THE HIGH TABLE

Naughty_Monkey:

I never believed in all that voodoo nonsense. Curses. Spirits. Dead men whispering from bone. Nonsense. But the reward for the skull was real enough to get my attention. The catch was that someone had beaten me to it. The skull had already been bought, locked away in a private gallery, and was now sitting somewhere inside the gothic building I was staring up at. Typical. Security looked standard from the outside. Cameras. Motion sensors. Reinforced doors. Nothing that made me sweat. The weak point was a narrow third-floor window tucked beneath a stone ledge, too small for most men to even consider. Lucky for me, most men are not five foot tall and built from 131 pounds of compact, stubborn muscle.

I flexed my fingers inside the adapted climbing gloves. The hooked claws along my palms bit into the brickwork, and I started up the wall, silent and smooth, dragging myself higher while the street shrank beneath my bare feet. By the time I reached the window, my breathing was steady. Locked. Of course it was. I pressed both palms against the wooden surround. The hooks sank in with a dull bite. I twisted and forced the frame until the old wood groaned in protest. One final wrench and the lock gave with a sharp crack. No alarm. Good. I slipped inside.

The gallery opened out around me, vast and cold, all polished stone floors, moonlit display cases and stolen history dressed up as culture. Masks stared from the walls. Spears and idols stood in glass coffins. Every object had probably been robbed from someone, somewhere, by men who wore nicer suits than mine. Focus. In and out. Take the skull. Leave. Then I saw it. An isolated plinth beneath a clean glass cover. Too obvious. Too important. There it was. The skull.

Yellowed bone. Strange markings carved into the crown. It should have looked ridiculous, like a prop from a cheap horror film. Instead, my skin tightened. A cold shiver crawled over my shoulders, as if something dead had just noticed me. I swallowed hard. Voodoo is nonsense. I lifted the glass cover. For half a second, nothing happened. Then the whole gallery screamed. Alarm bells tore through the room, shrill and violent. Metal shutters slammed down over the windows with bone-jarring force. Doors sealed shut one after another. All except one. “Fuck.” I snatched the skull from the plinth and ran.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

The silence is terrifying as the alarm cuts out. Such a silence. It takes intention to make such a silence, you should be impressed, I think. A metronome of single footsteps counts your time as I round the corner. "It has a way of looking back at you, don't you think, Monkey?" I approach. I am Raphael Tormenta, and I'm sure you know me. "Naughty Monkey... " shaking my head. "I can read your little mind. You think you can come into my house and take things? You think that's permitted because I do the same? I wonder how you make so many errors and stay alive? Did you hope the priestess' skull would raise you from the dead after you pitch yourself to the pavement below ...from the third floor? That's not an exit strategy, I must say, from professional to professional. now the question is this... what do I do with you?

"Yes, you know the answer... I kill you of course. But this is a polite theater for you to insert your negotiation for your life. "

The footsteps sound like gunshots, fine shoes on polished tile, and I grab your hair and pull you to my face. The rage is easy... you invade my home?? I am furious!

I pull your face to mine. "Do you beg, or do I snap your neck now?"

I stand tall and I am the wine of violence when confronted... waiting for your word...

Naughty_Monkey:

Your words slide over me without landing. The moment I saw you, I knew exactly who you were. The reputation.  The whispered warnings from men who thought they were dangerous until they crossed your path. Rafael Tormenta. The giant collector. The man who stole masterpieces the way other men bought wine. And somehow, standing here in front of you, I realise the stories undersold you. You’re even bigger in person. Even crouched down, even with one huge hand gripping my head and dragging me close, I still have to look up slightly to meet your eyes. Your fingers press into my skull like a clamp. Your breath is calm. Mine is controlled, but only just. Then you rise. Unfolding to your full height like a wall becoming a building. I know exactly what you’re doing. You want me to feel small. You want me to see the difference between us before you break me with it. It almost works. Almost. But fear sharpens into something better. Motivation. Motivation to get out of this sealed gallery alive.

The alarms are silent. The shutters are down. The room is locked tight except for one exit, and standing between me and that exit is you. There’s no going round you. So I have to go through you. I look up at you with the most confident smile I can manage. “The problem with being that tall,” I say, my voice steady, “is that you’re very exposed.” Your eyes narrow. By the time the final word leaves my mouth, I’ve already moved. My left fist drives into the inside of your thigh with a hard, compact crack of knuckle against muscle. Not a warning shot. Not a distraction. A full-force strike aimed to buckle the leg of a man who looks impossible to move. Before you can shift your weight, my right fist hammers into your other thigh. Again, full power. No hesitation. No mercy. Then I drop my stance, twist my hips and launch upward with everything I have. The uppercut lands between your legs. A dirty shot. A desperate shot. The kind of blow honourable fighters pretend they would never use. Good thing I’m a thief, then. I hit you with every pound of my 131-pound frame. The impact punches up through my shoulder and into my spine. No pulling it. No softening it. No heroic nonsense. Just survival. For half a second, the gallery seems to hold its breath.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

My eyes widen with shock. I don't feel it at first, it's the lights of the train of pain heading at me so fast there is no dodging. AUUUUUGhhhffff...... the floor hits my knee as I go down. I shove this irritating street punk away from me sending him tumbling ...yes away from the door! You come to rest 20 feet from me as I try to reach for my taser. It's strapped to my leg. I suck in breath knowing it will pass, in thirty second or less, but the pain leaves my hands weak and shaking. He scored the perfect hit; the crotch mining little dwarf! "You... will pay ...Monkey!" From my mouth, your cute nickname is a curse. I hiss at you. I cannot rise yet. The taser slips from my hands to the floor, a black tube 10" long. A deep groan escapes my chest as I work through the pain. My endowment is not small, testicles that swing heavy like a bull.

Naughty_Monkey:

I’m ready for anger. I’m not ready for your strength! Your hand hits me in the chest, and it isn’t a push so much as a casual act of demolition. My feet leave the floor. The gallery blurs. Polished tiles flash beneath me, and then I hit hard, sliding backwards on my arse until I crash into the base of a display case. For one ugly second, my lungs forget how to work. Then instinct takes over. I roll with the momentum, plant one hand against the floor and flip back onto my feet with the kind of speed and balance you could only dream of. You’re down on one knee. Good. But not down enough. Something slips from your hand and clatters onto the tile. A small device. Black. Dangerous looking. Your eyes cut towards it. That tells me everything I need to know. Whatever that thing is, you want it. Which means I absolutely do not want you to have it.

