Peaceful and placid were the next couple of weeks. Seeking refuge in a town of decaying wood, white wallpapers, and rational residents. Half of the summer has passed now but the sky never fails to linger in ochre until early dusk, the temperature never failing to cast down heat that brought stickiness to your smothered skin. He seems to even age a little himself with the passing summer, more wrinkles that wander around his eyes, more veins that swell out of his skin, a matured exhaustion.

You, him, reach the accomplishment of being normal people for once — exploited pasts that were portrayed over with orderly progression of escorted pains to originate the creation of this place of contentment. Nobody had knew what made the two of you before dwelling in their town; two equivalents of foul people, one of blasphemy, one of war and savagery.

Regardless of these fortunate wheel of events, with Ghost's maturity, he grows a little cold; similar to his former self. Through brushes of his skin and a kiss to your scalp, he's distant to himself and often does not hesitate to lock himself in the bathroom every other day. Intrusively, your ear finds itself pushed up the timber of the locked barricade, making out the noises of the bath's running faucet and a grunt on occasion.

An hour is typically taken up in there before he leaves. There's nothing that much rare to him, if you ignored the peek of gauze at his right wrist under his tactical jacket. You worry yourself considering he's going under the same circumstances as you previously did, recalling his words to you about being more careful after giving him a mediocre excuse about the slits of dried red at your wrists back under the vacancy sign of the motel's parking lot.

You sit on the foot of the bed, back hunched over, legs pointed and facing each other in an awkward angle, waiting for him. The luster of summoned lamp-light brights a side of your face, your hand taking the other to inspect the faded wound branded in the palm; he really did mean it, that you would be his forever, no exceptions.

Ghost roams to the foot of the door-frame, sort of leaning on it as he stopped halfway.

"Your wrist, Simon." you said.

He draws a breath. "Nothing about it."

"Let me see."

"Why the sudden interest?"

"I saw some bloody gauzes in the bathroom trash can — I'm worried about you."

His eyes squint to slots.

"It was just an accident at the gym, he said, "that's all it is."

"You don't bleed that much from the gym, unless you crushed your damn bones on a weight. How stupid do you think I am?"

He was being distant, and cold, and discourteous. Refusal bleeds from his throat as it prevents him from telling the honest truth of it all. Why hide from it? What was the worst you could go around parading all around town? Clearly he did love you, but never shown in public, always in private. No affection out of the doors of the apartment, unless it was a quickie of a handjob right at a pub's stall or the back of an alley. That's what he had felt right now; the right to privacy, to not disclose anything on the subject matter — his wrist.

"It's nothing, nothing." Ghost mutters.

"If it's nothing, you would show me," you said with a puny yell in your voice, collecting yourself on your feet, "because I didn't refuse to show you my wrists back at that motel, didn't I?"

"You did, you gave me that half-assed silence all night until I fucked you."

"That was different."

Your nails dig into the palm with the wound, afraid that you would break the skin to reopen it — but out of the anger, the distress all in the time, you didn't care for it. Maybe you wanted to break the skin, be equal to him and his secretive wrist.

"Please," you whisper, "I won't tell anyone, really."

He bites the lip where his bottom teeth align in place, shaking his head softly, his eyes rolling to the walls. "You're stubborn, fuck, you really are."

"My god. This isn't about me, or Soap, or whoever you think is going to be against you if you show me."

"You know what? Fine, be like that." he said, tugging at the sleeve of the talked wrist, all the way to the elbow.

His lifted head faces the wall to the side, you lean into it, lips parted slightly. There rested wounds that were so immediate to you, so nostalgic that you were able to confirm the hurt that caused them. They weren't fresh; well, some of some were, with pills of dark red around the tattoo and stood in place. A finger runs at the older ones that are not so dark red — they're bumpy and tattered like a collision in the road.

"...Like mine." you hush to yourself.

"Jesus." he tugs the fabric back down and stumbles to the frame, the bridge of his nose pinched in his fingers, his eyes screwed in tight lockets.

You look up to him. "Why'd you do it, though?"

"Stress. Fatigue. Needed to feel something."

It leaves you to wander the possibilities, even the worse ones.

"You do it because of me, Simon?" you rise, "is it our life that's doing this to you?"

"No...honey...it's not that."

"You cut yourself up, Simon—" you said, "and if I'm the one that's doing this to you, then please, just tell me."

"It doesn't matter. I love you, that's what matters." he protested.

He says it, ought to bring you back down to submission, but you only exhale.

"Right. Okay."

Ghost squeezes his bridge harder, tougher, then breaks out of the trance of repeated pinching — thuds of combat boots vibrate the floors while he snatches an additional mask from the hallway console table's cabinet, looking back at the light of the room where you stood a last time before he leaves through the slamming front door of the apartment, then the back door of the building. For the very first time in months, you feel alone again.

You feel like that teenage girl at the edge of her bathtub's edge, with that omnipotent cross over all your religion at your wrist like him, nobody to save you; nowhere to run, to stay. The floors that you stare down upon become a whirlpool of dizziness, your limbs give out so much that you collapse to the wood. You hold your head in your hands, then your face — all while your heartbeat is stabbed in the center, the forgotten tears spilling down to make your cheeks wet.

It's not like you were going to leave him, you wouldn't do that; not to him, hell, not even to yourself. That would just be downright idiotic. To abandon all that has been built up from shattered, repugnant pasts, would be the biggest regret to have, abandoning the man who acted as your savior through it all would be the biggest one to have, though. You knew he meant the last words he told to you before leaving, why would he replicate them all these times with you if not?

None of it was evident, except the arguments.

That was your first regret of it all.

-

It was hard to bear. Days shoot past like a quickened bullet to the flesh, and you somberly wait with a fist pressed to your cheek. You don't bother for looking for him, searching out like a dog with its nose in another person's business. Thanks to his tough persona — he's even toughen you up a little with all the time spent with him. You're no longer sensitive and coping to such tiny things around you, you can manage some big situations without the need of another's person usage of brain or strength. Naivety died down, but not quite.

Your life felt more oddly productive, but more depressingly expanding. You fixed up a crack in one of the cups, collected some clothes off the floors into the cabinets, infested the entire apartment so it wouldn't smell of mothballs and senior dust, even having the chance to be outside more. It was different, boring, but at least you got things done in the nick of time. Without a doubt you missed Ghost, but there was a personal freedom when he wasn't there.

You even separated all his clothes from yours and kept them in all their own prisons, in a drawer that was tucked into the walk-in closet that acted like a safe. The gnash at your hand began to sting a few days after his departure, you didn't know why, but your nails dug at the itch each time it did. Loneliness might've been drawing you to delirium, asylum-worthy. Silence rang at your ears like a high frequency pitch, the only thing that really kept you sane were the noises from outside when you cracked opened a window.

A worthy distraction is when you went for strolls outside, which is what exactly you were doing right now; the sun on the brink of sundown and night leaching in. Your hands of sweat dug into the downed material of your skirt; jean-ed and paired with a white tank top with thick-ish straps. The stroll made you lost in thought; you were right about yourself, about being a lowlife daughter, but now a lowlife personal in general in improvement.

Over and over, that's what the image of yourself was, a weakened lowlife who depended on the man who was only a one-night stand at first.

Turn a curve, the night was assassinating the skies now. A few hours after midnight. So many faces were blurred by with your stroll — none of him. Ghost was always going to be a bother in your life, he essentially made you; brought your dull body back to the roots of life. He was like a virus with no cure — unavoidable, even if he was actively fucking you, he would always be there. You wanted to forget him, you wanted to forget of all the affection and how special he made you feel like no other man, him plainly fading away from your memory like blood seeping into wooden panels. He had no purpose in life, not when you weren't right with him — useless, impractical.

But you plagued his brain, you both fatally did to each other without knowledge.

Bending over an ignited streetlamp of illumination, the apartment building loomed over the steep sidewalk like a threat in the night's stay. You hike up the steepness and bring yourself to the routinely walk to the back-steps of the structure where you normally entered, locked and secured unless wielded with a key from the landlord.

The hallways are quieter, more lone, except a toddler at a door and two people further down; non-aggressive lips to each other, the boy's arms tossed around the girl, something straight out of a romance film. You try to look away, to forget but you can't — you see him in the younger boy's place, you're in the girl's place, embraced and loved in the film-like sense. The two are left out of sight once you climb to the second floor, key in the keyhole once again with a dash of isolation.

Lights are left on how you left them. Bleach infuses the passage of your nostrils with some cinnamon air freshener, the curtains are pulled together closed. Then you walk further into the abyss of light, all the way to the bedroom where the light seemed to shine brighter than the ones you've purposefully left on to be able to navigate through the halls. You remain at the doorway with an aura of easiness derives from the bedroom, on the mattress, a bible and a crucifix.

It's ominous to say the least, which is why you pace back a few inches rigorously, mindful of the potential break-in. Although it's a minute too late to rush out of the room, the walk-in closet shutters open of its hinges and a blade is held to your throat — a hand clamps over your almost-screaming mouth. You eye back to the person, a familiar face. That man from the pub a couple of miles back.

You're brought to the foot of the bed, he's leaning over you, noticing the hunting knife that is held at your throat.

-

He clicks his tongue. "You scream when I pull my hand away and I'll splatter your throat's blood all over this blade, got it?"

You nod in a horrified agreement and the slick hand is taken away.

"Where's your masked man? He left this building a few days ago and never returned."

"I don't know."

"He despises me don't he? I know it."

"Maybe he does, a lot," you said, "why have you been following us—me?"

"Don't try to change the subject now."

"I'm curious. You didn't even like me at first and thought of me as a whore. —That’s all I am to you, some blasphemous whore."

"I needed to find you somehow, return you to your mother, to the community."

The cycle of peace is broken — he's that reminder that drags you down to the cesspool of religion again, he's the one who stalls like a vice in your head and in the realistic life, and you loathed him for that. You wish he didn't have your hands in a lock, then you would turn that knife around and point to him, gut him like a pig to what he's broken from you.

"I don't want that, I'm perfectly fine here."

He tears his eyes from the contact, as if he were anxious about it before slipping the contact back into connection.

"They don't want that—you're a missing person. Unfinished business."

"Well, they are something I never want to go back to," you said, "most of that town didn't even care for me except as a preacher for the church."

His nostrils flare as he leans closer, head shaking.

"No, no, no," he said in a childish manner, as if he struggles to process your words of rejection to be returned — but it's true, you don't want to go back to them, start all over from that vile start where everyone seemed to abandon you and your struggles. "You don't understand. None of that matters, they just need their beloved preacher's daughter back in place... have her disciplined for what she's done."

"For being a real woman? Living out of that cult ring? —And I thought you were all religious, thou shall not kill. You wouldn't kill, you couldn't."

"If it's completely necessary, then that is allowed. In this case, it very much is for a girl like you."

On the trace of the ceiling, out from the hall, you can see a glimpse of the building's fluorescent flood in. You're unable to see the door opening or whoever is coming in with the man towering over you, but someone else is clearly present. A pre-relief washes over you like flowing water, relieved that somebody sane was here to free you of this man of insanity.

"I saw you on that church pew that day, with him. You were talking bad of the church, the religion—" he said.

"I just didn't want myself there. I was sick of myself."

"That's ridiculous."

A shadowed silhouette of a skull materializes from the light out in the hall, right out the bedroom. His heavy breaths are stifled and quiet from the balaclava, about a few feet behind the man. His eyes are looked over to where you were laid flat on the bed, you return the look for a brief second, but snap back to the ones that are held above you. You twist in the hold a little and distract the man on you even more, unaware of Ghost at the room's entrance.

"You never feel sick of yourself in that community?"

"No, because I know how to be a devoted part of it unlike you."

"...And I say that's complete bullshit."

Some rage is flurried in his eyes and the failing knife is brought to strength in his fist, but he breathes a thick one first. A stern expression at his traceable wrinkles. As the man turns in place, Ghost has him tugged to his chest and holds him in a chokehold with one arm. You're reassured, content but once it 's about to happen it's already way too far—

"Simon, the knife—"

When you're about to lunge and grab at the weapon; the man in the chokehold gets to Simon first, the blade meant for you instead right into somewhere in his upper chest. The hunter knife digs at him in a uncertain angle, under his left shoulder, deep at the side of his chest, might be near his heart. He grunts at the sting. The man tries to gain another hit, at his neck, but you're swift to tackle at him and his hands.

Ghost hauls him to the floor in a backwards tug and he falls with him, you're also fallen with them. The knife slants to your neck. His facial expressions are distorted in a way that could be considered something from a horror flick, spit from his mouth as his breaths are drawn to death with Ghost's arm around his neck. The man attempts to angle the knife better, to jab at you, but you bite at the flesh of his hairy wrist in a fury. He lets go of the weapon and once you realize he does, you're snatching it off the floor in a struggle.

You tilt the tip of the knife at his stomach, somewhere at his ribcage. He yells in another childish tone, impossible to free himself from the hold that is at his head.

"Do it—" Ghost yells, sort of.

A gurgle charges the room when the knife is drawn into his skin. Blood flies to your cheek. It then sinks into another section of skin, underneath his heart, on the other side. His gurgles puncture to a wheeze as his lungs are hit. His legs thrash at you and you lose your balance, the bloodied knife sliding across the panels of the floor.

Ghost pants. "To the bathroom, come on."

"Okay... okay, I'll get his legs."

You tie up his legs in your arms and help lift him on Ghost's breathy count of one-two-three. The man's heavy, like a stoned boulder, but easy to drag to the bathroom with most of his help at his head. It's a half-carry, half-drag to the tiled room — easy now since he's beginning to weaken from the stab wounds.

Ghost is the one who gets into the bathtub, pulling the man over the brink and stationing him to his chest, still in that tight lock of a hold. The man wants to break out of all of this but is too driven by weakness that you're able to climb in alongside them and get on top of him. His arm tightens around his neck. He heaves and chokes on a sharp breath while keeping his shot-open eyes on you.

