another design verseXjasmeen

[Verse]

Kadashi Rihon had some ambitions once.

He'd been drawn to the dark things all his life. Once, when he was half his current height, another boy had screamed from the road and all the kids had come from the sun-bleached schoolyard. There had been an accident. Somehow one car had hit both a boy and a deer. And in the muck of boy-leg and deer ribs at the end of the bloody break-trail, Kadde had found something. The unforgiving, gruesome result had taught him a lesson about how delicate human beings are. The boy was crying like his one voice wasn't enough, and the other children chimed in all around him. Kadde stared. He had squatted down, to get closer to the exposed bone. And when he looked up, the driver stood over him. Kadde found something in the grown man's wide open eyes and mouth.

He searched for that kind of kinship from then on. It made his grades better and his friends fewer.

Even when he sprouted in height and his mother's facial features accented him into a beautiful youth, his relationships were just dalliances, and never much more. It felt as though he was protecting them from something. Maybe from the boy and the deer?

His fascination with this part of humanity, and its coalescing destruction, had him seek out law enforcement. He thought he'd do some good. Something about his insight and tolerance for macabre and unhinged crime scenes had the FBI, of all places, call him back. He knew he had the booksmarts for it, but doubted he'd shown them anything valuable in his oversharing letter and subsequent interview. He was honored to get to partake in a new class under the almost legendary director John Rydecker. Kadde had said in his application that he respected people, but that he wouldn't shy away from the gruesome truth in his pursuit of results, when shown a particularly graphic crime scene photo. And from this Director Rydecker had discerned the youngblood may have something for his new program. And he'd told Kadde as much, too.

The opportunity lit a fire under the Rihon boy, and he studied hard, and did well in the physical. His fellow cadets became friends. And even though some of them chose to leave, and, toward the end, some of them were asked to, due to insufficient performance, Kadde got to stay. The remaining group became tightly knit, and he became particularly close with one cadet. He liked her perspective, and her ability to follow his train of thought, when reasoning around cases.

Graduation was approaching, in this pilot program. Director Rydecker called Kadde and his friend for a test. Kadde had butterflies in his chest as they were driven out to a cottage in the woods, to a lonely concrete slab in a clearing at the end of the road. John's voice was on a handheld tape recorder, and his fellow cadet got to play it once she was handed it by the driver. John talked about the importance of knowing who they were hunting, and how some things could only be taught, if they were known first. Kadde thought it was hard to follow, but something in John's somber confidence made Kadde believe him, especially when he looked into his friend's eyes as she held up the device for them both. Was this another physical? Was it an awareness test?

But it wasn't.

It was an introduction to a side of himself that he'd glimpsed but never looked at fully. A side that smelled and felt like boy bones and deer blood.

He barely noticed the car driving away when he stood at the edge of the concrete. It looked like a scene for a performance. He inhaled when he saw something on it, apparitions in an intimate dance. And then they were gone. His knuckles brushed his friend's when he turned to look at her.

"Something happened here." he said. But she already knew, didn't she?

 

[jasmeen]

When Lena was seven she had terrified her mother to tears. It was on a school night. Lena had finished her homework and was huddled in bed, listening to the staccato shrieks of Mrs. Rai as her husband rained his fists down on her. This was a typical weeknight, especially if Lena's father had been out drinking after his driving his cab all day. And like clockwork, her mother would come into her room sniffling into her shawl, and crouch by the bed to cry softly into Lena's dark brown hair. Lena didn't know why it was that night she finally spoke. Perhaps the small child simply felt tired of having to devour all her mother's grief and fear and self-resentment. She had turned to face Mrs. Rai, looked into her red-rimmed eyes and said, "If you stay like this he'll kill you."
Mrs. Rai's heart-shaped face, which Lena had inherited, drained of its color.
"What?"
"He'll kill you. You're scared to leave because you think it will be harder than dealing with him hitting you. But it won't be long before he makes you dead. And probably me too." Little Lena said all this blandly, as if she was talking about tomorrow's weather. Then she had turned over to go to sleep, leaving her mother trembling and weeping anew. It was only a few days after that Mrs. Rai had sought the help of a neighbor to take her and Lena to a domestic violence shelter.

Once there Lena had felt like she was drowning. Every bruised and bedraggled face burdened her with its woes without Lena even speaking to them. It was then that she learned how to shut herself down, barely speaking but always watching with wide eyes that were as dark as the spaces in her head she was trying to avoid.

Luckily she and her mother were soon able to get a placement in a far off town, and made a home for themselves there, as much as Lena could feel at home anywhere. She kept to herself at school, made few friends and mostly replaced her social life with books. They were safer, made less noise in her head, and didn't make her stomach churn with osmoted trepidation. This habit sustained her and kept her in stellar academic standing all through school, university and a graduate degree in psychology.

It was during her graduate studies that she attended a guest lecture by an
FBI crime profiler. Lena considered most forms of law enforcement to be advanced forms of bullying, but the work this profiler did had intrigued her, and the types of questions she had asked him had caught his attention as well. He later referred her to a very specific FBI trainee program.

When interviewed by the indomitable director of this program she had held her own, and demonstrated an ability to look unflinchingly at the horrors humanity inflicts upon itself and still come away with valuable insights. Once offered entry into the program she had been hesitant, but the director had leaned in and asked point-blank if she wanted to help stop monsters like her father or continue hiding her ability and let them walk free. She hadn't told him anything about her family, but of course he'd know. Lena joined that day.

Once in the program she applied herself like she did with any academic pursuit. Having a willowy figure and delicate hands, she had a harder time acclimating to the physical training, but in time that too was doable. Her steely determination made sure she excelled at anything put in front of her. The pool of trainees whittled down to a few, including her and a man around her age by the name of Kadashi. Kadde. At first Lena had kept her distance from him. He was beautiful in the way a cold, placid lake was beautiful, and Lena got the impression that shifting shadows swam under the calm surface. But over time she found that he was the only other trainee that could keep up with her trains of thought or leaps in logic. They both had a similar...knack. Through that and other similarities they formed a tenuous friendship. They were both quiet types so it was a bond of companionable silences and mutual admiration. However, there were occasions when Kadde might touch her arm or stand a little close and Lena would find herself momentarily forgetting to breathe.

