The Penthouse

Penthouse

Two whole walls of the apartment are glass. The apartment is on the north corner off the huge skyscraper. Prime real estate. A dream home. The sun rising in the east lights up the city and makes everything look clean and whole but if you look closer you can see the boarded up buildings, the abandoned homes, and the derelict streets. The sun comes in through the one open shade and warms the empty bed where she sleeps. Normally all the shades are closed when she is here alone, when he comes over he opens them without saying anything and as soon as he leaves she closes them again, but she woke in the middle of the night and wanted to look out on the streets below, she wanted to watch people walking around out there, going about their lives, but the streets were empty, they were always empty now. She had fallen asleep sitting in the chair by the bed, looking out at the world imagining it the way it once was. She is naked. She sits on the chair with her knees pulled up to her chin, hugged tight to her body. She wakes from her sleep slowly and looks around the room and at the scattered mess of bed clothes, the only bright spot in the room. She presses a button on the control beside the bed and the window shade begins to descend, slowly blocking out the morning sun.
She goes to the bathroom and turns on the shower. She stands on the tile floor flexing her toes and lets the water run for a moment to let it heat up before she gets in. This is pointless and she knows it but old habits die hard and this was her routine long before her life became what it is now. She steps into the shower and breaths deeply as the water hits her back and drives the air briefly from her lungs. The water was painfully hot but she liked it that way. She stood there under the torrent for a long time, letting the water cascade down her body, cleaning the filth from her cuts and soothing her bruises. Washing away the dried blood.
She stepped from the shower and stood in front of the bathroom sink and inspected her damaged body. She used to cry every day while she stood here but that stopped quickly enough. This was merely taking inventory of her scars now. No new ones today. She washed her mouth with antiseptic and walked from the bathroom still moist from the shower and into the apartment proper. It was starkly decorated, the bed was by the right window wall and had a small table beside it where she kept a book for reading at night and a plastic cup of water but no lamp, it was too dangerous. In the middle of the room were four sofas arranged in a square with a small steel coffee table in the centre. On the wall opposite the bed was a bookcase filled with the classic novels of years past. There was no kitchen at all, just a counter by the door with a dumbwaiter at the end. Her meals came from there at regular intervals but otherwise it was immovable. The thing she hated most about this place though was that, with two exceptions everything here was white. Pristine, dazzling white. The sofas, the tile on the floor, the bed, the cups, even the books wore white covers with the title printed on them with little black letters. Even the shades on the windows were white. At first she had left them up to let the colour of the city, muted though they were, into her sterile environment but the desolation of the city outside her window only reminded her of how bleak her world had become and when the sun passed across the skyline it made everything shire around her and she couldn't bare it for very long and in the end and had started leaving the shades down all the time. Everything was white, everything except the elevator door that bore him up to her and her. Her dark skin stood out in such contrast to her surroundings that she felt alien to the environment, a blemish on the face of this immaculate world. Everywhere she went, no matter where she tried to hide she stood out. She was never comfortable, could never feel safe, she was losing her mind here. She didn't know what time it was but she knew it was still early by how low the sun hung in the sky. She was hungry but had no idea if breakfast would be served in hours or minutes. Naked and glittering from the sheen of water on her body she crossed the floor to the bookshelf and took a book at random. She sat on the floor in the dull sunlight coming through the shades to read, if she sat on a sofa while she was still wet she got itchy. She sat on the floor while she finished drying, not reading, staring alternately at the elevator and the dumbwaiter.