I sprint before you can reach for it and drive my foot through the device, kicking it hard across the gallery. It skims over the polished floor, spinning away into the shadows beneath a row of marble statues. Now my attention snaps back to you. You’re still on your knees. For once, your face is within reach. I close the distance and swing. My left hook lands against your jaw with a sound like knuckles striking a stone pillar. “Fuck!” Pain explodes through my hand, shoots into my wrist, then rips up my forearm in a white-hot line. It feels like I’ve just punched concrete dressed in skin. You barely move. I do. I grit my teeth, ignore the screaming in my hand, and fire the right straight down the middle. This one hits your nose. A better, softer target. Your head snaps back a fraction, and blood bursts from your nostrils, dark and sudden, spattering across your mouth and the front of your shirt. There it is. Proof. You bleed. I jump back fast, putting space between us before one of those massive hands can close around me again. My chest rises and falls. My left hand throbs like it’s full of broken glass, but I keep it up. I keep my stance sharp. And you look at me through the blood with murder building behind your eyes. I force a smile. “This only gets worse,” I say. “Let me leave with the skull, and you’ll live to see daylight.”

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

I am reeling far worse than I expected... you land hard and slide. It pleases me but somehow, not enough. More abuse is required. I lose my race to get the taser, you kick it into the murky distance and my mind rehearses stabbing you with an ice pick. 

THE PUNCH comes!

My head fires with pain. I taste my bloody lip. I reach for you as you slip back and miss grabbing your face by inches... My hands hit the floor. My pelvis throbs and I still have no breath. It would be a shame to end it all here. To such an unworthy opponent no less? Then I see it. You have broken your hand... on my jaw! The irony is almost painful. People will now fear my mouth and my actions. And then the threat... a PROMISE to go easy on me!

The sound escaping my chest sounds like a carpet tearing end to end and you finally discover it’s my revving up laughter! "Or what... you will break your other hand on my ass?" The laughter is uncontrollable. I love life and it's fun. This is a treasured moment. I haul myself to my feet slowly... And he has NO idea what happens to him should he succeed. I quietly dare him to touch the skull with an ungloved hand. I barely want this thing in my collection at all. It looks like a skull in a box. I have no idea myself what it's reaction will be to a bloody fight in its midst. I'm not sure this fight wasn't caused by it in some way. That will not stop me from winning however...

I stand.... and walk toward the Monkey.

Naughty_Monkey:

I put everything into those strikes, every ounce of speed, leverage and compact muscle I have, and still you rise as if the attack has done little more than interrupt your evening. The blood running from your nose is the only real proof that anything happened at all. It trickles over your mouth and down your chin, bright against the expensive black of your silk shirt, but the rest of you looks horribly intact, horribly calm. “My hand is not broken,” I snap, although the moment the words leave my mouth, even I can hear how much they sound like a man trying to convince himself rather than anyone else. Pain burns through my knuckles with each pulse of my heartbeat, deep enough and sharp enough that I know something in there might have cracked, even if pride refuses to let me admit it. I glance down at the glove. At the hooks set into the palm. A climbing tool. A beautiful little piece of engineering designed to bite into brick, wood and stone. Then the thought slides into my head, ugly and useful. Flesh is softer than stone. My eyes lift back to you. You stand over me in that black silk shirt, the fabric stretched tight across your chest as if someone tried to dress a statue and lost the argument, while I stand there in my own black gear, smaller, lighter and much too close to the point where confidence becomes suicide. I cannot reach your face anymore. Not cleanly. Not without giving those hands a chance to catch me. So the hooks need another target. I do not give myself time to think, because thinking is where fear gets its claws in first. I spring forward, driving off the floor with both legs, palms open, shoulders tight, and for one reckless second I am airborne, aimed straight at the broad wall of your chest.

The hooks punch through your shirt. Expensive silk tears beneath my hands, and then the metal bites deeper, dragging into the thick muscle beneath as my full weight slams against you. For a moment, the whole gallery seems to stop. I hang from you. Actually hang from you. My boots are off the floor, my arms locked, my fingers clenched inside the gloves while the hooks hold fast in the dense, brutal mass of your pectorals, and I am close enough to feel the heat coming off you, close enough to hear the first low sound building in your chest before it becomes something much worse. The roar erupts from you with a force I feel through my bones. It fills my ears. I've hurt you, maybe even enough to stop you.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

Should this little fucker survive the night, he will need a new name... Stupid Monkey? You are out of options and scraping cleverness out of the bottom of the jar. The muse of stabbing you is crimson in clarity. You look left and right casting about for an idea., You then charge me. Gloves. You have gloves. Well, the Priestess might not feast on your sanity tonight. but seeing how you work, it's not much of a meal, more of a snack.

You charge me... ME?? I'm offended but feel maybe taking you like a serious threat soon is prudent. I am about you take you into my legendary crushing embrace. Your back will break here and be done with life.

The scream is torn from my chest alone with a pound of my muscle. No not ripped out, you're STUCK IN ME! The pain is severe, and you test my foundations... Those are climbing gloves with built in hooks and they help you grip my pecs in a merciless and savage mutilation! My shirt is shredded as blood runs down my chest. You are right there, inches from my face. There to be damaged. But no, the pain is taking my sensation and paralysis takes my arms. My huge hand grabs your face and I push to shove you again... it's useless! DRAGGED TO MY KNEES AGAIN.

You watch me summon WILL and resolve... with it comes power and abilities you are alien to... You don't think I will; you are stupid and wrong. I put my hands on your chest, and shove!!! You TUMBLE hard as your hands TEAR from my chest AOOOOUGHGHGHhhhhh!!! I clutch my chest and drop to my face on the floor. The whole chamber echoes. A whisper slides into the room.

A silence.... the skull smells blood. The skull containment sounds an alarm. Yes it's awoken. I do not know which horror to address first. The monkey is barely harmed...

I pull up on my hands... looking up at him rising...

