"Death is such a funny thing," Medli said quietly, drawing her finger along the curve of his jaw, and then up beneath his chin, tilting his head back slightly. "We spend all of our lives knowing that it's coming for us, sometime, someday - we can do all sorts of things to wriggle away from it, just those few more precious seconds gripping our little lives, but when it wants you," she leaned closer to him, letting the words hang delicately in the air. "It has you." She kissed him and bit his lip (an unwelcome reminder), and dissolved away from him, just particles in the black.
"How many people have you killed?" she asked softly, sitting off to his right. His eyes shot over to where she sat, perched on nothing; where there should have been a scar upon her cheek, there was the wound, as fresh as the night he had cut it. Small rivers of blood flowed down her cheek and dripped off her chin, but she did not notice, or perhaps she merely paid it no mind.
"For how many people have you been the means to a final end?" another of her said, sitting cross-legged on the floor near his feet. Now, there, on her cheek, was the faded scar, and on her face, the contented smile he knew so well.
He felt a pair of arms slip over his shoulders and cross on his chest. A chin rested lightly on his shoulder while her voice said softly, "It's an exhilirating experience, pet. To be the ender of an life. To master, for one brief, singular moment..." She drew in a faint breath and let it out against his ear, "Everything about someone's life."
He slammed an elbow back into her stomach in rage, and he felt her melt. What had been her arms rippled and oozed down his chest, a viscous, flesh-colored fluid.
"That wasn't very nice of you," the one on the floor pouted, turning her eyes up at him.
"What the hell is going on?" His own voice sounded strange and distant to his ears, like listening to an echo.
"Everything you don't want, pet," the Medli to his right said, curling a lock of her hair around a finger slowly. "Everything you've wanted to avoid."
"And what, exactly, is that?" She was not going to play games with him.
"Well, you ought to know, Zero!" she mocked from the floor, a giddy grin, like a child's, on her face. "Else you wouldn't know you didn't want it, stupid." She giggled softly and rocked back and forth, eyes still upturned towards his.
"You insolent little--"
"Bitch?" She whispered tonelessly in his ear, beside him now. "Or... whore? Which one am I tonight? So indecisive. So difficult to keep track." She slipped away from him quickly and melted into the shadows of the room before he could turn and strike at her.
He clenched his hands into fists, trembling with anger. No. No, he would not lose control. He took a deep breath and relaxed himself.
The third one was back, the one who had stood behind him and spoken to him. She was walking towards him, slowly, her eyes locked with his.
No scar. She had no scar. The hell?
"I wanted to be your princess, Zero," she said, and the words seemed to drip off of her lips like honey. "Instead, I really have become your whore..." She let her voice trail off as she came to stand in front of him. Slender fingers began to undo the buttons of her shirt, one by one. "And yet... you deny me even the little gratification I might scrape together with that title, don't you?" The shirt dropped to the floor soundlessly, discarded. "Tell me something, Zero -- won't you let me embrace that?"
"Medli--" The sound of the name seemed to fill everything.
"Master graces one with a name," she hissed, sneering up at him with raised eyebrows. (There, for a moment - was that the blood upon her cheek again? But no, nothing there...) She reached behind herself and unclasped her bra. "One is truly honored and will surely remember this night."
He looked away from her and into the blackness around them - the others had gone. He took a cautious step backwards, away from her, unsure of what was happening. When he looked forward again, she was stepping out of her panties, tossing them aside as if they disgusted her.
She stood before him, naked, and he felt her eyes on him, that penetrating gaze.
"No more wondering, if you ever did such a thing." A raised eyebrow again. "Here I am." She spread her arms wide apart for emphasis, and then approached him, wrapping her arms around him in an embrace. He felt the warmth of her body pressing close against him.
"You wouldn't have me, Zero," she whispered against his neck, nuzzling against him. "So I'll have you." She gave him a sudden, hard push, right in the center of his chest, and though he tried to keep his balance, though his feet staggered backwards searching for equilibrium, he found himself falling. He was gripped by the sensation of plummeting from a great height, of his stomach dropping out from under him, of all the world whistling by him, a screaming terminal velocity.