This was the case after the two of them had been dropped off in the woods, and she had to remind herself to exhale as Kadde's hand brushed against hers. There was plenty to occupy her mind given the director's cryptic message and their unsettling surroundings. They stood in front of a dilapidated cottage abutting a grimy slab of concrete. A spasm passed through Lena's face as she suddenly smelled something familiar. The sickly sweet scent of fear laced with coppery blood.

"Something happened here." Kadde seemed to read her mind. She nodded as she reached into the interior pocket of the cropped leather jacket she wore over a green tank top. She pulled out two pairs of latex gloves, wordlessly handing one to Kadde. Snapping on her own pair, she approached the square of concrete first, careful of her booted footfalls. A glimmer of pink caught her eye, and she crouched down to carefully pick something up. She held it up for Kadde to see.
"Ballet shoe laces. There's blood on them."
It was then that the voice she so often had to repress crept into her thoughts.

I am a ballet dancer, elegant and dedicated. Why am I here, in these woods?
Lena caught the inside of her bottom lip between her teeth and her brow furrowed. Why indeed. She saw the muddled silhouette of a slender woman, slender arms and a long neck like Lena's own. But the silhouette did not stand with the controlled refinement of a ballet dancer. She was crumpled on the ground.

I am a dancer, I revel in having an audience. I have found one here. An audience of one, maybe two. They promised me attention and adoration. But that's not what was here.
Lena took a shaky breath and met Kadde's gaze.
"This woman, this ballet dancer, came here willingly. Whoever brought her here promised her something to lure her in."
She knew from their time training together that Kadde, like her, had a talent for profiling.

But where her skill was in getting into the headspace of the victims, Kadde had the uncanny ability to do the same for the perpetrators. Perhaps in this situation their skills could work in tandem. Likely that's what the director wanted.
"What do you think Kadde?" Lena tilted her head, her deep brown eyes intent on his. "What do you see?"

 

[Verse]

He hadn't bothered with any small talk. Lena didn't need it. They had completed group assignments flawlessly without exchanging many notes. He had told himself their recurring partnerships was based on stellar results, but then why had he sought her out for the latest physical test, too? She was fit, but she wasn't stronger or faster then most of the men in the class. When she ran the obstacle course he swayed behind her to smell her sweat. He just leaned on her, and contributed when he could. She had corrected his profile on a victim and quietly taken his input that lead to the capture of a serial two states away. Rydecker had given them each a pat on the back.

Maybe that's why they were here now. This place was empty, but it was writhe with other things. He didn't want to look at her while he was filled up with it all. His hand was out before she'd even reached into her pocket for the glove. Boy bones and deer blood. He felt a presence here, something building out of the memories that hung around the stained cement. When she moved, he wanted to tell her not to, because if she went into it, she'd drag him with her.

Lena moved well. Her steps echoed of; a young life dedicated to back-breaking art. They were so beautiful, these flowers that bent and taped their roots into pink shoes, and folded their stems over bars in mirrored studios. He could smell the feminine sweat and feel the wooden floor under his - well-tended to workboots. His now gloved hand squeezed and a breeze moved a blade of hair from behind his ear to touch the corner of his eye. His breath quickened when he saw Lena working, her mind going down the rabbit hole. He wanted to pull her back, but he also had the impulse to shove her; impossible to ignore like the urge to masturbate.

"Yes." He said and took the laces from her. They hung in his black latex fingers. He didn't feel steady but his voice was. It had a northern lilt to it, but it was washed away by many years lurking city alleys. Places like that have cheap rent for hopeful business. For dreams. Dreams like Swan Stretches and Grand Jetés. Girls who would never be women even when their ID's said so, girls who'd stay beautiful forever. Princesses with small tits and small cunts pressing at their leotards.

He looked at the blood on the little rope. It hadn't soaked in. It was smeared, shallow. Somebody had removed it from its shoe and now forgotten it. He was a strong man, large hands, but he was tired of strong women who pulled at his beard and joked like they had seen war through their work. He wanted flowers, not treestubs. He wanted to immortalize them on film that wasn't digital.

A dead deer and a crying boy.

When he looked at Lena she made it painfully clear she'd never be his. She was going to leave this place. He'd seen her talent in the studio and how her form was perfect on the small productions she'd gotten to dance in infront of friends and family and a handful of enthusiasts. Her neck was perfect for ballet. Her neck was perfect for his hands. He wanted to save her from ever becoming a woman, now that her 18th birthday had come and gone. He enticed her with his dream.

"I see love, it's conditional, but he is creating the conditions himself." It was his own voice again. His own hands with his wide palms and long fingers. His own leather shoes. Why was he staring at her like that? While wanting to cradle her but also eat her? Why wasn't he ending this? There were ghosts here, from abhorrent memories, and he caught them with his diaphragm and he wanted to follow them "in there." He said and the accent was back. "If you want to succeed." because success was everything to her. His hand went out before he could stop it. It was an unforgivable shove onto her shoulder in the direction of the house.

 

[jasmeen]

Kadde took the laces from Lena's outstretched hand, and for a second she felt the weight of his fingers, a fleeting pressure that was both reassuring and hair-raising. She might have been more inclined to ponder on why she suddenly felt like that if she wasn't so occupied by the insistent tugging on her psyche that had started as soon as they had arrived. It had only become more plaintive once she'd picked up the bloodied strings.

Wondering if Kadde felt anything similar she studied the sharp angles of his his face as he considered the evidence. When she saw flickers of those submerged shadows heading to the surface, Lena abruptly turned away, as if it might physically hurt her to observe him further. She decided to follow the impulses that gnawed at her, to heed the small, girlish voice that she could suddenly hear as her own internal monologue. Unthinking, she took the hair tie from her wrist and pulled her loose locks into a tight ballerina bun, the honey-hued slope of her nape now presented as an unintended tease or an unwilling invitation.

