“What was it, John?” asks Jürgen, sliding the blindfold over Preston’s eyes. He tightens the cloth and kneels back, sitting astride Preston’s belly, watching as Preston strains naked against the knots at his wrists and ankles.
“What was the initial compulsion? The reason you never dosed yourself again? It wasn’t this,” said Jürgen, trailing a piece of soft cloth over John’s face. “Do you know what this is?”
Preston lifts his head, following the cloth as Jürgen pulls it upward. “What are you doing? Why?”
“Because you need it. Because… for Robbie and Lisa - for all of us, you need to move forward. Call it absolution. What is it, John?”
“I don’t know,” Preston says, and sadly, Jürgen knows that he doesn’t.
“How about this?” asks Jürgen, slapping Preston’s face with another texture, first one cheek, then the other. Pushing it into his nose and mouth. “Do you know what this is?”
Preston pushes for a memory, inhaling hard, the exertion showing on his face, in the tautness of his limbs.
“Leather,” he says. “It’s leather. A glove.”
“Yes, John, but what else?” pushes Jürgen, “Tell me more.”
“There is nothing else.”
“No, there isn’t, is there?”
“This then,” Jürgen says, reaching for a vial. Opening it, sprinkling drops carefully over Preston’s jaw. Wafting the small bottle under Preston’s nose.
Preston moans, trying to beat back the tears that form suddenly in his eyes.
“Please. Please. Don’t do this.”
“What is it, John?”
Preston gasps, licks at his lips, trying in vain to take a drop of it into his mouth, knowing the taste will be pungent and sour, wanting it nonetheless. He’s tasted it before.
“John?”
“It’s,” swallowing the lump in his throat, gagging, finally choking out the word. “Mary.”
Jürgen smiles ruefully. “Yes. And this,” he says, picking up the first piece of cloth, once again dragging it over Preston’s nose, “is Viviana. And this?” Picking up the glove, pushing it into Preston’s face. “This is Errol.”
Jürgen moves back, straddling Preston’s thighs, begins to stroke downward, digging his nails into Preston’s chest, raking them down toward his loins.