Jaded by Rob Kaufman

Author:Rob Kaufman [Kaufman, Rob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-07T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Against the dark sky with its scattering of stars, the full moon glowed, its white face stained with gray seas and craters. A mist of high-up clouds left it surrounded by a smoky glow, a yellowish haze that gave it an almost supernatural appearance.

“Sturgeon Moon,” Jade whispered, looking up at it from the window of her unlit bedroom. She knew the name of every full moon and the meaning behind it. August, reported an Old Farmer’s Almanac, was the time of year when the Algonquin people caught sturgeon as they were fishing across the Great Lakes.

She loved this year’s Sturgeon Moon in particular because it was a supermoon, happening at perigee when Earth’s satellite was at the closest point of its orbit. It appeared larger in the sky and glowed with a brighter beam of light — extremely useful for her monthly ritual.

Leaving the moon behind for a few moments, she went into the bathroom, turned on the light and looked in the mirror. Carefully, she touched the skin beneath her eye. It was healing nicely, not too quickly; the bruise was still visible. It had waned quite a bit over the past month, but not enough that she could allow another injury to be easily noticed. That could cause suspicion, provoking questions she wasn’t yet ready to answer — which is why she made the purchase two weeks earlier.

She flipped the light switch off and returned to the bedroom. Kneeling on the rug, with her bed on one side and the window on the other, she slid the narrow box from beneath her nightstand and placed it on the floor in front of her knees. A brilliant moonbeam shone directly through the window, providing enough illumination to take the top off the box and pull out its contents.

The lacquered bamboo handle of the flogger fit snugly in her hand, and the dark brown braided strands glistened under the moon. She twirled her fingers through them, feeling the handmade coconut shell beads knotted in for additional impact. Jade had chosen this flogger after hours of research; the reviews online and the product photos gave her an idea of what to expect.

Bringing the flogger up to her nose, she inhaled the leather scent and let it fill her nostrils. She placed a smooth, hard bead on her tongue, then another, rolling them around the roof of her mouth. She grimaced, thinking how if anyone saw her right now, they’d assume she was getting pleasure from this. Little could they know she was, in fact, feeling quite the opposite.

It was part of the ceremony, a way of getting to know the object that would help her do her penance. The same way she rubbed her lips and face against the kitchen cabinet before smashing her cheekbone against it. Or the way she smelled and tongued the twisted macrame cotton rope before strangling herself just enough to cause bruises — never tight enough to pass out. All pieces of the punishments she

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