Fingers lift up the cloth of his white button-up and his spilling wounds are exposed to the modern-time air. You hesitate, but it's for your own good — Ghost's own good. A fist forms of your hand and you beat at the bleeding flesh of his stomach, you don't stop, brutality and vengance takes you over like a rabid creature. He puts up a tough fight at death and is alive for a few more seconds through your punches.

And with his air being constricted, his wounds beaten to colors of skin and blood, at last he dies; one last look over to Ghost, to you, and his death is accepted into the hands. Not of God, nowhere near heaven when his last few actions were of this. You draw yourself back a little, breathing, blood staining your white tank and anywhere, everywhere. Ghost does too and is laid back at the backside of the wall.

"You're back. I never thought you would..." you finally said.

"I would've eventually."

He's exhausted, almost glossy-eyed. He looks like that man of war, one on the battlefield, one who is used to taking men by shock and killing them without him even being a person in their eyes. He was always killing no matter what. Mentally, physically, he was would always be killing someone. And you're left unable to think. You mount off the dead man and the alive one, clearing yourself from the scene.

-

Bleach and a metallic scent, none of it was pleasant. Much like how none of the apartment was no longer pleasant to be in anymore.

Collapsed and on your knees to the stained-red wood floors, you're going through shock. You've killed a man; there was nothing more to it, nothing to do about the deed that had already been done. Innocence, cleanliness, it's all unusable compared to that. You pull your knees to your chest, like the many times you have, and smell the blood on you like a sniffing animal.

Ghost staggers into the room not too long behind you, a hand at his wound, sliding down the wallpaper and staining it with a trail of blood. You're both lost, considered criminals, and a dead body was rotting in the porcelain of the bathroom's tub. Your breathing with his was sort of sexual, in a way, but mostly pained and strangled.

"How'd he even find us? I swear he's a parasite." he breathes.

"We're not too far from that pub. It's a close town to it."

You cannot stop looking at your knees, bruised, and the dripping blood that dries like chalk to the lines of your skin. But he's grunting and wheezing more now which causes you concern, looking over and seeing he is bleeding profusely from the side of his chest.

"Oh Christ, Simon." you said awkwardly in a whine full of tears, rushing over and kneeling to him. "he hit your heart, or somewhere near there. We need the ER, the paramedics—"

"I've been through similar... Fuck, Is it good— Is it bad?"

"No, Simon— You're bleeding out, okay? It's not well." you echoed.

You examine the wound with your index finger. There's blood oozing like waterfalls through his t-shirt.

"There's too much. It's coming out too fast."

Ghost slips his hand to yours, squeezing and remaining. His naked touch is so soft, so familiar. You squeeze back but that's the less of your worries, you wanted to phone up emergency services but you just couldn't — with the blood stains, the dead body; you both were just criminals on the run and the police were going to be no help. He was being unnaturally calm about it, like he wanted to die; Why was he so calm? Were you that easy to forget, to drift away from, to love as a person?

And you were being eaten away at. With guilt, with horror, with sadness all at once. Your body is degraded with these emotions like how you were with that dead man's words and you felt the air from your lungs being stolen when Ghost was in this situation, near you like this. You're running a hand along his face, looking over his chest.

"Honey — honey. Listen to me." he said, "go over to the cabinet over there."

"Why?"

"Just do it, and grab one of my handguns. Any of them."

You sigh but comply with it, leaving him so you could wide-open the drawer and slide your fingers around a gun. The same one he told you to wield at the motel. Your lower lip is bitten, but you walk over and kneel back to his limp, depressed figure.

"Okay. What do I do with it?"

His breath hitches. "Bring us over to the bed. Both of us."

It was a hard task considering his size and bulk — but you follow with that too. You surround your arm around his shoulder and assist him with getting up, he limps and is constantly falling against you before you release him to the bedsheets from the walk you take. Tears want to fall at the sight, but they don't, you can only swallow hard and keep your head up.

You curl up to his side, taking his palm with the faint wound and squeezing it with yours tightly that had the same mark. The bedsheets soak up his blood.

"I don't know what you're trying to do," you said, "but I don't want for you to die... I really can't live without you and whatever. I can't go back to that shithole, I just can't, we fixed each other — you fixed me, then I would need to get a new boyfriend."

"You don't need a new boyfriend," he said tenderly. His head is pounding.

"I would need to move on somehow."

"I'll live on, somehow, fucking hell, you're making this depressing. You'll be better of some sort of widow who mourns me till you're old."

"That's depressing on my part though, isn't it?"

"Maybe it is."

Your fingers intertwine with his fingers, closing over them, tracing over his knuckles. He uses some weak strength to tug off his mask, throwing it to the floor, and you bend your head to his bare face. You linger there, close.

"Wait, what should I do with the gun?"

"What you want." Ghost said.

You roll your eyes. "Just tell me, unless—"

"Suicide."

"What?"

"You said you didn't want to be a widow, so, why not die together?"

"And you want me to go out with a bullet in my head? Bleeding out from a wound sounds easier, yeah. Unless you shoot me with your last bit of strength, then that's considered a murder. Not suicide."

"I'm not doing that."

"Please, Simon," the beg in your voice turns him over, and if it were the last thing he would do, so be it. "we do it to each other, put us out of our misery."

He can only nod, motioning for you to straddle on top of him, legs at the sides of his inflicted chest. You stabilize yourself on top, gun in hand, body trembling but brave. "God, please don't look at me, don't make me do that."

Ghost tilts his head in a weak move, his eyes are glassier, but did not cry. He only bites the side of the cheek and said, "And if I do?"

"Then I'll let you bleed out, and it's painful for me to look at someone who loves me like this. You were the first man to truly show me that love, nobody else, if I keep eye contact then I might just die of a broken heart, maybe," you replied, aiming the gun at the barrier of skin which separates his brain from the outer-workings, "I'll feel like I'm murdering someone for no reason, like you're my worst enemy. I would never willingly do this to you... but you're bleeding out now, giving me a good reason to. Other than that then... I would never live with that guilt."

His eyelids are half-gazed. He doesn't give a response.

"I wouldn't do this to you either," he said, "but I need you to do this. You love me and you would truly do this for someone you love, breaking them free of a miserable life. I didn't cut open our palms and press blood together in a truce if you weren't going to sacrifice yourself for something like this. Out of all the violence I've done for my life, I couldn't do this to myself. It's difficult." He closes a hand over the barrel of the gun and presses it further to his forehead.

Perhaps you were tired of this, your single fingertip pressed to the solid trigger and up until then everything was a blinding vision of non-reality. Raw bruises and spilled salt of tears, though you did not hear the deafening gunshot. All that you were able to see in perspective were more samples of red on the cotton pillow, and Ghost's silent skin that was draining paler by the second.

He was no longer warm underneath you, where you sat on top of him. The gun was clean, but you were not; tarnished and filthy without a choice. More blood was being soaking into the sheets like a gauze, your gauze. The one he had wrapped for you. Guilt was quick to replace your veins of blood, but you committed a good effort; Ghost was a bad man. He should've been punished in the first place. You didn't want God, you didn't want your father, but none of it mattered anymore.

The state of shock and guilt was becoming of you, and fast. You wanted to rid of yourself — rid of the one who was the filthiest, considered one, since you weren't wanted by anyone at this point. Not Ghost, or anyone of the church; you were a nobody and that was it.

So there were was only a single left to do. Your breaths are audible and fast, and you're not longer in control of yourself, at least that's what it feels like. The cross of Jesus Christ risen above the door's frame is the spectator of this terrorizing prospect, your fingers are clenching at the gun. The apartment is empty — you could feel sweat blowing from the heat in sticky pairs, eyes twitching — judging eyes of the man on the cross becoming overbearing. The gun's barrel prods at your forehead.

If not to die for religion, then let it be for him.

"You've repeated that dozens of times," Ghost said, cigarette to his lips where his mask flipped up to his nose, "And I've reassured you—you're fine."

You obscure your face with your hands, gauze in only small portions now. "I still feel guilty, though," you said, muffled, "I let him sit there, I talked to him."

"So what? You were a little drunk, happens to most of us."

Fields of fern, dried and washed-out shades of green. His truck parks right near the center and off the edge, out of the public eye — not too far from last night's location, there's a batch of forest at your side of the window. Smoke clouds in the vehicle and sniffs to your nostrils, bitter and almost acidic. No shabby motels or sketchy bars to catch up with old friends that were ditched once came to the realization that you were put in an incognito danger and crazed religious fanatics — just a truck.

You’re waiting, expecting the penalty. Now that a greater side of things were out of the bag now—about Ghost, your current locations, your rebellions— you’ve completely lost it. Shredded and submitted to the swelling hysteria; that had began to bloom its petals once you step foot into that place of bar and green fluorescent. You feel as if you’re not longer tied to your physical being, body swept away and too unstable to keep on with this secondary life .

Instead, you’re a mere pneuma, another physical section of your fleshed body. You’re not longer than religious idolater but a more distorted, freed individual. Fervid, prurient and vulgar — all while maintaining your primary agonies of naivety, innocence. Nothing was to do about that, cause no matter how hard you tried to deny it; you would always be that credulous little girl, trapped in the incarcerations of forced maturity, grown and a poor adulthood.

By your actions of hiding away in your two palms, one patched and one not, that recognition of a young girl oozes through the cracks. Your tears of frames guilt still pour, despite being reassured from his words; some of the tears not even guilt, but from indignity. You’ve grown to be more pathetic, a parasite to those around.

He pets your hair gracelessly, as if he were combing at an inanimate object. “Don’t know why you’re still crying, doll, it’s been hours.”

”It’s been thirty minutes.”

“Okay—yes, but, I don’t see why you’re still upset about it,” he said, “I’m not upset about it.”

You sniff. “It’s not about that anymore,” a stutter erupts, “I just feel pathetic at this point.”

“We’re all pathetic,” he said through his cigarette, leaning back into the driver’s seat, “That’s how things are.”

”No, I meant I'm pathetic—I'm a deadbeat daughter."

"And I'm a deadbeat father, see, we have a lot in common."

As much as you strived to contradict against that, he was unfortunately in the right. Despite being hundreds of miles away and embarked on a voyage to cleanse of those 'deadbeat' allegations, it still follows the both of you, stalking and infused into the great connection of those indistinguishable commons. He could never flee of his infidelity and intentional murders — and you could never flee of your doctrines, the purpose you were brought into this world for.

"Do you think we'll make it?" you queried, "Get away from everything, forget everything?"

"I don't know."

For a instant, there's no longer maturity. Authority. For once, he's unsure of himself; powerless to your questions. Besides — nothing of himself was a reliable shoulder to lean upon, cause despite showing the knowledge of commanding he was really just on the same level of uncertainty as you were.

About a week and a half into this fugitive domain and there was no distinguishable differences in comparison to your antiquated-past life. There was more space for a new start; regardless of having already embarked on one. You and him would reestablish, start over no malformations in the fissures of this start, no doubt, no confrontations of your old lives that came crawling back for more as a hellish reminder.

It would be a normal life. A single place of living — maybe the great chance of an apartment — and progress into an endeavor of a standard life; wiped clean off religion, services of the military, affairs. Ghost would be stood in the arrangement of a husband, you his lovely-archetypal person of a housewife. The concept was perfect in your mind — so pure, filtered out of the disgusting former lived-out spans of life.

Your curved pointer finger wipes the last trickles of tears that soaked your palms. "I think we should start over." the words slip into a quivered format, prepared in a concept that would be reasonable to agree with.

"How would we?" he puffs, "We've fucked this chance at a starting-over already."

You turn to him. "We could drop all our memories of this, get a place, get jobs, and just have one decent try at a normal life." the notion is a bit extreme, too soon and coming all at once, "Just be people for once."

"You really want that?"

"It's better than this." you said, "Better than running from everything all the time."

His light smokes out of its residues, the rest is diminished out the gap of the window's pane, he sighs and breathes in absence of the clouds of smoke that puddled at his mouth in a previous manner. You bore at him, musing of thoughts and decisions; the mannerism in which his eyes roam at the front of the dashboard glass. He doesn't yet want to cooperate with the abstraction of that fate — not yet, at least — but at the same time, it just seemed so right. So pitch-perfect in place.

He would hate the disappointment that would fill your face, the coldness that would burst at your chest for him. He wanted to keep you around for longer, tamper around with you in similarity of a doll, keep you under his wing of corruption till you finally rupture into a singular figure of a demoralized girl. Sure, love was there, Ghost loved you; he envisaged — so why would he ever let you break free of him? Why else would he be oh, so, longing for your bodily frame of an existence?

Your over-trustfulness was a gain for him; there would be no point in dissociating from it now. He wanted this, you wanted this — there was no hurt in an expedition at a plain, homesick spectacle life.

"Guess you're right,"

"You really up for it?"

"We can play at that game," he only shrugs with monotone in his vocal chords, "Have an attempt, distract ourselves, there's no point in taking the same routes over and over again."

You bite the vessels of your underlip. "I love you." you said, full of hopefulness.

That damned game.

-

Sometime in a less-melancholy interval, there's that apartment; one that is not of your hopes, but one that is white. It's almost white all over, except for the wooden panels linings of walls that only reminded of childhood. Windows with laches on each side of almost every room — the single-person-yet-shared bedroom, a portion of the kitchen, the living room, bathroom. Closets are to the sides of some walls, rooms too unevenly divided; too retro, almost eighties-like.

There you stood in the bathroom, half-naked, a t-shirt of milk and panties the same shade. There's only a crack of the hall in sight but you tap the bottom of the door with your bare foot, unlatching it to a widened length and wedging sticky, summer air in. Towels trash at the cream tiles of the bathroom, a plastic shower curtain adjusted to the left on the bowl, and wall-tiles of a fouled pink where a blurred-grid window laid, the blurs protecting yours and his privacy.