Naughty_Monkey:

Your hands hit me again, and this time the shove has enough power behind it to send me flying, but the hooks are still buried in you when you do it. They tear free as I’m ripped backwards. The sound is horrible, a wet, violent drag, and for one insane second the force that should have thrown me halfway across the gallery is swallowed by the damage I leave behind. Then I hit the floor. My back slams into the tile, my skull cracks hard against the ground. The whole room flashes white around the edges as the air bursts out of me in a broken gasp. I lie there blinking up at the ceiling, stunned, with the gallery lights swimming above me. Move. I have to move. My hands come up in front of my face, but it takes a moment before my eyes can properly make sense of them. The gloves are soaked. Blood slicks the black material and clings around the curved hooks, mixed with torn threads from your ruined shirt and darker pieces I do not let myself think about for more than a heartbeat. My stomach turns.

Then I look past my hands. You are on all fours. Raphael Tormenta, the giant collector, the monster in the silk shirt, is down on the once-pristine tile with blood dripping beneath you and both huge arms braced against the floor as your body fights to drag itself upright again. This is it. Not victory. Not safety. Just the smallest opening I am ever going to get. If I waste it, I do not leave this gallery. I force myself up before the dizziness can pull me back down, staggering for the first step, finding my balance by the second, and then running straight at you. You start to lift your head. Too slow. I reach you before you can rise, grab a fistful of your hair with both hands, and pull your face towards me as I drive my knee upward with everything I have left. It smashes into your already broken nose. The impact jars through my thigh and hip, brutal enough to make my own teeth clench, and your blood bursts hot across my leg. I feel your head trying to snap back under the force but the claws in my gloves become tangled in hair and scalp. I do not make a clever remark. I do not waste breath pretending this is under control. I just hold on, panting, shaking, furious, terrified, watching your massive body for the one thing I need more than anything else in the world. Stillness. Because if that does not knock you unconscious, then I have no idea what will. I pull violently and rip out some of your hair, taking skin with it. Stumbling backwards. Waiting for something, anything.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

The flashing white light a slow strobe, looks like a system readiness light, not a shrill sound, but I know what it means. A sharp rise in heat and alpha radiation in the case. This is bad. I feel the first wave of effects. I'M HUNGRY.... no no this is not good. I know what comes next.

You prove to me I know total shit.

You're on me... distracted! Your knee slams my face to an explosion of blood! Your gloves I expect to latch into my neck and no... no they don't. He hasn't trained with these otherwise he would savage me without a thought... My chest hurts. I will have scars through my ink... he wounded my INK! Hair rips from my head with the strike! My head reeling, but here you are clever man, right in front of me in deep reach of my hands... My arms SLAM around your waist and I LIFT just enough to help gravity do the devil's work. I SLAM on top of you driving into the floor!

Lifting off you, your face sings the song for me, one of pain and desperation. You have no idea handsome Monkey. My mind just called you handsome... that's the skull talking. It's in my head again... The hunger increases. I want to bite you so badly and that would be a tunnel into darkness. But the Monkey must suffer. I sit up enough to PLOW a huge fist into your gut forcing your dinner into your throat!

Naughty_Monkey:

For one brief, stupid second, I think the knee has done it. Then your weight comes down on me. Not a fall, not a stumble, but an avalanche of man and muscle crashing across my body with a force I have never felt before, crushing the air from my lungs and flattening me against the tile so hard that my vision bursts white at the edges again. You are already moving. That is the worst part. After everything I have hit you with, after the blood, after the hooks, after my knee smashing into your face, you are still rising above me, huge and wounded and terrifyingly alive, and I am too slow to stop it. Too slow to protect myself properly. Your fist drives down into my stomach. The punch feels impossible, like your hand has not just struck me but gone straight through the soft centre of my body and buried itself in the floor beneath my spine. Every muscle inside me locks at once. A broken sound tears out of my throat, followed almost immediately by vomit, hot and sour and violent, spilling from my mouth onto the polished tile as the burning taste floods my tongue and the deeper pain spreads through my gut like something heavy has ruptured loose inside me.

I cannot breathe. I cannot think. There is only the thunder of that impact still rolling through my body, deep and sickening, the kind of pain that does not feel like a bruise waiting to happen but like damage already done. My hands come up because they have nowhere else to go. I wave them blindly between us, trying to hit anything, trying to claw space out of the air, trying to stop you from getting close enough to do that again. The hooks catch the shredded remains of your silk shirt and drag through the torn fabric, but this time they do not bite deep enough to save me. They scrape uselessly across cloth. They snag, slip and tear free. I flail harder. There is no clever angle now, no plan forming in the sharp little corner of my mind that usually keeps me alive, only raw panic flooding through me as I thrash beneath the shadow of a man I had been arrogant enough to wound and stupid enough to believe I might have finished.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

You rake madly at me as you hit the floor and try to sink those claws in. I am correct, you are terrible at this as a fight tool, lucky Raphael. I feel your body compress under me. My face hits the scruff of your neck. The heat in my blood increases. the punch lands.... and you are speared like a cockroach in one of those stupid bug collections. I crawl up your body pinning one razor armed hand under my leg... then the other. Mounted on you, I am massive over you. Shaking my head, chest bloodied, face a mess and under all that my anger. BLISTERING SLAP across your face.... LEFT.... blistering slap RIGHT! two hard hits nearly taking your head off!

"You invade my house! IDIOT! You could have asked for a JOB! I know what you do! OH no, you had the brains to invade House Tormenta!" SLAP!

"IDIOT!"

I grab your throat and crush hard! My pulse hammers in my ears. I WANT HIM DEAD! I WANT HIS HEAD RIPPED OFF. I WANT HIS ORGANS ON DISPLAY BEFORE THE PEOPLE...

I suddenly let go... my eyes wide with an internal secret horror... I am becoming her. Or her slave. This is bad. I don't want his organs on display. I want him crying and his ass wrapping my cock while he's screaming my name!

The violence flows again... I rip my shirt off...blood still running down my chest. I tear the shirt in parts grabbing one and SHOVING IT IN YOUR MOUTH DEEP and then DEEPER!

He invaded my HOME! I keep trying to shove more and more of my shirt in to see if you can choke it down!

