“I’ll give you anything. Do anything.”

She blurted out. He continued looking at her, crossing his arms in front of him.

He remained silent for a moment. Slowly, he opened his mouth.

“Take off your dress.”

Troy said, his voice tone calm and collected.

* * *

“Huh?”

Pig A asked back in disbelief.

“Take off your dress.”

Troy reiterated, each syllable clear.

At the sheer thought itself, her face flared up in embarrassment.

“Right here,” he demanded.

They were standing facing each other in the middle of the busiest boulevard in all of downtown LA. The club bouncer and dozens of people in line were already staring at them, thinking it was a lovers’ quarrel. She looked up at his face, frantically looking for a trace of a joke. Unfortunately for her, he was dead serious.

“You can’t, can you?”

He tilted his head sideways.

“What did you really expect to do at a club? It’s no place to come and…talk.”

He went on, staring at her with pitch black eyes.

“All you’ll do is attract people like me. And you don’t want that. So don’t pretend like you do.”

His voice was cold and disconnected.

‘I’m never going to see him again,’ Pig A thought.

She became blind to logic, to common sense, to good will. Instead, she surrendered to the urge to know more of him, to keep him around, to do as he says.

‘I can’t let him leave,’ she thought.

Pig A’s trembling fingers grabbed her own arms. She crossed her arms in front of her, her fingertips grasping the spaghetti straps resting on her shoulders. She pulled them down and her dress fell to the ground.

The pink satin fabric brushed against her feet. Her bare skin perked up against the cold, night air. She stood in her matching white bra and underwear, head down in paralyzing embarrassment eyes fixated at her toes. Cars around her honked and men rolled down their windows and whistled. Those waiting for the club bouncer to let them in snapped pictures of her, giggling. Pedestrians averted their eyes and quickened their steps.

Troy’s lips pulled up into a crescent moon smile.

“That’s a good girl.”

He said.

She felt like lightning had struck her at the top of her head and coursed through her veins, leaving her plasma hot at the bottom of her heels. It was a chill like she’d never, ever experienced. The scarlet red humiliation she was inundated with soon turned into extreme pleasure. She coughed out a breath that sounded more like a moan.

He walked up to her and kissed her on the forehead. A soft, gentle one that remained just a second longer than she expected.

From that moment on, he was everything to her.

Pig A barked when he said to bark and meow’d when he said to meow. She wore clothes he picked out for her and hung out with people he sieved through for her. She woke up every day with her heart thumping to find out what he had in store for her that day. She was a plaything to him.

And a plaything Pig A loved being.

* * *

Byul was simply to be another one of these girls to Troy. The new pretty face in Troytown, his latest plaything. In his head, he was already calling her ‘Pig B.’ How convenient it was that Byul was in a situation where she was quite literally immobilized without him. She was laying there in a pool of her own blood, ready to be cooked in whatever way he wanted.

Help me, her eyes were saying. It hurts.

His eyes narrowed in a gross, sadistic smile.

He held out his foot by her lips.

“Lick it,” he said.

Her eyes widened in disbelief.

“Lick what’s dirty off, and I’ll save you.”

He used his chin to point at the part of his boot where her blood had stained it.

Byul was shaking. Out of confusion, out of indignation, out of fear. Her mouth opened. His boot was angled where all she’d have to do was stick out her tongue to do as he said.

She tried to look for a way out. To protest.

Troy pulled out a cigarette from his back pocket. He leisurely lit it and inhaled deeply, soon letting out a long, gray breath. His face scrunched up in a satisfied smile at the nicotine spreading through his lungs. All while Byul was bleeding out.

“You have til I’m done with this cig.”

They made eye contact. He wasn’t smiling anymore. He was serious. Byul shuddered at the realization that he would actually leave - he would leave her to die.

Her pupils, the only body part she could move at her free will, paced back and forth from the cigarette in his hand to his foot planted next to him.

He tapped the cigarette butt once. Ashes fell. The cigarette was getting shorter by the second.

