One day – a Wednesday – I tie my lover to her bed and cane her until her skin breaks. Then I carry on until she stops screaming into her pillow. Until she stops struggling. Until she has gone through crying and cursing and begging and squirming and come out the other side. Until she is bleeding freely enough that it runs down her hips to the bed, staining her sheets. Until her blood flecks from the cane and sprays across the walls and ceiling, and hits my face in a patter of tiny droplets with each stroke. Until the cane is slick with her blood, like a sword, the blood slippy on the glossy surface of the wood.
Afterwards, we are both spacey. Floating. She lies on her front and we murmur little observations to one another. She reaches behind her, wincing, to check her injuries. Shows me the blood on her fingertips. We play with the blood, smearing it across out bodies, tasting it, letting it drip onto the sheets. There is a lot of it. I tell her that there is blood on the ceiling of her room, and she rolls over to look, leaving a butterfly imprint of her bloody buttocks on the bedsheets as she does so.
I think, during this time, we fuck. It is difficult to remember in what order things happened, or exactly what was said. These things are superseded by other details: the texture of her voice – soft and velvety and thick from crying; the patterns of blood on the sheets; the image of her licking her own blood from the cane. The incredible surge of love and affection I felt for her as I held her. The feel of her fingertip on my cheek, drawing a little spiral there as though the blood were face paint.