Naughty_Monkey:

Your legs come down around me before I can turn the panic into movement. They are absurdly big this close, each thigh thicker than my torso, pinning the space around my hips and cutting off every route my body tries to find before my mind has even caught up. I twist anyway. It achieves nothing. Then your hand comes across my face. Pain erupts through my cheek and jaw, sudden and blinding, snapping my head sideways against the tile and scattering whatever thoughts I still had left into useless fragments. A second blow sends my head in the other direction. Before I can pull air back into my lungs, your hand closes around my neck. It does not feel like a grip at first. It feels like a machine testing pressure. Your fingers wrap so far around my throat that the size of your hand becomes more frightening than the strength behind it, because there is nowhere for me to shrink, nowhere for me to turn, nowhere soft enough to give. Then you squeeze. The pain builds fast, spreading from the sides of my neck into my jaw and skull, while the air thins inside me and my body starts fighting without permission, heels scraping across the floor, shoulders bucking, arms desperate to move but bolted to the earth. And then you stop. Not completely. Just enough. The crushing pressure eases by a fraction, and for a moment I stare up at you through watering eyes, caught beneath your weight and your shadow, trying to understand the shift in your face. There is a pause inside you. A decision happening somewhere behind your eyes, private and unreadable, an argument I am not allowed to hear. For one stupid second, I think I see mercy. Not kindness, exactly, because men like you probably have to import that at great expense, but hesitation at least.

Then you rip a strip from what remains of your expensive black shirt and force it between my teeth. The hope dies immediately. Large fingers push past my lips, rough and relentless, driving the fabric deeper into my mouth while I gag against it and try to turn my head away. You do not let me. Your hand clamps my jaw, forcing my face still as the cloth presses against my tongue and the back of my throat, stealing my words before I can make them useful. I choke around it, eyes watering harder now, the taste of silk, blood and dust filling my mouth. You watch me the whole time. That is the worst part. Your eyes stay locked on mine, close enough that I can see the changes moving through your expression, anger giving way to something colder, something almost thoughtful, then tightening again into a look I cannot read. I stare back because there is nothing else I can do. Pleading without being able to speak. Searching for the person behind the monster. Trying to find a soul in the face above me.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

The pressure in my head matching the fire in my blood. Something is happening. The alpha radiation alarm flashing on the display case flashes faster. I would like to be a clever man and pretend I know what that means. All I was told is to not let this happen. It feels like applause. Like adoration. Ignoring all of that, I want this little Monkey to know he should regret the day he decided to sneak into my house. I crawl up your chest, my knee driving into your face! Your head is drilled facing the left with my knee on your temple driving your face into a twisted shape. I Pull my other leg off you and my fist rises... A SPEARING PUNCH drives into your guts! AND ANOTHER!

The thunderous strike echoes through the gallery. Your moaning cried muffled by the shreds of my bloody shirt in your mouth. She wants him.... The thought echoes in my head.... She must see him...

I get off your chest, Grab you by the throat and HURL you at the display case of the Voodoo Witch! The glass crashes! You hit the floor and the skull lands next to you. Stalking over to you I quickly grab the skull, ignoring I have touched it bare handed.... I am Tormenta... I will prevail. I set her in her cradle again and turn to you. I feel different. Somehow stronger. I have purpose, not just a savage lust. I will breed this little Monkey in front of HER....

Naughty_Monkey:

Your size should not make sense. Your strength should not be possible. There is a point where height and muscle stop being impressive and start becoming something else entirely, something that feels less like nature and more like a mistake the world forgot to correct. And yet there you are, filling the space above me, wounded, bleeding, breathing hard, still somehow enormous enough to make the room feel smaller around you. I should be dead. That thought lands in me with more force than any punch. My skull should have cracked under the pressure of your knee. My ribs should be broken beneath the weight of you. Those punches to my stomach should have left me bleeding inside, curled around damage no amount of stubbornness could survive. But I am not dead. I am still here. Still feeling everything. That is the worst part. The pain has not faded, and there is no numbness coming to rescue me, no soft blackness rolling in to shut the world away. Instead, something holds me exactly where suffering is sharpest, dragging me to the edge of death and refusing to let me fall over it. It wants me awake. It wants me aware.

There is something else in here with us. I cannot see it. I cannot hear it. But I feel it moving through the gallery, not as a shape or a sound, but as pressure, as attention, as a presence sliding along the walls and settling over the artefacts like a hand laid gently on the back of the neck. And the worst part is that I know it is letting me feel it. This is not a secret being accidentally revealed. This is a warning. Or an invitation. I drag myself back until my shoulders hit the base of a display stand, half sitting, half collapsed, pulling the material from my mouth, gasping for air like it will help. I raise my hands. The hooks gleam wetly beneath the gallery lights. I do not know whether I am preparing to defend myself or attack again, because those two things have become almost impossible to separate now. My eyes lock onto yours. “I can feel it,” I say, the words rough and thick in my throat. “I know you can too.” I force my clawed hands higher, though my arms are shaking badly now. “We have to fight its influence.” And even as those desperate words leave my mouth, my true thoughts move to your now shirtless torso. Fear and lust trapped in an eternal battle.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

I am impressed with your durability for such a small man. I felt my fist penetrate your stomach. I saw your head smash into the display case. I look at my fists and they drip with dark black stains, your hearts own blood. And yet you look at me in respectful terror and speak. You are still armed with those nasty climbing talons. I grab your right hand and fold it into a fist and SQUEEZE engulfing your hand in mine and crushing it around your talons. They are hardened steel; not cheap tinsel and they bite you well as your hand crumbles around it!

"We have to fight it's influence..." My instinct is to roar at any notion I must do ANYTHING you suggest... with my free hand, I tear your shirt down the middle and rip it from your chest as I crush your hand. You must train like a savage. You are handsome. Lust for you climbs and my cock is painfully hard.

My eye catches the Alpha Radiation sensor flashing from yellow to red.

Red.

That is bad... Your hand collapses as the bones crumble. You cry and wail. Red. I look at the skull of the witch. I touched it with bare hands. The realization finally sinks into my thick head. I am being controlled. But is it control when we want the same things?

The caution is tossed into the past and I release your hand and strip your little body naked. You feel the floor shake as your slammed face down on the floor. I straddle you as I strip out of my pants.

Naughty_Monkey:

My scream tears out of me and fills the gallery, bouncing back from the high walls and polished stone in a sound I would barely recognise as my own. There is nothing masculine in it, nothing controlled, nothing brave. It is the sound of pain stripped bare, a raw and helpless wail dragged out of me by the sudden, hideous reality of my own weapon turning against me. My fingers buckle first. I feel them go in jagged succession beneath the pressure, joints forced past where they were ever meant to bend, while the skin of my hands tears against the hooks and the gloves that had made me feel dangerous only moments ago become traps cinched around my own suffering. The pain is so bright and so immediate that it wipes everything else away.