Zero braced himself for the inevitable impact that would shatter his body and chase the broken bits of life out of the ruined shell, but it did not come. The gentle, welcoming comfort of a bed surprised him, and as he sank softly into its warmth he opened the eyes he had shut tightly to find himself gazing up at the naked girl who seemed to almost hover over him.
She leaned down over him and held her head just slightly above his. There was nothing in her eyes, no emotion - just a dead, soulless stare.
Like looking in a mirror.
Her lips met his and he suddenly became aware of the full weight of her body on top of him. She kissed him deeply and slowly, and, he marvelled briefly in the back of his mind, better than she ever had.
When she broke away from him with a tiny gasp for breath, something felt wrong. Something was missing. It wasn't the absence of the scar on her cheek, wasn't the way she looked at him - something had been taken from him. But that was stupid - it was just a kiss.
He felt a new weight on the mattress, and then another. He looked to his left, and the Medli with the scar sat there, smiling like she had before, simply watching. On his right was the Medli whose cheek still bled freely. She placed a hand on the mattress and put her weight on it, leaning sideways, watching him with a disgusted look on her face.
Zero turned his eyes back towards the girl who rested on top of him.
"Medli," he said, but it was weak and distant, and not at all commanding like he had intended. "Tell me what's going on."
She smiled slowly at him, and for a brief moment some warmth flicked into her eyes, a comforting moment - a brief reassurance, just to make a point.
"Oh, pet." Her lips moved but he heard the words from all three of the girls, and it sent an involuntary shiver across his body. He knew what came next. "There's so much you have to learn."
They kissed, again - which of them had initiated it he could not tell, and it bothered him deeply. For a moment he lost himself in the feeling, floated away from the taste of her lips and the sensation of her hands moving across his body, exploring and touching delicately. He screamed and swore at himself in his mind - idiot, you're better than this, better than this worthless whore! Pull yourself together!
His shirt came off (he did not know how) and he felt sharp nails pressing into the skin of his chest. The taste of blood exploded in his mouth suddenly, followed quickly by the pain. She had bitten him again.
Nails raked downward and he let out half of a shout but Medli stifled it with the kiss, and still he tasted his own blood, and words that were not Medli's played out in his mind, scratching like a centuries old recording.
And a voice that was not hers laughed loudly in his head and called him a coward.
Medli pulled away from him and sat up slowly, straddling him. The blood seemed to shine upon her lips, standing out against their pale color. She crossed her arms across her breasts and looked down at him. He dared not look to either side - dared not break her gaze, lest she punish him.
"Who do you need, Zero?" all of them asked.
He would not let her win this, whatever this was. He would not give her the satisfaction of the answer he had squeezed from her when he had put the same question to her.
"I, I need..." he took a deep, shaking breath and grit his teeth, and all but spat the words out. "I need only myself. I don't need you, you fucking little bitch."
No expression. No emotion. Merely an uncrossing of her arms and an outstretched hand that patted his cheek lightly.
"That will change," she murmured, rubbing her finger against his cheek again. He shut his eyes tightly and forced a growing nausea away. "That will change."
And now he was naked. He felt cold air shock his skin, and he shivered again. Jesus Christ - this wasn't happening. He opened his eyes again and watched her position herself over him. Oh, hell no.
Zero made to move, to throw her off, to sit up, to swing at her - anything. Something, anything, just to deny her this, just to assert his place, to remind her of just who she was.
But he could not move.
The other two girls pinned his arms to the bed and he felt all of the resistance leave him like a spent breath of stale air. The parade of swears and screams continued onwards in his mind.
He felt the scarless Medli's fingers grip him slowly and he retched violently. The Medli to his right laughed.
A moment. Hesitation. Flesh against softer, warmer flesh. Hesitating again, a tease, or a contemplation, or a reinforcement, but oh God, just stop, just give me control, just let me know I am not helpless for fuck's sake...
He felt her come down on top of him and both of them screamed at the same time - ecstasy and terror, the most satisfying juxtaposition of any of the elements of the human existence.