You poke at your face while you turn on a heel, sauntering to the halls and turn one corner that opened up to that single-person bedroom forced to fit two. He was on the mattress, sprawled and almost as naked as you were, handgun cleaned being with a rag — more specifically, a Beretta 92 in a glory, grey and metal all over. A cigarette lights from the brink of his lips, face peeled of the mask, blond and dark eyes all over. There's a rotting cross at the top of the doorframe where you appear from.

Was this a dream? A memory? Another one of your hopeless fantasies? It's uncertain, unknown and uncharted like a land out-of-bounds. For sure, it's dreamy and all blurry — like the fogs of the weather on a moist, misty day. There's a sunlight of freedom at the windowsills and humid to the rooms, giving signals and features to this dreamy, memory, or fantasy.

"Still haven't gotten dressed?" you said, digging at the cabinet of trinkets.

"Too busy."

He polishes the top of the gun, click of his tongue. His eyes drawn to you, though.

"Exhausted from polishing a gun. — draining."

"I didn't say draining — I said busy." he said.

You trudge over to him, hair-tie over your wrist now, your arms pin him down to the mattress; one at the side of his pale leg, the other at the stuffed pillow where he rests. A small arch in your back shapes into place, your breaths at his face while he just about goes cross-eyed from the distance he stares you at.

"Now you're just taunting me to get my arse up."

"Taunting? How am I taunting—?"

"Pretty face, pretty breaths, pretty panties."

Your palm slaps at his forearm, playfully, no intent of 'serious' taken.

You push your palm into the foam of the mattress harder. "I'm doing nothing but leaning over you."

"I know, but you're driving me crazy with yourself. Mania, even."

The gun — the Beretta 92 — plunges from his grip to the bedside table. Disused. He searches you up and down, limb from limb, skin to skin; then both of his arms circle you, capturing you in a waist-clutch, pulling you down onto him and accepting your lips to his. The cigarette is also rejected — but it's to the floor, blown-out for safety and filtered to ashes. The embrace of lips is sloppy, cigarette-tasting with a marginal mint toothpaste taken from your teeth; it's a fifty-fifty division.

Ghost is no longer busy with his gun, but occupied with you; his girlfriend, a one-night stand taken to extreme heights. Prior to your life without him you were nothing but a puritan-like, average, knee-length-dress-wearing daughter to a man of god — but to the two-ish months of living this common life, no religion or disturbances, you're finally at ease; you're a normal girl, just like everyone else, like how you've dreamt of since pubescence. No more restrictions of lace dresses, morality constraining you by the neck, only crosses of where those used to be.

With the apartment in a convenient town, one that had been discovered once you had driven a few places back right until his truck gave out, one that was one town across from where Soap—Johnny resided. You had made the choice to get a job at the local library, Ghost was more stay-at-home but never declined to taking in one of your shifts if you were ill or just flat-out not in the mood to go work.

You're in an own paradise now, it's freeing, retro but so worth to live.

"God," you gasp, "You taste so good."

In response, he cradles the back of your head, driving your head and lips back to his mouth. For the next hour you spend a great segment of the morning in sweltering, adherent sheets; your hips grind up against his first, progressing to stripping of each other's garments, leading up to him being inside of you till you were both panting like fatigue dogs — perspiring skin and limbs attached as if you were conjoined.

After some time, his cum loads up into your walls, like the many other recalled events of the same action; you thank yourself for discovering the wonders of birth control pills while strolling the corner drug-store that one day. You're frail on top of him, slumped at his chest with a fully arched structure, breasts to a sturdy, sweaty chest. A ridiculously large and intimidating hand expands at your back, almost covering the full area of skin, stroking in feeble totals.

To return the caress — the hands at his sides wrap around him in a hug, leaning your head up his bare chest, the accelerated pulsations of his heart in a rhythmic pattern. He brushes his lips to your scalp before lighting another cigarette from the pack that hung off the edge of the miniature table to the side, keeping his strokes at your back.

You lay there. Wide-eyed, relaxed, ultimately immured. Aiming your head to where his head was, you observe, then steal the new light at his lips and return it to yours; you sit up on the edge of the bed, smoking the item.

"Was that enough to get you out of bed?" you ask him.

"More than enough."

A gloom of smoke chokes at your face before disappearing into the air. You snatch your panties which hang over the foot of the bed, as well as your shirt, dressing yourself of them. Ghost breathes a deep sigh then stretches himself out; muscles flexing in a showcase-like manner, kept identical from the routines he keeps up with while visiting the gym. He still has those illustrations of ink on his left forearm, black and extensive, his most significant feature.

He sits up in the same technique as you but gets off more sooner, off for a bath for himself.

"Ghost?"

He stops, swiveling to your sat body on the mutual bed.

"Let me come with you."

-

Afternoons are longer. They're more kinder, more warmer with the scopes of summer intact. You come from the side of the apartment, purposive for the theatre, but instead ended up strolling through town. There's life and exuberance that you could be having contrary to your strangeness. Passing faces were of some middle-agers and teenagers, but there's a handful of traditionally average people whose lives you wished to have so badly for yourself.

Some of the younger faces think of you as a peer, smiles at their curved-cornered mouths or a mumbled greeting as you passed on the blistering concrete. It makes you feel fit-in, like you were one of the them, which brings to a joy to repay an address to them too. At long last you find yourself perched on an auditorium seat — a balanced arm on the ledge of the seat, a viewing of Eyes Without a Face being projected.

Legs extend to the crest of an empty seat on a lower level of you — on that note, more than half of the theatre absent other the duos of couples rowed in random arrangements. Revolting squishes of lips disproportionate to the volume from the screen, out-balanced to a degree. Your throat clears and you shift placements in seat, but that doesn't seem to help you concentrate on the flick of a french film with those squishes advancing to something more eroticized.

Nothing can distract you of him — even if you tried your best. His ceaseless touch stamped onto your body like ink to a page, that lasting cigarette-smoke when you swiped your tongue across his teeth, the molded intimacy sticking to you; never leaving, no matter what you did to forget. Your legs cross on top each other at the conjured-up image. White lace droops down your thighs when they squeeze together.

In this present moment, you absorption is no longer on the screen, a palm shakily drags down to your skirted pelvis. You don't want this, but it's some sort of natural reflex, one that cannot be terminated in the ticks of time. Disgracefully — blasphemously, you breathe out and lull your palm to your thigh, then up your skirt. Your body slumps to the seat and sags down so your hips are more upwards.

Through the squishes, the petrified screams of the minute-mark the movie sets at, you're nothing but another variety of those noises. A first-time experience; just like that dirty, sketchy motel room of tuscan, only more shaming. The next enduring span of the motion picture were spent in an experience of indignity, a loss of self-respect — the full time you're conceptualizing him with you, his hand ideally than yours, your nose buried in his jacket which you wear; it smells of him. (Cigarettes, liquor, cologne.)

When the end title screen rolls to black and credits of words come into conception onto the lightened screen — your inner-thighs are already splattered at that time, drenched while your hand quickly removes itself from underneath. Vile.

It's full dark outside. The streetlights glow a fresh yellow — almost white hue onto the streets. To your luck, there's still signs of human-life, out-of-danger from the encounters of being alone at this hour. You turn the routined corner store, apartment in eyeshot, skipping a few of steps of the entrance with your trembling shanks. You reach for the key in the pocket of Ghost's jacket, the tarnished object in the lock, turning and staggering into the complex.

All of the shades drawn and the apartment is somber; it's quiet in addition, humid and burning, per usual. Your nose points in all kinds of directions and you take a few more steps into the place, inquisitive to his showing. A thump surfaces from down the hall, where the bedroom was, where a lamp is the lone light of everything and dripping from the crack of the door opened mid-way.

You walk on quiet feet the rest of your way down the hall. What was this? A robbery? An affair? Maybe he wasn't just as faithful as you interpreted him to be, but you hate that, you hate how you think of him like that — looking down on the idea. He would never do a thing. Pressing your face to the door and peaking through the crack, you brace yourself for the worse, but at the end of the day; it's not the worst, it's alike to your lone move-date of disgrace.

A hand, a fist, a bare stomach of abs, and a twitched face. He's there, in that same situation as you were in the theatre — though more personal and exclusive. You punch your knuckles to the frame of the door and bite the pink that's at the inside of your mouth, you feel filthy spectating him during such a private moment. Poor him, you thought, but you look back on the times where he pockets your panties after sex and never returns to them to you considering being forgettable. He was as equally filthy.

Squinting back into peep-hole, you study the sight further and only shock yourself one more step ahead. Not only is there a fist around himself — there's a common, cotton that rags down with the clenched hand and at his cock. It's yours. To the lace, to the bow at the front, it's yours to be confirmed.

With the cross of Jesus Christ watching such a sacrilegious act, you join in, dragging him down to a hell with you; in that tiny room, with that wood of cross at the doorframe, where everything holy and considered normal went to die.

Over the course of events; a cramped pick-up truck, a stay in a motel with a near-death-bleeding-out experience, back in the truck, and now on the road hundreds of miles away from hometown — you feel like you're losing it. Hysteric. Your sense of reality is starting to blur, unlaced from your previous condition of living. You find purgatory in his presence, in his truck, but he reassures you're just homesick. 

At the end of the day, he wasn't a good man. He was a criminal of war, a reason of infidelity, and near-murderer. But for the first time, ever since you were a young girl, you had seen him differently — you were seeing a man differently more than normal. They're usually pressuring, stern, archetypes of monsters in the real world; Ghost serves more as a symbol of an ideal man, dull yet affectionate at command. 

Naive and incapable to survive out in the real natures of the world, you give yourself to him ungrudgingly, discovering a shelter of safety and rapture when with him. He's one of the first to not only be in love with your body, but loves you for your actual identity and kind nature, presumingly. Uncertainty had always clung to you, even when it came to him, an unsure man of many secrets. All you knew is that he was violent, tender, and private. 

That's why one of the stops for the day was a pub; off the highway, nearing the late-afternoon, way too mature for your liking. It was his own way of cooling off, de-stressing off the responsibility of carrying both of you on. You sat on a barstool of chipped wood, a shot glass at your elbow, and Ghost under the bleeding lights of flashing signs at the walls. Shallow conversations are carried between him and another man — they seem close, old chaps, high-school friends perhaps, and he has a girl at his hip. 

Your hunched figure straightens and you prod at the shot glass. Ghost chuckles, a deep raspy one at the man with the girl at hip, then he takes notice to you. 

"You haven't met her, haven't you?" Ghost refers to you. 

"No, I thought you were married." the man said. "Who's the younger lass?" 

"Left the wife, too much of a bother," he said, "She's my new girl." 

The man's eyes widened but decrease in size when he stretches a hand to you; a tattoo near his wrist, fewer than the ones Ghost adorned on his left skin. 

"Nice to meet you, lassie," he said, taking your hand in his, "Soap—or Johnny, Ghost's friend." 

You shake his hand. "Nice to meet you, how'd you find him?" 

"Coincidence." 

"Ah." 

"Why are you two so far down the state?" Soap asks, "Last time I've heard, he was settled in some small town upstate."

Ghost clears his throat. "We're on a runaway, needed a fresh start." 

"And the missus doesn't care?" He interrogates Ghost. 

"She doesn't want anything to do with me," he shakes his head, taking a pour of his drink, "Neither the kid." 

"You're making yourself sound like a scumbag." Soap said. "How'd you find her?" 

"Town preacher. She was the preacher's daughter." 

"Didn't take you as one to be interested in religious gals," he smacks Ghost on the back with a free hand, "Good for you." 

He's more energetic than Ghost was, naturally friendly and welcome. Who knew that two complete polar opposites could be friends, some sort of best friends, even in the military; that's what you picked up from their back-and-forth rambles. He's a majority of smiles and one to lead on conversations easily. Easing off the conversation and slipping back into your area of thoughts, hysteria, you allow your perspective to wander the pub. 

In the corner, in a crowded booth of solitude and abandonment, there's four people — divided equally, two men and two women. They're younger than you were, not young adults like you, but rather teenagers; senior year, junior year even. One of the girls has a packet in a hand and holds it out in front of the rest of the people at the table. The plastic pouch's remains are poured out onto the wood of the booth's table, white and shining under the feeble bulb, a solid card is pulled from one of the boys. 

It was stupid to do that sort of thing here. Especially with people beginning to crowd in at the strike of rush hour, but they're fearless, taking turns at the smothered powder; index fingers pressed to one of their nostrils while the other swallows up a bit of the white, leaving a portion for the others. Memorials of behind the church, trying that similar category of substance but at a needle to the arm at the same age, reappear at the sight. Memorials that you begged to forget, to forgive to God. 

You could barely contain yourself behind the church, so what made you think you could contain yourself now? Without help, without constraint, you were arranging in your mind. Arrangements of reliving that memorial. 

"Honey?" 

His voice is soft, smooth like a polished plane top. Ghost. 

You whip your head back around. "Huh, yeah?" 

"Did you hear me, love?" 

"What'd you say? Sorry." 

"I said meet me in the bathroom in a bit." he whispers out the side of his mouth, "After I deal with him." 

-

These situations seem to unravel in nostalgic reels. Scene after scene, they repeat; same situations, different settings. (That were abnormally almost alike.) 

You're forced on your knees under some green light of the pub, in the bathroom, it glows on your face like a nuclear radiance. The green light is accompanied with a shadow as well, Ghost's looming shadow of a drunken figure. Nearby is a rectangular window that's right at the left side of the wall, unable to reach and too small to fit anything through it except the night's air. He compelled you to the last stall, hand at your scalp and pushing you to the midpoint of his jeans. 

His breaths are dense like a weight from his few sips of alcohol and a cigarette slipped to his lips. You sit shameful and in a pleasuring position; hands on your thighs and head sloped upwards. Your identity itself is unknown, not yet permitted to itself, but an amalgam of many girls that could've been in the same posture you're in. Bodies of beauty and loss painted in a sexual light. 