Then the floor vanishes. You haul me upward again with a strength that feels less like being lifted by a man and more like being seized by machinery, and I am suddenly airborne, kicking and twisting without purpose while my body jerks in your grip. My top gives way beneath your hands. The fabric tears apart as if it were nothing more than damp paper, and the sound of it splitting seems horribly loud against my ragged breathing, layer after layer stripped back while you wrench me around as though you are trying to uncover whatever weakness might be hidden beneath the black cloth and bravado. I flail uselessly. Arms, legs, whatever still belongs to me in that moment, all of it lashes at the air while you manhandle me with contemptuous ease, exposing skin, bruises and vulnerability in the same brutal motion. Then you drive me down. Hard. Face first into the floor. The impact slams through my skull and jaw and chest all at once, smashing the breath from me and leaving me sprawled across the tile, cheek crushed against the cold surface, tasting blood while fresh pain spreads through the front of my body in one deep, sickening wave.

For a moment I sense her pleasure. It spurs me on, washes away some of my pain. My remaining good hand reaches to get purchase on the cold, polished tiles, but the metal claws cannot get any purchase. As I clumsily try to remove the glove without the use of my other hand, I see your pants drop beside me. It gives me a renewed sense of purpose. I drag my naked body inch at a time away from you. Even without being able to see you, I feel your presence looming over me. Instinctively, my injured hand reaches forward to pull me further way. I flinch as it hits the ground, but the pain is much less than expected. I see my hand shaking, fingers slowly straightening, somehow repairing. It's slow, the feeling defies description, yet I somehow know to trust it, because that's what she wants.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

The fury is hard to explain to men that resist fury. There are words, but will you understand them? I delivered pain to this thief, this insulting little maggot! And that pain is being ROBBED from me! I look into her dead face and want to spit at her! I'm sure I wouldn't have been the first. I watch you crawl. I know your hip is broken, your hand is crushed and before my eyes your injuries mend and pain is given balm of mercy... I won't have this! It's repugnant!

I STOMP on your back crushing your back under my boot! You are sturdy and your spine doesn't break, but your organs riot under the crushing strike! I will be my namesake... now!

I DROP onto your back; my huge legs wrap your waist as my hands grab your throat. I lock my legs and you feel the massive quads flex and turn to girders of iron around you! I will not just make you breathless, I will wreck your bones. the CRUSH is set just at the base of your ribs, my knee in the middle of your spine, your face to the floor. And I SQUEEZE with torturous intent!

Naughty_Monkey:

The pain does not fade. It doubles. It comes at me from both directions at once, one half of it dragging me back together while the other half tears me apart somewhere new, and my body has no idea which agony to obey. Bones shift beneath my skin with a sickening pressure as they begin to knit themselves back into place. Torn muscle pulls tight and reconnects in hot, stabbing threads. Split skin closes with a burning sting that crawls as if invisible needles are being dragged through every damaged nerve. And while whatever power is in this room repairs me, you keep damaging me. Again and again. The mercy of healing becomes another form of torture, because there is no release in it, no clean collapse into unconsciousness. There is only pain being erased quickly enough for fresh pain to take its place. Staying conscious becomes a fight all by itself. I can feel myself slipping, then being dragged back, slipping again, then forced awake by another violent pulse of repair moving through my broken body. You are hurting me far more than you need to. I can see it now.

Even through the panic, even through the gagging pressure around my throat and the thunder in my skull, I know this is not entirely you. The violence is too much, too cruel, too excessive even for a man defending what I tried to steal. Something is pushing you. The thing in the skull. Her. She is in both of us, twisting fear into aggression and pain into something useful to her, but she has her grip sunk deeper into you because you are bigger, stronger and already furious enough to make a perfect weapon. Your legs wrap around me. They close over my body with impossible size and weight, locking around my ribs and stomach like a living torture device, and the pressure arrives so suddenly that my breath leaves me in one broken rush. Your thighs squeeze. My torso compresses between them. Every time I exhale, they tighten a fraction more, stealing the space my lungs need before I can pull it back, while your huge hand remains locked around my throat and turns each inhale into a thin, desperate scrape of air. I cannot move my arms properly. I cannot push you away. My claws, my speed, my tricks, all of it means nothing now that I am trapped inside the crushing strength of your body. Only my legs are free. They kick wildly against the floor, heels scraping, knees jerking, muscles firing with no plan beyond panic as my body understands before my mind does that I am running out of air. I try to speak. At first nothing comes out but a strained, broken sound. My vision darkens at the edges, then sharpens again as that same hateful power refuses to let me drift away. I force the word through the narrow gap your hand allows me. “Stop.” It is barely a gasp. Barely a plea. But it is all I have.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

"STOP?" I am moved to laugh hard and long. The laughter echoes through the house like a song of evil. A sudden thrill with her love of violence makes my heart shift from hate to worship. I am so strong under her gaze. Men will crumble in my hands. This one here? He's already clay to be shaped and reshaped. And he wants me to stop.... "I will not STOP you thieving parasite! While you still have unbroken bones?"

I launch into a crushing constriction around your body, not nearly my full potential of strength. CRUSHING your waist. I release and lift my legs higher on your chest, my knee in your sternum, my other in your back. You feel thick legs move around you as if you were being swallowed deeper and deeper into the mouth of a monster. And NOW the crush resumes. You feel the eruptions of bones breaking in your ribs and blood rushes from your mouth, an offering at her unseen feet. You gurgle through the bloody gore of your pierced lungs and burst organs. I back off the crush just enough to watch you struggle to breathe... I feel a warm flood of power coursing through you as she heals you, robbing me of the bread of wickedness and the wine of violence.

"Say it again Monkey Tell me to stop I dare you!"