And the blackness consumed all of them, and no sound reached his ears; he dared to look, dared to watch what he felt, and he saw the wicked grin on her face, the satisfied smirk, and with each stroke downward he felt a searing stab into his heart, felt ice flow through his veins. She tossed her hair backwards and splayed her hands against his sides, nails piercing the skin.
To his left the scarred Medli watched her unblemished counterpart with awed eyes, her mouth agape but twitching with a smile of adoration. To his right the bloody Medli looked unceasingly into his eyes, and a smile was growing on her face as well.
She rose and fell without end, and he felt the tension building in him, across his body, every nerve aflame, rippling the message across his body, fast as the nuclear cleavage of atoms in a bomb: the end is coming.
And suddenly the sound burst into his ears again, the sounds of their sex, his own panting breath, the giggles and laughs and encouragements of the girls who held him captive, and the ecstatic sounds of the girl he had gotten wrapped around his finger.
No more. No more, I can't take any more, just fucking end it, just - fucking - end...
The name escaped his lips unbidden as a shout, and for a moment that was all the world was, the sound of the syllable that signaled the release she was wrenching out of him.
Medli.
He shouted it again and again as unwelcome spasms rocked him, and tears sprang to his eyes and he cursed them and cursed the girl and cursed his existence as she took him at his most vulnerable moment.
Both of them took heavy, deep breaths, and she rested her hands on his chest. All he wanted again was to curl up and be nothing, to vanish. He turned his face away from her and shut his eyes. Zero felt the hands that had held his arms release him, and for a moment he felt free.
Too soon.
He felt a pair of hands turn his face upward again and he opened his eyes in shock.
Scarless still rested on him, breathing and smiling, and nodding to the other girls.
Scarred looked across him to the other girl with an eager smile, nodding as well.
And the Medli with the bloodied cheek looked down at him, down into his eyes like they all had.
"I'm doing it all for you," she said softly. "Because I love you, Zero, I'm doing it for you."
"No," the word came as a whisper. But there was the blade. There was the loving look, the one of comfort - it'll be okay. Just some course correction, and we'll be all set, and we'll be on the right path.
It stung only briefly at first, the first pinprick of the tip - but when she dragged it suddenly and harshly upward and the blood sprang to the surface and he felt some of it begin to trickle down his cheek, just like hers, as she made the downward, upward, and downward strokes again.
"So wrong," he choked. This was never supposed to happen.
"But we're making you so right," they all said softly, proudly.
In turn, each of them kissed him, softly and briefly.
"Good boy," they whispered, and then he was alone, and then there was nothing.
---
His eyes snapped open and the lazily spinning blades of the ceiling fan greeted him through the darkness of the room. He felt himself drenched in a cold sweat, and still shaking slightly. He shut his eyes again and for a long moment he simply laid still, shaken.
"Just a dream," he whispered, but another moment of panic washed over him as he felt something resting on his cheek. He reached up to touch it, and encountered another hand.
"What was?" Medli asked, her voice quiet and timid. She took her hand in his.
He jerked quickly away from her and nearly fell out of the bed, swearing loudly. She had been sitting beside him on the bed, looking down at him.
"What the fuck are you doing in here?" he shouted at her.
She shrank back from him, hurt.
"You... you were shouting, Zero." Tears were coming to her eyes; couldn't the goddamn girl keep herself together? "You never shout when you sleep, and I heard you, and I was worried, so I came in to see if you were all right, and I wiped your forehead off and tried to cool you down, and... and I was just worried," she ended lamely, unable to continue on.
"Get out." The words were a deadly whisper and fear jumped into Medli's eyes, and she nodded silently and slipped off of the bed. "Get OUT of my room, Medli." He shouted at her to move faster, and she disappeared silently through the open door, shutting it quickly behind her.
Zero exhaled slowly and laid back down, touching his cheek again. He shook his head. Just a dream; ignore it. Put it aside, because it's nothing. He shook his head and shut his eyes once more, seeking sleep again.
Out in the hallway, Medli leaned back against his door, shivering in the cold, air conditioned air. She smoothed out the overly large t-shirt she had worn to bed and straightened up, starting back down the hall. She stopped, turned, and looked back at his door.
A quiet, satisfied smirk passed across her lips.
Medli turned again, satisfied, and headed back to bed.