His eyelids fluttered open, his vision blurry with a red tinges around the edges of what he was able to see. Within a second, a spike of pain was driven into the side of his head, “Wha-what the hell?!” He growled his boyish voice rumbling with a slight vibrato. He blinked hearing a short shuddering moan from the darkness in front of him.

He only knew one person that would make such a sound when he spoke, “Hazel?! Are you there?!”

The sound of something heavy whipping through the air hit his ear a split second before the sound of a blunt object smashing into the side of his skull exploded in his ear drums. Starbursts shattered in his eyes, splatters of neon colors swirled in his vision blinding him more as pain racked his slim body. His head spun as it felt as if he were hit with the force of a freight train, in his current state of mind he wasn’t sure if that was the truth or if he was simply exaggerating.
 
“You’re beautiful like this, Tavor~”

“H-Hazel? Wh… What the fuck?! Jesus Christ…”
 
“Shut the fuck up,” Hazel snarled, smashing her aluminum bat into the other side of Tavor’s head earning her a scream of pain. “You’re ruining it for me.”
 
Tavor pulled at his arms, hissing when he felt splinters of braided rope dig into his ivory flesh. “D-dammit! What the fuck do you think you’re doing?! Fuck…” His head hung forward, spittle and blood dribbling out of the corners of his gaping mouth as he gasped for breath.
 
Hazel hummed a disturbing happy tune, the sound of her converse slapping against wet cement echoed against the walls as she took long strides around his chair. The ping of her dropping and lifting her bat a few centimeters off the ground rang in Tavor’s ears irritating him. “I learned something about myself during the time I spent with you,” she let out a small grunt as she slammed her bat against his right shin, vibrations of pain running up his leg as another scream was ripped from his throat. “And about you too, Tavor.”

“What are you….talking about?!”

“What did I say about talking?” She chirped, if that was the right word for it, as she smashed her bat against his arms and knees with each word that fell from her mouth. She sighed blissfully, dropping the bat beside her and letting the rattling go on for a few seconds before stepping hard on it to make it still. Hazel hummed as she climbed onto his lap and rested her forehead against his before nuzzling his neck affectionately, as if she had done nothing.

“Anyway, I learned something about us,” She said against his neck, making his pale skin vibrate with each word muttered against it and causing him to shudder a little. He could literally hear her smile with amusement, the rather sticky yet dry sound of her lips peeling and stretching causing him to cringe. “I know I feel bad about what happened when I was younger. I really do, it was a disgusting thing of me to do… I wasn’t thinking when it happened. I had nightmares every night for a year because of it, they come less often now but they got worse as time went on. But I don’t think I was happy with myself, my mind I mean. I wasn’t…broken.

 “I wanted to break me; I wanted to… destroy myself, as if it were the only way to cope with it, the guilt I mean. My heart wanted me to tear myself apart fibre by fibre then throw salt in the wounds as I was doing it because it was so sick of dealing with something that I did when my mind wasn’t there. Or maybe it was. Anyway, these emotions beat out my mind and wanted me to hurt myself but I couldn’t do it, not by my own hand anyway…”

“What are you trying to say?”

Hazel grinned, looking at Tavor eye-to-eye as her hands touched his cheek and smeared the drying blood across his face. Her right eye twitched as she pressed herself flush against him, her hips grinding maybe a little too much against his own, before giving him a small kiss and pulling away. “You’re not real.”

“What?! I’m right here and I am real!”

“No no no… You aren’t. Don’t bother trying to say that you are, because I know that you aren’t-“

“Then what am I!?”

“You’re someone that my mind made up, like you’re some human version of my guilt or something. Maybe you’re some alternate personality, like Tyler Durden was in Fight Club and I’m really just sitting here smashing that bat at thin air and occasionally hitting myself with it. Maybe when you would… stab me with the pocket knives or utility knives at home, I’m really in the bathrooms at Wal-Mart doing it to myself.”

“…Are you…insane!? I never-“

“Because every single time I’m with you, I wind up in a place I don’t know or I wonder how the hell I got there. It’s like I blackout after you would, or I would, get my kicks from being stabbed, kicked, thrown across rooms and slamming my head against the counters.”

“I…I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

She let out a moan, shuddering as she arched her back as if she were relishing the memories of his abuse. “I knew that I was always a masochist. I knew that. But… I often wondered if I were a sadist as well… Seeing how I enjoyed seeing that girl’s face pretty much cave in with every little punch and how I slammed her head against the dirt at the baseball diamond. I would get into fights so often and get off on the highs of the endorphins and adrenaline I got from the fights. The satisfaction of smashing some son of a bitch’s face in and breaking their ribs to the point where the gasp and beg me to lay the fuck off is just a bonus.”

“…Hazel-“

“And… seeing you like this… bleeding and bruised and broken while tied up… It’s beautiful. It really… is… Fuck Tavor…”

“I have no fucking idea what the fuck you’re talking about! I fucked you a few times and did your kinky little shit that you begged me to do, but I didn’t do the extreme shit like stabbing you and kicking you and whatever the hell you thought I did!” He screamed, pulling harder at his bonds as he tried to ignore how much her hips were squirming against his.

“No! No! No! No! Stop it! You. Aren’t. Real!” Hazel screeched, pulling herself off of him and scrambling towards her bat on the floor, kicking it farther away from her in the process. She swore under her breath as she managed to pick it up with her shaky hands before driving it into his head once again. “Once you’re fucking dead, I’ll be free of this fucking guilt! I’ll be able to fucking sleep again! I’ll… I’ll be free from this bullshit! I won’t ever fucking see his face again! And you’ll fucking disappear! And that’ll prove it!”

Ragged shuddering breaths fell from her gaping mouth as she swung the aluminum bat hard against his bruised body harder and harder each time. The disgusting sound of flesh being abused and bones snapping under the impact filled the air in the room, the sound of him gasping and gurgling on his blood and choking on his tongue making everything sweeter for Hazel.

Eventually, all sounds from him stopped. She threw the bat away from her, panting heavily as she fell to her knees when she was sure that he had stopped breathing. Her body was practically humming as adrenaline pulsed through her veins and tingles of ecstasy ran over her skin from what she did; relief washed over her and she felt so much lighter, as if a sack of cinderblocks was lifted off her chest. Her black hair clung to her wet skin, sweat running down the sides of her face and the back of her neck; she smacked her lips in satisfaction as she slowly climbed onto her feet to take a look at the body.

If there was even one in the first place.

She sighed, standing up straight and stretching as the vertebrae in her back popped into place before staring at the chair. Her jaw dropped when she saw a  broken body with blood pouring out of every orifice hanging limp on the chair; she screwed her eyes shut and opened them again, expecting the body to have disappeared, she did this again and again expecting a different result each time.

He was still there.

“…Oh God…”