She was unafraid when she arrived here, rather she had been giddy with excitement. But at the sight of the ramshackle cottage, sprigs of apprehension sprouted. And his presence had loomed behind her. She knew him, was used to him hovering at the periphery of her performances. But her youthful naivety had clouded her to his leering eyes. In fact, she thought of him as harmless and maybe a little pathetic.

"I see love, it's conditional, but he is creating the conditions himself."
Kadde's voice seemed faraway, and though Lena wanted to know more about his assessment she was too far gone among her own phantasms to form a response. Then came a shove on her shoulder and she looked back in surprise that was both hers and not hers. Kadde – and not Kadde – was there, demanding she go inside the unsettling structure. Her shoulders quivered with a shudder that trickled down from the base of her skull. She was now afraid, but maybe it was just the atmosphere of these old woods, maybe it was nicer inside. He had said he'd help her. He had always been so kind. Why would he stop now? Reassuring herself, the girl-woman in her head and Lena pushed open the creaking door.

The interior was sparse. A fireplace, a sagging couch, threadbare rug, a heavy pile of ropes, thick wooden columns extending to the ceiling. An open duffel bag. The air was stale and oppressive, as if it carried a heavy imprint of the unspeakable things that had happened here. Lena took her boots off at the doorway, then padded over to the bag, crouching down to gingerly examine it's contents. A change of clothes in size extra small, a black ballet wrap, spare laces, cheap lipstick, body sprays in the sweet gourmand scents favored by the type of perky young women who still idolized pop stars. Lena took out one of these last items and spritzed her inner wrist, then her decolletage. She needed to get ready, he said he was going to make her look so good. The prestigious ballet schools she wanted to apply to would be so awed by her grace captured in still image, they'd clamor to have her join.

Eyes wide and gleaming, Lena shrugged off her jacket, letting it slide off her arms and to the ground. Momentarily oblivious to how macabre it would be to wear a presumably dead girl's clothes, she picked up the ballet wrap and tugged it on. It was a tight fit on her, meant for someone with a smaller frame and flatter chest. Her breasts weren't large but they still strained against the material, and though it barely fit her arms it did cover her up to her elbows. But that was fine, right now this was her ballet wrap, her cloying vanilla scent. As she stood up, Lena undid her jeans, pushed them down and nudged them aside with her socked foot. The ballet wrap over her tank top – which slightly overlapped her high-cut black underwear – gave the impression of a leotard. The dark colors outlined Lena's narrow waist, the flare of her hips and the firm curves of her backside.

She walked over to stand on the rug in front of one of the smudged windows. Lena's long, bare legs moved with a controlled refinement that wasn't hers, and the usual casual sway of her hips was gone.
"Is the lighting good here?" She asked anxiously in a voice that was breathier, a few octaves higher. "How should I pose?" She looked over to where Kadde-not-Kadde stood. He was about a head taller than her but right then he seemed to actually tower over her and overshadow her in a way that made her stomach lurch in involuntary fear, the evolutionary instinct to flee from something large and carnivorous. His eyes were terrifyingly inscrutable. Lena swallowed hard, shoving down this apprehension as silly and imaginative. She crossed one toned leg in front of the other and held her arms perfectly still in a diamond shape in front of her. "Something like this?"

There was still a Lena on the outside of the little core of her where this hapless ballerina had situated herself, and she observed with both fascination and horror as she completed this dance that must be done, this performance that could yield valuable clues or leads. The latent fear from the girl fluttered in her chest, tugged at her insides. She knew Kadde would follow her and part of her was sorry for it, but that was why it was just the two of them there. They could both follow the design.

 

[Verse]

Kadde trusted himself among the horror alarms that went off. This feeling, this train of thought, it lead to a horrible place, but he had decency, he was in the FBI, he was a modern man with current values. He wouldn't lose himself to the primal and old things that drove this ghost, no matter how fiercely it loved this delicate and trusting subject. He felt safe the way all men feel safe against their own corruption, because they believe the best of their hearts, when they don't give the same benefit of a doubt to their bodies. That's why he treaded on inside this jagged dream, out in the woods.

But his confidence faded when she put her hair up, and reminded him that Lena had such a perfectly enticing neck. That was right, he realized as stray hairs caressed her skin there for him; it wasn't just borrowed, faulty love here. He was contending with real infatuation, however denied. It was the bridge between this dark man and himself. But that also meant it was harder to resist. Of course he'd follow Lena. Of course he'd take the laces and wonder how they'd look like around her throat. He remembered her panting during their physical test, and how her sweat had smelled, then. And how the floor of the ballet studio smelled. And how he'd licked the bench where she'd sat when she left, and the lights in the ceiling were off, and only the echoes of small bodies were left. When he pushed her the contact felt meaningful and explosive. He had wanted for her to fall forward and for her to break her bird bones.

Instead they went over the slab, and into the place where most of this abhorrent thing had happened. The excitement and pang of lust that greeted him when he realized they were alone was sickening. Kadde wrapped his hand around his mouth. But then it fell away. He swallowed to contain himself when she got dressed. Little innocent, pure thing. The darkest blonde he'd ever seen. He wanted to immortalize her before the gold faded further from her hair. The rest of life waited outside this house, hoping to take her away. Time would make her a woman - she'd abandon ballet and be swallowed up by the reality of having to pay her own way. Beautiful things like her never lasted. And never stayed with him.

A flush of anger fluttered against his stomach lining like a flock of razor blades. She was going to leave him, wasn't she? Kadde was swallowed up by want when Lena showed him her body, and the animal that had done this; put the blood on the laces and small, almost-not blonde hairs on the rug, was transfixed on the petite dancer who'd believed all his courting, even if it had just been lies to get her here. Kadde managed to look around through his own eyes in a moment of clarity. "A time capsule." he whispered to warn his partner and himself. But he was crushed back by a tide of stinking hormones that weren't his.