Guilty, pent-up, you claw and slide your fingers to the zipper of his jeans — the metal rod coming down while you work at his belt, throwing it to the side of the toilet while you shove the garments of his lower half down. More sin runs in your veins than blood, chastening yourself for bringing yourself to stare at that powder; to bring up the delight of the memory of a needle stabbed to your skin. Desperate, your lips hunger at his blunt head, no longer struggling to take his full length; only a few bobs and it's prodding at the back of your throat. 

He breathes, throwing his head back with a palm splayed at your head. "Fuck, sweetheart, where'd this come from?"  

A gag sputters at your widened mouth, your fingers raking at his thighs in response. Tears split down your caved-in cheeks as he permanents a firm clutch at your hair. He's grunting and has one arm finding purchase at the sprayed tiles of the walls, blinded by the greens of the lamplight when his head is met at a position that appears to look snapped. You find yourself acting as scandalous as ever, the most scandalous you've ever been. 

Picturing it, it's almost a reality, realistic; the dead preacher's daughter caught sucking the married lieutenant's cock. It would cause a stir in the town, like flies to a rotting animal's carcass, your bloodline in decrepit and decaying — and just because you wanted to act like a little whore, going around and resisting her religion with some man that had her easily persuaded and on a hook.  

Heat upsurges to your face and mobs your ears, a familiar suffocation birthing to life. His head rubs up at the tissue that's at the back of your throat, vowing that it was bulging out the outer layer of skin. Your hand under the aging gauze flexes and twitches, struggling to continue nailing at his thighs. There's a gnawing at both of your naked knees at the dirtied tile of the bathroom, denting the skin and impairing it.

The more you jolt your head and attach your lips around each prominent vein, tongue running up the slit of his blunt head, his impulsive act is to improve in volume and spasm at the barriers of your mouth. His hand at the wall slaps and fingers crook into the cracks, torturing himself with the mask at his head and emerging heat; the mask acts as a hazard, nearly at a loss to breathe normally.

With one, final thrust around his girth — his hand pushes your head away, heavier gags grappling at your throat while his cum is shot and splattered across your face; you take it like a sacrament, open and willing. He lets you off, leaving you to lean on the locked door of the stall, your fingers shakily stealing at the liquid at your face and staining it on your fingers, tongue lapping at it. His knees are bent, his arms lengthened out and at the walls, head hung low between them. 

You've never seen him more vulnerable, less dull. Drops of tears still spill at your cheeks despite not choking on him anymore, your face contorted and coming to be buried in your knees that pressed at your chest. Quiet wails stifle into your legs — heart weakened and preyed to a pulsating ache. You feel miserable, humiliated. You didn't know why you kept crying, but at the same time you did; it was variability, something between your failing image of a human being and being weighted down by the memory of powder at your nose. 

You were clearly failing, though. Zero fabrications. It was too far along to turn back now; go back and visit your mother, your hometown, revert back to a preacher status while you never see Ghost again after he ultimately leaves town and divorces his wife. The problem was that you didn't want to just leave him, not this soon, not when you had these visions of being his replacement of a wife, with him forever. 

"Shit, are you crying?" he asked, collecting breaths. 

"You have eyes." 

“Too rough?”

”No, no—it’s not that.” you mumble, "Do you still like me? Like, really like me?"

"That shouldn’t even be a question."

You shake your head. "Nothing. I've just been doing some thinking."

Lie by lie, they're imperfect, worse to cover-up — but as of this time, your words weren't really a lie. It was more of a severance allied with a lie and a truth; that you've been doing some contemplating but the only lie was his retort. 

Ghost reaches out his ragged hand of rooted veins and drawn discolorations of scars, his entire hand fits at your face and pushes your head back up to him, thumb at your cheek while the others dance at your jaw. His single thumb feels of your tears and swabs them of their salted liquid. You heed to his touch of manipulation and descend into lands of scarred skin, a fleeing and sputtering breath whining from you. 

Finishing with the finale of tears that rest of your face, he keeps his hand there — at your face, but your eyes fall out of uneasiness. "No, honey, back up here." he said, his words shrewd and easy to your naivety. "Look at me." 

Orbs of uneasiness focus like lens on him again; a domineering entity at your front. 

"You know that I love you, right?" 

You shyly sniffle. 

"Yes." 

He pets at your face again. "So don't give me any of that questioning shit—I know, you know, that I'd love you forever. That's why you're here with me, that's why you sacrificed everything to be here with me." he said, "And I swear on my life on that, understand?" 

Your head nods. 

"Good," he extracts his arm back, using it to pull his jeans and rest of cloth back up, finishing with the sound of a zipper, "Get yourself cleaned up and meet me outsides, yeah?" 

"Yeah." 

-

Late hours of the night is when the world seems to pitch and mangle into the worst of your fears; The existent reality, one that you were warned where men acted as wolves while women as lambs. Endangerment. For once in your life though, you feel some rebellion, some glory that you could convince yourself to enjoy in like how you've seen. In the gaze of the off-the-road abandonment, you're at a sick freedom. 

It's a cloud of your nightmares, of your sins, where things went to die. You bit the skin around your nail when looking around the pub now shrouded of night-activity, of more people. More teenagers were hauled in by secret, some adults as well. Some wrecked at each other's faces in the phone booth with pinning and lips-on-lips, like they were in desire to swallow each other, eat each other. 

More powder summons at more booths, in your sight while nobody really cared for it anymore. Blown off their minds and dozing into the condition of a drug-lost station, it pings at your head while the remembrances are brought back to you once again, forced down your throat. Ghost is nowhere to be seen; perhaps somewhere off with Soap and his wife in a corner, acting adult-like, mature without your unfitting, solid spirit there. 

The drink at the shot glass, which you swore not to take, was burning down your throat, strangling your throat in an irresponsible manner. Multiple burns of shots. Your mind spins on a carousel, head in your rubbing hands while a sigh—a groan is fit through the strangulations. 

"Are you alright there, miss?" 

A hand at your shoulder, an unfamiliar voice of masculinity, a stranger. 

You swing your head back, slowly blinking, the stranger in lines. "What?"

"I said, are you alright?" the lines repeat, "You seem too, uhm, tipsy." 

"Yeah—yeah, I'm fine." 

"You here alone?"

You dumbly respond, swept over of dizziness, amnesia — possibly. 

"Yeah, just me, always me." 

"Oh, well, okay," it said, "You mind if I sit here with you?"

"Don't care, go." you mutter. 

Flesh rubs at your eyes at an effort to form a person out of those lines. More slow blinks occur but your vision restores to an original state, your hands drag to at the lap of skirted lace, brows furrowed at the now made-out man that sat in front of you; where Ghost was supposed to be. (But to your forged amnesia, you were just too stupid to say take notice to it.)

He was a brunette set of hairs, most of it greying, and older than Ghost. He kept a decent build but in total — was just an average kind of guy, a bit of creep that tingled at your spine once you got a greater glimpse of him, regretting your drunken agreement to his request. A smile of dimples is at his face while you only frowned, annoyed, you kind of wanted to leave and tell him to piss off. 

His eyes shine under the light, smile on his lips. "You from around these parts?"

"No, I'm not... upstate." 

"Traveling?" 

"You could say that." you sink into a fist, sighing. 

"Upstate, uhm, I've been up there," he expresses with a stutter, "Been around a couple times, seen pretty girls like you." 

His attempts at flirtation were admirable but weak, nothing charming, it just came off in a creep-like-sense.

"Not much up there." you said

"You a Christian girl too?" 

You tense at his words, eyeing him in suspicion. 

"What? How'd... you know?"

His eyes no longer shine, his drink is at the table, his expression plain and difficult to perceive. 

"Because I've attended your masses, listened to your sermons," he said, "You're that preacher's daughter, aren't you? You're the one that your mother has been holding up missing posters to store-fronts, seen with that man in a mask."

You collect yourself off your stool, stumbling back a little with a breath. "Mister, I don't know what you're talking about—" 

"Don't try lying to me," he breathes, heavy and daunting of whiskey with his palms slammed at the table, "I've seen you all now—I can go tell everyone back there that you're on the run, sleeping around with a married man." 

His words shrink you down, causing you to fluctuate in fear, body trembling and begging for a savior in the moment. You needed protection, a physical protection — his sworn protection. Where even was he? Where was Ghost? And why did he fabricate that protection, right when you needed him most? (God, you sounded pathetic.) 

"That's what you are," he spits, "A lowlife, sinning, blasphemous whore. What would your father think?" What would he think of his precious, innocent girl acting in such a way like this?" 

"Shut up!" 

Their eyes are everywhere— his, your mother, your father— you're left unable to run, to hide away from their judgements. You were descending down spirals of hallucinogenic terrors knowing that it was aware, they were aware, aware of your sinning accomplishments and hidden tracks. Those accomplishments and your faulted feelings were sure to be the traitorous consequences of your faith, forever stuck in a purgatory wasteland of these blasphemous deeds. 

You've went against everyone, especially the preacher. Your father. No matter how hard you scrub of the memory, no matter how deep you bury the ditch, you cannot escape the creeds of your father; the sins he was originally bound suffering to, passed down a generation to you. Your body rots, collapses inside and out, the weight of awaiting penalty heavy to bare. You're tormented, losing it, distant—

"Whose this?" 

The voice is no longer a stranger. It's full of warmth, of that rasp, and like a home. You look into the voice, finding a face of familiarity. 

"The fuck are you doing with him?" Ghost rasps to you, a finger to the man, "And she's with me, what are you doing with her?" 

"She said she was alone." the man replies. 

"Clearly not." 

The man cuts his concerns off the rope. "Do you know you're running around with a wanted woman? Someone who went against her faith and turned to whorish deeds?" 

Ghost pulls you to his side with a strength, your arm coming to wrap around his left bicep, face smashed right into it and clinging like a child.

"You know her personally?" he asks. 

"Yes, I actually do." the opposing one out of the two men said, "I've attended the masses she's lead—disappointing to see what she's turned into." 

"That's not personal, mate, really just the opposite of it." 

"Still," he shrugs, "She's a missing girl, anyways, and her community is waiting for her, her mother." his adjustment on the stool is driven to two limbs and stood on the ground, "Let me have her, will you? You can come along too if you like, it's just one other part of your big journey." 

"She doesn't know you, I don't know you, so I'm not giving her up to some lunatic." 

"I'm just returning her to original state." 

Ghost presses his head to yours. "Let's go, love, eyes on me—and keep up." 

He has a distaste of wasting his time; so that was his reason for no longer keeping conversation with the insanity of a man, his arm to your shoulder, a majority of him in control of navigating away from the man and through the crowds of people, pushing past in a silent hurry. You rest your face into his jacketed arm, the scent of cigarettes on it, comforting down from the matter of unlucky circumstances. 

To your luck, the man does not keep up, and is lost in the bunches of teenagers and crowds. His recorded verses of vulgar nicknames for you and berating insults resonated through the structure of the pub. Labels of Innocent between Whorish and Blasphemous. It's a flux of bemusement, what really were you? — innocent? or a whore to the Devil?

The sunlight was sticky pouring into the room. Without the air-conditioning circulating; it almost felt like you were in a territory of scorching hell. 

Still tangled in some white, stained sheets of sex, your vision was foggy. Lines of brown and sultry colors appeared before adjusting to physical items in the room; the television stand, the wooding panels of the walls, and the on-going television forgotten to be shut off. A weight is at your chest. His weight. His head falls at your chest, face nuzzled into the material. Large biceps tug at your waist, smothering you. Your fingers glide through his short, blonde strands; moist with sweat from the heated room. 

His hand, which rests at your hipbone, is not bandaged unlike yours. Peaks of his own bloodshed is noticeable, the line of red is crooked and deepening in a dark red. Dried blood crusts at the lines of his palm, tarnished and unkept. There's something inside of you that wants to get up; find another medical kit and bandage him like he did for you. But despite your lack of knowledge on treating a wound of this kind, you stay pushing his hair back, caressing the soft grass-like fibers.

With him, everything feels numb. There's no movement, no sound, just having him cradled to your chest as if you were valued. About twenty hours, or less, have passed since you made the cruel conclusion of leaving your life stranded; no religion, no family, no responsibility. (Except the overbearing responsibility of being on your own, only Ghost your leverage of pushing on.)

It feels more insubstantial. Like your authority was nothing but a mere feather aloft in the air. You loathed your corpse of a father for leaving you to take his place, unable to escape his faith. A division of your life wasted away to chanting words of a choir, spilling verses out of a leather swathed book praised to be the epitome of religious affairs; you could've had everything the opposite of that if you hadn't been born into this contorted family tree. 

You could've had the stereotypical teenage dream. Boys, parties, make-up — even the usual Friday-night football game, making out with a boy of the same age under the rusting bleachers unstable and bound to fall. That was out of the question; it's been irrational since the day you were declared a teenage girl. There was no way for you to be asserted prom queen with all you did was wrap your fingers around a thick book in dresses that made you look as a puritan, staying silent and out of popularity, prominent for being a religious freak instead. 

Your father would've disciplined you if he had found out you've been running around doing any of those things, anyways; punishments of being on your knees at a pew and reciting rounds of Hail Mary's to the cross of Jesus Christ, nails in his wrist and thorns to his head. The remembrance makes your stomach twist in a spiral. Maybe you were really thankful for running away, no hesitancy this time, just pure gratefulness. 

There was some gratitude in Ghost taking an interest in you; even though he had already started his life, unlike you. He was a portion of being more successful than you were — married, a father, not constrained to a single religion. That's what you dreamt life would evolve into as a younger girl, like his — without the adultery and weird military-cutting-palms practice. You were almost relieved you didn't get together with a boy your age, living with Ghost was more than you could ever daydream of; he's older, more mature, he's quick to take dominance. 

And with the older man right at your nightgown, you can't help but be put into a strict trance. With another lovingly swipe to his hair, his lashes awake. He's awake. The first thing he does is blink away the blurs of sleep away — then he burrows into your chest a bit more, a grunt from his throat, before he stares up at you. You pin your lips to his forehead for a quick kiss. 

