It’s vicious this violence that lurks within you. It lies just under the surface, eager and waiting for the opportune moment to spring. Awareness of it has brought you closer to controlling it, but still you struggle with the reins on days like today, where too much energy, sexual or otherwise, has been left untapped - festering, blistering on the leather of your control.

When it snaps, you are almost always alone, untrusting of yourself near another who would see you quite as the demon you see yourself. It is that distance you keep between them and your true nature that keeps them distant in every aspect. So you rage in the walls of your home, thankful that only she might remember that vase that used to sit on top of the mantle and only she might - or might not - remember it.

Explanations are difficult because you won’t lie even as you are aware of the subtle change in her demeanor - the way she leans back from you, the slight frown that lightly dusts her brow. You wonder if it is her fear that your rage will turn on her.

Your knuckles are bloody - you’ve forgotten to tape them before beating the bag which despite your efforts, remains in one piece. It stands as a testament of strength, not yours, but its ability to yield to each punch while still keeping its strength intact. Were it to be that you could match its abilities.

When you are done you sit on the floor. Physical exhaustion always gives in before the mind finishes with its war. And while sweat sheets off of you and your chest heaves with exertion, you still feel better, worn out, bathed perhaps in the sweat, but more likely in the energy that washes away from you. It is a baptism of sweat and blood that has been repeated countless times in your life.

Still, despite the pain, you find yourself smiling as you push yourself up from the floor to stand.

I’ve never claimed to be a poet, but I’ve decided to unlock one of my pieces from earlier. Enjoy.

‘Let’s go hunting’ He says as we sit down on the patio for lunch.

‘Hunting?’ I pause for a moment, catching the appraising way he looks at one of the waitresses and then I smirk. ‘I assume you don’t mean the kind of hunt where you go out and kill a deer, then.’

He catches the slight inflection and returns his own look of amusement. ‘Yes, that’s what I’m talking about. I’m bored with the same old stuff. We could make a weekend of it.’

‘What is the last thing you’ve killed, Dan? A duck when you were two? You aren’t exactly an avid hunter.’ I turn my head and met the nosy gaze of the woman sitting at the table just beside ours. She has the courtesy to look away, but I can see her interest remains.

‘And you are?’ The sarcasm in his tone is the dripping sort, oozing from each word.

I simply look at him and smile before shrugging my shoulders. The waitress comes over and takes our drink order. I try to determine if those are nipple rings I see pressing against the white material of her shirt. As she walks away, I turn my attention back to him.

‘I don’t hunt just for the sake of hunting, and I don’t find it a challenge to slaughter something because it was stupid enough to walk in front of my gun while I sit in a shack and wait.’ My fingers toy with the rim of my water glass and I pull out an ice cube.

‘See! That’s what I’m talking about! We could hunt bears or those moose, mooses, meese…what’s the pural for moose anyway?’

‘Moose.’ I glance and catch the woman’s head snapping back to the plate in front of her. I’m not certain if I should be irritated or not.

‘Yea! We could kill something like that.’

‘They aren’t exactly common in this area and the same thing applies. Perhaps a rabid raccoon would be more your speed.’

He laughs, ‘Asshole.’

‘Mm.’ The ice cube starts to melt between my fingertips and I bring it to my mouth, crushing it between my teeth as I bite.

‘So what are you planning on doing this weekend anyway?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Another weekend with N?’

‘I haven’t really decided.’

‘Yea.’ I can see the boredom written on his expression.

‘So, what are we going to be hunting, again?’ I ask and his face rekindles with the excitement of a moment ago.

There is a single chair that sits in front of a table, you can see that it is intended for you, it always is at this time of the year, when reviews are done and explanations demanded for the failures of the quarter. Failures. They sound as if each person lost and gained are like dollars, lost and gained. The beast is what it is, you remark in your head just before you open the door and feel the weight of their gaze upon you. It hasn’t changed since long before you came, and it isn’t likely to change despite your interference and objections.