He looked at her in awe and fear when she borrowed motions and words. He wanted to break those limbs so they'd stop growing, he wanted to keep her skin pale, somehow. "That's good." he said and swiped up a camera that had long since been removed from the table, only a small mark from the lens left among the other scuffs. He held the device infront of himself like a shield as he came closer to her. His jacket fell off and there was only a standard issue blue t-shirt left, with big yellow letters on the back. The other man wore a checked shirt and a tanktop. Clean. He'd dressed up for this occasion. The photographs that rained sporadically on the floor and struggled to develop on their thick arcs. Most of them were blurry. He wanted them but he wanted her more.

"But you're more beautiful when you fly." he explained, like that was his big declaration of love. He had seen some other lad lift her, and it had made him mad with jealousy. What business did a boy have touching his beautiful little goddess? He dropped the camera and grabbed her by her hips. He hoisted her in the worst way possible, without her jumping to help, but their discrepancy in size made up for it. His arms were straight, having lifted her, and getting wafted in the same scent he'd become addicted to from her studio, and from the laundry that she had left behind in her locker. He laughed, burly, and shook her like she was a trophy. He spun her. It was the happiest he'd been in his life.

And then he didn't know where he was in the room. And he felt the thud through her body, through his fingers that held her up. One of the vertical beams had gotten in the way of their dance. He dropped her and he fell on his knees with her.

There was plastic shrapnel between the boards of the floor and a faint dusting of red on the beam to tell the story so far, but most of the obsession was inferred by the duo's talent. Or curse.

He was livid, blubbering and frothing at his mouth as he apologized and prayed that she wouldn't be dead. But even as he doted frantically on her body on the floor, he couldn't help but tear at the leotard and tanktop underneath. Her body was so soft over her skeleton. He had masturbated so much over this moment. He thought about sitting beside her in the academy classes, he thought about sitting behind her in the dance recital audience. He thought about fucking her until her mouth was wide with spilling secrets.

 

[jasmeen]

She felt like she was in a waking dream. Since she was a scrawny child Lena had been subjected to absorbing the fears of others but it had never presented this potently, or been this all-consuming. She could smell him. Nervous masculine sweat and cheap cologne used as an attempt to impress. She could practically see him too, though he was part man and part roiling shadows obscuring what Lena couldn't extrapolate. An unkempt beard, arms as thick as her waist, and reddened eyes that preferred to hide furtively behind the flashing of his camera.

He always paid her special attention when he did photo shoots for the studio. Even though she wasn't the most talented, or most statuesque she often ended up the focal point in the promotional or commemorative photos he'd shoot. It made her feel special and a little bit glamorous. He would try to speak with her whenever he saw the slightest chance, and a callow lack of guile and caution made her an open book so she told him all sorts of things. How she liked her tea, the names of her siblings, her hopes for the future.

As she posed in front of him now, awaiting instructions on her pose and expression, she once again lacked the caution or experience to understand what the darkening of his eyes meant. She could not see the sleeping violence in his twitching hands. Lena could observe and identify it, but that was all she could do. As much as she always wanted to, she couldn't warn the ghosts in a brutal moment already passed.

A time capsule. Lena could barely comprehend Kadde's words through the onslaught of sensorial information, but she did hear the man praise her as she changed poses and he circled her with his camera clicking incessantly. She balanced on the toes of her left foot in a mimicry of dancing en pointe, her other leg lifted behind her, arms spread wide. Perhaps it was her resemblance to an airborne bird that spurred the man to declare she was more beautiful in flight. Lena felt the first lurch of true dread heave in her stomach as Kadde took ahold of her waist and effortlessly hoisted her off her feet. She let out a yelp of surprise and panic, not understanding his sudden mad joviality. Her hands fumbled feebly against his grip on her as he dug his fingers bruisingly into her sides.
"Let me down! Please!" She cried out shrilly, but he was just laughing as if they were sharing some great joke, and he shook her so hard her teeth clattered. He started to spin her around as if they were in some twisted waltz, and Lena had but a second to register the heavy wooden beam he swung her towards before she heard the wet crunch of her own skull cracking.

The actual wooden beam was a few feet away from where she and Kadde stood, but this facsimile in both their minds was enough to show Lena the same bright white stars the girl saw as her head collided with it and left a crimson trail. Lena's ears rang, and the pain was excruciating in a way she'd never experienced in her short life. Her lips parted as she gasped and choked for air and reassurance. Then suddenly she felt the hard floor meet her and everything went dark.

Lena's eyelids fluttered and spasmed as she lay unmoving, and in moments of consciousness she could only see and hear him. Kadde was above her, his perfect features distorted by rage, self-loathing and lust, his voice ragged from bellowing like a wounded beast. The girl was terrified and Lena felt it and embodied it, but on another level she was also fascinated by the change in Kadde. In their time learning and working together she had never seen him this entrenched in his ability. Part of her wanted to reach out and touch his cheek, bring him back and check to see if he was OK. But another part wanted to see how far they could both go. It quickly became a question of how far she was willing to let it go when she felt his hands start to tear at her clothes. Through the fog of nauseating pain and receding consciousness, the girl found the will to try to push his hands away. But it was futile. She felt the cold bite of the air as her top was split open, exposing a smooth stomach toned by pushing physical limits and breasts that were simultaneously nearly flat against her ribs and an ample handful, stiffened nipples that were both rosy pink and rich brown.
"Stop, please, I'm hurt, please-" she sobbed and shivered, barely able to keep her eyes open.

Lena inhaled the girl's terror as she was enveloped by its thick smoky tendrils. But there was something else this time. The glint in Kadde's eyes as he leered down at her, his demanding grip and feral noises all mingled with the fear that pulsed in her belly. And this noxious cocktail beckoned her. Now Lena felt horrified of her own accord, and not at Kadde but at herself. And yet, even as her vision flickered and faded, she met Kadde's eyes under the dark hair that had fallen into his face, and in holding his gaze she let him know that she was not going to stop him. Not yet.

