Disfigured Love
By: Georgia Le Carre
Once upon a time…
there lived a…
Hawke
Her eyes are a mutation. A beautiful mutation.
It was late when I finally stopped working and reached for the red envelope laid at the edge of the desk. I placed it in front of me, and simply stared at it, as if it held some great and frightening secret. In fact, its contents were prosaic and vulgar.
Some months ago, late one night, I had become so unbearably lonely and unhappy that I had actually craved the forgiving curves of a woman—any woman. So I went on the dark net, a place where all depravity is catered for and anything one could possibly wish for is in ready supply. I found myself a procurement agency… And signed up. In that brief moment I became everything I had detested in other men.
The intolerable loneliness of that fateful night no longer possessed me, but ever since then a red envelope had arrived once every two weeks. I’ll admit, I did open the envelopes and look at the photos of those poor girls, modern day sex slaves. But even though each one was exquisitely beautiful, not once had I been even slightly tempted. I skimmed their fresh faces and nubile bodies without interest, sometimes with regret at my lapse in judgment, and other times marveling at the extent of my need. Never in my life had I paid for a woman and certainly not for an unwilling one.
I didn’t even know why I still looked. Curiosity? Compulsion? But each time I stuffed those photos back into the envelope and threw them away, I became the unforgivable beast who condemned them to a fate worse than death.
With a sigh I tore the envelope open and slid the photographs out. My eyes widened. What the fuck! I began to shake uncontrollably. The photographs fell from my nerveless hands and landed on my desk with a soft hiss.
This girl had cast her eyes out and looked back at me.
In a daze I picked up the photo and stared at her…ravenously. At her enormous translucent gray eyes, the small, perfectly formed nose, the flawlessly pale skin, the long lustrous blonde hair that spilled out and lay in curves around her full lips and slender neck.
There was something clean and ‘new’ about her, as if she had just come out of tissue paper. I reached for the other photo. Wearing a black bikini and red high heels, her arms at her sides, she stood in a bare room, the same one all the other girls had stood in. Leggy. Shining. Unlucky.
I turned the photo over.
Lena Seagull.
The bitter irony of it did not escape me. The hawk’s prey is the seagull, after all. Her age and vital statistics were displayed in English, French, Arabic and Chinese. I let my eyes skim over them, although they were no longer of any importance. To my shock and horror I couldn’t walk away from this one. No. Not this one.
Age: 18
Status: Certified Virgin
Height: 5’9”
Dress Size: 6-8-10
Bust: 34”
Waist: 24”
Hips: 35.5”
Shoe Size: 7
Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Dove Gray
Languages: Russian and English
My hand shook as my fingers traced the unsmiling outline of her beautiful face. How strange, but I yearned for the smell of her skin, the taste of those plump lips. I had never known such irresistible desire before. I wanted her so bad it hurt. At that moment of longing I felt it, as if the photo was alive; I had an impression of a quiet, but terrible grief.
I snatched my hand away, as if burnt, and frowned at the photo. I must not fall under her spell. And yet, wasn’t it already too late? The connection was instantaneous, beyond my control. I felt desperate to acquire her, brand her with my body. And make her mine. I turned to my computer screen and tapped in the secret code. The encrypted message was only one word long.
YES.
Almost instantly my phone rang. I snatched it and pressed the receiver to my ear.
‘The auction will be held at two p.m. Friday,’ a man’s voice said in an Eastern European accent. ‘And,’ he continued, ‘I must warn you. She will not be cheap. I believe there are already two Arab princes who are also interested. What’s your limit?’
‘None,’ I said instantly. In my mind she was already mine.
A pause. Then, ‘Very good.’
I terminated the call. There, it was done. I had sealed both our fates. My eyes seeking hers fell upon my own disfigured hand. Claw-like and ugly. And I heard again, as if it had happened yesterday, the sickeningly angry screech of metal against metal, the explosion that had strangely brought with it a blissful silence, and then the bitter smell of my own flesh burning, burning, burning: watching my skin bubble, crackle, glow and smoke. I had sizzled and cooked like a piece of steak on a fucking barbecue. I thought of the shimmering waves that rose from my flesh and shuddered.
