Domesticity was an unfamiliar taste but a welcome one. She couldn’t remember when was the last time she could cook a meal for herself - and for someone else for that matter but she was sure she never had anyone like that before in her life. Drugs bleached away whatever remained of her memories before she was thrown around like a dirty doll and hence the unfamiliarity.

She was lucky though. Not many of those like her had a chance to taste that.

He came back home and even after he washed himself from crusted blood and guts of whoever happened to be in his way there were still dark red crescents under his nails - but it was still domestic. A strange domesticity but she has been brought into it only in underwear and covered in blood prints from his hands, high as a kite and trembling from overdose and shock and fear.

From a whore to someone resembling a housewife for a murderer if a boyfriend although she wasn’t sure if that word applied. They had a relationship - she ensured he won’t feed only on pizza and that his flat won’t be devoured by dirt and he held back her hair whenever she had to vomit her guts out when her body again demanded whatever she’s been doused with before he saved her. She wished she could help him with nightmares she quietly hoped he had but for a murderer his sleep was deep and calm. It was nice to spread her thighs open to someone, instead of having them forced apart, too.

He never talked to her about her past and she never asked him how is it like to be a murderer (he always came back covered in blood, she remembers the bodies staring at her as she clung to him, the newspapers give her numbers, too high to be considered murders, no, “murderer” wasn’t enough).

She doesn’t even know his name and he never asked her for hers. They always say “you” because nothing else really matters, she knows he has no one else to talk to and same could be said about her. They know nothing about each other and yet the small talk flows, commenting on things in newspaper or telly, watching stuff he borrowed, always carefully avoiding violence and blood.

Aspects so deeply ingrained into their lives that they’d rather tiptoe around it carefully than acknowledge it. At least out loud.

She washes the blood off the floor when he showers, he keeps her close whenever she again couldn’t sleep. A symbiosis of sorts. She knew it was temporary - she knew not when he will stop awaiting phones and leaving home in the night and she herself had no perspectives for future either. What was she, a retired whore now? A toy put into hands of a calmer kid who didn’t want to break her but appreciate her? She had nothing, no education nor experience and anyway any of those wouldn’t do her good with paranoia slithering everywhere.

She didn’t dare to speak about her doubts. She wasn’t sure how he’d react. Yes, he never harmed her, be it with his words or actions, but she still felt fear. It was nothing in comparison to what she felt the first time she saw him, blank blood-spattered rooster mask staring into her eyes, but she still avoided dwelling on sensitive things when talking with him.

Small talk was safe. Yes, I never did that before, is the taste so bad? I’m glad you liked it. Oh, you have a new tape, what is it, I never saw it.

She never asked. He never asked.

Rat tried to slither in and it’s steps were loud on the staircase. Too early to be him coming back from another murder spree and she had been careful. Rat had a gun, maybe one of those machine ones, she never knew much about those things. Rat was fast but she was in the kitchen and she had a knife. If this gun of its didn’t work, she’d be dead and she didn’t have time to think why and how and what for that rat came for here.

She stabbed, over and over and over, until blood trickled from rat’s mask. Only then she stopped. Only then she took a lungful of iron-stained air in confusion and shock. She didn’t notice when she sat on the body, a corpse after first few stabs, blood sipping from his torso and stomach and abdomen staining her thighs and panties.

She put the body in the bathtub and cleaned herself in a sink, stench of iron strong in the air, she could almost taste it.