 

[Verse]

It was his treasure; all the trust he had built with her. An exclusive, valuable thing. He'd started small and let her get used to his scent, like any predator, hoping that the surroundings would saturate the killing hormones in their mane, until the forest was rife with it, until the prey didn't know it was there, anymore - it was simply how the world smelled. And then he'd closed the circle. This photographer, this preserver of memories, this ingestor of moments that were filled up and saturated with her. That's why he trembled now, so much the already low quality pictures were sooty from blur as they littered his way closer to her. Because he didn't want to spend it. He wanted to keep this belief she had in him; it had cost him so much. Sometimes he had to choke on his tongue so he wouldn't try to sink his teeth into her in the open. Kadde remembered Lena's neck, and the photographer remembered the ballerina's sinew, stretched between her pussy and her thigh when she lifted her leg.

Maybe he would would have saved it, if he could. But the wealth was spilling over. He couldn't fathom any more of it. She had come here. She was filling this place up with her youth and light. It was perfect. So he grabbed her and he was offended by the way she tensed up instead of leaning into it that she did her wretched partner. Maybe that's why he spun her so recklessly. Above him could see her breasts in that thin fabric, as Kadde could see Lena's soft hills, more mature and prominent than the dancer's. It was dizzying for all of them. And then the beam. Borrowed trauma onto Lena that Kadde could feel through her ribs. They toppled. On stage it would have been chaos. Here it was just an opportune tragedy. An unbidden and vivid descending of limbs.

He dug her out. He would find the part of her that he loved, and that reciprocated. It was his religion. He would have it for himself, out of this shell that she protected it with. It was complicated, no, it was impossible to discern the girl's naivety and modesty from Lena's social armor. A grapher of lovers inside unknowing girls, rather than photos, suddenly. Her clothes were no real obstacle. His erection became painful in his cargo pants when he saw her barely lifted orbs off her dancer's chest. And Kadde got to answer the question what his partner looked like, under her sensible clothing. He didn't have to imagine the Grapher. He was him for an instance. And when Lena saw him, and their quiet agreement bled into the truth of this borrowed and intruded-upon scene, he felt kinship with her. They were afraid but they were drawn to it. Cursed together. His heart was steady while the Grapher's was exploding continuously, rapidly, like the fanfares of an entire war compressed into a single cage. The contrasts between the two men found common ground in their depravity.

And when one gave in, the other was pulled along. Kadde didn't know which one he was; could he really usher on this ghost?

He collapsed ontop of her. Rough fingers that wielded cameras; long digits that touched evidence files. Kadde took Lena for himself. This pretty thing in clothes that didn't hug her enough. A beautiful woman who built her intelligence like a shield. Kadde coughed once when the softness of her breasts let his grip fall into her, and the firmness of the tissue pushed back. He dropped his face between them, worshipping hurriedly while the fall was still fresh inside the dancer's skull. When he sucked in her scent it sounded like sobs. "You would have left me." the Grapher accused against the Dancer's sternum. Lena smelled like fear and sweat and Dancer's blood and-- sweetly of some intimate, inviting hormone.

"Stop him." Kadde breathed as his hands went lower with their strength. He tore her underwear too. He'd daydreamed how Lena's pussy looked, when he caught her profile when she sat beside him, taking notes in their classes. He did want to crush her like the Grapher did the Dancer. So maybe Kadde dug with a steadier hand than the assailant. Either way, both women were stripped of their underwear. The male body slid down to their knees between her legs, and parted them. The Grapher wept as he took his cock out, compulsive and desperate, jerking. Kadde's limb was apart from the rest of him; it was burly and rough with its pushing, dark veins and red-grape head. A weapon of its own. And yet he borrowed shame for it, from the apparition he was hosting and following at the same time. Still he jerked as he stared at the taboo slit. Either man was entranced and violently pumping.

He thought several times in flashes of agonizing, white-light clarity that he should stop, but as he looked at the beautiful, primal slit in its lurid beckoning, he knew he wouldn't.

 

[jasmeen]

Sensation and unconsciousness both danced wildly in Lena's head, played a game of tug-of-war where she and the girl were caught in middle along with the terror that made her pulse roar and her small body shake feverishly. Lena wanted to hug the woman-child, to stroke her muted golden hair with maternal comfort and rock her to sleep so she did not have to feel anything. Yet at the same time she fed on her fear, and was immensely disgusted with herself as the girl's exuded terror lit up Lena's carefully guarded pleasure centers. She was wet from this borrowed fear, as if she were watching some violent free-with-ads performance on a porn site instead of living out something that had been real, something involving living people who had suffered all too real consequences. Lena's heart plummeted as she had these ephinanies about her own predilections. She had always worried that she was a monster masquerading as a caring doe-eyed woman and something like this inched her closer to the belief that she was no better than the filth that enacted these crimes.

So on some level she started to believe she deserved to experience this girl's anguish as the unbearable weight of the man crushed her pliant flesh and deficient bones. It didn't help that the beast wore Kadde's face, one she'd sometimes imagined sinking down between her compliantly parted thighs. Now his face burrowed between her exposed tits and stiff pebbled nipples, and the girl made keening noises of dismay while Lena arched into his touch. The man's beard itched and burned the dancer's hitherto untouched skin, and she tried to push away from it, twisting her body with what little strength she had remaining as she screamed a ragged "Nooo! Please!" Her trembling hands yanked pointlessly at his hair, her grip weakened as the gash on her head oozed out her strength and her awareness.

Sweet baby, so full of fluffy pink dreams and visions for her future, only to have it all torn out of her in one brutal evening, Lena mused dejectedly, her throat constricting with a potent mix of rage and sorrow. She did not want to find out more about how she'd react to the progression of the girl's torment, but she also owed it to her to make it to the end of her story. Now their story.

So when Kadde quietly implored Lena to stop the pheremone-drunk photographer's assault, she could only shake her head with a hitching sob that was both hers and the girl's. The sound melded in with the tearing of the fabric of her plain underwear, divulging both the trimmed patch of dark hair, and sparse and curly little blonde-brown hairs. Lena's cunt throbbed and spasmed in jarring unwelcome anticipation.
"No! Not there!" She managed to form the words even as the pain in her head surged and had her gulping desperately for air. There was an attempt to move her arms to cover herself but they had started to feel leaden and useless as her brain became steadily more deprived of blood.