He blinks. "How long was I out?" 

"It's been a couple of hours, it's around nine-ish." you said, eyes taking a peak at the digital clock at the bed-side table.

"You get any sleep at all?"

"I would say just enough of it." 

"Good," he pats your hipbone, rising from the grave of the mattress, "We should get going." 

You stretch the muscles of your shoulders out, a noise of unbending sore bones clearing out of your mouth. He's sat up next to you. 

"But where are we going?" you ask. "We don't have anywhere to go." 

"We'll travel, cross-country trip." 

"Really? That's a bit far." 

He shrugs. "We're free to do anything, why not waste it away with something like that. Traveling." 

"It's not a bad idea, it's just a little sudden." 

"Right," he uttered, "I think you'll enjoy it, though."

"We'll see." 

Ghost untangles himself, and you, out of the cobweb of bedsheets that clung to your bodies. The springs of the mattress squeak as he stands to his feet rather than lounging next to you, bare muscles of his back curving and flexing in ways that could resemble waves of an ocean. 

"You going to have a shower?" he asks, turning to you. 

"Probably am," you replied, "You should too."

"Me?"

"Yes, you, both of us. We reek of all kinds of shit — blood, sweat, cum." 

"I guess you are right," he said, "Come on."

"What?" 

"Well we're not going to waste the water bill by taking individual turns, yeah?"

You quirk a brow. "You want me to bathe with you?" 

"Why not, we've both been naked in front of each other before. Not the first time." 

"You sick pervert." 

"It's an innocent request, honey," he said, "Nothing bad." 

You sat at the bowl of porcelain. Not as clean, but tolerable enough for a ten-minute cleaning period. Your legs press to your naked chest, arms keeping them in a lock, as the flesh of your cheek rests to the web pads of your knees. And he's right behind you, arm to the edges of the tub in an out-stretched position, legs reaching the hole of the drain. Leaning backwards, you fall into his chest, pressing your nose into his jaw while you take in his scent. 

He returns the touch by altering his head, placing more kisses of soft, chapped lips into your scalp and at your face. A smile and a twitch of your eye shifts at his thawed nature, genuine and fond of you; nothing that you were rewarded of feeling in previous time. Ghost then assists you with a swampy rag in one hand, scrubbing at your skin first before he treats his own. It's a quiet session, but you appreciate it, it's peaceful and leaves you for time to admire and get lost. 

The liquid of body wash is rinsed away at the pooled-up water that you and him sit in, splashing in ripples and dying back down into the puddle of filth. It's almost a reminiscence of your first time, once again; in some other different motel bathroom, but this same situation of a tub and washing at each other after intercourse. 

Despite not being not that long ago, it's for sure some volume of recollection in your life. 

-

Now that you had the chance to thoroughly think it through, his pick-up truck wasn't that bad of a place. 

Equally as sticky with sunlight as the checked-out motel room, it's similar to a home of all places. Something you've grown to be familiar with. He's right at the driver's seat while you're in the front passenger, his hair lined with beads of murky-motel water and still a bit more damp. The v-neck he seemed to wear for days-on-end is clenching to his torso again, along with those same jeans and combat boots; but you don't really have the space to talk about since you were also in the same exact dress. 

The engine sputters before coming to life with a key to the inserted hole. Now that was more sunlight and given radiance outside, you had a clearer notion to where you were; a nearly empty parking lot except for the few cars that were littered around, run-down and some new. The levels of threat had gone down and lessened from last night, it just gave off the appearance of just some other vintage, run-down place. 

"You got everything? Nothing missing?" he asks. 

"No. I've got everything, didn't even bring anything that significant." 

With your words of confirmation, he egresses the vehicle from the parking lot, the motel nothing but a minimal outline slowly fading from view with each motion of the road taken. The road is rough and bumpy once again — a specific, frequent bump causing your body to lift under the belt that hung as safety around you. Peering at him through the side of your head that rested on a fist, he's back in that balaclava, refusing to exhibit his authentic self. 

A part of you longed for him to peel it off again, the sunlight hopefully giving you a more evident view of his features other than the dim under-lights of the motel room. That appeal couldn't be bothered to be touched on since he was occupied with the duty of keeping his eyes on the road, and windows for unknown human eyes to glimpse at his bare face. So you're left to keep your own eyes on the road, like he does, and watch the conveying roads come and go. 

You falter your vision to your gauzed palm, spreading it open like blooming petals in the spring. It's clammy from the bath, blood seeping at the whites and drying on the surface alternatively than under it. Some of the bandages were hung loose by your fingers and were in a need to be replaced soon — though by that time, most of it had probably been reduced to pink and brown, shrunk and faint like Ghost's scars on his face from the military. 

The radio is bumped up a few volumes thanks to his hand moving to adjust it on, melodies of a song ringing throughout the span of the vehicle. It almost sounds of rock, almost metal; you're uncertain, though, considering only being allowed listening to instrumentals and Christian-type music. 

You motion your head at the built-in radio. "You listen to this?"

"Oh, yeah, just some old tunes from my younger days." he said, with a stare to you, "What? Never heard of Nine Inch Nails?" 

Your bob your head in a disagreeing motion. 

"Forgot you were a religious girl, nevermind," he uttered, "Here, we can listen to a couple of tracks and you tell me if you like any of them." 

For the next four hours of curving roads, passing trees and different kinds of landscapes, resonates of Ghost's teenage-hood echo your ears. Some of it metal, some of it rock, and often it's slow tracks. It were a lie to say you weren't warming up to his genre of music, mastering the bits of lyrics — eventually memorizing entire songs. (And it was much better than the melancholy, slowing strain of church organs and opera-like voices.)

By the starting time of hour five on the road, you're humming along to the melody of the songs. Track by track, second by second, you're fully indulged in; practically converting into a version of teenage Ghost. He joins in with you often times and a dry giggle leaves your lips at the sight, a sensation of feeling alive and on-top of the world. 

It's a moment out of the misery, the pure melancholia of everything. You're put in distraction of what life really was, what it was like to feel blood exude from your palm like how the son of God had felt with the solid nail at his same palm. The scene is innocent, it's something film-like; something you've sworn you were recreating from a film, seem from one. Ghost is more content than he ever could be, at least that's what you assumed about him, once again. 

Out of his words of Nine Inch Nails and some mentioned Billy Idol, he actually seems jovial with you — but still stiff and hard to break through. A raw scene of sharing dug-deep items of his life with a filled-in preacher he's only known for about two days and a half; those two and a half days feeling more like months, even years. 

The last playing track dies away as the vehicle is felt bending into a lot, stiffness replaces the atmosphere. It's an abandoned parking lot by the looks of it, levels of a cement structure with lines painted yellow on the roads where vehicles once stood. Ceiling lights of a sickly yellow give illumination to where Ghost was actually heading in to and not to be blinded. He goes up a level of the lot, settling on the highest ground and shifting the car into park at the very edge of the complex. 

Interior lights of the truck accord luminosity out of the shadows of the night, sickly yellow, much like the lights of the motel room. 

"Are we sleeping out here tonight?" you question. 

"By the time and place, we are." 

"I prefer it than some stay-in place that reeks of alcohol and cum."

"We caused some of those stains, you know that." he said, tilting his chair in a laying position, almost like a bed. 

"Still prefer it here, besides," you said, laying with him, "I've grown fond to your sketchy pick-up truck, anyways." 

-

When you wake, your body lifts with a bump in the street. There's no surroundings of cement, or yellow lines where traces of vehicles once laid; ones of where teenagers had sex in the backseats like a bunch of animalistic beings or snorted chemicals up their nostrils. Your throat is parched, dried like cotton, eyes blinking away the first remnants of doze. Outlines of your fingers in a fest leave imprinted marks at your sleeping face; gazing to your left, where Ghost normally sat at the wheel. 

He was more energized than you were, despite shown being that always-stiff and dull, and a bit kind of depressed. Knuckles tapped at the leather wheel when he first side-eyes you, then fully stares at your before readjusting back to the road of wherever. 

"You're exhausted, aren't you?" 

You sigh. "I said I didn't get much sleep at the motel, so you should understand."

"I do, very much." 

"Where are we even headed?" you stretched, popping your knuckles in the bandage, "Or where even are we?" 

"Somewhere deep in the state, I don't know, just guessing." 

"Fuck, then we really are lost." 

"That's what cross-country trips are, sweetheart." 

"Ah," you mutter, "The more you know." 

You bend yourself forwards to the cabinet of artillery, popping the hatch of it, and balancing a class of hand-gun in your fist. You observe it a little, assuring that there were no bullets loaded in the piece of heavy matter before you play around with it like a toy; using both hands to point at the glass, molding your lips and popping out noises of bullets shooting from the hole of the presumed glock. 

He stares at the gun, then your molded mouth. 

"Don't go shooting your brains out," he said, "I don't want your brains all over my leather." 

"What? I thought you liked me," you pouted a little, "At least you have some pretty brains all over your leather seats." 

"Minx." 

"Perv." 

Minx. That's what you were. That's what he turned you into, some religious minx that likes showing off the man she's thieved off. You succumb to the words negatively despite knowing his bantering intention behind it, sinking into the seat and only fingering at the gun in a single hand. The one thing you dislike about yourself is how you allow a simple joke to turn you over, tatter your mood and adapt it to something cynical. 

But on the other hand, you took a liking to the label. A minx. Especially his minx. You loved the attentiveness you draw from him, how you worship him like he's your new religion. A new god. 

Him a new, extensive line of reverence to your religious roots.

You were relieved and loose. It was all you ever desired in your confines of creed. You eventually, with quick decision-making over the course of a day, made the burdening choice of running away with Ghost. No luggage, no letter of sympathy left to be read, yours and his trace of life gone. Banished. Fleeing away from your desolate lifestyles. 

It was a fully-developed relationship yet — at least that's what you thought. At the same time it was a liberating and detaining; you had felt the only person you could trust and give all of anything up to this point was Ghost. It was ripping you to shreds. A substitute to the seeping hole of desolation growing like inside you. You perceived Ghost as multiple things at once — arousing, esoteric, corrupting, and like a brand new god to worship as if you were a saint. Fragments of religion would always be stalking at your sides no matter how hard you tried to flee from it, even into a more erotic, agnostic way of living.

Ghost had a great number chances to be at your side now. There was no more need to hide and shield away from you through his role as a desolate husband, and he was hung on you like you were a compulsive drug melting on his tongue, constantly taking you — tasting you. You overflowed his void of desertion. 

Seated in passenger seat wasn't so bad — sole in the front of a pick-up truck besides Ghost. He didn't have any remorse in his chest about the whole idea about abandoning his grueling life but had frequent suspicions that he was a criminal on the run — homicide, theft — all of those listed offenses yet being a complete cheater was what he felt so beaten-up about. Beaten-up about craving to touch and perform the same set of sins binding you two together. You on the other hand, it was like remorse was eating away at your limbs — the resentment you held to be in position of his most normal life, his dull and most suburban life with a wife and kid and a nine-to-five job used to supply like the good husband he was carved out to be, but you couldn't hold onto that resentment forever now that you had the satisfaction of no longer leading a church on with false propositions and acting like a little thing of innocence.

Through the deceits of purity and preaching you were sad, feasibly than sad. You were too young to be feeling as sad as you were from late teenage-hood into younger adulthood. 

It was more of a one-time thing. Repressed feelings of hormones and depressive episodes sent you over the edge, misusing substances and getting off on it like any kind of teenager new to the curiosities of an adult world would. It fucked up your perception of anything you had in view when nearly dozed off and left somewhere in a whole other nature. As bad as you knew it was, it was a known and easy fact as a way to sort all of your troubles out with one quick brisk motion. 

Torturing yourself was a multiple-time thing, though. Dressed in white dresses of lace and the usual chain of a necklace escorted with a rusted cross pendant, smelling of fresh perfume and never showing any exposures of skin beyond the limit, you found yourself sat on the edge of a marble bathtub. The sharp edge of your rosary rested against your chest, your hands too occupied with your head as you sulked out your issues, you didn't want to take the brim to the wrist of your skin. It just stacked on your issues. Another one of your bad issues, though you did it anyways. Not fully available to your consciousness but somehow it gave you a sensibility of painful relief.

The first and only time was horrific, your experience as a full-fledged teenage religious girl. Most of the particular wounds oozed of blood too much and caused you to become light-headed the next day at church. The gauzes around them were barely any kind of help at all.

You gladly never had done it again but the marks seemed to be hemmed onto your skin permanently. 

Ghost's truck was the staple of a soldier's base, and it resembled his time taken in the military quite well. The car-seats made of foam and tattered fabric smelled of him, a deep manlike cologne and a few spare balaclavas imprinted with the same pattern of a skull without the hard shell of a physical one much like Ghost worn most of the time. There were a pack of half-full cigarettes stuffed in one of the compartments, a few photographs of his family littered on the floors, a switchblade in the front cup-holders, and a small amount of handguns for protection loaded safely in the backseats and a bunch of other compartments. He was something of a decent guy with keeping polaroids of his family and cherishing them like any gracious dad would, besides the living with the shame of murdering while his time as a lieutenant and messing around with his town's preacher, but still kept up his face of a good man. Army training and guidance left him with the engraves of stealth and development skills. All of it still held a significance. 

"We'll stop over there," Ghost said. He says out of the blue without giving you a chance to agree with his words — but lethargy was getting to both of you, especially you. The absence of his family gave him a respite; a new start for his wife and son that offered a new start for them moreover, especially his kid stuck-up in the spider web of a weakening melancholy household and parent-life. "It's just for tonight, I'm getting a little too worn-out to drive anyways."

"Don't kill us, I refuse to die in a pick-up truck." 

Ghost chuckled. "What's wrong with my pick-up truck?"

