The First Time I met Marie

***Damian***

The place was a reflection of my own soul – cold, decaying and full of darkness. A nameless city where the shadows were longer than the days and the light was just a distant dream. I had fled there, leaving my old life behind in flames, a life that had been nothing but pain and agony anyway. The place was perfect for broken people like me. It was a hiding place, a place to disappear.

My father. Just thinking about him made my stomach clench. I could still feel his hand on my skin, cold and hard, like the grip of a tool made only to hurt. My childhood had been one long battlefield, and I was the soldier who never had a choice. My body bore the scars, but it was the wounds in my soul that had driven me to this place.

I was empty when I arrived. A hollow space that held nothing but darkness. Until I met her.

Marie.

She was like a phantom that suddenly emerged from the darkness. I still remember exactly what she looked like when I saw her for the first time. Her eyes were like black holes that swallowed up all light. Her smile was dangerous, seductive and repulsive at the same time. She was no ordinary woman – she was an enigma, an abyss that irresistibly attracted me.

I was sitting in a seedy bar that smelled of sweat, alcohol and blood. My drink was almost empty when she came in. She moved like a hunter choosing her next prey, and when her eyes fell on me, I knew I was doomed.

“You look like you don't belong here,” she said, her voice deep and rough, like a blade drawn across stone.

I looked at her, my eyes empty, my voice almost a whisper. “Maybe I don't.”

She sat down next to me without asking and ordered two drinks. Her movements were fluid, controlled, like a cat playing with its prey.

“Why are you here?” she asked, studying me. ‘You look like you've been running from something.”

I shrugged. ’Maybe I have.”

“Maybe you're exactly right here,” she said, her smile cold yet hypnotic. ”I'm Marie.”

The next few weeks were like a dance in the dark. We were two lost souls drowning in our own pain, clinging to each other like drowning people to a piece of wood. But Marie was different from me. Where I wanted to hide my pain, she celebrated it. She lived to feel it, to cause it. She was like a virus that ate its way into my veins and extinguished every spark of humanity in me.

Our relationship was intense, brutal and boundless. She was everything I didn't want to be, and yet I couldn't let go of her. She pulled me into her abyss, and I let her.

Marie was filled with a dark, morbid passion. Pain was her elixir of life, and she taught me how to bring it into the darkest corners of a relationship. It started out harmlessly – at least I thought so. A whip here, a knife there. I thought it was just a game, an outlet for the darkness that simmered in both of us.

But Marie was no game. She was a hurricane of chaos and destruction, and I was her slave.

I remember one night that changed everything. We were in an abandoned house that we had claimed for ourselves. The walls were cold and damp, the floor covered with dust and shards of broken glass. She had lit candles, and their flickering light made the shadows dance.

“Come here,” she said, her voice a command.

I obeyed, as I always did. She held a whip in her hand, letting it slide slowly through the air as if she enjoyed the tension. I knew what was coming, and part of me longed for it. The pain was familiar, almost soothing. It was better than the emptiness.

But this time it was different.

She produced a knife with a blade that sparkled in the candlelight. My breath caught in my throat, but I said nothing. I trusted her – at least, I thought I did.

“Hold still,“ she ordered, while she brought the blade to my skin. The cold steel burned like fire, and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming.

“You like this, don't you?” she whispered, while she pushed the blade deeper. Her eyes glistened with sadistic joy. “Tell me you like it.”

I nodded, unable to deny the truth. But something inside me began to break. It wasn't the pain that destroyed me – it was the realization that I was nothing more than a plaything to her. I wasn't her partner. I was her victim.

Marie went further, deeper and deeper into her own abyss, and she dragged me with her. Her fantasies became darker, crueler, until at some point I could no longer distinguish between pleasure and pain. She demanded more and more, and I gave in because I believed I had to. Because I believed that I didn't deserve anything better.

But one day she went too far.

We were in a basement that she had discovered. The walls were covered with strange symbols that I didn't understand. She had hung shackles from the ceiling and prepared a table with tools that looked like medieval instruments of torture.

“This is going to be special,” she said, her smile wider than ever. ”I have something new for us.”

I wanted to escape, but my legs didn't move. She tied me to the ceiling, her movements precise and controlled. Then she began, and I knew I would never escape.

The night Marie decided to break me for good began like any other, and yet I sensed something was different from the moment she looked at me. We were in the abandoned cellar that had become her personal dungeon—a gloomy cave of cold stone and musty stench, illuminated by flickering candles. The shadows danced on the walls like living demons, and the air was heavy with anticipation.

Marie was different that evening. Her movements were more precise, her smile sharper, her eyes darker. She hardly spoke, just hummed a sinister song that sounded like a lullaby but carried the undertone of impending doom. I sat in the corner, watching her, my heart racing in my chest.

“Stand up,” she finally said, her voice soft, almost loving, but the command was unmistakable.

I obeyed, as I always did. There was something hypnotic about her presence, something that made you follow her even when you knew it would destroy you.

“Tonight, Damian,” she began, pulling a long, thin dagger from a drawer, ”we will get to the core of your darkness. I will free you from all that holds you back. From your fears. Your doubts. Your pain.”

I felt my body tremble with tension, but I said nothing. Part of me believed her. Part of me thought that this was a way to leave behind everything my father had done to me. But another part, a deep, instinctive part, knew that I would not come out of this night unscathed.