Love Me to Death

THIRTY-FOUR

The sun has not yet risen. I see snow falling lightly to the ground outside my windows as I rise from my warm bed.

I am calm, as I always am when I end one cycle and begin the next. Though this morning I am not as pleased as I should be, and I wonder about that while I shower.

One reason is that the female I currently have has potential; she learns to obey well. If I had more time, I know I could put her back together the way God intended.

But Lucy Kincaid stole my time. I cannot shake her from my thoughts and my nightmares. I am driven to teach her. She is the most ill-prepared for my instruction. She’s the most defiant. I see it in her eyes, in the way she walks. I’ve been watching her for weeks, and never would I have chosen her as one of my students.

But it is not always up to me. Greater powers are at play. Who am I to question? She placed herself in my life when she sought to send me back to prison. She overstepped her bounds, if she even accepts that she has any.

She will be a challenge for me, a test. God doesn’t give us more than we can handle, and as she is merely a woman, I can break her.

I cook my breakfast and eat as the sun rises, though with the dark gray clouds I can see but a faint shift from dark to less dark. I put the leftovers in a bowl.

I cross the worn kitchen linoleum and go down to the basement, as I do every morning. The female is lying in the corner of the cage, under the single wool blanket I am generous to provide.

She looks at me but shows nothing. No fear. No anger. No soul.

I have broken her.

I put the bowl in her cage and see if I am right. She doesn’t move, doesn’t crawl toward the food, though her nose twitches like a cat’s. She smells it. She wants it.

And she waits.

“You may eat,” I say.

Slowly she crawls across the hard-packed dirt basement. There is blood in the corner from her punishment last night. I had given her ointment and a clean towel—I do not want her to get an infection. I’m not inhumane.

I refill her water bowl and leave it with her food.

Her response should please me, but I am not happy. She broke far faster than the others. A trick?

I could give her to another who will appreciate my time training her to be a proper, obedient woman.

But I do not trust her. In the end, they all turn away from the Truth.

She whimpers as she eats.

I sigh. No matter. She’s going to die soon anyway. I don’t have the time to finish her training. Break them, then put them back together the way they should be.

I turn and walk back up the stairs to prepare for the next female.