To be sure, this change instilled terror in me. Not only of her but of myself. I didn’t dare confirm it, but over time my performance ceased to be a question of adaptation. Something else was involved – an uncanny impulse beyond my control.

Secretly, I began to enjoy my work.

I know it’s hard to fathom. God knows I was worried about my sanity. But the woman made love as if possessed and this wore off on me. I decided Ariah had violated our contract: often, I felt like I was the one being raped.

But I allowed it. Even longed for it.

How wretched was that human tumour. Every recess of my brain pulsed with pleasure whenever she clawed and hit and slapped me. A thrilling jolt surged through me when she roughed me up. I held her down because I knew she would kick me. The more I internalised my role as the rapist, the more viciously she treated me. I slapped her because I wanted her to box my ears, harder, over and over. I said I wanted to rape her to encourage that savage voice of hers to lacerate me with dirty, guttural whispers.

My pact with the devil dragged me into a universe I’d never known. She awoke in me desires I didn’t recognise. A desire to be degraded. The woman infected me with her disease. Questions that I dared not ask gnawed at me. How did she become such a terrifying creature? Why, how, could she repulse me so and yet draw me in at the same time?

—

I don’t know if it was because she was satisfied with my work or because she realised we shared an illness, but Ariah started to treat me like a human being. I say that because up until then she had behaved as if I was a dog. She made me satisfy her five times a day. The next morning, while I was still slumbering next to my wife, she would order me to come over again, right away.

She questioned me about my family once, her face expressionless. She seemed to have developed an interest in her obedient servant.

Cautiously, I started asking about her work, hoping to discover answers from the source of the sickness I needed to treat. She revealed details in dribs and drabs. Often, she cut off the conversation, commanding me to get back to satisfying her lust. Always in control, she prevented me from digging into the contents of her head, contents that I imagined were uglier than her mutilated face. I received her life story in fragments with no leads to follow. Maybe she lied about her past and maybe that wasn’t important since our transactions would soon be over anyway. But the scraps themselves kept calling me to piece together a story.