a story originally written in autumn of 2019
I told her that I was weaker today, tired today.
I told her that I was not up to the same standard of vigilance.
I won't say I was expecting it when she jumped me; I wasn't, really. It just didn't come as so much of a surprise that I failed to react in time.
And so there I was holding her knife hand in a vice grip, her back against the wall.
"Really? Aren't you tired of these games yet?"
She squirmed and fought, but she fought half-heartedly. The chains I had built around her did not permit free movement and hurt to struggle too hard against. She was forced either to be caught in an obvious lie, or to concede the truth although it weakened her strength.
She confessed that I had not provoked her attack. It was her responsibility, it was her fault. She was the instigator. But she was angry at me. Perhaps nearly as angry as she was at herself.
Had I raped her? A demon bound to service does not serve willingly, so had I raped her? Maybe. As much as it may also be claimed that she seduced me... or that what bound us were more like wedding vows. Or that to take any single option thoroughly out of another man's capability is to imprison him.
Our world is not one in which such all or nothing ideals can yield useful judgements. To a high enough eye, all love has conditions no matter how well-intentioned, all conditions are coercion... And so if sex under coercion is rape, surely I had raped her, as all us hairless apes guilty of loving one another have been traumatized rape victims who go on to perpetrate, since the moment our species's behaviour first met whatever conditions the observer chooses to sufficiently qualify what we do as love.
Perhaps, to some eyes, we are not even there yet.
I was angry. I was frustrated. But more simply, I was tired. I had broken down and cried twice the previous day. I had thrown up sour juices from my belly and spat them out. I was tired of holding her so tightly, watching her so closely that she couldn't attack me.
But I was not so tired that she would beat me. Even tired, I was too fast for her. I could see in ways that the wounded creature was blind, too paralysed by fear to reach far enough out to touch that thing which cannot be seen with light nor sound nor nerves, but that required something else to sense. Something subtler, something that required some of the absence of fear.
Her attack was clumsy to me. I was tired, and did not enjoy the task of restraining her. But what must be done must be done. I grumbled. I will admit I kicked her ego while she was down. I was in a bad mood. She threw at me an argument, a package of words, which unfolded into an entrapping net of meaninglessness.
Still feeble before me. I had seen this kind of net before. I did not even sidestep. I walked through it, and I held her chin. I spoke into her face, up very close, and I explained. Her net was like a mist to me. I had had my turn being entangled in such nets before. I had learned long ago how to wriggle out of it, how to avoid being caught in the first place.
She spoke with quiet words that I had freed myself perhaps, but had not saved her. Behind the front of her words, she was crying and shrieking to be freed from her own net, but she could not have seen that she was, with her sense blinded by fear. The key was in her possession, but she had forgotten how to find it and did not know how to use it. I showed it to her, guided her hand to the right pocket, and opened it with the key inside. She looked at the thing blankly.
I told her she could use it, that she could figure it out.
"No. I refuse."
"I see what you are doing. You are trying to scare me away so I'll let you die. I also refuse."
She cried then, and she cursed me, helpless before my power over her, pitiable in her helplessness. Such is the nature of things bound. One cannot help but resent one's captor. I know I cannot in fairness expect her but to lay on my shoulders every scrap of suffering she lives while I bind her to life and force her to endure.
And so, had I raped her? Had it perhaps been time, and long since time to not bind but trust her? But sex was one thing, and one thing I could do without.
If she died, if I undid the chains and lifted the geas that guaranteed her from taking that knife to herself and then she did, it would stay with me forever until the memory was destroyed along with the rest of me.
Was I in my guardianship truly worthy of any other thanks but her contempt for keeping her here, in a beating heart and the raggedness of her sobbing breaths?
I do not have the comfort of conviction that I am doing the right thing. I am not actually certain. But for now, I continue to hold her here. It is the best I dare to do. In my own fear, my senses are clouded, although less so than hers. I cannot see a way to heal her without holding her to life, no matter how unwilling. If I could put her into a sleep until I have the answers, perhaps I would...
But in truth, I am glad to be spared the decision to choose between my own deepest loneliness, and forcing her to endure waiting for a cure that neither of us know is coming, that neither of us really know is possible.
Such is life, I suppose.
