Category: Fiction

Perspective

Polka Dots by melusine-la-fay via DeviantArt.com

“Three can keep a secret, but only if two of them are dead.” My dad had told me that once. It sounded smarter coming from his lips. And not nearly as threatening as it did in my head.

Bruce’s breath came out in a rush against the door to the bathroom. “Josie.”

He hadn’t actually mocked me. Rationally and logically, I know this. But crazy rarely pays attention to such things.

I hate that I take this all out on him. The mere implication of how those two girls always react to my presence, their giggles and whispers dripping with deceit and disgust, it nails me behind the bathroom door. It floods me with a jealousy that chokes out all sane thought and produces the intrinsic need to hide.

It doesn’t matter how much I trust him. I don’t trust THEM. And the knowledge that he spends every day, alone in tight quarters, with women who were cut out of magazines and pasted into his life for pretty much no other reason than to actualize my self hatred, it’s too much for this broken girl to take.

A gentle thud on the wood makes me close my eyes and mimic his likely stance. Foreheads pressed against each side of a bathroom door that has separated us far too many times. His voice is simultaneously muffled and amplified by the position of his lips which I imagine grazing the surface of the tan paint as he speaks.

“There’s no one else who could even hold a candle to you, Josie.”

The pinch of those words travels right to the center of my forehead. That place that makes tears eminent and rips right down through my heart and guts and soul.

There is no believing those words.

“I don’t even know how to compare you to other girls. I can’t even imagine wanting anyone else.”

I do. I can. I am plain and pudgy and gravity has stolen anything that might have been desirable about me long ago. They are beautiful and sexy and pert. Oh how I hate that word.

“Not a Victoria’s Secret model or those dumb girls I work with.” His voice is gruff, filing down the last words to wood shavings and casting them aside like garbage. “Especially not the two of them.”

A lifetime of self hatred boils up through my chest, escaping in silent sobs that wrack my upper body and steal my balance. I steady myself with both hands pressed on the hollow core door. But instead of holding me up, it disintegrates like a wall of dust.

I free fall as though everything around me was nothing more than smoke. The spiral is deep and dark, rushing through my ears and somehow constricting every inch of my body at the same time.

Closing my eyes to the furious spinning, I feel the door against my fingers again, as well as the solidity of the floor beneath my feet. The vertigo releases me as quickly as it chomped down.

But everything feels different.

Eyelids squeezed shut, I exhale and push myself back from the door. My center of gravity is off, my heart feels heavier and louder against my ribs, and my chest itself feels constricted from within. Bigger somehow, but tighter. I take a deep breath, filling an expanse of lungs that makes my eyes pop open.

As they focus, I’m on the wrong side of the door. The other side of the door. The tan paint marked with the oil of where my forehead just rested, except it should be on the white side. And much lower.

I take another step back as the handle turns and the door swings open.

She stares up at me. Shy, flirty smile budding on her soft, pale mouth. Lips that always seem to carry the tiniest pout below the most adorable nose that fits her face just perfectly. Her hand rises to sweep back the silky strands of hair that fall in her face whenever she looks down. But when she looks up, her oceanic eyes rimmed with long, black lashes, painted by expert hand, watch me expectantly.

The delicious curve of her breasts, which lift and press against the sweetheart neckline of her red polka dot dress makes my mouth flood with saliva. The hourglass dip of her waist and thrusting curl of her hip beneath the satiny bow fogs my mind so that I can hardly force my gaze further down to the arc of her calves.

I swallow against the feeling that fills my chest. It’s like warm soup, how a look can somehow give you a hug and a kiss and wipe away all your complaints. But the feeling doesn’t stop in my chest. It sinks and swells, burning hot and bright and full in my groin. I crave her like a beast hungers for it’s prey, but at the same time, I long to cradle and care for her like she is fragile.

My mind can’t quite wrap around what it is that I’m experiencing, and there isn’t time to contemplate it. I simply must convince her just how wholly and completely beautiful she is. That it’s impossible for me to notice other women because, when she is near, even in thought or memory, I am simply engulfed with desire to kiss her.  To touch her. To hold her.

