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them upward. Push her head into the pillow and hold it there. Her cries are muffled, and I cannot tell if they are in protest or delight. Nor do I care. I enter her violently, unnaturally.
    We hike a portion of the Appalachian Trail. Violet, sore from our encounter yesterday, has great difficulty navigating some of the rockier terrain. In fact, she was still bleeding from my rambunctiousness only this morning. I take a secret pride in this. Pride in my manhood for injuring her so. I catch her looking at me, and the expression on her face is a mixture of respect and fear. I suspect she wonders who I am. Wonders who is this stranger who brutalized her. I don’t blame her.
    We come to a magnificent waterfall and riverbed with large flat rocks scattered invitingly in the stream. We have not passed any other hikers in over an hour, so I begin to shuck off my clothes. I find myself wanting to be naked all of the time. Violet has to be coaxed, but soon enough she joins me, naked, in the water.
    We sun ourselves on a massive flat rock in the middle of the stream. The water rushes coldly by us as we grow dry and warm in the fall sun. I close my eyes and visit my old friend, the dark. Violet rubs her hand lightly over my chest, scratches her nails playfully over my nipples, and asks, “What are you thinking about?” I don’t answer. She trails her hand across my stomach, rakes her nails through my pubic hair, tangling it.
    “Adam, tell me what you’re thinking about.”
    “About how much I love the sun.”
    She grasps my penis, manipulates it, awakens it.
    “Do you think about your wife?”
    This is a scene that she has assuredly read or seen countless times. Get your lover to discuss his wife while you excite him sexually. I am sure the romance racks at bookstands across the country are filled to overflowing with such scenes. No matter, I will let her play it out, as I play out my own.
    She gauges the thickness and rigidity of my erection, the barometer of her powers.
    “Do you think about Rachel?”
    “No, she’s in the dark.”
    She works me with her hands. I see now that this is her power, her way of controlling me just as Rachel controls me. I allow her the control. I think about my brother and the girl I loved a thousand summers ago. And the circle closes.
    Her hands move with a speed and grace that seem incompatible. “What else?” she asks me. “What else about Rachel?” She coaxes me just as she coaxes my erect penis to give up its gift.
    I blurt out the words just before the semen splashes across my stomach in a stream of white light.
    “I think she’d be better off dead.”
    That night, our last, I rage against Violet. My contempt for her knows no bounds. On the pretext of sexual exploration, she agrees to allow me to live out my fantasies. I tie her wrists and ankles to the four posts of the bed. I use her body for my own selfish ends. My every animal desire is given over to hate and lust. I commit unspeakable acts. I degrade her. In every way the imagination allows, I degrade her.
    Afterward, I untie her. Her feet and hands are blue and icy from lack of circulation. She crawls to a cold dirty corner and weeps quietly.
    We leave the mountain as we came, in silence. My thoughts are private and not to be shared with the likes of her. There is no longer any need to formally end the relationship. It is over. In her simple mind, I know she wonders. Questions if she is somehow at fault, at fault for my unspeakable behavior. I know that she wonders if this is not what she deserves. On some collective level, she feels that she somehow deserves such treatment. I know these things, because my brother taught me well. I can already feel Violet pulling away; my actions overrode even the hardiest of abuse syndromes. I know she will never contact me again. I made sure of that last night.
    A billboard looms ahead. SEE LINVILLE CAVERNS. It calls to me, a cheap roadside attraction, but I know I must see it. Its dark recesses