This is your life now,the demons whisper,a worthless boy spinning his wheels, waiting for a Master who will never come and a Sir who doesn’t want you. You may as well—
“Shut up,” I snap, which startles Anthony who has been watching me slowly unravel.
Maybe Anthony could find him,the demons say, and I know better than to trust their suggestion, but I’m not sure there’s a better idea.
“Can you find Silvio for me?” I ask Anthony. He’s been given explicit instructions not to leave me alone, especially right now, so soon after Master’s departure, but he sees the conundrum presented here, a slave with no Master and noSignoreeither. It would be like Anthony hanging around with no body to protect. By leaving, Master has rendered us both redundant, but no, Anthony is here to babysit me, isn’t he? Well, what will he do when I’m gone?
“I’ll try calling him,” Anthony says.
Tell him you’re going to get a drink from the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back,” I say to Anthony, who’s stabbing his phone with his thick pointer finger. “I forgot something in the kitchen.”
I turn away before Anthony can argue and make my way back to the splendid kitchen with every convenience a kept boy could possibly want. I scan the counters and notice the wooden block containing the steak knives is absent. I open the cutlery drawer to find the sharpest tool within it is a butter knife.
Master hid the knives, or he told Anthony and Silvio to hide them because he knew the demons would demand a sacrifice. How dare he leave this slave without even the tiniest outlet for the panic that is inflating inside him like a balloon. He’s trapped me, caged me, and the demons don’t like to be caged. The rage comes swiftly, and I can’t really differentiate if it’s the demons or myself.
“Giovanni?” Anthony asks. He’s across the counter from me, eyeing me with trepidation. When the demons grow strong, I begin to sway back and forth like a hypnotized cobra. I can feel myself doing that now.
“Anthony, where are the knives?” I ask carefully. The demons want me to appear disinterested.
“They’re put away. Boss didn’t think—”
“Anthony, how can I cut melon without a knife?” Knives are practical if nothing else. The melon isn’t ripe yet, but Anthony doesn’t know that.
“I can ask Silvio for one when he gets back.”
“Where is Silvio?” How far away is he and how long do I have?
“He went to check on his boat, but he said he’s on his way.”
He’ll be too late,the demons say.We want blood. We want it now. Just a little cut. Make us feel something good. Give it to us, give it to us, give it to us…
I grab a half-empty wine bottle and break it across the counter, sending the red liquid flooding across the marble. I present my forearm for the blood sacrifice. I won’t go deep, and I won’t go hard, nothing that will need stitches, just a surface cut really, one that will heal before Master returns,if he returns… I’m negotiating with the demons, discussing desires and limits as if they’re a rational entity while they hiss,yes, yes, yes…
Anthony is waving his hands as he approaches, but he’s too far away. I press the broken glass to my flesh so that it dimples and pricks, droplets of blood blooming on my golden skin. Master likes gold but the demons like blood red. As I’m about to drag it along my flesh to give the demons room to escape, a large hand swoops down and clamps around my wrist, yanking back my hand and thwarting my demons’ desires.
The pressure around my wrist is a vice that forces me to drop the broken bottle. The demons don’t like this, not the interruption of a blood sacrifice, nor the grip that restrains me, holding me down. I struggle to yank my hand away, but I’m pulled backward and surrounded by a wall of flesh. I can’t move, I can’t move, and I hear them coming, their heavy footsteps just outside the door, and now they’re inside the room, casually discussing the unspeakable things they’re going to do to me and how much it will cost them, bargaining over the price of my rape. The demons rage,they rage, but they are trapped inside this body and cannot get out. I can’t fight them alone and Master isn’t here to protect me. I need the demons’ help, so I give up resisting and let them take over.
I claw at the arm that holds me and then at their face. I use the back of my head to dislodge their grip and kick my heel up, aiming for something soft and tender. There is shouting, a commotion. I’ve gone feral.
“Lock me in the box,” I shout above the din.
Strong arms wrap around me again as they haul me off my feet and drag me, kicking and screaming, into Master’s bedroom, but Master is not here. Master has forsaken me, has left me at the mercy of my demons and the cruelty of bad men. They shove me inside the box and lock the door and my demons are so furious at what they’ve been denied. They arethroughwith me, unwanted and discarded, adirty little faggotwho cannot do anything for himself, who cannot even satisfy his demons.
I cannot fend them off any longer and so, I surrender to their wrath.
Haveyou ever seen a demonic possession? Put aside for the moment whether it’s “real” or not. Whether it’s demons or voices orstress, whatever it is, the entity that takes over a rational human being when the person can no longer cope. You can see it in their eyes, the demons look past you, unfocused, dazed. The demons answer to only themselves. They cannot be rationalized or convinced they’re not right; their desires are the only thing that matters, and they demand immediate satisfaction. They cannot be controlled or calmed or sated with reason. They want blood or pain or poison or death. And whatever it is that they want, they will have it, even if they put you through hell to get it. There is no way to stop the demons once they take over, but sometimes, you can wait them out.
You can also see the moment the person comes back online. A flicker in their eyes, like a lightbulb being turned on in a dark room or a computer being rebooted, signaling the moment their consciousness slides back into place.
How am I so sure that the demons are to blame? Because my mother was possessed by them too.
When the demons finally finish with me, I find myself kneeling in the box, swaying back and forth as if in a trance. My throat is raw, which means I’ve been screaming, and there are scratches all over my arms and chest. My hair is a tangled nest and my robe, now torn and lying in the corner, smells like piss. The condition of my box is just as bad. The vinyl pad is ripped with chunks of foam everywhere and the books have been shredded. I glance at the four walls that surround me, and I’m relieved to find I haven’t smeared the glass with my feces, but only because I didn’t defecate while the demons were in control.
And as my sight slowly returns, I find that I’m not alone, that Silvio has placed an armchair directly across from me in Master’s room and is leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees and his hands clasped between his legs. Anthony stands a little behind him, shell-shocked.
“Is he finished?” Anthony says and the box makes it seem as if he’s speaking underwater, or perhaps it is me staring at them through my glass aquarium.