I take her hands, or she takes my face, or some cosmic force magnetizes us until our bodies are touching and I feel exactly what it is for a man to want a women so completely that his body takes over the thinking.

As his lips meet mine, the spiral stops for real, and my eyelids spring open.

Behind my own eyes now and watching his face from the correct perspective, I am frozen in his arms. His lips tasting of all the love I just felt and his hands preparing for the task of forcing me to feel it.

No other women get to experience that. Only I do.

“Please, Josie. I’m so-”

I hold a finger to his mouth, tracing the soft, full curve of his lower lip before looking deep into his clear but heated gaze. The words he wants to say pour from his fingertips as they pull me tighter against him and grip me there like he cannot allow me to escape.

“They are beautiful, Josie, I don’t deny that. But you are a sunset. Compared to you, they are the dry desert surface of the moon.”

I know it’s crazy. That no amount of affirmation could ever make me see myself as he does. But even after feeling it first hand, it’s difficult to believe myself worthy.

But it’s easy to believe he wants me. To see the beauty he sees in me. To feel the physical representation of that affirmation.

So, I guess I’ll hold off on killing those girls just yet. You know, now that I have some perspective.

 

Beneath

ramada
The Ramada Plaza Hotel of north Columbus, closed in 2015

I’d heard the rumors. Some of the guys on the force think it’s funny to try to scare the female officers. But, I would say, after seventeen years of experience, women police are far more difficult to rattle than male.

We probably have more fears than our male counterparts, but we simply cannot show them.

Dan was trying to bait me, no doubt. Our afternoon assignment was to clear out the squatters in the abandoned Ramada Plaza hotel. The property owners had security, but once a month, they’d ask for a sweep. And we drew the short straw that day.

“Patterson, code 4.”

The hotel was supposed to be on a low-use power setting, operating hallway lights, exit signs and the fire system 24/7. But even this seemed to be faulty, as I exited the 2nd floor and jogged down the steps in the dark, my feet spotlighted by my Maglite.

“Please answer me.”

My ears rang with the bang of the door behind me as I exited the stairwell and jogged over the matted, thick carpet between peeling wallpaper and doors marked with large, gold plated numbers in the one hundreds. My whispered pleas where only met by the squelching of the carpet beneath my shoes.

“Officer Patterson, please respond.”

The crackle from the two way echoed through the first floor hallway. No power on this floor either. I stopped and started to close my eyes. But the silence around me begged for my full attention.

He’d said we should stick together, but I wanted to get in and out and had felt the vile, moldy stench infecting my uniform before we were even inside. No one in their right mind would sleep here, breathing normally was impossible.

I thought we’d be out in fifteen, so I’d decided to split up.

But as I had kicked around crack pipes and used condoms in my twentieth empty room, there was a laugh through the two way, a gasp and a sigh. Then, complete silence.

Half an hour later, I wished I’d listened to his sorry, lazy ass.

“Dan, please. If this is a prank, it’s over. I’m calling for back up.”

I stood at the front of the damp, putrid lobby, praying for his laugh to bark through the speaker at my shoulder.

But the only sound I heard was my own breath. And the pop of electricity as the lobby, too, went black.

Reeling into the daylight felt like being born. The front door swung open so easily, I half expected to find Dan standing by the cruiser, eating one of those God awful protein bars his vegan wife makes for him.

But the car was empty.

I fought back tears as I sat in the drivers seat. Pressing insubstantial buttons on the laptop screen, stomach acid rising in my throat and my skin itching with some combination of the late summer heat and the layer of mold spores that must be invading every pore. I could not give myself the opportunity to second guess. It had been nearly an hour.

“Better not be fucking with me.”

I cleared my throat and took a deep breath, closing my eyes to the setting sun glaring across the windshield.

“Tango Echo, officer needs assistance at 4900 Sinclair.”

