I sit in his room, hands in my lap, eyes to the yellowing wall, which has holes the size of his fist littering the surface. I can only look when he's away and breathe when he's gone.

                   

My breath must be quiet and shallow when he's in the room; my chest cannot move. I must only blink when he looks away. My body stays perfectly still as I suffocate amongst the pillows at the head of his bed.

                   

My nose itches angrily, and I cannot touch it. I fear a red mark will be left when he returns, and he will no longer find me perfect.

                   

I don't want to know what will happen if I'm no longer perfect.

                   

When he gets home, I know it's him from the stomping around the hallway like he's warning me of his presence. To be ready for him. But I know I am not a living thing to him, whom he needs to warn, only a doll to move around as he desires.

                   

My body straightens when I hear his hand clasp the handle, and the door opens. Dolls must sit perfectly for their owners exactly where they are left.

                   

He stumbles into the room and collapses onto the bed. Burying his head into my thighs, he reaches over to turn the lamp on.

                   

I want to recoil. I want to shove him away and strip my skin from my bones and have nothing that he has touched attached to me. I wish I could bleed out to show him the blood that pulses beneath the surface and my humanity hidden in it.

                   

Instead, I stay perfectly still. He rubs his face along my lap, and I control the curling of my lip when I smell the grease from his hair and his pimples scrape across the coarse fabric of my skirt.

                   

He grabs my wrist, shoving my fingers into his hair. His scalp is entirely covered in little red bumps and flaky sores. I keep myself from ripping out his hair in large clumps.

                   

'I hate those females I work with,' he sneers, rubbing his face further into my thighs. 'They're all a bunch of whores and prudes. I wish I could kill them all.' He rambles on about the women he sees; he hates them all.

                   

Wise women see the disgusting lust he rakes over their unwilling figures.

                   

I wish I had seen it instead of smiling.

                   

He sits up, clutching my cheeks between bony hands and pulling my face closer to his. His rotten breath crawls out from somewhere deep inside him and strangles my nostrils. His tongue is yellowing, with food stuck between his blunt teeth.

                   

'You are the only woman for me.' He tenderly rubs his thumbs along my jaw and turns my head to the side. 'You're perfect. You don't scream or talk back. You stay perfectly still. You are my perfect woman.' He sighs dreamily as his lips crash against mine. His tongue squirms around my mouth like a coiling slug.

                   

He tastes purely of rot and decay. My mama used to say that a body can only hold on so long before your outside begins to taste like your insides. And he has been rotten for a while.

                   

He pulls away, a string of white saliva connecting us. He looks around for a second, and I swallow down the bile and scream that aches on the back of my teeth. After kissing, he is usually done, leaving for the bathroom before curling up asleep on my lap.

                   

But tonight is different.

                   

His eyes glaze over, veins pulsing along his neck, and fingers dig into my hips urgently. He trails his hands down my skirt, flicking open the buttons and exposing my underwear.

                   

My heart pounds violently in my chest; I think it's trying to break my ribs so my bones will puncture my skin, and I will bleed to death on his bed.

                   

A bed that is not mine. A bed my parents will never find me in.

                   

When he gets to the zipper and tries to pull my skirt down my legs, I grab the lamp and smash it into the side of his temple. I keep slamming it until blood is oozing from a crack in his skull, and his brain is shining under the light. I shove his body off mine, ignoring the blood that is slipping down my hands. I trip over my skirt, bundled around my ankle, and kick it off before I stumble around his apartment trying to find his front door.

                   

I try to recall where I heard him enter, but I don't have time. His footsteps are chasing after me. I open a cupboard door, crouching inside it with my knees against my chest. I breathe softly through my mouth. The room smells like decomposing meat, and thousands of tiny creatures squirm and wriggle beside me.

                   

I flick on the lights when his footsteps disappear.

 

An ear-splitting scream leaves me as the room comes into view.

 

All around me sit beautiful, crumbling corpses of girls dressed like porcelain dolls. Their limbs are falling off, and maggots are curling along the open wounds. Some have chunks of meat torn from their thighs with a blunt pair of teeth.

 

I keep screaming as my body starts to dry heave and saliva drips out of my mouth. My body violently shakes as I drag my fingernails down my face, splitting the skin, and my vision fills with little black dots like flies that have sprung from the hundreds of maggots around me.

 

They buzz around my head, trying to get down my throat.

 

The door opens, and wrapping his arms around my waist, he drags me out of the cupboard and places me back between his pillows. The black spots follow me; the flies wait to lay their larvae in me.

 

'I was hoping you'd last longer than the rest,' he says with a sad smile that spreads across his blunt teeth.

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Keely-Felicia Smith, a 23-year-old from Australia with a passion for storytelling. She has studied for a Bachelor's degree in Creative and Professional Writing and is on her exciting journey to becoming a published author. This is her very first published work in a magazine. Keely-Felicia loves to dive into the worlds of horror, psychological thrillers, poetry, and memoirs, crafting tales that captivate and inspire. You can follow her on Instagram, where she posts about her readings, writing, and volunteering at writing festivals: instagram.com/keelyfelicia.