The girl was pristine, her dedication to her art left her no time to even think about sex or relationships, which made this assault even more alien, even more gut-wrenching. Lena had only ever dated and fucked kind and docile men who would not overwhelm her, who could not feed the tightly coiled creature that laid dormant inside of her, waiting. But it was awake now, and so eager, so impatient. She wanted it back in its cage.

Her vision wavered with the pulsing in her head, but she still glimpsed the wide-eyed manic need of the man and felt his dreaded heaviness between her forced open thighs.
"Please don't hurt me." She was able to whimper thickly as a last ditch effort to keep him from using on her the vile instrument he played desperately with one hand. She tried to twist her bony hips to the side, possibly to obscure the sight of her sex, though Lena knew with burning shame that by now it was slick from her fear-induced arousal.
A glimpse of Kadde's face also told her that neither man would be deterred by desperate squirming, not now.

 

[Verse]

There was something victorious in the scent and flavors he found between her breasts. The Dancer had taken care to be pretty, always, so she had something meaningful but cheap sprayed on her. The Grapher ate it up with his tongue riding the little bones sewing the center line of her chest together. Kadde thought Lena's hills were monuments, lifting out of the phantoms of the girl's. Part of him wanted to relent his power, as though he could, so he could just enjoy Lena like this, drunk on borrowed misery. They way she moved made the men beastly. And her fingers in his hair told him exactly how much strength she had left. It was because she couldn't bring herself to resist him, wasn't it? She could only hide behind her modesty to a point, but she'd felt his eyes on her sex when she lifted her legs when she danced. She had wanted him to see that she was still intact. She'd been bragging about her innocence.

When he ripped her underwear the sight of her was painful, because it pulled at him. Another imagining of the most expensive grocery store bought perfume, mingling with Lena's natural, inviting juices filled his head. He swallowed, and didn't know even through his own gift, if Lena's moisture represented the Dancer or herself, because the Grapher's delusions had been so strong in that moment there was no real truth other than what he saw. He inhaled, shrill, when Lena refused to help him. The voice that the beautiful things shared could not deter Kadde. His cock was tortured. How could she be averse to this coming pain - it would be transmutational, it would make her better - when all she ever did was put herself through pain? She should understand that love was a greater goal than playing a swan on a hard stage.

How beautiful the eyes were under him, mixing up in their contradicting irises, but following each other with the same tosses of their skulls. They said the same things with their lips. He looked down as her hips angled away from him, but called to his hungry nature more. Cruelly, he pushed her hip bone with his palm, to negate the posture, to align her slit just the way he wanted it. He put his forehead to hers, and there was girl's blood on his hairline. But it was Kadde's breath on Lena, a hot burst of it, when his cockhead touched her pussy, and her pussy was soaked. A moment of them, the partners who'd skirted their own mystery, Rydecker's students. In his eyes, Kadde let her know he'd discovered this thing about her, this unforgivable, macabre part. A tinge, a vibration in the black of his eyes - judgment, the word Whore, and a small sadness for her, before Kadde was obliterated by the Grapher, and Kadde's hips jerked forward, sliding into ballerina cunt, separating folds that had never been apart like that, and give her the kind of love she had always been disgusted by.

The Grapher, even as a lesser man in this aspect, bled the girl. Kadde's cock rung from the excitement, from the swallowing of her. He took her wrist and held them by her shoulders, against the scuffed floor, and rested his weight upon them, pressing with the balls of his palms. Her limbs were nothing - ballerina arms are just beautiful afterthoughts; correctly moving garlands in her tailwinds - and her inner walls were crushing him with an adorable, useless vengeance. All the while there was a wound giving her a red halo, that mixed with her hair and made her eyes foggy. All the times masturbating in a barn, and putting spiderweb strands between rotting hay, in a farm that would not survive its own stride into modernization, were gone from his memory. He had her. She was his saint. She was taking all the things he'd lost and she was replacing them with pieces of herself. Sh had loved him without knowing, and now he was explaining it to her.

Kadde grunted as he stuffed her with his flesh. He was scorned by Lena, by how she had facilitated this. It was so easy to blame her and fuck her at the same time. The Grapher told him there could be absolution in pleasure, and Kadde sought it out in the lovely face of his partner. When he looked down, there was no ballerina blood or newly taken pussy. There was just Lena's soft breasts, waving at him at the pace of his efforts, and her delighted, dark pussy, taking on his punishment. Her slick, hugging folds felt like absolution for his burning cock. He knew it was him that decided to switch his weight from her wrists to her throat, both his hands hugging the air out of her as his hips violently bucked, because the Grapher had used the laces. The floor made noises as her body was pushed along from his violent thrusts. Lena was the kind of woman who'd squeeze him dry as he increased the pressure around her windpipe. He wanted to have her like that, for this moment to be that, for them.

But he couldn't. Even as things got hectic, long after the Grapher had left his excited and furious but meager offerings inside the Ballerina, Kadde wouldn't taste that forbidden reward. So he groaned, his grinding never relenting, but his hands letting go to twist the laces around her neck instead, and pulling in opposite directions. The threads were discarded somewhere along the way, but the pair still remembered them vividly as they tied lethally around her neck.

 

[jasmeen]

Perhaps she should have been the one to protect the both of them, Lena considered even as they barreled past the point of no return. Kadde and herself. Was it Lena's responsibility to be the bulwark against getting swallowed whole by this unholy aptitude they both possessed, and were both now in the thrall of? The voice that wondered this was distant in her mind. It could possibly have been her conscience, which was compelled to speak up as she witnessed the shift in Kadde's visage while he hovered over her, his shockingly huge member erect with combined male fervor.

His usual observant calm was long gone, and she could also see his precious self-control slipping away, the despondent hunger of the assailant having permeated into Kadde and now directed towards Lena. He had wanted her to stop this and she had refused him his chance at salvation. She told herself it was because they were there to do a job and she wanted to finish it. She assured herself that it was because she wanted justice and resolution and whatever other noble aftermath that could be used as a salve for what she knew deep down. That small seed of self-destruction inside her wanted to see how far this could truly go, and how it could electrify her flesh. Even if Kadde was also damned in the process.

