Chapter 2: The Aftermath and a New Demand
The buzz of the bulb was the only sound for a long moment, a high-pitched whine that seemed to vibrate in Lars’s teeth. He lay motionless, the cooling mess a second skin on his chest and stomach, the taste of her vomit and his own failure a burnt chemical streak down his throat.
Ingrid looked down at him, her head tilted as if examining a curious insect. She scuffed her shoe against the painter’s tarp. “Get up.”
He tried. His limbs were loose, uncoordinated, shock and release making them feel like they belonged to someone else. He managed to push himself onto his elbows, a fresh wave of the stench rising from his body.
“Not like that,” she said, her voice slicing through the damp air. “You don’t walk out of this. You crawl. On your hands and knees. Pig style.”
Lars hesitated, a final, feeble spark of something that might have been dignity flickering and dying in his gut. He rolled onto his side, then slowly, joints protesting, got his knees under him. The shit smeared between his body and the tarp made a wet, peeling sound. He placed his palms flat on the cold linoleum beyond the tarp.
“To the bathroom. Now. And don’t you dare stand up.”
He moved. The journey across the small apartment was an eternity. His kneecaps pressed into the hard floor, his hands leaving faint, brown prints. He trailed the odor with him, a filthy comet’s tail. He passed the rickety card table, the half-empty bottle of aquavit glowing amber in the gloom. The yellowed newspaper clippings on the wall blurred in his peripheral vision. He focused on the chipped white paint of the bathroom doorframe.
Ingrid followed at a leisurely pace, her footsteps heavy and deliberate. He heard the creak of the floorboards, the rustle of her dress. “Faster,” she said, not loudly.
He scurried, the humiliation burning hotter than any physical sensation. He reached the tiny, dank bathroom and paused, his forehead almost touching the cool porcelain of the toilet bowl.
“In. Kneel in the tub.”
The shower stall was a fiberglass coffin lined with black mold. He crawled over the lip, his knees scraping on the gritty surface. He knelt in the center, facing the faucet, his body trembling from cold and exhaustion. The showerhead stared down at him like a blind metal eye.
Ingrid filled the doorway, blocking the light. She walked in and closed the door behind her. The space shrank, becoming intolerably intimate. She unzipped her dress with a swift, practiced motion and let it fall to the floor. Her nakedness was monumental, a landscape of pale flesh and dark hair. She didn’t look at him. She turned on the cold tap at the sink, rinsed her hands briefly, and splashed water on her face.
Then she turned. She stepped over the edge of the tub and stood before him, her thick thighs framing his bowed head. The coarse hair of her pubic mound was level with his eyes. He could smell her, a musky, living scent cut through with the sharper notes of what she’d done to him.
“You’re still dirty,” she murmured. “Your face is a fucking disgrace.”
She reached down, her fingers rough as they gripped his chin, forcing his head up. “Open your mouth.”
He obeyed, his jaw aching. He expected another handful of filth. Instead, she shifted her stance, spreading her feet wider. She guided his head forward, pressing his face into her.
“Now,” she said, her voice calm, conversational. “I’m going to piss on you. You’re going to drink it. You’re going to open your whore mouth and you’re going to take every drop. Understand?”
A small, pathetic sound escaped him. He nodded against her flesh.
He heard it first, a low, internal gurgle. Then a hot, powerful spray hit his forehead, his closed eyelids. It was startlingly hot, almost scalding. The acrid, ammonia smell flooded his nostrils. She adjusted her aim, her hand still vise-like on his chin.
“Open.”
He opened his mouth. The stream hit his tongue, a bitter, salty torrent. He gagged immediately, choking, but she held him fast, grinding his face into her. The piss splashed over his lips, filled his mouth, ran down his throat. He had to swallow or drown. He swallowed, the liquid burning a path to his queasy stomach. It kept coming, a seemingly endless flow, drenching his hair, his face, his shoulders. It pooled in the hollow of his collarbone, mixed with the earlier filth, and ran in rivulets down his chest into the tub.
She let out a long, satisfied sigh as the stream tapered to a trickle, then drips. She released his chin. He slumped forward, coughing, sputtering, cold piss and spit drooling from his lips. His whole world was the smell of her urine.
“Use your hands,” she instructed, stepping out of the tub. “Wash your face with it. Scrub it in.”
Whimpering, he raised his trembling, filthy hands and smeared the liquid over his skin, rubbing it into his stubble, his eyelids. It was the final erasure.
Ingrid watched, leaning against the sink, completely at ease. She turned on the shower. A blast of ice-cold water shot from the nozzle, hitting Lars in the back like a punishment. He gasped, jerking upright.
“Stay there,” she said. “Stay there and get clean. I want to see you shiver.”
The water was merciless, needling his skin, turning his flesh to gooseflesh. He hugged himself, his teeth chattering violently, rocking on his knees under the frigid spray. He watched as Ingrid casually used his sink, rinsed her mouth with his mouthwash, and then began to wash herself with a damp cloth, ignoring the shower’s spray. She cleaned between her legs, under her heavy breasts, with the detached efficiency of a mechanic wiping down a tool.
When she was done, she dropped the cloth on the floor. She stepped back into her dress, her body still glistening in places. She looked at him, a pitiful, naked creature turning blue under the cold water.
“You can turn it off when I’m gone,” she said, pulling the door open. The comparatively warm, foul air from the apartment drifted in. She paused in the doorway, a silhouette against the flickering light. “That was just the warm-up, Lars. The appetizer. You keep paying, and I’ll keep giving you what you need. Next time…” She let the promise hang, a darker shadow in the already dark room. “Next time, we’ll use the mirror.”
She left, closing the apartment’s main door with a soft but definitive click.
The water beat down on him. He couldn’t move. The cold was a penance, sealing everything into his pores—the taste, the smell, the complete, utter nullification of self. He heard her heavy tread on the stairs outside, fading away. Above him, the neighbor’s laughter started again, bright and oblivious.
Slowly, his arm shaking so badly he could barely control it, he reached up and fumbled the faucet handle. The water stopped. The drip from the showerhead was the only sound. Plink. Plink. Plink.
In the profound silence, he began to sob, great, heaving gasps that hurt his ribs. He cried for a long time, curled in the bottom of the tub. When he finally uncurled and looked up, his eyes met the crooked mirror on the bathroom wall. A stranger, hollow-eyed and bleached-pale, streaked with brown and yellow, stared back. He looked at the mirror, and the mirror, as always, seemed to look through him. Waiting.