Maybe

15

Donovan Creed.

AFTER LEAVING THE hospital Miranda and I cross the street and enter the hotel quietly. I feel her staring at me.

“Are you okay?” she says.

“I’m good.”

She nods.

We walk down the hall in silence, enter the room, sit on the bed.

She says, “Can we talk about this?”

“Are you sure it’s ethical?” I say, and immediately wish I hadn’t.

She ignores my comment and says, “I know you, Donovan.”

She thinks she knows me. In truth, she knows very little about me.

“This has affected you deeply.”

She’s right about that.

“Look at me,” she says.

I know what she’s going to say. She’s going to tell me I need to clear my head of evil thoughts. She’ll say that giving total strangers more than fifty million dollars worth of free treatment is stunningly generous, and I should reflect on how their lives will be improved because of me. She’ll tell me not to dwell on the bad. She’ll say I need to forgive the person who did these terrible things, and move on with my life.

But when she speaks she says none of those things.

What she says is, “You’re going to catch the bastard that did this. And when you do, you’re going to torture him in the cruelest possible way.”

“Yes.”

Then she says, “You won’t turn him over to the authorities. You’ll make sure he’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“But I need to be there, Donovan. I need to talk to him.”

I look at her. “Why?”

“I need to understand his thought process. I need to know what makes him tick.”

“It’ll make you a better psychologist?”

“I believe it will.”

“Do you want to participate in the torture?”

“No. But I want to watch.”

We stare at each other a moment.

Then we attack.

To put it more accurately, Miranda attacks me. She slaps my face with both hands as hard as she can, over and over, stopping only to fall on her back and rip her blouse open. I take this as a cue to remove the rest of her clothing, which is no easy task while getting the shit slapped out of me.

Now, entering her, I expect the slapping to stop. But it intensifies! Again and again she slaps my face. She eventually makes her hands into fists and flails away at my face. Miranda’s not a skilled fighter, so I lean into her punches to intensify the effect.

When she bloodies my nose and lips she gets excited and starts bucking me. I ride it out as long as I can, which roughly translates to eighty seconds.

As you might imagine, this type of fucking is exhausting, hard work.

When we finish we’re panting like overweight dogs after a two-mile sprint.

Miranda says, “Are you okay?”

“I am.”

“Good. Now it’s my turn.”

I look at her. “What do you mean?”

“I’ll get on top while you hit me.”