"Nothing, I just thought I would be dead somewhere more delightful." You clearly didn't mean it, about dying in a cramped vehicle you've been seated it for the past hour or two, but at least you would depart with your supposed man-of-your-dreams. "There — park there for the night, it's closest to the motel entrance, and it's probably the safest." 

"Don't think it's safe anywhere around these parts," Ghost said. "But don't worry about it," he shifted into park and leaned over to the compartment above your legs and opened it. "Got a bunch of self-defense weapons for us, and I've got enough muscle to defend you and me off." 

"How sweet of you." 

"Course. It's only the best." he said. "You take the switchblade, I take the pistol, an AMT AutoMag II, It's for the best." 

"Is this legal?"

"Having weapons on you for self-defense? Certainly is." 

"I guess you would've known since you worked for the law." 

"Mmhm."

"What a coincidence, we've traced our steps back into first base." you said. "You know, we had sex for the first time in a motel. Now we ended up in another one but with weapons on us and a risk of being murdered in our sleeps... but who cares, we need the rest. Guess there is an advantage of you being apart of the task force." You lean back into the foam of the seat, unbuckling your seat-belt. "I think we should go in now." 

"Shit, yeah, let's go." 

His compact collection of guns were praiseworthy, impressive. They were wiped clean of dust and gleamed as if they were new considering you had listened to him ramble on about them throughout the duration of the car-drive. He was sort of a nerd on the military. There were much more of his weaponry from years of serving — combat knives, assault rifles, basic snipers, bouquets of badges and British-type equipment from his time as a leader. Hell, you had even gotten invested into it too, taking a chance to run the tip of your finger over the crests and carved patterns decorating each gun like a fine piece of china. 

You and Ghost we're out of the truck, given a period of time to stretch your limbs out, and start your way to check-in. With your own notice, Ghost seized a long glance at the gauze dying from around your wrist while you tucked your knife into the waistband of your dress, blotches of brown dried-out blood speckled at some of it, the rest of it beginning to peel and fall off. 

"It was a kitchen accident," You said, "Long time ago."

"Long time ago? Seems more recent to me."

"I meant it happened a week ago." 

"Whole lotta blood for a kitchen accident, you tear at your skin on purpose?"

"No. It was a one-off thing." 

"Well, don't do it again, could cause some serious blood loss." 

Ghost cleared his throat and came to the realization that the front door was already within feet in front of him. He opened the door for you, lacking of anymore words, without another mention of his awkward conversation started by his evident staring at your gauze. The blacks of his pupils followed as you went ahead, him following right behind, instantly being hit with the radiance of a buzzing overhead rectangular lamps adorning the ceiling.

You watched as he took lead and paid for the room, leather-pleated wallet, and a bunch of dollar bills that almost came across as too incompetent to pay for an entire overnight stay. In your eyes he was the more responsible one, not you, but him. You were never the type to be holding the title of responsible or adult-like, you had always felt like such a little girl disregarding that your mature responsibilities and tasks, but you had to accept that you ultimately grown into an adult woman with the same mindset of your childhood; it had never changed, and god was it degrading. Acceptance of it was a kind of a huge-small block in the path. 

Following Ghost into a turn of a curved hallway, you examined the bulge of his bicep through the shirt he wore, sweat shining his arms with the adding heat of the building — so run-down there was no air-conditioning anywhere, apparently. He had a look in his eyes of a worn-out father, soldier, lover, husband, or how many roles he took in as a vacant man, and only his eyes without an apparent face. It was kind of attractive, if you were being honest, though there laid pity in your palpitating heart. 

"Here," he said, an outstretched arm of his reaching out to your shoulder, situating you right next to him."Open it."

You lifted a brow. "Me?"

"Yes, you open it. Take the honors." 

He dropped the key into the palm of your hand.

"Go ahead." Ghost said.

His request was a bit bizarre, considering he was the one with key in-hand and had made it to the door first, but you couldn't rudely brush off his order specifically made for you. With his request on mind, you took the key into the rusting and unsteady keyhole, sliding it into the left and pushing open the door with your foot. The room was shadowed and flat with only simple glowing off the hallway light, a few outlines of a coffee maker and a front-door-closet that was placed way too close to be opened when right next to the entrance of the room.

The lights of the room were no different than the outside. Hardly even providing any light but gave you enough to make-out a single bathroom with a single bed, low-quality and not even cleaned from previous residents. Cum-stains, spit-stains, cigarette-stains — who knew what other lives had been present before you and Ghost, but you did hope it was good enough to rest and try to make a reasonable stay in. The entrance door was locked and gave extra security with a chain lock and a do-not-disturb sign hanging from the knob outside.

"You want anything to eat? I could ring up room service," you said. "If room service even works at this hour."

"Nah. I'm okay." 

Ghost sits at the edge of the bed, a sigh relieving from his lips. "This feels more like a honeymoon rather than a runaway." 

"What?"

"It feels like my honeymoon, you're the wife and I'm the husband, all of that stuff."

"I've been at your wedding," you said, leaning up against a desk. "Not invited but I was there when my father married you and your wife, I didn't know you, but you still had that mask clinging to your face."

He sort of grunted at your words; of course he didn't know who you were either but still held some kind of admiration for you, often seeing you roaming around town with feelings in his chest that were perplexing and confusing to him at the time, either dealing with them sexually or self-violently. 

"Really? Guess it was fate that brought us together again."

"I would've went up to you but I didn't want to ruin your special day." 

"I don't think you would've." he said. "But my wife insisted on you not being there, for some reason. Something about you being too scandalous. It was hard to believe when you were working under the church."

You were taken back but covered it up when you felt your heart skip over a thrum. It was hard to believe his wife's statement too. "Ah," you muttered, helpless to give a proper response. "So she's never liked me?"

"Challenging to say, she's never given me an actual opinion on you."

"Know what, don't worry about it," you said. "Save your energy for tomorrow." 

"I didn't pay cash for this entire room to be spent sleeping in."

"Thought it was, no?" you asked.

"We got until daylight."

"Well," You said, standing from the bed and proposing his long figure. "Just one request of my own, that's it."

-

The request this time wasn't perplexing or confusing. It was unanticipated. 

You didn't recognize yourself at first, like an out-of-body projection. You held in compiled traction, not because of Ghost but with all that you had went through with him — the request came in short straightforward words. Fuck me, ruin me like I'm your wife, tear me apart, ravage me. Between his mentions of the gore remaining on your wrist and his seemingly always-bulging muscles through the shirts he wore you could put together sex and brutality. 

Ghost was a natural at harming another living person — hence his burning skill of military trainings that fully gave into the skill of drilling up into you — but he lacked the genuine emotions he once felt when violence was impacted onto a combatant. Your begs irked him (Paying no attention to how hard it got him, considering mostly every single thing you did raised a boner up in him) but eased down with small tears glittering down your cheeks, chest heaving as you were spread out open on the mattress.

It wasn't like he was going to fuck you standing upwards, right up against a wall where neighboring residents occupied, because that would be indecent. The space was cramped and left you and him to either fuck in a dreary bathroom or a two-person single bed with a one-sided comfort. Ghost's biceps were more strained from the heated moisture around, as well as you were, but your words — more like begs, in which aimed towards him — were kept on top of your mind. 

For some mindless reason, he wouldn't stare you straight in the eyes when he fucked you, and neither could you. Occasional glances occurred but other than that it felt like you were having sex with a complete stranger, two strangers were you and him, and some objective sex. You didn't like it as much as the first time, sure you were turned on to the fullest — but you had also felt empty with a side effect of bothering feelings. The silent tears that continuously dropped in packs down your throat, the moans and rough skin-on-skin together, your begs now turning into a long, uncomfortable but pleasurable session of fucking.

It was also indecent to not take a birth control pill or, at the very most, a gas-station condom before giving permission to let him inside you again. At the back of his head, Ghost had some sort of sealed hatred for you — for ruining his marriage, acting as if you were fully-grown, your constant laughing and sexual remarks. It was bewildering to him; you were like an irritating stain somebody cannot scrub away of, at some point giving into its presence — though Ghost had already fully gave himself into you, he still loved you. In a sexual point of view, he loved your body and the way you fit so perfectly around his size, how warm you were, how you feel when he comes inside of you, how reactive you were underneath him. In other windows of views —

A share of it was limited. Not because he didn't know — it's just that he couldn't find the correct mental images to piece together the right concept. The right concept of love and a proper relationship in his two, very own dark-eyed perspectives. 

Bonafide love. The statement that had been passed around. 

"Tear me," You said, in some sort of whine under him.

Ghost turns a blind eye to your unusual, violent plea, thrusting up into your warmth. With his fingers caressing the contours of your face, he could feel the tears in which surged down your face, down your neck — and he disregards to it as well. You were whimpering and moaning, wounded with the feeling of stinging thorns at the space between your thighs. Bruised. 

He flattened a palm to your back, pushing your body further into the mattress, knee-deep into the springs and buried. 

"Tear me apart, please, tear me apart," you whimpered, legs unsteady as if you were about to give out any second. It was vulgar, and had some brutality to it while Ghost was fucking you far past his limit, deeper, back going sore from the amount of pressure being put onto your spine. "Please." 

"I can't," Ghost had you crushed, caged, as he keeps you within the fleshy enclosure of his body of sweat and tears. "I can't, I don't know how I would." 

He comes into you with a last grunt beyond his clenched teeth. Your own cum was soaking your thighs along with his, staining the sheets just like the many other couples who performed the same actions to acquire the same results. 

You were bare and cold, quivering. 

You were injured. 

You were caught in an excruciating, dreadful on-going agony. 

Ghost throws you to the pillows. 

You sinked yourself on the mattress heavily, swearing you could feel the print of springs digging at your skin. He's on top of you, overhead with something flaunting and curled in his fist. It was unknown to where he could've possibly acquired the object but through blurry lenses — the top was shifted and had the shape of a crooked spine, sharp too. Ghost uses his other fingers and wraps them around your gored wrist full of stained gauzes, crooking that top of a crooked spine to the out-spread of your palm where no fingers resided. 

His eyes squint while prodding the cold skin and without another word, the spine is dragging a sharp line down. It didn't last long (the pain of it) but you couldn't deny the way your teeth automatically clenched against each other, legs nailed down, whimpers falling through those teeth. Only beads of blood left in the wake of it, some of it deciding to drip down and stain the gauze even more. It was hot and spurting, cold wind going through the cracks of the crimson line at your palm. You were once again, confused — he didn't, and possibly wasn't going to explain what he was doing. Insistence. 

The sanguinary blade now rests at his right palm much like how he did with you. For the first time, he hesitates, he hesitates the sight of bloodshed for the first time since being put into his place of ex-military. But then he looks down at you, those two eyes of odd adoration up at him — gleaming and sparkling though at the same time, so empty and diluted. And with that sight on mind he drags the resting metal down his own palm without any symptoms of pain or even emotion, just a twitch of his right eye before the wound is finished and in preparation. 

Divided between you and him, a shared common was the gouge caused by the same weapon that was now scrapped to the bed-side table. Again, he gives you that soulless stare behind pools of dark brown, staying silent until he grasps at your right wrist again with his non-wounded hand. You swipe your tongue across your chapped lips and with your repaired vision, you're able to catch sights of him more clearly — the sight of his hand at your wrist and his wounded palm up. 

Lacking the need to open your mouth and vocalize anything out to him, he pressed the cuts together, warm skin and warm blood of his right in contact with you. There's a minor sting but soon subsides once his palm is pressed against yours for a longer period of time. Ghost adjusts himself — climbing over to sit up straightly crooked at the headboard, lifting you into his bare lap with palms still attached. 

"You shouldn't say things like that," he mutters, "Unless you've developed some weird violence kink like that." 

You tilt your head. "And you don't think it's weird you cut our palms out and pressed them together right now?" 

"Got me there." 

"Why'd you even do it, though?" 

"I've watched guys in the military do it," he said, "Some sort of oath to each other. Loyalty. One guy to another guy."

"Right, shit... that stings, will this give me an infection?" 

"There's a chance." he said. "But as long as I've known, those guys haven't." 

"Good to know." 

There's a change of demeanor in him. He acts far more gentle, his free arm wrapped around your waist, his cloth mouth nuzzled at your neck space. You actually didn't know if he was being gentle, or was just too exhausted from intercourse and took the chance to rest on you. Your legs rest at side of his spread ones, hairs on his legs lightly tackling at your flesh, shared blood drips down your wrist and his wrist. The liquid is warm. His wound apart of yours is warm. 

"So we're swearing an oath?" you ask him in a hushed-out voice. 

"Yes."

"Of what?" 

"Love — protection, I don't know." 

The words of issued love and protection were abnormal stripped from his throat and mouth. The oath could've been of something else, something that wasn't so love-and-protection-like — something more of guilt, longing for you to stay by his miserable, imperfect life. Though, you chose to be delusional to that. You successfully persuade yourself in the delusions of intimacy and the worship you held for Ghost — like he was some kind of holy being, a religious form of a god that you willingly indulged in worshipping yourself to. 

He acts superior, creating commands and proposals that were nearing religious. He wasn't a lieutenant anymore, or even apart of the military anymore after giving it up for the lifestyle of dull suburbia, but only a simple man. (One with the needs of bearing a mask all the time and a girl by his side, intentions of violence still drowning in the depths of himself.) And you were a simple girl, intended as daughter of Christianity — to God and the beliefs — but curving the normality of it all, fucking it up to be deemed as some whore who ruined some man's family life and marriage. 

Losing blood, the thoughts blur up in your head, head pounding with combining sensations of throbbing and a sting. While he brings himself up from your shoulder, his pupils are blown-out, the whites of his two eyes with some fading lines of red vessels crowning it. There's two of him in your vision, a delayed shadow of his outline each time with a move of his head or flex of his biceps. You struggle with the effortless task of looking him directly in the eyes or generally focusing on him at all. There's a want at your chest that you wanted to burst out, curse him out for allowing you to lose this much blood, but you didn't — you just couldn't bring yourself to do so, the feeling was too familiar; too easy to bathe in and swamp yourself in so easily. 

