The Broken Ones

CHAPTER 10

*Warning: This chapter may be triggering.*

...................

LUCIAN

Before

"My apologies for interrupting."

The couple scramble away from each other and sit bolt upright in the bed.

I contemplate all the whiteness: two pairs of bulging white eyes, the naked white shoulders, the white sheet my wife has yanked modestly up beneath her chin to cover her pale nudity, the white, petrified face of the young man cowering next to her.

Theodora whispers faintly, "Lucian --- "

Her young lover stares at me, open-mouthed.

Theodora's breathing is audible, tattered by terror.

"You look very comfortable in my bed, I must say," I say pleasantly, unbuttoning my trousers. "So comfortable I think I might join you. Slide over, and we'll share her." I fix my eyes on the trembling boy --- how old is he? Eighteen? Twenty?

Their gasps nearly suck the air out of the room.

"Please, Mr Farrington, sir --- " Gavin chokes and stops, his eyes filling with tears.

I pause my hand on my trouser zip.

I know him, of course, and his brothers and father, a very wealthy, very acclaimed business associate of mine. We have had several dinners together --- though, on hindsight, Theodora and young Gavin had more than food and silverware on their minds.

I mull the notion of toying with them a little more and reject it as pointless. And perhaps more to the point, boring.

I have caught my wife in bed with her lover.

My marriage of two years is over. If you can call it a marriage, that is.

I move so quickly that Theodora shrieks and Gavin flings his arms up over both of their heads defensively --- but I stride past my marital bed across the room and yank the window up high (it is an ancient window, centuries old, frozen in time like the rest of my ancestral home), then bend and seize Gavin's puddle of clothes and his shoes and socks --- and hurl them out the window. I hear the satisfying thud thud thud thud the items make as each hits the concrete below with precision.

The guilty pair stare at me, stunned.

"Your turn," I say to Gavin. "Leave." I nod at the big tree outside the open window.

"B-but I'm naked --- " he babbles, sweat beading on his brow.

"Don't test me," I say flatly. I take a step forward.

Gavin slides swiftly from the bed, dragging the sheet with him. But Theodora tugs it back. She holds on to it grimly, frowns, and gives her head a frantic little shake.

"Please, I can't go out there like this --- " Gavin whines, holding to his end of the sheet. "I need it more than you --- it's freezing cold out there --- "

Oh, for God's sake.

I rip the sheet from Gavin's hand.

"Go," I say, "now."

The young man and his limp organ sag in defeat. He walks to the window like a condemned prisoner to the guillotine.

Theodora and I watch in silence as Gavin's pale, skinny torso shimmies out the window. His buttocks refuse to follow suit, and Gavin has to bend and contort himself into the most remarkable poses --- and, in the process, expose madly jiggling private parts that would likely haunt me in nightmares to come. There is a high-pitched scream as the branch that he is hanging on to snaps, and he plummets to the ground; and another loud grunt and a string of expletives, as he staggers to his sad pile of things scattered on the concrete.