A/N: All lies! There is no truth here it is fiction and not to be confused with reality in any way shape or form.

Chapter 423: Foppa XXVII—Salve and Forgetfulness, Self Destruction

The only thing that kept Peter sane right now was in believing all of this to be a dream, and in a dream consequences and morals did not exist. Things were backward, things were flipped to a negative, a colorless negative. The bleeding wound in his chest began to feel cool, bathed in kisses, little fingers, little words, and soft skin and clothing underneath his fingers sending odd velvet pulse of peace from figertips through his wrists up his arms and to his heart. There, the blouse off and her eyes speared him, her smile gouged him and for a moment the girl looked like a woman, eighteen, petite, with an expression as ancient as love and sex. She couldn’t be a child, those apple green eyes glowed with the experience of a Goddess, timeless, ageless, painless.

And the pain returned so quickly, again the meaning of her expression the message, reminded him so much of Josefina. And he remembered the real woman in his heart, and recognized the child before him. If Jo had not destroyed him so thoroughly, angered him, hurt him, he wouldn’t be here. He hated her for that, and he imagined how horrified she would be to know what her senseless stomping of his heart pushed him to do. He wanted her to know.

His heart trembled when Chloe touched his cheek, smiling so passionately and truthfully as if she saw into the depths of his pain and could touch it. “See it ain’t so bad hunny,” she whispered and he wondered if her accent were coached and fake. He liked it though, and he kissed her palm, tasted it just a little.

The taste fired him, he lost all of his qualms and he grabbed her in his arms, she laughed, fingers in his hair and he felt embarrassed, looking into her eyes, “I’m not overwhelming you?” Wrong, wrong, to be here, with this child, a slave no doubt, a good actress, and probably inside scared and terrified and begging him not to hurt her.

The laugh jolted him, and tickled his ear. “Hunny you ain’t even started yet are ya?” No trace of fear, complete with expectation and erasing his will again.

Forgetting about Patrick, who sat and watched like a bored, napping cat, forgetting Josefina who probably slept quiet and unaware back in her home, forgetting where this girl could have come from, Peter pressed onto her, feeling and wanting to cry, listening to her laugh and breathe. The laugh, her voice, the shape of her pointed little face, the color of her eyes, not only did it please him but it egged his brain, reminding him of something from somewhere, bothering him. As she lay before him, waiting, smirking, the image rang clear, her smiling laughing eyes, Tanguay’s pout, Danny’s worried grimace, the taste of…. Peter sat up and felt cold.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe asked sitting up and fixing her bra around her body. “I ain’t purty enough for ya?” Even her question sounded genuine, with no sound of relief or worry, just mild irritation and curiosity.

“You’re beautiful,” Peter whispered. “But I remember where I saw you.”

“Mon Dieu!” Patrick hissed, sounding disappointed and angry.

“Well, where?” Chloe said and she leaned into his shoulder, frail and delicate. Thrilling in a weird way to feel her hand slip around his arm, and tighten. Comfort filled him and suddenly he felt as he could talk to her, tell her everything, as if she were a friend. What kind of a strange girl was this?

“Last time we were in LA, it was last year,” he said. “You were with Tangers and Noter. We kicked you three out of the room.” Even the nicknames! He spoke them as if she’d recognize them.

There was a burst of laughter from Patty so loud and amused he sounded like a jubilant seagull. “Those two? I would never have suspected that of the boys!”

“We?” Chloe repeated and she narrowed her large eyes, he could see her thinking, her lips mulling over the names and then she blinked rapidly, black lashes fluttering and she lit up. “Hells Bells!” she laughed. “I remember thim! They were the boys who just wanted to play cards! And you!! You were with Gloria, you and the chubby little one. Sure I remember ya!”

“Drury,” Peter said quietly. “Me and Drury.” Back to taste! Ah the feeling had escaped him for so long now, the taste sharp and salty, never like a woman’s exotic, thrilling untapped and frustrated. No! Because of Josefina’s bitchy petulance it was coming back to him, like a bug, like a welt in his brain and loins.

“You and Dru eh?” Patty said with a lifted eyebrow. “So was this Gloria the one that bit him?” Alarms now, fire, danger, the fall down a steep hill with no bottom in sight… Peter’s heart began to race, he felt sweat prickle his skin.

Chloe seemed to be rung with that sentence, as if what Patrick had said meant something. And she frowned and looked at him. “No, no Gloria don’t bite anyone, she said that the chubby one was fucking her a good one and that Peter here was the one biting him, kid didn’t even seem to notice him.”

Peter wanted to smack the kid, throttle her, and then tear at all of his own hair.

A smile played on Patty’s lips and when he made eye contact with him Peter felt his inner organs constrict and twist with fear, never before had a man looked at him that way. At least if felt as if he were being looked at like that. “You bit Dru? You were the one? Not the hooker?” Patrick said slowly as if he were tasting each letter in each word.

Chloe covered her mouth and Peter reddened. “It was in the heat of the moment,” he said in a helpless voice. “I just bit him the one time.” Really what else could he say? “ONE!” Chloe exclaimed unable to contain her laughter. “Gloria said you made lunch out of his cute tooshie! You were fucking snacking on him!” God damn kids always had big mouths, what a ridiculous mistake.

The little smile on Patrick’s lips spread to an even bigger one. “Peter,” he said. “I never knew you were like that! Interesting.” Now the complete look of hunger and interest in Patrick’s expression pulled at Peter’s heart and instilled fear he had never known before.

“I’m not!” Peter exclaimed, grabbing his hair in a desperate display of panic. “I’m not like that! I prefer PUSSY!”