Naughty_Monkey:

“Oh God, no.” The words form somewhere inside me, clear and desperate, but they never make it past the ruined squeeze of my throat. You adjust your legs by the smallest amount, barely more than a shift of muscle and weight, and then the pressure comes again. It is worse because I understand it now. This is not just strength. It is not just restraint. My body is being fed through the living machinery of you, trapped between thighs so huge and powerful they no longer feel like limbs, only a crushing device built from muscle, heat and malice. My chest folds under the pressure. Something inside me gives with a deep, sickening crack, and the pain that follows is so vast it seems to swallow the room, pushing the lights and your face into a distant blur while my body tries to scream around air it can no longer find. My ribs shift where they should not. Breathing becomes impossible in a new way, not blocked now, not merely restricted, but broken at the source, as if my lungs have forgotten what they were made for. Blood bubbles into my mouth. I choke on it, eyes wide, body jerking helplessly between your legs while your hand stays around my throat and turns every failed inhale into a thin, wet struggle. I cannot ask you to stop. Even if I had the strength, even if the words were still inside me somewhere, they would not escape. And God, I want it to stop. I want it with a purity that makes every other thought disappear. I want darkness. I want silence. I want the mercy of my own body giving up because nothing living should be forced to feel this much and remain awake for it. But every time I begin to slip, she pulls me back.

The edge of unconsciousness comes close enough to touch, soft and black and almost kind, and then the presence in the room drags me away from it with a cruelty far colder than yours. She will not let me leave the pain. She will not let me die. Not yet. The skull is somewhere nearby, watching without eyes, listening without ears, and I know with absolute certainty that the thing inside it can hear every thought breaking apart in my head. Do you want me dead or alive? I ask it silently because my mouth is full of blood. She does not answer. She only holds me there, crushed between your legs suspended on the edge of an ending she refuses to give me. And through all this pain, my cock stands excitedly proud, aching for more.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

You scream and my cock throbs at the sound. I sense she loves this, a warm bath of power rides through my pelvis, making my cock swell to nearly painful arousal. I know now she would bend time and space to have a cock like mine inside her. It will have to drive inside the Monkey instead. I am not disappointed by the proxy fuck. I've wanted to rape his little ass since I heard of him.

And as I suspected, your body mends... does it mend correctly? I doubt she has God's divine blueprints hidden away somewhere. I feel she would re-make you in the image of her madness. This whole line of thinking is above my paygrade, and I drop it feeling your body return to some form and I CRUSH into you once again! My legs crush your body more and I feel your sternum splintering under my knee. Such incredible pain that is wrecking your bones once again. I reach back and slap your ass! YES, I will be fucking you there of making a new hole more convenient.

NOW I roll Lifting you over me bodily and SLAMMING YOU on your back! The SQUEEZE is pure brutality. Masculine muscle locked around you like a merciless python.... in the middle of this obscenity, I sense something. I grab your crotch. "Your little dick rises Monkey. So unfortunate for you that the Fates see you as loving this. Your future is bleak little man."

I reposition to a new place and CRUSH once again carving into you and chewing your body in half! Rocking my legs side to side sawing into your chest. "Is there room left for your little beating heart I wonder?"

I look at her daring her to once again extend the torture and relent on the pressure and see if you heal...

Naughty_Monkey:

Tears pour down my face before I even realise I am crying. “Just let me go.” The words are barely there. Not aimed at you. Not really. I am begging her. The thing in the room. The thing inside the skull. The thing that dragged me into this and keeps refusing to let pain become an ending. For a moment, I think I hear laughter. It might be real. It might be delirium. It might just be what the mind invents when suffering becomes too large to understand and starts dressing itself in voices. Then you reposition me, and the purpose of it is obvious before the pressure even returns. You are not trying to restrain me. You are arranging me. Moving my small body into a shape that gives your strength better purchase, turning me slightly, pulling me tighter between those gargantuan thighs while the ruined parts of me protest in hot, useless waves. The healing is still happening, but it cannot keep up. Or worse, it can. Perhaps she is choosing not to let it. Perhaps she is repairing me only slowly enough to keep me aware, mending just enough damage to stop me from escaping into death or darkness while you create more than she ever intends to undo.

The adjusted grip repositions my arms. They are pinned awkwardly against me, trapped between your legs and my own collapsing body, caught in a position where there is nowhere for them to bend, nowhere for them to escape, nowhere for the pressure to go except through me. Panic flares so violently that I try to scream, but only a broken, muffled sound escapes. Then the bones give. Not with resistance. Not with drama. They simply fail beneath a strength they were never built to survive. A sharp, white-hot line tears through both arms, and my body convulses uselessly inside the crushing cage of your thighs while my mind reaches again for the black edge of unconsciousness. She pulls me back. Of course she does. She pulls me back to make me aware of your hand around my hard cock. She makes me visualise the large fingers mocking my small tool. Her enjoyment is making my cock ache.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

It's a true horror, maybe to those that have never been in the pits of horror. I crossed the jungles from war camp to war camp with 100 men and watched their faces as they died one by one in that carnivorous place. I fought horrors and yes even felt this titanic squeeze in the coils of an anaconda so large it saw my big ass as a fair meal. I came out with scars and ink. I came out prepared for this undead slut. I am now awed with her divinity, she has all too human motivations, just with new tools. I feel the eldritch miracle of Monkey coming back to form in pure agony. His wailing tears make my cock throb.

I unlock my ankles and move up your body, your head now clamped between my huge thighs. Furry thick monsters larger than your own waist by far, larger than your chest, wrap your head... my ankles cross and I FLEX hard crushing your skull! Heat and pressure try to take that lump of coal in your head and turn it into a diamond! CRUSHING HARD. "Save him you ROTTING STRUMPET! Save this LITTLE MEAT BAG if you can!"

You hear your blood rushing through your ears, the world in a dark eclipse as I SQUEEZE your head without mercy! I feel your head reshaping under the pressure. Your face aiming at my crotch and my huge balls on your face. My cock so hard like a spike in the air over you begging lightning to come.

Naughty_Monkey:

My upper body is ruined. Everything from my chest to my arms feels crushed and broken out of shape, held together only because something in this room refuses to let me come apart completely. When you release the pressure, I think it must be over. There cannot be anything left worth breaking. Then your hands move again. No. The repositioning happens slowly, inevitably, while my damaged body is dragged and turned with terrifying ease. This time, my head is forced between your thighs. Held for a moment to take in the terrifying magnificence of your cock before your thighs swallow me up. The pressure is instant and impossible. The world narrows to darkness, heat and crushing force, and for the first time since this nightmare began, even she cannot keep me fully awake. The blackness comes. I feel relief. Dark clouds roll through my vision, swallowing the gallery, the skull, and the pain that has become the whole language of my body. Is this the end? I beg it to be.