I waited, an odd light grabbing my attention from behind the glass inside. Green and hollow, like a hot air balloon, but as it grows brighter, I’m fascinated by it. I stand and move toward the door, the dispatcher’s voice chirping over the call, asking me to repeat. The sun seems to be setting too fast.

Stopped, halfway to the door, I felt the ground beneath my feet shudder. The vibration was electric in it’s intensity, invading my skin, penetrating my tissues right through to my veins and nerves.

My vision swam, the light changed, became all I could see.

It is twenty three steps to the door.

I know this because I fought my own feet for 22 of them.

I heard the sirens blaring up the highway that zoomed across the back of the hotel. My puppeteer maneuvered my body as though I truly was held up by strings. I couldn’t stop staring at the light. I wanted to be in it. Under it.

I needed to.

When I found him, in the center of the basement, the light pouring from his pores, I understood why.

But by then, it was too late.

 

 

 

Flower in my pocket

I slipped it in there to hide it from sticky fingers and perplexed glances. It was a greedy gesture, sure. But it’s not for them. 

It’s mine. 

It pokes through the fabric lining a few times, digging into the skin of my thigh. But it isn’t painful.

It’s a thrill. 

An injection of femininity. A sharp reminder of the girl I leave behind so often. A symbol of the self I long to set free. 

I reach into my pocket to feel it’s faceted petals and silvered leaves. I hold it in my hand, letting the buzz of touching something so fine, so sweet rush through to the deepest darkest places that need it so desperately. 

She stands about twenty feet away, a gorgeous girl, fingering a strand of beads and wearing a self satisfied grin. The kind I would wear, if I’d only chosen a dress, if I’d only worn the kitten heels, if is only slipped that flower in my hair. 

It’s me. 

As I glide it from my pocket, watching the light catch the pastel ovals to make glittery lights sprinkle across my skin, I stop thinking. 

I let it find its way into my hair, and the buzz turns into a high. Wings of sparkling daisies glinting in the sun of my imagination, lifting me and my mood, brightening the world all around. 

“Oh, how pretty!”

It’s only a barette. 

But sometimes, the little things are so much more. 

Future

Family-Foods by KyleAndTheClassics via DeviantArt

It was so dark that night that the lightning bugs looked like flashbulbs. As we drove north on AB-2, the highway was littered with stopped cars and lifeless bodies. And the static on the radio was too deafening to keep seeking through.

Shannon’s hands were so cold that I had turned the heating on, despite the mild July evening beyond the Chevy’s windows. I held my fingers over her wrist, her pulse was fast and her breathing slow. My mind felt like a glass ornament, crackling into fragments before it would eventually shatter beneath the pressure.

As we approached Calgary, there were still no sign of life except the occasional firefly. The draw to this unknown place made no sense. Yet I knew, if I could reach it, everything would be alright.

I checked my phone as I passed a billboard for the MRT Family Foods, lit up like a homing beacon. I don’t know why I kept checking, it had shown the map and nothing else for hours and hours. Not even the time. It must’ve been close to 10pm.

Shannon had called me from her office. “Glenn, honey, oh thank God.” Her voice held the kind of throbbing shrill that made you pull the phone away from your ear. “Everyone is lying on their desks or the floor, unconscious.”

I was working beneath a 1958 Olds and had to slide out to hear her properly through the chunky, digital static that I’d grown to hate. Cell coverage in my shop had always been a joke. “Baby, you aren’t making sense.”

The sound was so garbled, I had to step outside to hear better, but the call dropped and before I could even dial her back, half a dozen people strewn across the parking lot of the First Baptist Church caught my attention. Like they had been rushing to their cars, but just… died.

I went back inside to ask Mike what he’d heard, but he was out cold. He was breathing, but his pulse was slow. The DJ on the old Memorex radio said, “…reports from all over,” but then he was gone too, along with the power. The phone in my hand proved as useless as a paperweight, but I still stuck it in my shirt pocket, climbed in my ’57 Chevy pickup, and made my way down Marias so I could get to Shannon.

