play

“Let’s play” he says, all grin and glinting canines.  My reaction is instinctual: survival.  I lunge for his throat, for the thick jugular full of life and heat, biting down on skin and heartbeat before he can do the same.  As teeth graze skin and I taste sweat and musk along my tongue, I wish for claws over these weak cuticles, for the ability to sink down into flesh, deep to the bone, to carve my presence there.  So he never forgets.

But already I feel the vibrations of his laughter against my tongue, and he lifts me bodily, still attached to him by the throat, fingers pressing between the bars of my ribs.  I bite harder to tease out the russet taste of his body, while his fingers move north to find my own snappable neck, oblivious to my hands grappling against his wrists.

Squeeze, and white flares out against the edges of my vision.

Squeeze harder, and my jaw goes slack, desire for air overpowering desire for flesh.  I forcefeed tiny gulps of wheezing air down a constricted larynx, but it is not enough to extinguish the sunbursts in my skull.

The final, sputtering moan that escapes through my swollen tongue is not of my own doing, but rather milked from each air-deprived cell of my body, fed up to his hungry ears, drawn out by his thumbs pressed close to my vocal chords, and I don’t have enough oxygen in my lungs to thank him (Thank you, thank you, thank you; but the bridge between mind and voice has crumbled) for this hard-earned euphoria.

And in an instant it is over, gone: nothing pressing against my airway, no fingers laced like wire around my throat.  Air rushes into the vacuum of my lungs faster than I can gasp.  As I lie there panting, I see only his wild grin coming into focus, and his voice coos, low in my ear, “Now, wasn’t that fun?”