She was running out of time.

He seeped in one final puff. Exhaling, he dropped the cigarette on the floor and extinguished the light with the toe of his boot.

He looked down at her once again and, to her utter dismay, stepped away to leave.

* * *

They say when you’re at the verge of death, your life flashes before you. Perhaps this was the real proof that she was dying. Byul saw very particular moments of her life. She saw herself in elementary school not having lunch money. In middle school, being chosen for dodgeball last. Bullies making fun of her accented English. Men who thought they could get the better of her, a skinny, poor, quiet little Asian girl.

She saw herself never having bent to any of those circumstances, to any of those people.

‘It could’ve been easier.’

She thought, seeing her memories pass by her.

‘If I just let it go.’

She looked at her own face in those pieces of memories. Once soft, her face was hardening more every year. She looked tired.

‘If I just let them have things their way.’

The scenes she was seeing were getting closer to real time. She saw the memory of her and Veggie closely dodging a car accident with the Camry earlier today. It felt like a lifetime ago.

‘It can be easier.’

She thought as she saw her current self, mere minutes ago, crunching against concrete as the car hit her.

* * *

Byul was sucked back into reality.

She didn’t know herself where she mustered the strength. But she did. Blood vessels in her eyes popped. She heard a crunching noise and realized it was the sound of her teeth grinding against themselves.

She held out her trembling hand and gripped onto the bottom of his pants. It was the first time since she had been hit that she was able to look at her own hand, or any of her body parts for that matter.

Her fingers were bending in directions they shouldn’t. They weren’t able to hold the grip on Troy’s leg.

‘Come on,’ she thought.

‘You can do this.’

She pushed herself. Just like she always did.

She hooked her wrist around his ankle. She suppressed the urge to throw up at the pain of forcing her broken bones to move.

She yanked with all her might.

She saw him turn his head and look down at the split second before he came crashing down on the asphalt next to her. He groaned. He braced himself with his forearm instinctively before he hit the ground, but half of his pretty face still ended up covered in blood. Byul couldn’t tell if it was her blood or his.

The surprise in his eyes soon turned into blood red anger. His upper lip twitched up, revealing his fangs.

Before he could spit out curse words, Byul pulled his face close.

Her lips met his. Her tongue slid into his mouth. He tasted blood. They both did.

“There,”

She said.

“I licked what’s dirty.”

Her voice was raw like nails scraping on metal.

* * *

Byul must have lost consciousness for a second. When she snapped back into it, she found herself on the same slab of concrete. Still laying in the pool of her own blood.

‘So that’s it then.’

She thought. Her eyelids shuddered at the pitch black that was surrounding her.

‘He left me.’

In her head, she laughed at herself.

‘There’s a line I never thought I would say about a man.’

This was how she would die. She’d lose consciousness again soon and this time, she wasn’t waking up.

‘At least I didn’t beg,’ she thought.

‘I never begged anyone for anything.’

Troy’s haughty smile flashed before her eyes.

‘Least of all, him.’

Even at this moment, she thought about the loose ends she was leaving on this earth. Her Instagram account. Unfinished book review videos. Her VTubing community. She should be streaming right now. Her fans were probably wondering where she was, worried sick or angered sick. They’d have to wait until somebody posted a notice for her on her accounts, posthumously. There was nothing she could do at this point.

But Veggie.

Her loveliest, fluffiest, sweetest little boy. Her Golden Retriever puppy who knew only of her.

He was her biggest regret left in this world.

She had told all of her friends that if she dies, she wants everything she owns to go to Veggie. She could only pray that her friends didn’t pass her off as joking. She prayed them to honor her dying wish that had become true.

So this was it.

* * *

She felt her body lift off the ground. Gravity was now working its physics only on two arms supporting her.

“I’ll get you out of this.”

A voice cut through the darkness.

She strained to get a look at his face, but it became too tiring to keep her eyes open.

The arms felt strong. She closed her eyes.

To be continued…