An Absence of Love.

He felt as if his heart had been torn from him. His love was gone, apparently bewitched by a ragged unkempt apology of manhood to his eyes. What had she seen in him? Why would she leave the luxury of the life he had provided for her for the seeming poverty of a future existence if his judgement of the situation was correct?

With a soft apology in her eyes, she had handed back to him the diamond-encrusted wrist-watch and the keys to the Ferrari. Then without a further word had turned and walked out of his life.

Rachel, the love of David’s life was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but beauty was not what was seen by herself. She saw only ugliness. An ugliness that permeated through her whole being confirming her uncle’s assessment of her as he repeatedly raped her for many years. When he was killed whilst drunk by a drunken driver, she was not even relieved by it. Humiliation, degradation, was as natural to her as eating. She went through the process of existing seeing only what she expected to see, bleakness. Kindness made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t tell herself why.

The association with David was traumatic. She felt she had been dragooned into a relationship that always felt alien. His utterances of love and delicate caresses, grated. She was intelligent, but with this intelligence, she was not able to evaluate why she longed for the familiar abuse and violence with which she had become accustomed to in her childhood. Tender love-making from David made her want to scream at him to beat her and shove so hard that it would tear her open. As soon as she could she would rush to the bathroom to ram a blunt wooden spoon into her vagina until it induced enough pain to take away the even more painful emotional stress. 

David was blind to her misery caused by the gentleness he bestowed upon her. She filled a need in him that made him unaware of the constant suffering he ‘inflicted’ upon her. Rachel in her turn was not unaware of society’s convention of portraying happiness and delight and made an effort to duplicate this when he bestowed expensive gifts upon her. With every presentation from him her desire to commit suicide had to be reined in afresh. She kept a small sharp knife in her purse for when living under the burden of goodness would become totally unbearable.

Rachel had met David whilst sitting on a seat alongside the River Thames. David was a forlorn and dishevelled sight in her eyes and this immediately appealed to her. She was not motivated to tend to the injuries he had sustained whilst leaving a nightclub of dubious reputation. In his drunken state, he had been easy pickings for the vindictive thugs to beat him up and rob him of his possessions. In this state, to Rachel, he echoed a familiar and alluring spectacle of resonance in her. She was sexually aroused. Without speaking she led him by the hand to her own home located in a basement of a rundown terrace block of houses. Ignoring his wounds she undressed both of them and pushed him onto his back on her bed. Sitting astride of him, she inserted his penis into her and furiously rode them both to orgasm. Despite his injuries, the unique event led David to multiple erections culminating in Rachel meeting every one of them with her own willingness to impale herself ruthlessly upon his engorged member. She threw herself into the couplings with such force that her painful needs were met. David, although not oblivious to the pain that Rachel’s vigorous demands were making upon him, was nevertheless overwhelmed by the satisfaction from the unique occasion. By the end of the encounter, he was in love.

They slept.

Congratulating himself upon his lucky choice of the nightclub as it had led to his meeting with this fantastic woman, he became aware of the shabby state of Rachel’s home and vowed to change it. He took the little money Rachel had and whistled down a taxi and took the pair of them to his own luxury residence.

Brooking no opposition to his demands she reluctantly and  permanently vacated her current home leaving everything behind. Love had given him a greater sense of purpose that overrode any previous ventures that had made him exceedingly rich. All resistance to David’s insistence had been swept aside. Her ‘Gallant Knight’ would install his princess on the throne of his own conception.

It was a treasured beauty that David undressed and now entered with her into a spacious shower to wash away the remains of their dual escapade. When cleansed, he wrapped a thick enormous towel about her and carried her into the bedroom. Whilst she lay there and still ignoring any of her weak protests, he asked for her clothing and shoe size. Using his computer, he found a high-end clothing outfitter and requested them to come with a large array of their finest apparel for all occasions.

Over the next two days, the activities were a traumatic event for Rachel. She endured it but failed to truly register it. What was happening to her should have been one of happiness, but for her was only misery. Her intelligence, although superior to most, did not mesh with her emotional needs. An underlying sense of unworthiness permeated her whole existence. It had been established so long that it seemed a part of her, not something assumed. She wanted to scream!

David’s love for Rachel blinded him to her unhappiness. He only saw a radiance, where he should have seen misery. Because of the overwhelming exuberance of her ‘saviour,’ Rachel put herself on ‘automatic.’ She went where she was pushed and pulled, and to the things that David was sure she would love. Rachel carried on but screamed inwardly. 

She was feted at the places David took her, each praise of her beauty plunged a further dagger into her heart until she felt she could not go on, but she did.

The resolution to her despair occurred as she was racing along a deserted cliff road in her Ferrari and decided to turn the wheel to go over the edge. It was only with superhuman restraint that prevented her from doing so. She suddenly saw an image of the gentle lovable David in her mind’s eye, and in that moment felt an alien feeling that she later took to be love. It was a momentary feeling which later seemed alien as she now sat in an unmoving car. However, it crystallised a resolution in her that she had to leave David.

Later, she didn’t argue or try to justify to David why she was going, she just turned and left.

It was a week later that a devastated and transformed David, received a photograph of Rachel and her current boyfriend lying dead beside each other after having overdosed on heroin.

They both had smiles on their faces.