"Ghost," you mumbled, "There's two of you." 

"What was that, love?"

"I can see two of you." 

At first, he's silent, confused and hit with a bit of shock in the mind.

Ghost curses under his breath. "Sleep it off." 

"And my head is throbbing, hard to think." 

"Think I cut too deep for you," he said, "I'll patch us up in the morning, yeah?" 

You don't present him with an audible response to his statement, only managing for your vision to dim; an overcast of black polluting your perspective of where you gazed into him, and where your slashed hand linked with his larger one. There's white noise in your ears, along with a high-pitched ringing that you were certain could damage your inner-ears permanently. Now there's more than just two of Ghost, there's illusions of carbon copies like stuttering television static of black and white. Blood from the shared wound flashes your eyesight one last time before you burst into an episode of a blackout. 

-

The buzzing of ceiling fluorescent stings in his ears. There's an insidious chatter among a few motel workers nearby, a family of three from across the room with stares of concern. He's back in a black v-neck and some hurried, un-buttoned jeans; you're in the same dress upon arriving a few hours previously, before you started this runaway with him, and on-top of of a counter intended for laundry supply. A first aid-kit is right by your thigh. 

He knows he can't introduce himself to the public-eye just yet, not after a few hours of abandoning his family, so he does the best at medical attention — a hospital inaccessible during this time of your unconsciousness. Your limp body is supported with his hand splayed at your back, the other is reaching for antiseptic and spilling it onto a ball of cotton. The cotton drags to your hand which he holds open for you, some blood going dry, some of it still fresh from the slash. 

Your body stutters, even in this state, at the cleansing liquid. Ghost earns your attention, staring for a minute before continuing with the procedure of getting you cleaned up. The now-bloodied cotton is tossed into one of the sections of the kit, his fingers jabbing at the roll of gauze that feels like sandpaper under his touch. He holds you to his chest, allowing you to lean up against him as both of his hands are needed to portion out enough of the white sandpaper for his own faulted wound at your palm. 

At least it wasn't a major infection — he thought. 

White sandpaper wraps around your palm, surrounding your knuckles and palm, leaving your fingers to stand out. About three layers of the gauze are worn on before it's ripped apart with his bare fists. A sigh leaves his mouth; of exhaustion, maybe, or out of relief that he didn't kill a girl. He squeezes your bandaged hand with his raw one, in hopes of you waking up — and you do to his hope. 

Indolent orbs of eyes flutter open half-way prior to fully widening. You swallow, of nothing, just pushing a force down your throat. Ghost bites at his torn lip, but you're unable to see with his average balaclava right in your face. He wants to say something, but he's left astonished in an abnormal shock. You attempted to bleed out words but you're too fresh out of a coma-like situation to even think right now. 

"Thought I lost you there." he said.

You angle your head, eyebrows furrowed. "You say that as if you didn't see me bleeding out." 

"I know, I know..." he muttered stiffly, "I just — I wasn't thinking." 

"You know what, half of it is probably some of my fault too." 

"How?" 

"The confessions," you kept quiet, "Tear me apart, ruin me. Don't make me repeat them." 

"Ah, yeah. That." 

"So it's not entirely your fault that I passed out." 

"You're right, but I was the one with the blade."

"We're both at fault, then. That's that," you said, using him as a pillar to stand on trembling legs, "We need rest, anyways. Too much has happened today." 

You stare at the ground; it's spiraling of motioning swirls in your vision, similar to the sensation before falling faint. He assists you with the helpful gesture of placing that splayed palm of his right at your legs, hooking them around his arms and lifting you into his arms. You're in a sort-of bridal position — arms linked around his neck while your head was heavy at his shoulder, looking up at his clad face. You feel him move from the room where he provided you with medical attention, sights of a hallway coming into perspective soon enough. 

With him this close-up, you feel person towards him. Almost intimate again. Even without the indications of intercourse, you can still feel a malformed connection towards him. He's as special as you were to him; at least, that's what you thought. You actually didn't know what he thought of you, that region of curiosity closed-off and kept in his private depths. Maybe he really did like you, loved you more than life, than himself — or he just really despised you, had a fathomless disgust in his chest, only keeping you around just for the sake of having a reason to desert his family. 

As bad as you wanted to interrogate him on it, you didn't. You've already caused him so many problems; your hand, your fainting, your presence of a disturbance between him and his household. So during this time you just wanted for him to have some term of recovering. The nostalgia of your divided motel room swarms your eyes, facing walls, then a ceiling where you lay flat on the jumble of sheets that were left with small blemishes of blood. His blood. Your blood. 

The noise of a zipper sliding down echoes from across the room with a swish of a shirt coming over a head. A sink in the mattress next to your body appears, more vanishing, causing you to face in the direction of the sinking. There, you're met with him, and his naked face. He's peering at you, not only two holes from a mask, but now given an entire structure of a face. A light stubble plants at his jaw, faded scars on his cheeks and flesh, short dirty blonde hair at his head with lashes on his eyes of the same tint. 

Inching closer, you rest your head on one of your arms while the other hoists to his bare face — fingering at the dim scars and brushing over his skin in gentle motions. He's nearly a god, half-religious and gorgeous in your eye of worship, but he's stiff. He doesn't smile, he just watches. His eyes examine you like an artifact as your fingertips trace his skin as if it were water to a pond. 

"You're handsome." you said. 

"You didn't think I was handsome with the mask?"

"I meant I think you're as equally handsome, even with the mask."

"Good," he said, "Get some rest." 

His blonde lashes reach to the sagging dark marks underneath his eyes, closed, at ease. Only the reverberates of the boxed air-conditioning on the opposite side of the room, where the closed-curtain window was gave you some noise — no longer his raspy, accented voice. 

You're at some kind of heaven of tranquility, for now. 

Religion was a cesspool, and you were amid all of it. — Corruption was the fitting word for it — religion was a corrupting cesspool. 

It was draining, both mentally and physically.

You didn't care about the impression you made on others, but what you really cared about how your facade was displayed to others. Behind the forced grinning and girlish laughing you were weary and spiraling — You're restrained and branded by a fate that was decided for yourself long before the events of birth. And despite all of that, life still feels present at the palms of your hands. Dreams and made-up conceptions could be achieved with the freedom of being mature. 

Leading the town’s congregation somehow prevented that. A struggle of appearing bright and on-top of the rest of faces in the room, faces of people, worshipping you as only the religious leader but never as the human girl behind that leader. Drugs were seriously considered for a while after some bunch of people, mostly dealers meeting you at the back of the church, offering you all sorts of drugs. Ecstasy. Heroin. Little packets that could easily alter your existence with a quick sniff up the nostril or injection to the arm tangled with a thick band. 

Nothing like that was in your preferred league, though a single try wouldn't hurt, which is how you ended up behind a place of worship — heroin shot through your forearm and a band squeezing the top of your arm. That was the first and supposed last time you ever did drugs, reliving the overwhelming quantity of pleasure and an up-rise of your libido levels you knew you never had. You sweated, a lot, and your mind was fuzzed. 

After that single event you were crystal clean. No addiction, just reminiscences. You were much better off without it now anyways, never thinking of telling anyone about it, and that was soon long gone after confessing to Ghost. Your heart was too full. Too full to process your in-depth confession of inserting drugs into your body's system and communications with a man as persistent as Ghost was. It made you nearly teary-eyed and overly sentimental. 

Besides, heroin was still something you were naive to then. At least it didn't make you act like some kind of moron; they alternatively boosted a new pipe of stir that made you feel way better than the dullness of your drug-free life, possibly granting a rise out of men in town, if you were around any men under the influence. It was a fact that they wouldn't care about the drugs and put you in their own personal gaze of you acting as the personification of sexual desire. You might've appreciated it, maybe not. 

One finger prods at the parched spot on your forearm where the needle once poked, your arm stretched out on your mattress. Your mattress was scarcely ever changed throughout the years, the same one owned since your younger teenage years. It was still your childhood home after all — decrepit and useless at this point — but enough to produce shelter. Only you and your mother occupying it. 

You've been to Ghost's residence more times than your own, studying every sacred detail of it. Two bedrooms and an average suburban look that was in the middle-class and affordable range, and more objects disproportionate to the rest. He exhibited a handful of the weapons that were flaunted off, carbon copies of the mask he refuses to take off, and pieces of tactical gear laying around. It wasn't strange to decorate with considering his job position in the past.

A fingernail makes white lines on the canvas of your skin, it wasn't painful, but gave you some design to boring flesh.

You longed for Ghost's presence. You wanted to feel his skin on yours again, you wanted him to fuck you as he did in that grubby motel room. Even without the injections and pumping chemicals, your head was throbbing and blood was flowing faster than usual. Restraining this much emotional appetite for a married man made you feel shameful, embarrassed even.

Maybe you could've aimed for a younger boy; somebody around your age to cherish and love. But Ghost made you feel unique, trusting you to see his nude face and body when together, you always felt like you were on some pedestal when shown with him. The relationship was complicated, like you were his authentic lover, ending up at a double-end of bottled-up emotions but the most comfortable when it came to sex and anything bordering it. He knew it was screwed-up to cheat on a partner but went with it, still, for what reason? To earn back that charisma and leadership he once consumed in the army? Or to do it multiple times on his wife for the sake of amusement?

If she were to find out somehow, he would fall to his knees on a prie-dieu and emotionlessly beg for forgiveness. He would go back to his old life with his wife for mercy — ultimately dissolving all of the feelings he held for you, shared with you. He fucked you in the back storage-area of the church and the motel — no relevance about that, but the first time he ever put his infatuation in real time ever since war.

War and religion could be comparable in some ways — slaving away to something a person was bounded to do. 

-

"We should meet-up more often like this," You said, Ghost at your right-hand side where he sat on the church pew. Your voice was hushed. "Especially more of them just like at that motel."

There was a risk. His hand on your thigh, his wife and baby in the house down the road with a couple of curves, and somebody walking in. A ring was noticeably on one of his ungloved fingers, the display of it tormenting you, the gleam of it too. You could trust him, and him? You didn't know. Probably or probably not. His rubbing motions were driving your thoughts off the rails, his body warmth transferred onto the one body part he caressed. 

"I think we should run away together." Ghost said. That sentence sending you into shock alone.

"Wha - What about your life here?"

"Well, I..." He sighs, the accent of his words fading out. The sunlight reflecting off the glass windows of used primary colors gave you a headache, doubling onto the headache you already established at the idea of running away with him. "There's some issues there, wife won't talk to me after the motel. Refuses to even glance at me." he said. "So, I'm practically useless there. How about you?"

"Me?"

"You had any ideas running away from problems here?"

"I hate leading the town's church." you said. "I hate being a fucking child of the church, I've always been one."

"A preacher's daughter hates being a Christian, huh."

"Hate to admit but, yes, I do," you take a breath. "Also, did you wife suspect you cheating or something?"

"Ah, yeah. I was confronted."

"What'd she say?"

Ghost talks in quotations now, to emphasize on her words. "Why are you home so late?" and "Are you cheating on me?" and "Why are you being so secretive?" Was what you made out of all the arguments he tells to you, a guilt creeping up your spine. All of those quarrels caused by you being the root of the problem. A single curse whispered from your mouth, a sweaty palm slapping at your forehead, lips agape and breathing disordered. 

"You okay? Looks like you're in shell-shock." He asked. 

"Look, Ghost, I don't think I want to ruin your relationship anymore." you whispered, whiny and with cowardly tears threatening to fall of their hinges. "I ruined your marriage, your family life, everything-"

"I don't think you ruined anything. You essentially saved me from my miserable life."

"Miserable?"

"Yeah, wife's a pain in my arse, can't do anything without her mentioning a divorce or another deposit for her own spendings. Not even for the baby either." 

"Uhm, well, I'm sorry about that."

"Mmm." he hummed. "Never mind that, let's get back on the original topic — getting away, about you."

"Oh yeah. Hate being a Christian, can't stand being a replacement for my father so — I guess I really do want to run away from here too."

"What about your mother?"

"Huge pain too. Overly religious and she won't let me wear anything that goes above the knees."

"Sounds like we both need a fresh start." Ghost said.

"We should seriously consider getting out of this town soon," you said. "Or we'll both be driven to insanity."

"Tomorrow night work for you?"

"I guess it does." You reply.

"Nice," Ghost clicks his tongue and stretches his cramped muscles out. "I think we should have a little fun before that though, my treat."

"Oh? And where can this fun take place?"

His visible eyes gesture to the public restroom of the church. "Bathroom?"

"Bathroom." You replayed back to him.

-

You and Ghost fucked in a bathroom stall. More specifically, a church bathroom stall. You sucked him off then he had sex with you — and it was the actual thing — nails scratching at the wall tiles and his fingers secured at your waist, dress skirt pushed up.

Surprisingly, you were decent at taking someone in your mouth for the first time. Your mouth-virginity taken rather than your actual one. A stroking hand in up-and-down motions and your mouth widening to dig at the back of your throat. Ghost's dick was still that lengthy and bulky piece of flesh that could make any girl's panties drop to the ground. He planted a hand on top of your hand; aggressively slamming you down, too aggressive, but regardless you found enjoyment in such an act that could be deemed demeaning to another human eye.  

Blowjobs weren't certainly essential in Ghost's book but it was heaven to receive them once in a while, usually to lay off the stress or just for the fun-side of things. They were never treated as viciously as he did to you. He had eaten out a couple girls before you but in comparison to you; they wouldn't even be placed in the competition. It didn't feel right. Dominance was something he claimed, and you too from time to time — whether it was riding on top or a blowjob, handjob.

Ghost was picky when it came to sex. Sometimes he favored both parties getting pleasure, sometimes just one party, it was all a one-way thing for him.

You peered up at him with saliva running down the corners of your mouth. Soggy tears released from your eyes and mixing in with a light mascara that tinted your lashes. 

He gently smoothed your hair repeatedly. "You okay?"

