Infliction by Dernhelm
Past Featured StorySummary: 'She was so soft, and warm, and yielding, and you didn’t expect of her to hide a knife behind her back.'
Categories: Jim and Pam, Past Characters: Jim
Genres: Angst, Inner Monologue, Oneshot
Warnings: Violence/Injury
Challenges: None
Series: None
Chapters: 1 Completed: Yes Word count: 484 Read: 1318 Published: July 03, 2020 Updated: July 03, 2020
Story Notes:
Disclaimer: I  still own nothing Office-related.
Chapter 1 by Dernhelm

She was so soft, and warm, and yielding, and you didn’t expect of her to hide a knife behind her back. 

She was not a kind of girl who makes a quick, firm stab, no — the knife seemed to be a foreign object in her hands; you doubted that she even knew how to use it and watched with a smile how she fumbled with it awkwardly. You smiled when she made those tentative, shallow cuts. You kept smiling because you’d had them before — one day of bleeding and two days of itching, and they would be gone. 

Your smile disappeared when your wounds inflamed. And though you took urgent measures, it was too late. The infection had already run in your bloodstream, and your sufferings began. 

In the beginning, you held pretty well, actually. You were still able to walk and eat and have conversations. But under your clothes was red, throbbing skin and you had to take medicine to tame the fever, just a little. It soothed the symptoms but didn’t erase the cause of your disease. The only antidote was clutched in her tiny hands, and she wasn’t going to give it to you. 

It would be simpler if she was aware of your condition if she did that cuts on purpose. You were sure that if you recognized the satisfaction in her eyes, her taking pleasure in your misery, you’d be healed pretty quickly. The hate would simply burn to ashes any of her infection that circulated in your blood. 

If only she was aware. 

But, of course, she wasn’t. 

She worried about you, asked why you were so pale, and why your forehead was so sweaty and breathing shallow. She brought water to your parched lips and put a wet cloth on your forehead, and you knew that her clumsy care wouldn’t help you, but you wanted it so desperately. When her fingers accidentally brushed your skin, they left more and more cuts. And though it was self-destructive, you were okay with the new injuries as far as she was the one to inflict them and stay nearby to change a compress. 

It worsened with every passing day. You used all the willpower you had to stay conscious in the office, to suppress shivering and keep your breathing measured. The sleep became elusive as you turned and tossed every night in feverish nightmares. The food had no taste, and you consumed it only because you’d die otherwise. But you felt no hunger or tiredness — only this pulsation of sore wounds, only the fever heat. 

You could stand it no more. You felt a little selfish to ask her for a cure, but it was the only chance for you to stay alive. So you took a risk. 

In the end, you told her everything and begged her to heal you.

She looked at you with pity, regret, and sorrow in her eyes and twisted the knife.

‘I can’t.’

End Notes:

I have a certain mood, and if it motivates me to write angsty stories instead of curling into a ball and cry, so be it. 

Sorry.

This story archived at http://mtt.just-once.net/fanfiction/viewstory.php?sid=5814