5. Greed

To greed, all nature is insufficient ~ Seneca

He who is greedy is always in want ~ Horace

She lay, glistening white, on our marriage bed. Eyed me as I moved, dark with lust, distraught at not knowing how to further my possession. She was my wife, my lover, my companion. And yet still, and always, she was her own. First and foremost. When I married her she looked me in the eye – and I the same to her – and promised me. To have, and to hold. I set her with my even stare, she was mine; to have and to hold.

Never, not once, could I recollect a moment in which she denied me. My every whim was indulged. If I wanted to eat, she fed me. If I wanted to drink, she poured the wine. If I wanted to fuck, she parted her pretty thighs.

But it was never enough. I could sink my prick deep inside her, see the ache of the probing depth, biting her lip, tears back, no more than a whimper of discouragement. More than once I flooded our midnight bedroom with harsh light and laid her slumbered limbs across my bony knees, spanked her buttocks crimson, and cast her aside, sighing into sleep.

I pinched, probed, poked her beautiful body, left her limp and lifeless, bruised and battered, and she didn’t fight. Unless I asked her to. And then she was wild, tooth and nail dug into my fierce flesh. She dragged lines of blood, and took the punishment I pushed between her swelling lips. And at dawn she always smiled, thanks and love, pure adoration. Nothing I did could break her heart.

Let me be clear; I did not want to break her. I could not lose her, could not live without her smiling adoration. But something within me, the demon on my shoulder, the endless possessiveness spoke and told me that until she cried from pain and begged, in earnest, for me to stop, I did not truly possess her. In order to own her, I had to take away her own pleasure. I was greedy for her, longed to take her from her. Her willingness to please seemed to me a blatant, shameless display of self-possession. She knew too well what she wanted. To truly own her, I needed to know first.

In my dreams I crushed her skull in my mighty palms and with my probing fingers ate her thoughts, plucking them from between the fractured bone. In reality I learned to labour the lengthy conversations her tabloid magazines insisted we have, to keep man and wife together. But still her tongue, her mind knew first what she would say, and it was never enough.

Frustration edged my desire for more.

I tried – oh how I tried to sate my unquenchable greed. Each day I took another liberty; today she was to eat nothing but fruit, today she was to wear those panties, but today she was to wear none; today she was not allowed to speak to anyone but me, and tomorrow she was forbidden to speak at all. Every minute detail of her living could be kept, calm palmed, under my direction.

But it wasn’t enough. Never enough. I clawed at steel and it broke my nails. Unsurprising really. I went mad. Spiraled into inevitability. Frustration bore frustration. Frustration fucked my wife. But even he couldn’t break her. My mind was consumed by the details. Obsessively mindful, as I lost my head.

It took a while for her to notice. She was so used to indulging my whims without asking. Everything was and always had been unorthodox. Not until I began to make mistakes, confused by my own commands. Then she wondered, then worried, then stepped out of herself and probed back. No doubt what she discovered was too much. But she hid it well, kept her face prim, as our marriage had taught her. And when I was shown to my hospital bed – for rest and recuperation – I saw her smiling face above me, and only despised her a little for knowing more. For knowing first.

• • • • •

The Seven Deadly Sins
1. Pride
2. Envy
3. Wrath
4. Sloth
5. Greed
6. Gluttony
7. Lust