"I am." you replied. You gave another suck at the tip. "Can we get to the part where you fuck me now?"

Your libido was high, if it wasn't clear, higher than when you were on heroin. The church was so old that there were barely even any security systems booted up, excluding the main halls and actual church where the stage was. You and Ghost, caught in a profane position, a disgrace to the holy place. 

Ghost's sticky arousal splattered your face and spotlights under the overhead lights, he uses the bottom of his shirt to clean a bit of it off.

"Up." Ghost said, helping you with both hands at your waist. "Turn around and bend over."

You're down on bruised knees, hugging his waist, using his structure as support to hoist yourself on quivering legs. There's a sufficient number of brawn held in your muscles, most of it being used to front-face a wall and lean over with your hands flat. The stance was awkward — but you were committed to it, committed to him. Your lips were swollen and had bits of teeth-marks lodged into the pinks of it. Ghost stood stiff with only his arms moving to undo the buckle of his slacks and shrug them down.

By the next minute, he was pounding into you, barely giving you the time to catch your breath. You were squirming around but kept rigid when you feel all his twelve fingers pushing down on your waist. 

It was all pitched moaning and masculine grunts that fled the stall like an assembled choir in a group. A pornographic-like, two-person choir at that.

He has enough decency to pull out and come on the interiors of your thighs, scrutinizing it as the thick liquid drooped in spurts downwards. Ghost is holding you by the waist as he's clearly heard through the air with dense breaths — you definitely appreciate the support with how sore he caused you to end up, quietly whining as your cunt contracts around nothing but the sticky liquid that you press your thighs at.

"I don't think anyone has ever drained me like that." you breathe out, head hanging low between your two arms. 

"Get used to it," he said. "It''s going to happen a lot once we're out of this shithole."

"I'm not complaining."

"Good." Ghost exhales and gives your hips a squeeze before letting go. "I think we're committing a little blasphemy right here." He refers to what's been happening for the past hour in the confined stall. 

"Are you saying you want to do acts of contrition?"

"No, I'm not a religious fanatic."

"Good. I'm tired of that cult shit." you said.

Ghost collects a few rolls of toilet-paper and cleans your thighs up, per the gentleman he was to supposed to be — or so he thought. His jeans are back and buckled around his waist and your dress is pushed back down to your knees, but damn the man for giving you two sore legs to walk on and an aching back. 

"If you are being true to your word about leaving," he said, "Really think about it first... you're leaving your beliefs and life behind, kid — and just for a guy like me. Hell, I'm only appealable because of the damn mask and the muscles." He unlocks the latch of the stall and pushes the door a couple of inches open. "Together we're just a bunch of old sinners. You a cheater and me a betrayer... I'm worse than you, though."

You're glum, too fatigue and brain-dead to take his words to heart. But you understood most of it — sinners, betrayer, cheater, beliefs. Putting that all together, it was just a whole big nothing to you, you needed to start new and rid of those. You longed. 

Ghost, cheater. You — betrayer?

"Need a towel? Birth control meds?" Ghost asked. "I know we're already past the whole sex thing — me inside you. Still wanna be careful though."

The motel reeked. It reeked of rotting wood and a stuffy ventilation system but was decorated as if it were brand new, not as new though — considering the mundane bedsheets colored of browns and reds that you would find in somebody's Tuscan home. One out of the two lamps providing barely enough illumination was blown out, narrowly highlighting the sweat in which was coated in a thin layer over your chest and laid body.

But considering it was already slightly difficult to breathe out of the air contained in yours and Ghost's singular shared-for-one-night motel room fuck session, a thin cigarette stick plucked right in the center of your middle and pointer finger; your first cigarette that you were fully able to enjoy without that poor hallow shape of a preacher scolding you for committing an act of impurity. It had also been your first time being fucked — or more professionally known as having sex with another man — for the first time even having been reminded in sex education to use some sort of protection like an IUD or the most popular recommendation, a condom. The situation could be worse, unless if it was already at its peak of worse.

You clothed your bottom half underneath the comforter, but chest exposed to the air.

"I think birth control meds are long gone at this point," you laugh a little. "And you smell like shit."

"Didn't know you had that type of language in you." he said, outstretching himself to the bedside table that was most reachable. Coincidentally a towel was placed there, two at the matter, for a substantially unknown reason. Probably just another money-grab to be written up and charged on the bill or to be used as a masturbation slash sex towel, it's placed at your side. "I like it more than when you speak in bible verses."

You sit up against the headboard with one of your hands grasping the comforter that offered you a defective attempt at covering up. Ghost was bigger than you, and way too big to fit entirely on the mattress that could break off its springs any second, he was all muscles and height. But you tried not to complain as much since he went out of his way to pin-point and pay for a location just for the both of you to meet up, as if you two were on a honeymoon, but in a minimal privacy and thin-walled way. You always had wondered what it would be like to make love for the first time but not necessarily with a man who used to reload AK47's and put his life on the line for a living. That was far from your daydreams.

But there was no complaints there, you thought. It's not like you were some kind of pornstar selling yourself out with violent whining moans like a porn video. You knew Ghost for a while but not enough for him to spill out his real name, hence the name he's blessed you with to call with every slip of your tongue — sexual or not. You knew him down to every abnormal breathy grunt behind his mask and tensed movements.

The TV filled up on the tension laying along the lines of loud silence — talkshows, propagandas of sorts, unrestricted channel waves of porn videos. There was no futile perspective to actually watch any of the stuff that was on, most of it used as background noise instead of listening to partner arguments through the narrow walls or the whistles of wind that blew through the curtains and directly into the room. Night air was oddly more different than day air — more relaxing, quieter, delicate.

Nothing felt for real in the moment. You were on your own and with a man, a man you couldn't keep your eyes off of, who seemed to move slowly as if stuck in time the more you kept an eye on him. That didn't last long — Ghost leans over and hoisted himself off on his feet, the muscles of his back traced and flexing while stretching.

"You never take that mask off, do you?" You asked.

"Never."

"I'm sure you get awfully claustrophobic in that from time to time."

"I did a lot more in this than sex." Ghost said. "Why the sudden interest?"

"What more did you do?"

"Killed a few men — a lot of men, actually."

You exhaled deeply. "Sure you had a good reason for that."

"No, but I had a good reason for booking us a motel." he said. "It was my job anyways." He leans down to collect his discarded white v-neck off the floor. It complimented his muscles and tightly wrapped around them, as if he couldn't find a baggy shirt. "Haven't you done anything like that? Sinning — being a sinner, something like that."

"Sometimes." you said. "More like constantly, but that's beside anything. Fuck, I feel weirder down there... is that normal?" You abandoned the comforter clinging to your fingers clawed into it and trailed them down to trace your inner thighs, figure hunched while you poked at the remains of dried blood caking your flesh. "I'm fucking bleeding, and it feels weirder down there."

"It's dried up. Anything hurt?"

"I mean it is your first time doing stuff like this, so yes, very normal."

"...Thanks for the reassurance. What about you? You feeling okay?" you asked. "I mean, I'm okay but I think I also should also be asking you about your health just for the sake of it."

He scoffed, jokingly, of course. "I've been through open battlefields and had bullets through every limb. Sex doesn't hurt I can tell you that, love."

"Good to know." you said.

You reckoned the beads of sweat formed and still at his back. "We should freshen up."

"Have a bath?" Ghost asked.

"Whatever works for you." you said. "Unless that's an excuse to see me naked again."

"Bath it is, then." Ghost said, joking or not, it didn't matter.

The bathtub was porcelain and cold. You sat between his spread legs, bumping right up against his large chest. Ghost was never the one to show affection, love, of any sorts — it made a bit of sense after you had recalled him being a past-military lieutenant and having the front row seat to execute so many people. So much gore and blood at once. You've kissed the man many times, even though it felt like you were the only one truly into it. Regularly in came in small pecks or fast passes between your mouth and his once you noticed his constant flinching or signs of discomfort if you touched him for too long.

That was true romance, at least for you. The kissing, the sex, all of it, like some kind of cheap romance movie you would flip to on the motel television — but it again, for some reason, it didn't feel right. Ghost didn't really mind if anyone had a sense of hatred for him or held a deathly grudge — but coming to you, you were captivating enough for his stomach to tie in knots of sickness. Out of all the things, you were that light amidst a disgusting void of dullness, an angel of some sorts — ironic if he followed back around to the fact that you were quite literally, a preacher's daughter.

He wanted to beat himself to a pulp sometimes, considering you as well, but never as often as himself. It wasn't out of a fury or wrath, but to knock a bit of sense into the both of you. Human embodiments of sinners and all dried up of perception and dried up of compassion — none of you wanted to end up like this. Nobody wanted to end up like either of you and Ghost would even consider the aftermath two bunches of corpses, bloody, beaten-up.

It wouldn't get that bad, he thought.

You weren't a cold-blooded soul like him, regardless. You reached up and were pressing kisses into his exposed neck area and had your hand in a fist moving around him down there rapidly, he appreciated it as much as you did even after an afternoon progressed into late night of pure sexual affairs. Ghost was mute while you released a string of nearly quiet whines through your clenched teeth. The sexual vigor had dispossessed from him and left him soft and sensitive. Self-absorption didn't make up the whole of him along with full cruel intentions, and you weren't selfish to be the only one receiving pleasure that day.

His veined knuckles clutched the edges of the glassy tub, you sat up properly back against him, sopping and bubbly. You pinch the edge of his balaclava and genuinely kissed him, drained of the leftover stamina you acquired. You felt different, both you and him. It was thought he would feel no distinct from his normal self — but he did, and had no guts to own up to it, to you. The night was moved.

Ghost breathed heavier than usual. More tensed. Withered to nothing.

You allow your eyes to drop down to his forearms, his inked detailed forearms. "Are these new?"

"Nah, had them for a while." he said. "Way back when I was still in tactical gear."

"They are beautiful on you."

"How sweet of you." His tone sarcastic but you couldn't tell this time.

Eventually you're back out where the bed is, the television raging of a talkshow — the type where you answer a question win a million, some scam like that, at a low volume. So low that an argument could be made out from the walls behind the messed bed, you worked out to pay no attention but Ghost did. All it did was bring back recollections of his wife exterior to the shell of the motel.

Speaking of his wife, a vibration is sent down his side of the bedside table. Ghost's cellular blares no ringtone but a nagging vibration every ten seconds or so. It hadn't been doing that since he arrived so you just had to wonder — what was so special about right now?

Ghost has his head cocked downwards towards the vibrating item, he stands above the table and adjusts the towel around his waist even though all of the bath water on him had been sucked into the air. No matter what, whoever was ringing him up was just begging to get the attention, and only increased your wonder of the source behind it.

You sat at the foot of the shared bed and studied Ghost when he finally decided for the vibrating to come to an end, his naked self carrying around a single towel around him, yourself also with a towel but dressing your top and lower half. Naked for some other reason, perhaps? After a harsh gym workout of his, is what you could assume if you hadn't been in the same tub with him, washing up in soap with him.

"Hi, honey," Ghost said. "Sorry, sorry. Something suddenly came up and I needed to stay. Something wrong?"

Subconsciously your eyebrows furrow at him and the device, for no reason, though you still got up off the bed and collected your clothes off the floor to replace the loose towel. His conversations were like skewering you straight through the chest and reaching to the depth of your heart, but you took an interest him so much you could never stay that mad. Nothing wrong about spending time with an ex-military man who you really did have to salute for his doings in the war — spending time as in wasting time away at making the both of you cum in a ran-down barely-put-apart motel room.

"I'll be home in a bit, okay, hon? I'm just with a friend from church and we were catching up on a few things." He exhaled loudly. "No, no, we're almost done, I promise you. Get the kid to bed and I'll be there when he wakes up, won't even know I was gone. See you later — yes I really do, bye."

By the time Ghost hangs up the phone, you're back at the foot of bed, a white dress of lace covering you up instead of the towel that had been hung up somewhere in the bathroom. You had no words, vocal chords empty, dried with nothingness.

"That your wife?" You asked.

Ghost sighs and picks up that tight shirt of his to situate on his chest. "It was. Don't worry about it, love."

"Do you love me?"

"What?"

"Do you," you paused. "Do you like me, Ghost?"

"Of course I do — I wouldn't have done all of this with you if I didn't."

His words are comforting, bring a taste of soothingness to your veins. There quite believable to say the least.

"Are you going now?" You ask.

"You heard me on the phone, I have to, unfortunately."

"Will we see each other again?"

It's silent, everything's silent, the couple arguments and television have even gone silent to the maximum.

"...If we don't, I just want to confess this, I'll give you everything of me — even if we're not physically near each other, it's you that I feel like I can truly understand, the first man that I can really view from an understanding point."

Your words feel like a old letter from a military wife to her husband out of war, a tradition that you've seen passed down that you never thought would be used in your lifetime. Downright dramatic was the right definition that highlighted your words to him and you had to confess, maybe you were over-exaggerating it, you did have a strand of luck that you were holding onto that you were going to see that face again. Those empty sockets belonging to a pair of darkened eyes, the rest a void; a void of a skull and thick drooping cloth.

"I can be anything for you," you plead. "I'll be there for you, always, promise. Bones and flesh or what not."

"Wouldn't dream of it."

Were the last words slipped from his cloth lips before he shut the door of the motel to bash at the janky doorframe. You sat in the same position, same place on the bed, the TV left just like that. You were left desperate and still longing for the shadow of a man, and he was longing for you as much as you were. A daughter of a dead preacher, a daughter who went opposite paths than a typical Christian lifetime.

ACT 1 - IMPURITY [PART 1/7]

ACT 2 - OBLIVION [PART 2/7]

ACT 3 - RAGE [PART 3/7]

ACT 4 - REMINISCE [PART 4/7]

ACT 5 - SIN [PART 5/7]

ACT 6 - PREVAIL [PART 6/7]

ACT 7 - SLAUGHTER [PART 7/7]