Then the clouds in my mind split open. White lightning tears through the darkness. It erupts inside me, spearing through my skull, racing across my nerves and flooding my brain with violent brightness. For one terrifying instant, I think she has found a worse way to keep me alive. Then the lightning moves through me. Out of me. Into you. The charge pours from my skin into the massive thighs locked around my head, burning through you with a crackling force that fills the air with the stink of scorched skin. Your grip breaks. Not because you choose to release me. Because something makes you. The pressure vanishes and I collapse sideways onto the tile, gasping, shaking, somehow still alive as thin white sparks crawl over my skin and fade without leaving a mark. The sickening feeling of internal healing replaces the crushing pain, and for once, I'm left with only this feeling. You lay next to me, not moving. Tears continue to flow but they are sweetened with a tiny sense of relief.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

The pressure on his skull amplifies with my rage. And YES I dared her. I devilishly did so. His head starts searing with heat, ON MY scrotum! The stench of burning meat fills the room and I thrash to let go... AND I CAN'T! Screaming and pounding the floor, my ankles are paralyzed into position. Smoke running between my legs. I thrash harder and my WILL is a terrible thing, even to eldritch horrors... I find myself finally releasing. Monkey's hair white with singed parts and his body bloody and ruined.

My heart is hammering. I clutch my chest. Sweat runs over me hard and I feel my cock growing with lust. In all my wicked days have I ever felt this possessed to fuck. I rise to my hands and hold up one hand. "STOP! You made your point." He fried his skull with lightning. I have no idea how a man might survive this, yet covered in his drying blood, he's looking whole and very very fuckable. I am crazed with lust. It's hard to imagine words right now. I crawl to the Monkey and crush him flay with my chest on his back. He is so small I have to move his head under my pecs to gain his ass. It's one savage drive, raised up on my hands, I press my cock into him, wider than it has ever been, 10 inches of demanding lust invading his hole! "THERE... BITCH!" I scream at her... and at Monkey. "You now have the pleasure of Tormenta!" My cock drives in all the way and my huge muscled, sweat slick body crushed you flat!

Naughty_Monkey:

I see movement. Not much at first, only the vast shape of you shifting through the haze, but it is enough to send panic through me with the same brutal force as one of your punches. My body tries to obey before I even know what I am asking of it, muscles twitching uselessly against the tile, fingers dragging across the floor, legs kicking for space that is no longer there. Move. I will myself to move. I will her to help me. For one desperate moment, I reach for the presence in the room as if it might answer me with lightning again, as if the thing that has kept me alive through all of this might finally decide that survival should mean more than being dragged from one agony into the next. Your incredible weight crashing down on me is her reply. The impact drives the air out of me and pins me flat beneath you, your huge body covering mine so completely that the gallery disappears behind heat, pressure and the suffocating scale of you. I try to buck. Nothing happens. I try to twist. Your weight swallows the movement before it can become anything useful. Then comes the feeling. At first I cannot name it because my mind refuses to accept what my body understands instantly, but as your mass moves over me, your oversized cock searches for its resting place.

My roar of pain is muffled under your mass. My hole rips apart, unable to stretch and accommodate such a girthy weapon. Inch after inch invades my body, tearing through it, making it fit and breaking me when it won't. She pushes the image into my brain so deeply I can taste it, smell it, feel every part of it, just so she can feel it too. And I know she wants more. Her power concentrates on my muscled arse forcing me to heal quickly, gripping your cock and causing me more pain. My arms remain broken, she has no use for them right now. Ribs are starting to knit together because she wants my torso to be able to take what is coming neck. And it's her who is making my cock so painfully hard, trapped between my abs and the cold floor. Yes, it's her that wants it. I have to repeat it to try to make it true.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

It a profanity on life that you are still alive through this. The Monkey is mine. She will have to live with that. But now we share him in the most horrifying threesome I have ever done. I am in raging lust with the amazing sensation your ass is on my cock. You tear and shred and heal and SQUEEZE... my head rocks back as I roar in pleasure. I could cum right now and in fact I feel a deep urgency in my heart where this will complete her plan.

...her plan.

My heart hammers as I drive and thrust into the Monkey, fucking him without mercy. So close to a snap-shot load, and I DON'T ever do that. She is impatient and I am not. I fuck with thundering thrusts shaking the displays on the floor. I watch blood gushing from your mouth on every thrust. She's just kept enough of you alive for fucking. Unacceptable...

I look at the idol. "You will heal all of him. Restore him to himself. “It takes enormous will.... "DO IT!" I command... and my cock pulls OUT of the Monkey. "Restore him!" My heart is hammering again, she is pushing me. I resist it hard. "You will have to find another stunt cock if you do not do as I wish.... Restore him!" I play gambit after gambit with her. There may be a price, or she will know when I have my leverage, it gets used. I watch the Monkey's chest reshape and his fine little ass firm up. My lust reaches horrible heights. My head is pounding and I cannot stop.

I LIFT Monkey into my arms as I stand, trapping him in a full nelson, a perfect place for him. I THRUST into him finding that hole again. His little cock hard and leaking... Standing and holding him he's crucified in my cock once again!

Naughty_Monkey:

Jackhammered into the tiles so hard my damaged body breaks too easily and she is too obsessed with your cock to care. And it stops. The pause fills the air, I dare not breathe to disturb the silence. Your angry rambling breaks the moment. You are arguing with her. Are you able to resist her? My questions are forced to wait. My body burns with an impossible heat. I rise off the ground, limbs jerking awkwardly as bones are made to heal within seconds. The feeling is ungodly. I vomit but she continues. My body drops to the floor, fully healed. My brain untouched, the scars remain along with memories I will never be able to erase. I roll onto my back. "Thank you... I..." I stop myself from continuing, disgusted with my words. How can I thank you after what you have done. And then I see the look in your eyes. You haven't done this for me, it's all for you, for your pleasure. Maybe for hers too.

