Naive Stapling

Where my forearm had been so ferociously gripped, a red ring of bruised skin served as a permanent reminder of her power over me. 
I hadn't done anything to deserve punishment, yet I couldn't help but feel guilty and remorseful.
For so long it felt like a coating of apathy had begun to spill over my heart, and it took these embarrassing, frivolous emotions to remind me that there was still the possibility of breaking free. I rubbed the bruised area as the girl circled the room once, humming in thought to herself, lips turned upwards and eyes focused on something that I wasn't privy to, before coming to an abrupt stop, leg swinging backwards towards me, bending over so that she loomed tall over my body. I was cross-legged on the floor that I had been pitiably crawling across, wearing a sorry expression across my face, waiting for her to pass judgment upon me.
After she had caught me red-handed (in what, I'm not exactly sure, but her actions were starting to hypnotize me into really believing I had made some kind of transgression), I had been flung to the floor, before being ordered to remain sitting while she pondered what to do with me.
With any other prelude, this might have been a desirable situation, but in this kind of context, I was in quite the unfortunate predicament. Changing contexts would have made this almost a perfect realization of fantasy. While I hadn't gotten such a great look, not that I was trying to, at her while she was asleep, her features radiated a natural beauty and congruity that would have easily carried her through life until now. Good-looking people really have it easy sometimes, and she was a person who especially brough about the sensation of 'ah, she's probably had it easy'. Look, I'm not trying to say that a person with attractive features has never had it hard in life, but there are undeniably tangible perks to being a beauty in this world.
Take it from the experience of one whose been sitting at the opposite end of the spectrum for a good while, or at least, far enough from the attractive end for my only compliments to come in the form of 'how cute'. 
Moreso than pretty, however, this girl was terrifying. There was something lying dormant beneath the warm luster of her skin that seldom peeked through, but it was a kind of maniacal beast that couldn't be unleashed into society, even one as wrought and bizarre as this one. 
No, maybe it was just that same bizarreness that's allowing those small snippets to peek through, and it was simply that slowly and slowly, it was being freed from its porcelain guise. 
I didn't want to be around when it realised that it could roam free.
Even in my own prison of this apartment building, there was information flowing in steadily and swiftly enough for me to, for what felt like the first time in a while, be up to date with societies ills and miracles. Being such a serious employee, polite-glasses constantly had a stack of the latest newspapers and (mostly business) magazines in his hands, and when he was done scanning over them for whatever it was that he deemed noteworthy, they were offloaded onto me.
Rather, I had simply picked one up through sheer boredom and curiosity one morning, and maybe even a drop of naive desire to gain some of his respectable qualities, when I saw the flash of a proud glint in his eyes. 
Even if that's what spurred me on, though, I wouldn't have kept up with it if I wasn't serious about improving myself, making myself more useful as an errand boy - and hopefully much more than that.
Though any kind of dream of self-improvement might just be cut short.
Permanently.
However, being at the hands of such a pretty girl, even putting aside the fact that all I had to greet me every morning was the serious-glasses guy and a poster of some famous idol, I resolved to not let this fateful encounter go to waste, and twist this into my favour.
First would be explaining my innocence.
"Look, there seems to have been some kind of-"
And I was answered with a foot across my face.
At least she wasn't wearing shoes or sandals...
"Permission to talk? I don't recall ever granting it" came spitting from this girl's lips. 
There's really no way to get out of this, is there?
This girl is nuts.
Now she was standing, arms-crossed, chin raised, and cackling to herself.
Forget anything about pretty or desirable, a quick exit is all I should be focusing on.
"You've sparked my cogs a little. I know what punishment to hand down to you."
With that, I was once again gripped by my arm, dragged across the rough carpet, and brought to a stop leaning against the frame of the bed.
With a ravenous contortion of her otherwise smooth features, she thrust her fingers into her pink shorts and pulled a stapler from god knows where.
Seriously, what the hell was this?!
Why does this girl carry a stapler around in her pants?!
What the hell else does she have down there!?
More like, where the hell was serious-glasses when you needed him!?
I know I've done my fair share of complaining about him, and I've changed his nickname around countless times, but I'm always grateful for his protection.
I'm truly thankful that its him here, acting as my guardian, and not the delinquent who seems to have it in for me. 
But that's besides the point - rather, my feelings are besides the point, and as ungrateful and heartless as this might sound, wasn't it his job to protect me?
Don't tell me this girl...
But that's where my thoughts were unfortunately ushered off the stage, my speech having extended well past the time-limit.
A glint was all that my brain could register, before the right side of my vision was cast into a silver-tinged darkness by her deft wielding of a certain piece of stationary.
"That's one of the eyes that saw me sleeping, isn't it? Well, since I'm benevolent enough to be an angel, I'll allow for half of that memory to remain as a vivid picture in your mind. The other half," she muttered into my left ear, bringing her warm breath and cold fingers up against my forehead, and I could begin to feel the plastic shell of the stapler push up against my eyelid.
"will belong to me!"
Snap!

But a broken, twisted staple fell to the floor beside me, having clasped down on nothing but a strand of my hair, now lying entangled alongside it on the floor.
I would like to think that I held up pretty well under her pressure, but my teeth were silently vibrating, and sweat had begun to cling against my neck and forehead.
In this heightened physiological and emotional state, she truly looked like a viscous predator, gleaming with pride and glee at her mutilated prey.
Like my terror was an art piece for her amusement, one she painted to her predilections.
Her head tilted to the side, to an angle that almost seemed painful, while her ravenous smile was washed over by one of pure, guileless amusement.
"Joking!" came from her flushed lips, and her eyes closed with the kind of delightful expression that a child makes when they show their parents a clay-figure they're proud of.
Such an expression arising in this context seemed off kilter somehow, like I had turned the page of a manga to find a misprint, a page of a shojou manga inside a seinen.
Maybe that comparison isn't so apt; it's already sometimes difficult to tell the difference between the two, even if some people refuse to admit it.
"What kind of joke involves an interrogation stance that would make even the most hardened yakuza veterans crumble?!"
Her tactics could cut through a diamond-ranked Yakuza.
Though I hear that diamonds aren't actually all that difficult to cut, and scratching them is the truly impressive feat.
"They say that the funniest jokes cut the deepest."
"I think you mean the harshest insults."
"Whatever the case, the end result is a wound that needs stitching."
"I don't think you should be aiming to wound people with a joke" I chastised with exasperation, at her attitude and her words.
With a cock of her head that seemed too cute for a personality like hers, she parted her lips to answer with heated breath; "Haha, I guess you're right! Well, don't worry, I would've only wounded you if you had agreed to leave me with one too", which was a strange sentiment and left me speechless for an while, giving her ample time to correct herself, or maybe cover up her slip.
"Of course, that's kind of a joke, too. Ahhh, when I get into one of these moods, it's hard not to fall in a drowning, debilitating love. You're lucky you caught me at the end of one."