The cold comparison bothers you, and you remind yourself, again, that you are not entirely damned for feeling something for strangers. They are names to you also, most of them you could never set apart from the person behind you in line at the store, or the clerk behind the counter at that coffee shop you favor. Somehow, with their lives tucked neatly in the manila folders clasped between your fingers, you feel closer to them. Their spirit, however forgotten in their life, has, with death, been cleansed of stains - and you think perhaps God does listen.

It takes hours to go through each one, case by case and you find yourself rubbing your closed eyes. Your answers are becoming clipped, crisp and there is the briefest of realizations that you are about to lose your temper with this part of the process. Your teeth are grinding against one another as they as for clarification - again - on the final subject. As you glance back down at the picture, fastened to the page by a paper clip, you note just how young she appears before your eyes move to the mug shot, and the age is added back 100 fold.

Her eyes look helpless as she stands there, the tips of her fingertips appearing below the black sign holding up her number. They are sunken, surrounded by dark circles which you hope are makeup, but somehow know are not. Her skin seems loose, sagging over cheek bones and you can’t help but stare. Your eyes seem to focus, you feel it happening, but don’t turn your gaze away.

An irritated voice says your name, and you look up knowing somehow that it wasn’t the first time they spoke to you.

It is over. You close the folders and stack them into straight piles on the table before shoving back your chair. The walls feel as if they are closing around you - that muted green color, hollow halls and cold flooring are abrasive, shadowless and soulless. You nearly shove someone aside getting out of the door and you don’t apologize.

As you take the quickest route home, you loosen the tie that strangles your neck in formality and leave it to dangle, drunkenly. Opening the compartment to pay the toll, your eyes dart down to the razors and your fingers flip through and pull out three, closing your hands around them as you use the other hand to toss the change into the mesh bucket.

Home is only a short distance away.

The door opens as you step out of the car and it is her, wrapped in a robe, her hair piled on top of her head. The smell of ginger hits you and you inhale sharply. God you love her scent.

She doesn’t say anything as you enter, perhaps because you are silent, or she can read the aura coming off of you in waves. Silence is greeting enough sometimes. You feel the razors, each in their sheath, biting into the fist of your right hand. The briefcase you carry is dropped unceremoniously onto the floor and as she moves to pass you, your free hand wraps around her upper arm.

A moment later, she is shoved into the wall with a razor blade held against the pulse in her neck. It is a challenge, an ugly one that only precipitates the movement that nicks her skin and draws the faintest line of blood.

She sucks in her breath and you feel the aggression start to boil. Her eyes carry that startled look of prey, you’ve seen it before when you went hunting as a child. It is a look that calls out silently for the predator.

When you feel her fingers move from your back, you tense and dig the sharp edge of the blade in further. Yet even as the liquid finally gathers enough of itself to trail down from the wound, her fingers slide into the hair of your head and she moans, turning her head to give you better access.

The warmth of her response seems to throw cold water on you and you drop the blade as if it burns you.

You realize then that it was the fight you wanted.

And you wonder what kind of person that it makes you.

Does honesty excuse the cruelty in the telling?

Am I always on?

Fielding this question as I was, I took it to understand: ‘Are you always sadistic?’

Well, yes and no. If we refer to my habits, they would certainly suggest a certain tendency towards that conclusion. Emotional sadism, I am always capable of at any time of the day….I am not, however, someone that totes around a big, bad bag of sadistic hand tools for my erotic needs. It isn’t a fetish - I don’t need someone to be in pain to experience orgasm or to be aroused and the lack of those doesn’t hinder me in any way.

Even the people that have come and gone in my life as lovers haven’t all known about my darker habits. It isn’t something you spring on the first date unless you picked them from the local list of BDSM (S&M) personals. Hell, most of them would even cringe at my idea of fun - blood is one of those ‘hard limits’ I often see listed.

Still, having found N, whose dark side is almost as black as mine, we do have a higher chance of engaging in those activities. Obviously we have to reserve the bloodbaths and animal slaughters for special occasions. ( I have a feeling that is going to bring some interesting search topics to my site.) We do, frequently, want what most people would consider as ‘regular’ sex - without the whips, broken glass, goat heads and crucifixion nails. (There I go again.)