Pulled from the floor with ease, I flail momentarily until your arms snake around my body and hold me in place. My neck screams as you force my chin to my chest. My legs flail with renewed agency until THAT pain returns. My hole is ripped apart once more, this time with more violence. My legs tense then go limp. I force the screaming to stop for long enough to give you a warning. "I will kill you!" I mean every word even if I lack the ability.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

I drive it your harder as you scream for my death... blood drips on the floor from your ass. I am no less brutal. "Such gratitude Monkey. You prove to me you're ungrateful!" I bring you to the mirror that lines the hall. One cannot have art without some kind of expensive mirror where the buyers get a cinematic moment watching themselves around art - it plays to all egos involved, mostly mine. And it pays again now. I walk to the mirror and my heart sings with rage and lust watching you try to get off my cock. It rams you deep. I FLEX hard, your body trapped against my chest, my arms wrecking your shoulders, so close to breaking them.

"Look Monkey, your face and your little dick says you love this. Tell me you love this..." Hammering your ass.

Naughty_Monkey:

My eyes glance up. The horror is brushed aside by something else. Your hypermasculine body looks incredible. My body looks like it was designed to be in this very position. Your arms move a little, lifting me up your shaft before being brutally slammed down, only my only blood acting as lubricant saves me from more pain. yet still I watch, transfixed by the sight. I'm sure I can see the outline of your mighty cock through my ab wall.

Her face appears, overlayed onto mine, I gasp, blink, then she's gone. Am I feeling this ecstasy, or is she? "Harder!" I yell. Not my words. Are they? I look at our reflection again. My 5" little cock bouncing around as you move me. "HARDER!"

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

You call me to slam you harder... you are a depraved masochist! but I am not in a judging mood when it comes to these matters. I CRUNCH my grip on you harder and you feel your neck crackling as your spine objects to the crushing power bearing on you. I fuck you so hard, my cock batters your insides, your blood splatters on the floor like a slow rain. I subject you to a brutal mutilating fuck! I shake you hard and shift my arms around your chest crushing the breath out of you as I hammer you brutally over and over. I look at us in the mirror. The horror was not visible before but now it is. Her face can be seen on yours. She's possessing you to speak. But I see you suffering horribly. It's clear you will die here.

But dark miracles happen. I feel you flex on my cock in spite of me focused abuse. I feel your ribs break under my arms and your back presses into me, sticking to me in sweat and blood. I will never love again; I am drawn to this sensation and want more and more of it. My blood boils to an acid hot orgasm coming. It feels like my cock spitting fire... THRUSTING into you hard and SQUEEZING without mercy! I ROAR and flood your insides with Formenta sauce! OHHHH the feeling is melting the world is fire and smoke! Jets and jets of cum flood out of you.... I drop you and you pull off my cock. My foot lands on your back pressing your body into the floor. "Die already MONKEY!" CRUSHING you under my weight!

Naughty_Monkey:

Everything feels so incredibly wrong. My body is behaving in ways that should not be possible. The sickening sensation of bodily reformation at cellular level sends waves of nausea flowing throughout my entire being. The gaping void left by your ravenous cock. Her voice interfering with my own thoughts. She is satiated yet craves more, her conflict fucking with my mind with the same level of brutality as your cock fucking my body. I have to live so she can experience more. My head turns. There it is. The skull. It's within reach, but how? It was kicked away and lost underneath the destruction, yet here it is, begging me to touch it.

My rib cage and spine begin the shatter under your tremendous weight and strength. Seconds from death, I reach for the skull. The second my skin touches the bone; an explosion of emotions overwhelms us both. There is a mighty thud as you fall to the floor next to me, your head turned to face mine. A thousand conversations between us happen in a micro-second. Lifetimes of her influence merge with our own. And then nothing but blackness and silence.

"Move! MOVE NOW!" The voice awakens me from my unconscious slumber. I groan as I move... sore but unbroken. The skull is still in my grasp, the connection much stronger and more parasitic. Two distinct voices fight for control. I look down on your still restful body and become flooded with lust. I need more! I want you to do unspeakable things to me. I also want to run, to escape, to never see you again.

RAPHAEL_TORMENTA:

I have physically delivered this little pain sponge to his death more than five times now. His ribs shattering under my foot. My cock leaks at the sadistic feeling of destroying you yet again. Over years of threat and violence, spending weeks with deadly men and their deadly toys, I am still alien to the working world of magics and gods, and those that would pretend to power instead of accepting their chosen mediocrity. I do not know how the skull got within his reach. I do not know why I would touch it bare handed after telling him not to. Through his foot, I'm harshly rebuked by her relentless hate and the pain that he's experiencing she shares with me to make it my own. Drained from him the agony of dying, she shares it with me.

I hit the floor is no much agony I want to black out. I feel my heart fluttering and insisting it should quit. I am suddenly with the Monkey in Sao Paolo, in a humid moulding warehouse while his hands shake, he's looking through boxes for something. In my hand is a short whip, his naked back is red with marks of my wrath.

Time melts and I'm with Monkey in the streets of Kyoto and he ascends the stairs of a temple, his face swelling with a black eye, walking up an endless set of stairs to a temple shrouded in mist.

Time shifts again and I am in the mental space, a hot hotel room in Miami in a king-sized bed fucking Monkey as he screams for mercy, an ice pick in his shoulder, blood trickling to the white sheets, a world of agony as the sharp spike pierces the joint in his shoulder.

She wants me to stay with him.

She is tempting me with a menu of sadistic delights, all possible.

My head shifts and I'm naked on the floor of my gallery, crawling to my desk. The Cowrie... I need it. It seems my body remembers the remedy before my mind did. Legba...every god in the pantheon of Voodoo has a rival. I pull the drawer on my desk, and it pulls out completely scattering papers and pens and shit people think I need. and YES, one fist sized cowrie shell. My hand closes on it. "I have been foolish. Legba is great and merciful." I say the words. Maybe my heart means them, Legba doesn't care. Her influence strips from me and the pain of my body collapsing strips away! AWUGHHhhh!" I scream in relief. Then the purge. I am violently unwell on the floor, dinner from a week seems to leave me.

I recover and look around to find that little shit. I do not see him. She found legs through a little Monkey. They have until dawn to find safety.'

Naughty_Monkey:

As the sun begins to rise, I hurriedly dress in the clothes I took from the homeless man, who is not only homeless, but not now dead. She commands me to look at her. As I raise the skull, I become lost on her beauty and malice. The sound of a truck driving by snaps me back to reality. The skull is gone, but she is still there. No, she is here. She is in me. An image of a place burns into my brain. I know I have to go there. I also know she wants the Tormenta experience again. With focus and determination, I push her desires to the back of my mind, making what I can of the moments until she returns.

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