes just breathe just breathe only breathe. Maybe this is my escape. Maybe this is my vacation home, this narrowing corridor of lung and chest. I live here now. You fuck.

You fuck. Do you even care if I suffocate right now? Where would you hide the body?

You're not right and you know it.

The closer you get to climax the heavier you sink into me, pressing so ruthlessly now I can feel the rake of your bones pushing into my skin, into my spine and muscle.

Relax.

The fear lives in the body, the fear that knows you can't hear me now, the fear that feels your hand close around the back of my throat.

That's what it's like.