There are times I just want to smell her skin. Listen to her moan as my fingers play in her damp folds. Hear the moisture that whispers sweetly from between her thighs. Hold her face between my palms. Kiss the sighs from her lips. Fuck us both mindless.

So yes, I can be romantic - all without the sadist giving tips on how to pierce her lips using my teeth.

However, I am always dominant, and N, is always submissive to me. Dominance is woven into me so finely I doubt it could ever be extricated. Of course, like any day, there are times she cares more about something than I do and vice versa, so we will allow the other to take the lead. Ebb and Flow. It boils down to picking battles. When I put my foot down, N knows she needs to prepare a court argument to get me to budge. (or do that thing where her eyes water and her chin wiggles, damn that, it either works or pisses me off.)

In bed - I am in charge. We did that thing where she is on top, and have even had it where I am tied down (-grunt-), but somehow it just works best for us both the other way around.

I love the balance.

I remember those essays you used to write for me, I still have many of them which are now saved to disks, abandoned to the filing cabinet until such times that I get like this and want to remember the girl that you once were. I think in many ways I took your innocence, your naïveté. I should, I suppose, feel some measure of guilt, because the world I’ve opened you up too is filled with pain - whereas before you only knew the tender and sensual touch of a Dominant. I should, but as you also know, I don’t really have too much emotion attached to the past - reflection, perhaps, but not emotion.

Still as I sit here and read over the 3500 word essay you wrote for me on how to be a slave, I have to laugh at my own arrogance. It was a different time for us both, where formality played a larger part in our relations. Structured contact and rules, there were endless amounts of rules. Perhaps it is you that taught me to loosen my grip, or perhaps it just happened as I matured. We both have grown as time has passed - each of us with different lovers, different minds, which have only helped us to understand better, think more clearly.

I go back to the word slave. There was a time that I would have wanted that from you - exquisite beauty, absolute obedience. I can’t say that the idea of having someone so under my thumb still doesn’t appeal to the caveman in me, but I don’t want that from you. I don’t want that because I see how I was and how I am now, and I can only see the improvement. Yes, I have developed a darker lust for blood that I didn’t once have, but I’ve also learned to appreciate your voice, your thoughts, your challenges.

You are the only one close that isn’t afraid to tell me no. How I appreciate you for it.

I can’t guarantee you forever, nothing is certain. I can’t promise that I’ll stop striking out at you when you voice yourself in that forceful way you have. I can’t promise much really, and perhaps that is my failing as your lover. I’ve failed you before.

Still, I will tell you this…you have profoundly impacted my life. What more is there to say?

See no evil, hear no evil…………………….speak no evil.

He was a busy man. Monogamy was one of those words that you never heard him say - he was rather libertine with his affections, despite having made a commitment to her. She (Taylor), for her part, knew of his infidelity, but did her best to ignore it and would even joke with him about the women that would call him. He knew she was more in love with the idea of being able to claim him as her own, but he ignored it. It wasn’t as if he lacked his own list of faults.

Still it continued as most relationships do, when they were together - it was good. He found her to be emotional, but would often just ignore the tears that would roll down her face. She was manipulative, he knew, because she seemed to cry whenever he went neglected or ignored the ’small requests’ that she would make on him. It seemed to work because he felt a certain measure of guilt when she would cry.

She was submissive, which was different for him, his tastes generally favored other dominant women, but she won his attention with her persistent smile and lowered lashes. He knew her tastes didn’t run in his direction, Taylor was sunlight, and he, just the opposite. Oh, she looked good on his arm, just as he looked good on hers, and people would often ask them when they intended to make it permanent. She would look hopefully up at him and he would politely say, ‘When it happens.’

It wasn’t his favorite subject. And so it continued for a while and he found himself spending more and more time with Taylor. The other women just seemed to fade into the shadows as relationships do when no one puts any energy into them. He wasn’t puzzled by their loss, sometimes people just go their own direction.

He wouldn’t marry her, the thought of being tied to her for the rest of his life just didn’t seem right and divorce was not an option. So he did what he could to silence her for the time. He collared her. It was the only time he had ever done such a deed, despite having been close one other time. Perhaps no one outside their world of kink understood, but they both did. They sank deeper into the world of S&M. Her commitment to him, and him to her seemed to spur and drive them both - it was on her that he found the pleasure of needles.