********
Ding!
The steel parted and slid away from itself like a curtain in a theatre. He strode out of the elevator with a rectangular wooden tray and a smile to shame a Cheshire cat. She rose quickly from the floor and backed up into a corner.
“My dear, how are you?” he asked with false joviality. He acted soft and sweet with her until she went against him in the slightest way and then he became fury incarnate. He had broken her jaw not long after she had arrived, she had spat in his face and before she knew what had happened he had struck her with his elbow and she had fallen face first hard against the tile floor. She wasn’t sure which blow had broken her jaw but it took months to heal, he had refused to get her any help at all, saying she wouldn’t learn her lesson if he soothed her pains. That was the last time he had hit her and the last time she had disobeyed him. Lesson learned.
He set the tray down on the small table between the sofas and pressed a button on the small controller he kept in his pocket and the shades behind her began to recoil into the ceiling. That controller was his key to everything, it controlled the shades, the lighting at night and he could even conjure music from some unseen stereo system, but most importantly it called the elevator when he wanted to leave.
He sat on the sofa and looked across the room at her, neither speaking. She stood tall and uncovered before him, he had taken her in so many ways and so many times it would have been childish to try and hide herself from him now. He said nothing and eventually she walked over and sat beside him.
He leaned across and kissed her lightly on the cheek. “I decided I would have breakfast with you today my pet” he said lifting the cover from the tray revealing their meal. It wasn't exactly a feast, a few slices of bacon, a sausage and eggs, scrambled of course; they would have been powder less than an hour ago. Powdered were the only kind of eggs left now, in the city at least, who knew what was happening in the countryside? What did shock her though was the plate of fresh fruit that sat on between their two meals. She couldn't remember the last time she had seen fruit, there was slices of apple and orange segments and fruits she had never seen and had no name for. For a moment she forgot her fear and leaned eagerly forward and started tasting the selection before her. As she fed her hunger and curiosity she heard him sign and lightly glide his hand down her back over the scars and bruises that littered her back and sides.
“Why do you do this to yourself my sweet?” he said tracing the curve of a long ravine that ran along the line of her bottom rib.
“Such a sweet creation and you damage it so wantonly”
She ignored him and continued to slowly savour the acidity of the orange segment, so full and bursting with juices, they ran down her chin as she bit into it.
“Give me your hands my dear, we will have to keep these nails of yours much shorter to stop this from happening again. I may have to remove them completely if you insist on treating your body with such disregard.” He took her arm and turned her to face him, she slid a last long slice of what she didn't know was watermelon into her mouth and looked at him and offered him her hands.
Taking her left hand in his he reached into his breast pocket with his right and produced a nail clipper of average size.
“You shouldn't be so cold with me; you know all I do for you.” He began carefully trimming her nails, this was a fairly regular practice of his and he was very exacting normally but today he cut her nails much shorter than normal, exposing the raw flesh under the protective layer of keratin.
“You have seen how harsh and cold this world is, especially with one as delicate as you.” She still did not respond, she just looked blankly over his shoulder at the glinting silver of the elevator and he began to trim the nails of her other hand.
“Here you are protected and cared for. You are loved here. I will always keep you safe, whatever it takes. Do you understand?” He finished cutting down her nails and now spun out the small file that was attached to the clipper.
“The dangers of the outside world are easy for a man like me to control and shelter you from.” He said as he began to file at the raw skin of her fingertips.
“The dangers inside these walls are much more potent though,” her fingertips began to weep blood and her eyes wept as well but she was silent still.
“I will make you happy here, even if it kills you.” He finished and folded the clipper up and returned it to his pocket and examined his work.
“A fine job I must say. Yes, very tidy indeed.” He looked down at her hands and smiled.
“You haven’t thanked me for breakfast my sweet, I think it is the least you could do, don’t you agree?” He stood now and faced her and unbuttoned his pants. She knew what was next and reached up and gripped his trousers and underwear and tugged them down to his knees. He was already hard as rock, no doubt from his last lesson. He ran his hands through her hair and under her jaw. His hands went to the same spot as usual, two tender points at the back of her jawbone. He would place two fingers on these points and if she tried to fight him he could immobilize her in an instant. She accepted him into her mouth and thought of the sweet fruits she had been eating not moments ago and how the citrus didn't taste as sour and bitter as this. For the next few minutes she pleasured him, his strong hands guiding her and forcing her compliance. He was nearing his moment of release when a new sound filled the room. A rhythmic beeping she had never heard before rang through the apartment. BEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP ! Over and over again it chimed. BEEPBEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP!
“Who the fuck is paging me now!” he seethed.
Suddenly his hands weren't on her jaw anymore; they were going for the breast pocket where he kept the clipper. She didn't even realize what she was doing until it was happening. She bit down hard on his cock.
“I told them I wa…AAARGGH! He screamed in agony as her teeth punctured his flesh. She slid her teeth from side to side and sawed through the flesh and muscle and veins of his penis. His blood ran into her mouth and she thought it was a sweeter taste than any of the fruit she had eaten before. His juices ran down to her chin now as she clamped her jaw closed hard, trying to severe the part of his dick that was still in her mouth.
He struck her as hard as he could across then side of her face then and she fell into the steel table beside her, tearing the skin from his penis with her teeth as she fell. He was still screaming and he dropped to his knees now clutching his penis gingerly in his hands.
“You bitch! You bitch!” he panted looking down at his ruined manhood. “What the FUCK! I’ll fucking kill you.” His anger was rising and she knew she had to act quickly. Her head spun as she rose to her feet but she maintained her balance and grabbed the tray from the table, spilling the plates of uneaten food to the floor, and swung it at him as hard as she could. The tray connected flat with his face and splintered in the middle. His nose burst open and blood spurted out across her stomach and he fell to his side now clutching his face. She swung again and this time the tray broke over the back of his head. She tossed it aside and dived on top of him, rolling him onto his back as she did. He grabbed at her throat and face now but she swatted his hands away, he hand lost a lot of blood and could barely see through the mess of blood that was his face. She punched him in the nose again for good measure and his head snapped back, rebounding off the tiles, dazing him. She started rummaging in his pocket. It didn't take her long to find the clipper and pull it out.
She spun the file out and moved to pin his arms under knees. She sat down hard on his chest and took a handful of his hair in her hand, lifting his head up from the floor to look at her.
“What do you think is going to happen her you dumb CUNT!” He spat at her. “There’s no way you are getting out of here, as soon as you get down stairs you’re dead.” They will shoot you the second those elevator doors open!”
She looked him in the eyes for the first time then; meeting his gaze she washed some spit through her mouth and spit his own blood in his face.
She said; “Me and you lover boy are both going out the same way”
She drove the point of the file into his neck and fear and confusion rushed across his eyes. He squirmed beneath her now fighting desperately to free himself. It was a pointless struggle, even if she were to let him up now he would die in moments. She drew the file out and stabbed at the artery again and like so many times before she straddled him while his body jerked and writhed, spilling himself on her skin. Again she stabbed him and the life drained from his eyes.
Her hands were slick from the blood and the crimson gore dripped from her nipples. She reached into his pocket again and took the little controller out. She stood up and walked to the sofa and sat down looking out at the city before her. She wiped the blood from her hands on the soiled white of the cushions. She looked at them as she opened and closed her hands feeling the stickiness of the blood and thought that this place finally didn't feel so alien to her now, It was starting to feel like home. She picked up the clipper and controller again. She pressed the button on the controller and the shades began to descend again. She sat on the sofa watching a false sunset and drove the point of the file into her neck. She felt the pain of it piercing her skin and it made her smile, pulling it out now she looked briefly at the small piece of steel that had brought this to an end and her vision began to blur from tears or blood loss she didn’t know. She pushed the blade in one more time and felt no pain this time. She watched the shade touch the ground and closed her eyes while her blood coursed down her body, mixing with his, turning the clean white sofa to a deep warm black.

THE END.

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