I heard someone click their tongue, my eyes automatically finding the sound, a habit I had yet to break.
A woman stood on the other side of Azrael, older, graying hair, her wrinkles covered in too much makeup, her lips painted in a too bright color of red. “It’s fascinating, isn’t it?” she said, admiring the male. “It can be used as punishment or pleasure. Do you see it?” she asked, glancing towards Azrael, not seeing me at all. As if I were just completely invisible. “The contraption around his penis is laced in thorns on the inside. It can be placed on for those who enjoy pain, just tight enough to cause pain when the penis throbs or…” A smile stretched across her thin lips as she turned back to the man. “It can be tightened down all the way, the thorns pushing into the flaccid penis, where any movement, no matter how slight, pains them.” She angled her head. “I wonder what he did to deserve this.”
I turned back to the sign, reading the single word over and over again. Gluttony. Lack of self-control, greediness, over-indulgence. He had committed a sin, and they were punishing him for it.
I felt a chill fill me as, without a single word to the woman, Azrael turned away and we walked to the next exhibit.
This one was a woman, younger than me. Her head had been shaved haphazardly, her makeup smeared as if she had been crying. She was spread wide on a table, the position familiar to something Azrael had done to me once, but rather than something fun being shoved into me, something clamping onto my breasts or teasing my skin, she had a device shoved into her vagina that spread it wide. The wire around her wrists and ankles wasn’t barbed, but it was thin enough to cut into her skin, blood dripping from her extremities.
Her head had fallen to the side, and when I met her eyes, all I saw was emptiness. She wasn’t dead, she had just shut down. There was nothing left inside of her. No fight, no life, just…nothing.
The sign on her table read‘Coveter’.
I looked over her carefully, taking in the old scars and fairly new lashings she had gotten. The blood, her barely moving chest. Coveter of what? Of something more than the life the church had given her? Of freedom? Ofchoice?
What had she coveted so terribly that she deserved this?
The next three were worse than the last. Each person hung or nailed in a certain position, some sort of contraption clamping them or opening them up, making them suffer for the sin the church claimed they committed.
And everyone around us ‘ooed’ and ‘ahed’ as if they were fascinated by these people suffering. As if they believed they deserved to be on display. Would I be one of these people had Istayed with Thomas? Would he have hung me up for the world to see because he believed I had sinned so deeply?
We stopped in front of yet another display, this one the worst I had seen tonight.
Children. Two of them. Contorted in a way not meant for children. Wrapped together in barbed wire, staged with rods that forced them to remain still.
They were both whimpering and crying, their eyes searching for help.
My hands gripped into fists, the only reaction I couldn’t stop tonight. I could feel my heart pounding, feel my skin heating. That chill within me spread so fully, my entire body filled with a freezing electricity that turned my blood to ice.
“Aren’t they just precious?” a familiar voice asked.
A roaring raged through my ears as I turned, the anger overpowering any feeling of fear or habit that I might have felt had we reunited elsewhere.
Thomas stood feet away from Azrael, a smile on his face.
It was the first time I had seen his face for as long as I could remember, and it was just as putrefying as I thought it would be. The tar within him had tainted his outside. His face was splotchy and red, although he tried to hide it behind a beard. His hair was greasy, combed back, several strands falling into his eyes, his smile was yellow, his brown eyes the color of shit.
His smile faltered when I met his eyes, his anger and irritation growing. “I knew he would allow your leash to go,” he hummed before releasing a sigh. “I took them from Absolution,” he went on, turning back to the children. “They deserved to be there, and they were a great addition to my museum. The most popular display of the night.”
I tapped Azrael’s hand, albeit aggressively. Of course, Thomas was filled with tar. How could he not be?
“Will they be returning when the night is done?” Azrael asked, that lilt dancing through his words. He felt the same way I did, but where I was ready to burn this whole place to the ground, rescue these people, try and save them, he was more calculated, and I think that was part of the test for tonight. I had to control this. The urge to hurt them. I had to refrain from doing anything that might jeopardize our mission.
“I haven’t decided yet,” he replied, glancing over to me, taking me in. It made my skin crawl. “How is fucking a stolen blessing?”
“Everything you’ve ever dreamed of fucking your hand to at night and so much more,” Azrael hummed.
I lifted my chin a little higher at the compliment. I would do anything for Azrael, but Thomas? Looking back, I was ashamed that I ever gave in to the idea of pleasing him.
“Are all of them from Absolution or have they been donated by other members?”
Thomas was fuming. His jaw was tight, his eyes alight with rage. “Thinking of donating her for all to see?”
I didn’t even have to look his way to know how sharp his smile was. “I don’t like to share,” he purred.
“Is that why you gave her such a gawdy ring?”
My eyes locked with his, and the next thing I knew, I felt his hand over mine.