He seemed to know this as well. His rough hand shoved down her vain attempt at deflection, the force bruising where her hip bone jutted against womanly softness while the girl whimpered. His forehead touched hers, the tiny patch of resultant warmth almost a comfort. But Lena's heart sank as she saw how his dark eyes were both accusatory and pitying. This time the tremble that unsettled Lena's lower lip was her own, and after this miniscule show of regret when confronted with Kadde's judgement she did her open her mouth to possibly call this off. But that chance was long gone, and it was her shuddering gasp, and the girl's high pitched wail, that were released instead as the man drove into her cunt in one mercilessly smooth motion, and the photographer finally took what he had so long coveted.

The girl writhed fruitlessly under the weight of the man, a butterfly pinned to a spreading board while still alive, fluttering desperately. The sharp pain of her shredded chastity permeated her whole body and wracked it with unending sobs, ones that faded and swelled at the same time as her consciousness. A deep nausea filled her in time with the man's member brutally making space inside her untouched cunt. Through her darkening vision she caught glimpses of the man's face, how his eyes gleamed with unrepentant mania, and she despaired that this might be the last thing she'd see. She had only ever wanted to dance. What had she done to deserve being skewered and bled like this?

While the girl agonized with her last remaining shreds of consciousness, Lena passively absorbed it all. It amalgamated disturbingly with the rising wave of arousal she felt, or perhaps it helped incite it? Lena refused to look further at this, afraid of the answer and still reeling from the look in Kadde's eyes. She would never had guessed he was so large, to the point where his initial thrust had caused her actual pain that faintly echoed the girl's illusory agony. Lena knew with a stirring of shame that her pussy had been wet already, and despite the discomfort her pulsing walls had enveloped him eagerly.

Her eyes rolled back in her head as he began to fuck her with a steady ferocity she was unaccustomed to, eliciting a throaty moan from her every time he thrust deep enough to jolt her whole body and bounce her tits. Kadde's grip burned the tender flesh of her inner wrist, the closeness of their hands almost too intimate, and she was near grateful when he moved it to her throat in the place of bloodstained laces. With her arms freed, the girl had feebly slapped and scratched at her assailant but Lena merely rested her hands on Kadde's arms, one thumb stroking the skin there in a minute show of tenderness, as if trying to tether him to reality, even as his grip on her throat hardened and he fucked her with abandon. That corrupt seed inside her sang in pleasure and manifested as a delicious molten pressure rising in her core. She was gasping for air as her dark eyes locked on his. His hands moved away but the laces remained in their minds, and in Lena's there was still the feeling of them digging into her windpipe as the girl felt one final deluge of despair.
"I'm so sorry," she whispered hoarsely with some of her remaining air, one hand lightly finding Kadde's cheek right before she gave a strangled cry and bucked against his thrust, her spine arching against the harsh floor. Instinctively, her legs wrapped around his lean frame, and she rolled her hips into each of his pistoning movements as her abhorrent climax had her cunt exquisitely gripping his length.

 

[Verse]

He had reached for her through this; their kinship had been their abnormality, the anchor points of their gifts perfect opposites but true companions, still. That should mean something. Hadn't they wanted something other than what their phantoms did? Didn't they join the initiative under Rydecker to do some good? But everything she did only mirrored something in him. Perhaps he was a coward; like the boy who'd lived rich in nature and then been made destitute by expanding industry. Something in the Grapher had been disappointed too. The men understood each other when Lena wouldn't dislodge from their dual dream. Kadde had hoped she'd be better than him. He'd fettered himself to a person who had just as much stock in his heart's triumph as her own. The anger helped him. It didn't matter if he turned it inwards or at her; it didn't even matter if he ended up killing the poor Dancer in the process. This all had to go somewhere.

But Lena was impervious. She wore some of the Dancer's suffering when he corrected the angle of her hips. Her dark hairs were beckoning, and he'd been so curious for so long. Her pussy was even prettier and rawer than he'd illicitly dreamt. It hurt him, how much it called for him; mocking him like he wouldn't even be a challenge, despite her smaller build and the meager length of pink slit. Maybe he wanted to prove something to her, to quiet her doubt, when he sank into her. Like it'd teach her something and put her right. It was something he had in common with the Grapher, other than their shared view of the ballet girl's demise. Poor thing saw her wishes crushed with her pelvis, as the greedy and pent-up agent pierced his partner's body. She was so slick and so softly tense around his plunge that he gasped, fully as himself, before slipping back into another murderer.

The scent of virgin's blood billowed between them, mixed up with the girl's oils and Lena's juices. Such a beautiful gift the Dancer's body contained, and Kadde found something for himself, that he would keep, as well, deep inside Lena; the pressure to assure him of his size. He tried it out more in her. The Grapher loved the girl but he had physical limitations that didn't apply to the vigorous male who was channeling him. If she should abandon him to their plight, he must see it through to get out the other side. To think her carte blanche was so bitter, but felt so darling. He shouldn't blame her, because he was fucking her like she was made for it, like she had been given to him. But the blame made it better, made him thrash her as his hips and all the strength in him crushed himself against her repeatedly. As though her bones owed him a debt. The Lena who'd been so stoic, undone and unlaced all the way to her delicate, wonderful, whore insides. If she was too shallow for him, the ramming bulb of his cock would beat her senseless.

They knew the girl had wailed at the Grapher best she could, but Kadde gasped to see her begging hands on his arms, pulling at him. He fucked her harder for it, unforgiving, like her encouragement. How was she so soaked for this murder? The Dancer was already only a rag being moved by her killer, but Lena wanted more. And that made it impossible for Kadde to hide that he did too. Furious like men are to be faced with the absence of the strength they want, Kadde found other forces in him; volatile spirals that would have been unfamiliar and gaunt even to the Grapher. Teenage guilt and adult surety. Her conflict was addictive, but the part of her that won was that macabre kind of divine. As much as he meant to kill his partner, too, the girl's throat gave first, and she'd spray herself all over her assailant as the laces dug in. How beautiful she was when the dark stains on the floor were still fresh, fat pools, fed by the gush from her strangled-open neck.