Such is life.
I told her that I was weaker today, tired today.
I told her that I was not up to the same standard of vigilance.
I won't say I was expecting it when she jumped me; I wasn't, really. It just didn't come as so much of a surprise that I failed to react in time.
And so there I was holding her knife hand in a vice grip, her back against the wall.
"Really? Aren't you tired of these games yet?"
She squirmed and fought, but she fought half-heartedly. The chains I had built around her did not permit free movement and hurt to struggle too hard against. She was forced either to be caught in an obvious lie, or to concede the truth although it weakened her strength.
She confessed that I had not provoked her attack. It was her responsibility, it was her fault. She was the instigator. But she was angry at me. Perhaps nearly as angry as she was at herself.
Had I raped her? A demon bound to service does not serve willingly, so had I raped her? Maybe. As much as it may also be claimed that she seduced me... or that what bound us were more like wedding vows. Or that to take any single option thoroughly out of another man's capability is to imprison him.
Our world is not one in which such all or nothing ideals can yield useful judgements. To a high enough eye, all love has conditions no matter how well-intentioned, all conditions are coercion... And so if sex under coercion is rape, surely I had raped her, as all us hairless apes guilty of loving one another have been traumatized rape victims who go on to perpetrate, since the moment our species's behaviour first met whatever conditions the observer chooses to sufficiently qualify what we do as love.
Perhaps, to some eyes, we are not even there yet.
I was angry. I was frustrated. But more simply, I was tired. I had broken down and cried twice the previous day. I had thrown up sour juices from my belly and spat them out. I was tired of holding her so tightly, watching her so closely that she couldn't attack me.
But I was not so tired that she would beat me. Even tired, I was too fast for her. I could see in ways that the wounded creature was blind, too paralysed by fear to reach far enough out to touch that thing which cannot be seen with light nor sound nor nerves, but that required something else to sense. Something subtler, something that required some of the absence of fear.
Her attack was clumsy to me. I was tired, and did not enjoy the task of restraining her. But what must be done must be done. I grumbled. I will admit I kicked her ego while she was down. I was in a bad mood. She threw at me an argument, a package of words, which unfolded into an entrapping net of meaninglessness.
Still feeble before me. I had seen this kind of net before. I did not even sidestep. I walked through it, and I held her chin. I spoke into her face, up very close, and I explained. Her net was like a mist to me. I had had my turn being entangled in such nets before. I had learned long ago how to wriggle out of it, how to avoid being caught in the first place.
She spoke with quiet words that I had freed myself perhaps, but had not saved her. Behind the front of her words, she was crying and shrieking to be freed from her own net, but she could not have seen that she was, with her sense blinded by fear. The key was in her possession, but she had forgotten how to find it and did not know how to use it. I showed it to her, guided her hand to the right pocket, and opened it with the key inside. She looked at the thing blankly.
I told her she could use it, that she could figure it out.
"No. I refuse."
"I see what you are doing. You are trying to scare me away so I'll let you die. I also refuse."
She cried then, and she cursed me, helpless before my power over her, pitiable in her helplessness. Such is the nature of things bound. One cannot help but resent one's captor. I know I cannot in fairness expect her but to lay on my shoulders every scrap of suffering she lives while I bind her to life and force her to endure.
And so, had I raped her? Had it perhaps been time, and long since time to not bind but trust her? But sex was one thing, and one thing I could do without.
If she died, if I undid the chains and lifted the geas that guaranteed her from taking that knife to herself and then she did, it would stay with me forever until the memory was destroyed along with the rest of me.
Was I in my guardianship truly worthy of any other thanks but her contempt for keeping her here, in a beating heart and the raggedness of her sobbing breaths?
I do not have the comfort of conviction that I am doing the right thing. I am not actually certain. But for now, I continue to hold her here. It is the best I dare to do. In my own fear, my senses are clouded, although less so than hers. I cannot see a way to heal her without holding her to life, no matter how unwilling. If I could put her into a sleep until I have the answers, perhaps I would...
But in truth, I am glad to be spared the decision to choose between my own deepest loneliness, and forcing her to endure waiting for a cure that neither of us know is coming, that neither of us really know is possible.
Such is life, I suppose.
Such is life.
