Yes.
“Humanity is dull and predictable. I take great pleasure flipping it between sufferance and joy. You, probably, included.”
Her mouth opens, shock evident. I don’t know why. But perhaps with the pills and the sleeping and the time we’ve had that included some element of normalcy in this guise of reality, she saw something else in me. “Sufferance?”
“Yes. Do you enjoy suffering?”
“No. I don’t.”
“But you already are doing. How does it feel? The suffering, the confusion? And take your clothes off. I want your colours.”
“Why do you enjoy making people suffer?”
“What else is there to do?” Her eyes narrow.
“Did your grandfather make people suffer?” My whole body stiffens, as if his ghost just got inside my veins and rendered this conversation inappropriate. “Why do you covet him and what he was as much as you do?”
“That’s none of your concern either.”
“But it is now – because of you and these pills you forced on me.” She spins the knife again. “Perhaps you’re the one who suffers, Malachi. Perhaps you live in a world full of suffering and pain despite all this around you, and because of that you choose to inflict that suffering on others.”
“Assumption gets you nowhere.”
“Or maybe you’re just a coward.” I scowl at yet another assumption and turn the other way. She gets around in my face immediately. “My mother was a coward. She left us alone. Chose death instead of protecting us.”
“Maybe you weren’t worth living for. As I said, your existence is pointless."
She frowns, glares actually. “That’s cruel."
"Cruelty is something I know well, Alice. You'll understand that soon enough. "
"Those hands that touched me last night weren't cruel.” She walks closer, peering at me with her questioning eyes. “I think, hope, you’re better than that. Do you need more to be man enough for truth?”
I stare, perversely infatuated with the belligerence of the question. “Probably. Certainly more skin on show.”
A smile slips over her lips, as if thinks she just cracked a shell. “And what about this wife of yours – Faith? Does she make you suffer?” The longest sigh rattles through my body, as I turn for the lounge. I need a drink. Several. I need pills in reality, but given the pain that Gray seems to have covertly lodged in my body should I choose that option of escape, drink will have to do.
The walk seems filled with emptiness and hollow objections in my mind. Digging, pushing, scraping my thoughts for memories only I ever linger in.
“Malachi? Does she?”
“I’m waiting for more from you.” She huffs and takes her top off to expose my colours on her skin, slinging it to the ground by my feet. “Thank you. And she couldn’t if she tried.”
“Do you love her?”
A laugh barks out of me. “No.”
“Then why stay married?”
“More.” Her eyes narrow, fingers going to the trousers to flick buttons open. I keep watching, as she shuffles the trousers down, eventually kicking them sideways along with the boots. “I accept reality for what it is. No more than that. Love is irrelevant.”
“What a sad marriage. Must be tiring.”
My fingers go to her shoulder, gently tracing her lines downwards until I reach the scars on her stomach, the vines crawling across them. “Sad? No. More inevitable. She’s simply a bitch that I can’t afford to divorce. The practicalities of wealth are difficult to manage.”
She could be right about tiring, though.
“No. You just give her half and-“