“…come on prove it to me….” The only words that registered in his mind and the girl enveloped, dominated, and controlled every fucking beat of his heart, every breath in his chest. He couldn’t think, he couldn’t remember, he could only feel, and what he felt amounted to the pleasure of everything she had to offer, and the soothing pulse in his brain as if she’d reached inside and rolled the guilt and anger and pain out of him.

Did he speak to her? He asked her something, about her comfort, about her size, something stupid, something she barely even answered. Patrick? What about him? He couldn’t say, he couldn’t tell, he didn’t care. Concentration existed only on Chloe, on this angel, faster and faster he could only conclude that something spiritual in the most perverted of ways was happening, something that could change everything forever. The girl didn’t cry or care, it seemed as if she was the one who gave the commands and then, sharply, quickly, a splash of heat and he fell to his back exhausted, Chloe’s cheek on his chest, damp and limp.

She said something and he didn’t listen, perhaps she spoke to Patrick there.

“This isn’t right, you’re just a kid.” Now the guilt hit him full force, splashed him, and drowned him in misery and hatred, even more so then when this stupid idea began. Dirty, filthy god damn son of a bitch, what had he just done? Again this all had to be Josefina’s fault.

The girl had the nerve to laugh as if nothing had happened, and she slapped his chest, she spoke, and he did not discern the words from the sound of his embarrassment and blood rushing through his head. He watched her sit up and jut herself out suggestively to Patrick who still had no real expression on his face. Bleak blackness, glittering eyes, the only equivalent Peter could think of would be late in a multiple overtime game, and that comparison seemed weird.

He didn’t want Patrick touching her, but before he could say anything, she did. “You want some more?”

Lighthearted and amused, the smirk on Patrick’s face seemed indulgent and that annoyed Peter. The girl stiffened obviously as Patrick lifted her chin with his finger and then his other hand jerked her neck almost roughly, held onto it, tightly, and Peter felt his heart stop with fear and hesitation while Patrick kissed her as passionately as he would any woman. The sight twisted Peter with even more revulsion and self loathing, freezing the blood in his veins to cracking pain. But he did nothing, he watched Patrick kiss the lobe of her ear and whisper something,

Chloe giggled and whispered something back, and they continued whispering like plotting school children. Patrick ended their little tete a tete with a quick kiss on the side of her throat and feeling impatient and left out, Peter chimed in. “What are you talking about?”

“You hon,” Chloe said flopping back onto the mattress, her soft head coming to a rest on his chest, warming him again, filling his soul with comfort all over again. The girl had a magically calming touch. “You’re so purty.”

“Oh,” Peter replied, he knew she’d just lied to him, and he wondered why, and he knew Patrick had been stirred in a dark way, and he didn’t want to know what he’d planned with her. Maybe he could just pay her and get rid of her now.

Chloe interacted with Patrick again, actually laughing and encouraging him in a way, discussing money, of all things, a business proposition, a sick game. And Peter lost his will to get rid of her. She seemed to like her present situation enough. He felt brash now and full of life. “What now?” Peter asked, to Patrick or Chloe it didn’t really matter.

“Oh I dunno, hun,” Chloe sighed. “How ‘bout doin’ me a little favor. Satisfy my curiosity.”

“Sure,” Peter said brightly, “Anything.”

“Perfect!” Chloe replied with a smile in her voice.

The trap right there had not only been set but sprung. Looking back on that moment, Peter could never tell himself that anything different would have happened. The steel jaws closed on his leg that did not feel it, blinded by his own desire at the time, he’d not sensed it. Eskimos, his father told him about their culture sometimes, told him of a cunning way to catch a wolf with a bloodied sharpened knife. The wolf would lick, and lick frantically not realizing it had shredded its own mouth, not feel the pain and then fall over dead, blood loss, drinking its own blood.

He stayed on the bed, he watched, he did not hear, he enjoyed watching her toy with Patrick, watching their interaction with fascination, completely awash in glutton’s depravity. Somehow, someway, they had sprung him. Perhaps the girl’s tender image, the child, lulled his guard, distracted him from the complete monster he’d never known Patrick to actually be. Patrick had convinced the girl, talked her into it and before Peter knew, Patrick’s mouth was on his own, his kiss, his touch, his taste.

At first, panic, wanting to fight it, wanting to deny it but Patrick took him gently and relentlessly, the girl a soft buffer, as slight as could be but enough that he didn’t run. Taste, hate, taste, anger, taste, frustration, taste helplessness, and Peter took it all in. He took it in punishment of his own body, and his own greedy devouring of a child’s charms. Perhaps in part, Patrick had taken him completely by surprise, and Chloe soothed him to stupefication, probably out of her own childish mischief and curiosity.

Whatever the cause, whatever the consequence, Peter forgot completely about Chloe and did everything Patrick asked of him. What’s more, he discovered an intense, powerful, fulfilling pleasure with him that he knew to be completely different from anything that could be with a woman. Patrick not only satisfied his curiosity about how if felt to be with another man, and to pleasure one, he OBLITERATED it, destroyed his will, scraped out the last vestige of feeling in his soul.

When his pleasure climaxed and dissipated, when all that was left was fear, when Patrick finished, Peter rolled into a fetal position on the bed and closed his eyes. Tears and strength seeped from him and he wanted to sleep so badly, feeling intruded and soiled. He needed to leave.

“Oh honey,” Chloe whispered with a voice full of maternal tenderness and caring. “You did real good, honey.” He felt her lips kiss his cheek, pressing against him. For some reason he felt like the used up little whore, and he hated Patrick, and he wanted another shot at him at the same time.

“It’s impossible!” Peter whispered weakly.

“Aww,” Chloe tutted and he felt her fingers on his hair, petting him and then suddenly Patrick grabbed her and yanked her off his body.

“OW!” she snarled in anger and pain. “What the fuck...”

What Patrick said to her terrified and chilled Peter’s soul and he didn’t feel in any position to help her.