Posted 6:41 PM by Alfred

Dark - Prelude 1.5

There were two things in the world that Rion Dark loved unconditionally. These things were pain and money. The pain of others was what he really enjoyed, although Kylie had taught him the pleasures of his own agony as well.

Two things that Dark loved quite conditionally were the two main women in his life at the moment. Could he even call what he felt for them love? In some ways he despised Bonnie more than he cared for her, but that was what made the relationship so special to him. As for Kylie, he supposed that if he'd ever loved a woman, she was it.

Kylie Dusk was the kind of woman who took the word “bitch” as a compliment. She was a stripper at the Box, a skin club in Hollywood. Kylie made her money shaking her ass and bouncing up and down on desperate "gentlemen's" hidden hard-ons - lapdancing they called it. Dark had gone to the club a few times to check out her gig, and he had to admit, she was damn good at her job. She really drew the sadomasochistic freaks from their masks of domestic stability. Her whole trip was that she hated men. It was on her promo poster - "come see the slut that loves to hate men and whip them till their asses turn rosy red." Literally, that was her slogan. Maybe it wasn’t catchy, but Kylie made more tip money than any two other girls in the club combined.

A little expose on Kylie had appeared in the back pages of the LA Weekly a few months back, a neat little column sandwiched in between the horoscopes and the phone sex ads. "The allure of Kylie Dusk is not in her appearance, though she is undeniably beautiful in a macabre sense. The true draw of Ms. Dusk is her ability to make men feel good by treating them bad." And it was true. She had so many stories of sad sacks walking into the club. After a few hours of being berated and verbally abused by Kylie, they had gushed a secret load in their pants and left the club a happy man, ready to go home and deal with wifey and the brats for another week, that dark need for domination satisfied again. For the time being. They always came back, and that is why she had so many regulars and made so much cash.

"It is my experience," she had been quoted in the column, "that men love to be treated like shit. Especially the kind of scum that crawl into the Box. Men scurry around the world, attending to all their important business, blowing up their own egos, but at the heart of every man is a spot. This spot is the black ulcer that can only be treated with abuse. I serve as the most effective medication for this ulcer."

Dark loved the blackness in her, the fact that she cared almost nothing for him. He loved the violent, enraged sex they had together, which often resulted in minor injuries to either or both of them.

The sex with Bonnie was less exciting, almost tender. Bonnie was nearly the complete opposite of Kylie Dusk. With Bonnie, he was in charge at all times, which often bored him. He didn't know why she stayed with him, perhaps desperation. He had never really cared enough even to ponder it.

With Bonnie, he was the one inflicting pain, mostly of the mental sort. Dark didn't love Bonnie, didn't even really like her. Dark did love, however, the hatred he felt for Bonnie, the paradoxical nature of that hatred in the whirling mists of her unabashed, unrequited love for him. In a way, really, he cared very deeply for her, but for purely selfish reasons. There was nothing for Dark like the joy in abusing someone who loved him.

Enough uninvited thoughts of the fairer sex, Dark mused. He should be keeping an eye on his surroundings.

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