That's when they came in her, meeting her own burst. Maybe the spasms from the Dancer had fed the man's delusions that his Dancer had reached her peak for him too. Kadde groaned outside the ghost he was placating, and looked down in a moment of painful clarity as they were together in the fray of disgusting, cathartic pleasure. Lena's face was gorgeous, vacant of the control she had in their classrooms. He knew her another way now; she'd been honest with him when her own little death spread rapture in her being, started around his pistoning cock. His head hung when he breathed after another minute of continued thrusts. He didn't know if he was punishing her, or if the Grapher tried to jolt the girl into motion again. Soon he just laid there, breathing on her face and mourning their beautiful victim. His cock was still soaking inside her.

Sorry. But they'd both peaked.

And then, when he thought he was going to get up and start healing from this, dislodging his member from her tell-tale place, he instead grabbed her by her hair. The truth wasn't over. It took them all the way between two standing beams. Kadde shook his head but the Grapher had a job to do. The fibers of the old rope dug into Lena just as the wire had into the Dancer. The suspension schematics of the reverent, sadistic posing dug into the skin. The wires had already been set up, but Kadde followed the marks on the beams quickly, with his gift. It didn't take long until Lena was strung up in a grand jeté, ropes kinder than the metal threads but just barely, with her recently filled up cunt left to drip her colleague's seed just as the Dancer's had her innocent blood.

And then, when he looked at the crisscross bindings over her torso, celebrating her emaciated chest and bony center line, contradicted by the woman's bountiful flesh that fought the rope, he collapsed onto his knees, indignant, cock still out, whispering.

"We have to find someone who started out in the country and came here. He delivers to a place near the studio. They will remember his empty charm and breathy laughter as he withdraws from conversation. He will have praised her." Kadde regurgitated as he quickly stuffed his cock back into his pants. "But he would have been gone in the weeks leading up to her disappearance." his hands were on his face. "He tried to stop but all he did was prepare." he sobbed once and looked up at Lena. He felt a wave of adoration and accomplishment, that they'd never part. "I loved you so much. And you'll always stay with me, like this."

 

[jasmeen]

As Lena's lithe frame was wracked with crashing waves of reprehensible, jagged pleasure, her nails dug into Kadde's skin in some small attempt to tether her real self to his, to not fall into the yawning pit of this all-consuming role. She was a woman who was always careful with what came out of her mouth, always chewing on her words before letting them out, but now all that escaped from between the dewy dusky pink lips were uncontrollable husky moans and stammering mewls, depending what part of her peak she was riding and what part of her insides Kadde's unrelenting length was hitting. He was showing her no gentleness as he took her and gave himself, and guilt squeezed Lena's heart as she felt his condemnation each time his girth parted her soaked and squeezing walls. Some part of her wished he'd hurt her more as a way of her finding absolution.

Lena's secret fantasies about Kadde had always been fleeting, fluttering thoughts, she had never allowed them to linger long for fear they might taint their camaraderie. In none of them had she imagined how overwhelmingly he could fill her, to the point where the pinnacle of his thrusts sprung spikes of exquisite pain between her hips. And it was not just the instrument but how he wielded it, she could see from the maddened, haunted, adoring lines of his face that he wanted to punish her for what she had allowed, but he also revelled in it.

All of it intermingled to make her climax unlike any she had experienced before, especially as she also felt the dancer's life rapidly extinguish from her mind, leaving the taste of bile and copper to fill her mouth. The diminishing bucking of her hips met the spasmodic thrusts of Kadde's climax, and her head lolled back as she felt the heat of his seed overtake her insides, pumped deep into her with his slowed but thorough thrusts.

Kadde's weight slumped against her, and she wondered if the photographer still kept a hold on her partner's psyche, if his ragged breathing held a trace of the monster who had just violated and snuffed out such a small, delicate life. Her silent question was almost immediately answered by the ferocity of his hand suddenly entwined in her hair. She gasped, the sharp inhalation containing both surprise and wretched excitement. The girl dancer was gone, it was just Lena now, at the mercy of these two men, one a mere shadow and the other with shadows carving his otherwise angelic face.

He dragged her to her feet, and she remained limp, an imitation of the girl corpse. The show must go on after all. Even as she was maneuvered like some mannequin, she was aware of and distracted by the slow, warm trickle of Kadde's cum carving a pearlescent trail down her fawn brown inner thigh.

The men's arms were strong around her, though it was Kadde's soapy sweaty musk that filled her nostrils. She watched noiselessly as he began to wrap the scratchy old rope around her limbs, no doubt the photographer making a final clumsy and pathetic attempt at artistry and the worship of the small and innocent thing he had slaughtered. He used the rope to part her legs as far as they would go, lewd fluids now splattering on the wooden floor as it leaked out of her. The rope was uncomfortable, marking her skin where it dug in, but Lena remained silent and uncomplaining, merely watching Kadde focus on his final masterpiece. Finally, after posing her in a macabre mockery of a leaping grande jeté, the men collapsed. Lena looked down at them.

Kadde spilled information like it hurt to keep it inside him, then gave a small sob like a little boy who was trying to keep from crying. Lena's throat shifted with her unspoken apology, she knew he wasn't done. There was still the glimmer of the murderer in Kadde's eyes as he gazed up at Lena one more time and uttered his words of adoration for the girl he had broken in so many ways. She was gone. Lena remained. Was there a possibility she would also be like this in Kadde's mind forever? What they had was ruined now, she knew that. But how would he see her after? Lena shuddered.

Tearing her eyes away from the obscenity of his grief and twisted love, she examined the binding around her wrist. Kadde had not tied them in a way where they would be inescapable. Because a corpse would not have needed that. She could potentially get herself down. But the adrenaline was wearing away and her body hurt. Her heart ached.
"He'll likely be looking for the next one already. Another girl on the cusp of womanhood, dedicated to her art..." she finally said in a hoarse near-whisper. She took a shaky breath.
"Kadde, please let me down. We can report back to Rydecker once...once I've cleaned up." the words held no embarrassment, just neutral acceptance tinged with a little sadness. She faced him again. Now just him.
"I really am sorry, Kadde."