Complicit

Forsaken, I am but a memory — dilapidated, some say; laid to rest in history’s mausoleum. The dank air, my only companion.

My entrance has forgotten the prelude of hands, the act of tactility — a spinster’s malediction.

Long I have waited, expectant of that which was lost: the coming alive to the fingers of another, stroking my finer lines and taking control of my love handles.

For too long, silently, solitary, I had waited. But whispered breaths of a name came to me — a lover’s baited moans of longing. The ache vibrates from my core to the firm edges of my opening. Then I feel you near.

A remembrance — in slow motion.

Passion ignited: the conflagration of my stilted, hidden heart spread from the gaps, with gasps, as your breath on my opening was the precursor.

I bloomed at your touch.

It was not the strength but the confidence with which you coaxed me open. It was the welcome and brazen way you crossed my threshold, letting the cautionary walls I had set in place give way to wonder.

And what lay beyond, curious suitor? Was my inner sanctum all you had hoped for as you inhaled and took in the glory of my creation?

You were so young when last we met, but how you've grown. Eagerly, I beckon you to stay a while, shrouding you in my warmth as my threshold closes.

Please, tell me — do you remember me, my darling?

I whisper lightly, softly, through the brief breeze, as my body — my temple — transforms the remainder of the cold air you brought forth into the hazy mist of remembrance, of my desire.

Ah — giving me the cold shoulder? The silent treatment?

Oh, how I remember that well. How you would send shivers through my supporting walls as I begged for your attention, your affection. When you crossed my threshold with your latest conquest — her laughter echoing against the ghosts of our past.

That laughter would rise, then twist, turning from delight to an unseen God, to disquiet in pain and anguish. The walls remember, even when you do not. They absorbed every tremor, every cry, until the air itself grew heavy with what could not be confessed. And yet, you always returned, whispering promises as though I might forgive, as though stone and timber could forget. One conquest followed another, teasing me in the downtime between, leading me on with honeyed words and gentle enticements to keep me within your grasp.

I kept your secrets, held them close to me, absorbed them as memories in the very fibres of my sanctuary. We had an understanding, did we not, my dear? That was my understanding.

But, alas, it was in vain. Wasn't it?

Oh, how the passage of time has contaminated your memory. Perhaps you simply chose to forget, to leave the past to oblivion. But my walls remember. I remember. While I could — and still do, to an extent — take your need to feed your illicit, transgressive desire, it was the neglect that destroyed me: the inattention, the dereliction, the abandonment. When you frequented the hallowed gateway to my fortress, even then you would vanish, fade, dissipate to nothing like cigarette smoke through doors. But then the odd days, here and there — those in-between days — became years.

How long has it been now?

Ten years?

Ten long and lost years, my love. Crushing pain, regret, guilt, and anxiety. Did I do something wrong? Did I not show total devotion to you, my love?

Did I betray your trust as you enjoyed the fruits of your labour, time and time again? Sensual but disconnected, I believed our presence in each other's lives was a mutual improvement — a shared benefit.

I was clearly mistaken.

Now, as I contemplate our history, our legacy, realisation gifted me the truth.

You see, so long I yearned for your touch, to be enough. Forsaken, though, you deemed me. I was your afflicted: there when you needed me — a safe haven, complicit and locked off from reality.

Why was I never enough? Why could you not stop? Your own affliction, obsession, drove you beyond insanity.

Not that it matters really. Truly.

I will not, and cannot, lie to you, dearest. I was hurt. Those old pains and groans of buildings long abandoned — I feel them now throughout our room.

Though I don't expect to win you back, or convince you to change and focus your transgressive tendencies on me and not the latest bit of fancy arm candy.

Though all that — painful as it is — remains true.

I do want to gift you a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Something I feel you've been chasing all your life.

The ultimate marriage of pain, pleasure, and total domination of mind, body, and spirit.

I am not merely a room. I am a holocaust waiting to reveal itself. I have such sights to show you. That's what you never considered.

Long I have waited to force the human race to confront its own vomit, and to look in the mirror. This dreamlike logic has been my sanity through our long parting.

Passion kept me alive; reclamation, redemption, and revenge brought me hope. Hope for the time you'd come back to me.

And here you are.

You never gave me more thought than beyond what you required from me.

That is your downfall.

I'm sorry, my love.

As you look around my inner chamber with that reluctant charisma, I purr in the stale atmosphere — just as I once did when we were as tight as lovers in the sanctuary of salvation I offered. Salvation from the dull repetition of normality. Welcomed you in and tended to your needs, kept your secrets. Diligent and loyal, through and through.

In an undertone, my calm and soothing susurration enticed you in only ways I knew how — to caress me as you once did, before and after your wicked deeds, when you washed me clean of our sins. They were our sins; you made sure of that. In my complicity, I thought our bond was made eternal.

How wrong I was.

But it's okay. Because as you start to caress me — fingers tracing the fine lines and deterioration, the use and abuse from all those years we worked side by side — I will introduce you to elegant and exquisite memories of our victims.

When you look back from the dark decades of your pain and delightful suffering, you will see this as a memory of heaven — your forsaken tomb.

*

Thanks for reading!

Author's Notes: I wanted to share a bit about the influences that helped shape this story. Long before this piece existed, I was deeply affected by two works that explore the psychological and moral consequences of pursuing transgressive desires: Crash (the novel and film) by J.G. Ballard and Hellraiser (the film) by Clive Barker. Though very different works, they share a thematic undercurrent: when curiosity and compulsion drive a person to seek experiences beyond the boundaries of the ordinary, the results can be ecstatic, destructive, or both.

In Crash, characters fetishise collisions and the wounded bodies they produce. In Hellraiser, the Lament Configuration opens a doorway to beings who collapse the line between pain and pleasure, offering transcendence at a terrible price.

Some lines in this story echo paraphrased moments from those works, in homage. Their influence — and the themes they explore — lingered in me for years, eventually finding their way into this piece. Here, the forgotten room becomes an active accomplice to a man in search of ever-greater, ever-darker experiences — a partner in his obsession, and ultimately, his reckoning.