She cried after those sessions. Not in that pretty way where a single tear rolls down her cheek, but the sobbing, hiccupping, snotty way that she did when something went perfectly right or horribly wrong. And while he felt a certain amount of distaste at her emotional excess, it had become such a signature of their sessions, he could only take the time to wing her down, calm her - before they would fuck. She was open to him after such sessions, spilling out even the acts she normally would never have allowed to escape her lips.

He saw one of his former lovers at the bank a few days later. He shared the details of his life, she shared hers, and she asked him to lunch. As they sat down, she just stared at him and then blurted out something he still has trouble processing.

‘I think I should tell you something.’

He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck lifting. She had that serious look in her eyes that spoke of something else going on.

‘I don’t know if it’s true or not, and I’m sorry if it isn’t…’ she seemed to pause and then said ‘or is…’

‘Yes?’ He asked, raising an eyebrow, she didn’t usually take the long way around an issue.

‘Did Taylor have a miscarriage?’

He felt relief just before his brows knitted together, ‘No. Why would you ask that?’

She looked at him directly, her gaze unwavering, ‘She told me she did. She told me it was because she couldn’t handle your….infidelity. You know, the stress.’

Confusion registered on his face. ‘You must be mistaken.’

‘No, D. She called me about a week after our last date and told me all about it. I backed off. I didn’t think….I mean, I didn’t want to be the cause…’ She cleared her throat and then continued. ‘It was only later, that I thought maybe…you know…that it wasn’t true.’

She covered my hand on the table and I snatched it back. ‘Are you certain about this? If you are lying, so help me God…’

She sat back in her chair and shook her head no. There was a long silence which seemed to stretch for an eternity. He finally reached into his wallet and dropped a few bills on the table.

‘I need to go.’

She nodded her head and gave him one of those cheerless smiles.

He didn’t confront her. He wasn’t really certain what the truth was here and he refused to accuse her without cause. When he got home he pulled out the small black book of numbers he kept in his desk. He only found the new one she had given him to replace it.

It took him a while to track down the numbers of the women he dated. Some numbers, he found, seemed to be programmed into his fingers. He only had the stomach to speak with 3 of them - because they all echoed the same story.

Still, he did nothing. He just couldn’t define a motive. She used to laugh about the women he dated. She knew just how he felt about his independence.

Why…why…why? It kept playing in his head for the weeks that followed.

He woke up about a month and a half later to an empty bed. He was laying in her apartment and staring at the ceiling when the phone rang. He rolled over and answered the call only to have it disconnect. He glanced at the caller ID but didn’t recognize the name.

He thought for a moment as he pulled his jeans on, but dismissed the idea of her cheating. She seemed to have done everything possible to keep them together. He couldn’t find his socks so he pulled open what she had designated his drawer to be and found a pile of stockings. He was about the shut the drawer when he saw the book laying, half buried, under them.

He opened the book and her writing filled the pages. He glanced at the corner of one entry and noticed it dated a few weeks ago.

He only seems to be getting worse. I see now that I was stupid to think that he would stop. My back is covered in welts where he whipped me last night. I don’t think I can stand it anymore. Why can’t he just be normal?

He stared at the page, his hands shaking as he started to realize how much she had hidden from him. He flipped a few pages over and sucked in his breathe at the entry:

I’m in love with a MONSTER!

He dropped the book as if it had burned him and backed away from its open pages. Lies. She had been lying for so long. He felt sweat break over his face as he realized how seamlessly everything fell into place. She never complained, she never said stop, she never said no, she just swallowed everything and vented her rage in the book. She never told him anything. How could she? And he, how did he miss it? Was he so detached that he could have missed something this….this wrong with them?

Why? The question was there again.

He hurried out of the apartment as if the demons of hell were chasing him. Monster. She thought he was a monster. His hands were shaking as he drove away.

Lies. Lies. Lies. The word echoed in his mind until his teeth gritted with rage. The pulse in his head throbbed.

He felt betrayed by his ignorance, her voicelessness. Cold.