I Feel, Therefore I Am

Booker felt numb. Ever since the Merrick debacle and his resulting exile it felt as if he was lost even to himself. He had sought numbness so many times over the years, in alcohol, in drugs, occasionally in mortals for the briefest time, but this was different. This felt somehow final.

He had said he wanted to die, but this scared him. What if the numbness took him completely, but then eternity continued and all there was, was nothing?

Desperately he wanted to feel something.

The knife was sharp, it's blade glinting in the flame of the flickering candles he had lit. Artificial light was too harsh for this. Lying naked on his rumpled bed he looked at the hard lines of his own body. He was too thin, beginning to lose muscle tone; he hadn't been eating. His cock lay flaccid against his thigh. Even that release escaped him now.

Touching the blade to the hollow of his stomach, he drew it across his skin. Only lightly, but he saw the little blood trail, felt the tingle of the skin knitting back together. It tickled more than hurt, but at least it was something.

He did it again, harder. This time the bite of pain came, sharp and clear, before the tingle of healing flesh took it away. 

He licked his lips. 

The small amount of blood pooled around his navel in deep red, almost black in the low light. It was fascinating. Drawing the knife's tip through it, he dug it into his body, just a tiny amount, but feeling the sizzle of agony as he held it there, stopping his flesh from healing.

To die was nothing special. He had felt death so many times it meant nothing. Death did not last. But this pain, this pain that went on and on as he held the knife point in his skin, this was different, it was his. He controlled this.

His cock twitched.

Pushing slowly, carefully, he urged the tip deeper into his flesh. Too far and this would be over. Not far enough and he might lose the goal he was chasing.

He watched the blood pool grow, running off past the top of his hip, down his side and into the bedclothes below. All the while the delicious pain daggered through his nerves as he defied what he was. He pulled the knife point through his flesh, feeling the wound fold and close behind it, but never losing that sharp, clear agony.

His cock swelled. 

Arousal was not new, although it had been hard to find lately, but this was edged with something different. It reached through the numbness. Maybe this was what he had been after in the end. Maybe the torture his actions had caused for Nicky and Joe was what he had wanted all the time.

He was the last person to understand his own mind. It made no sense to him. All he knew was this was a reality he could feel.

As he played, his cock throbbed and he could no longer separate pain from pleasure, it was all one. Minutes passed and his breathing came in shallow hitches and low moans as his arousal built. He needed more. Taking the knife in both hands, he gripped it hard, feeling its bite. He felt poised on the edge of a cliff. Before he could back out like the coward he knew he was, he pushed down. He gasped as the agony sizzled along his nerves. He came, not even having brushed his cock with the lightest touch.

For long seconds he held the knife, shaking from pain and orgasm, until he could take it no more. He pulled it out, shuddering and gasping, letting the knife fall to the floor.

He felt sick and ashamed and confused as his body healed. But he felt alive.

The End