The signs of life downtown were few and far between, and when I reached the US Bank parking lot, my phone buzzed and screeched, sounds I didn’t know it was programmed to make, then as I took it out of my pocket, it lit with a nearly radioactive glow that almost seemed to mist out and land on my skin before displaying a navigation map from the bank parking lot I stood on to Calgary, AB in Canada.

It was hot against my fingers, but I was paralyzed against dropping it. Like a silent, siren’s song beckoning me to follow it’s command, I heard it without hearing. And then I felt it, without feeling.

I gripped it back, as it gripped me, and ran inside to find Shannon on the ground just inside the front door.

Whatever this was, it needed me awake.

It was about a four hour drive, from Shelby to Calgary. But with cars dead in the road, and the boarder blocked from so many angles. It must’ve been six hours later when I reached the exit for 19th Street.

I’d seen two other cars approaching the lot from the other direction, and when I pulled in, the store was lit up like Christmas. The appalling darkness of a city so big but so completely dead made the store feel like home.

“I got here at 5. Cleared the lot to make space. I really don’t know why,” Tony approached me, his phone glued to his hand. I don’t know how I knew his name.

“Cleared it? You moved the cars?” My voice held a depth that was usually reserved for pillow talk with my Shannon, dark and heady, thick with testosterone. I suddenly realized I was growing erect.

“And the bodies.” Our voices hung in the still air. I wanted to ask if they were dead, what he’d done with him, what had made him move them. But as I stared at him, I felt my own purpose seep into my skin like ocean air.

There were fifteen of us by midnight. All in classics. All with wives who had warmed when we reached the lot, but had not regained consciousness.

By then, I was as hard as steel pipe and felt the body of a much younger man inside my skin. It was invigorating and intoxicating. And the work we had all begun without any instruction or understanding continued to energize me, instead of wearing against my 57 year old bones.

Each new fella came in a classic car with a wife 10-20 years his junior, asleep in the passenger seats of those vehicles that lined the parking lot of that little shop as though we had communed for an auto show. But our work on the shop and it’s contents was as individual as our thumbprints.

I had stopped worrying about Shannon almost immediately. I knew she would soon be revived and would join me in the place that we were transforming. My skills with mechanics offered me a lead position along with two others whose specialties were in science and medicine.

Charles, Stan, Bernie, Don, Freddie, Dominick, Cecil, Henry, Virgil, Robert, Paulie, Kirk, Tony and I greeted Buck when he arrived, phones up, dicks hard, the bewildered look of Cub Scouts getting ready for their Arrow of Light. We knew each others names like we’d all grown up together. Buck was apparently our leader. We all knew it when he shook each of our hands, still acclimating to the surge of answers flowing into him from… well, us I suppose.

He instructed us to place our phones together on the ground of the thing we were machining inside the store. When they were laid in place, each screen went black, and once the 3×5 block had been created, they came to life in unison. One great white square.

It hurt to look at, but as we moved into a circle around it, Buck began to explain things, looking as though it was a great effort to do so. I understood immediately why, as the last to arrive, he was made the top dog simply out of necessity. He needed every drop of energy to receive and translate the information he was getting. From what, I did not quite understand.

Buck’s wife was the first to rise, then Tony’s. One by one, they came over to us, leaving trails of their clothes as they did. Shannon was the last, the oldest I guess, and when she joined us, the women undressed us as well.

Buck continued to speak, eyes closed and appearing to be pained by the effort. “The future is bleak. The men of this world have allowed themselves to be woefully misused and taken for granted. Fifteen men from fifty sectors of the planet have been chosen to remake that future.”

Cindy led the women to the left of their husbands, positioning them on the knees, looking up into the eyes of their men. Shannon’s were filled will the admiration and respect they had always held for me. I welled with pride at the understanding of exactly what the machine we were building was to become. And why this store had to be the site.

Buck, somehow a conduit for something I could not understand continued his speech about our paths and our ideals. That the fallout would only remain for five years, in which time we were to procreate as much as possible in the bomb shelter built beneath this fascinating place. Stocked with supplies, vitamins, plants and the machine we were creating would withstand the blasts and power the shelter for at least those five years.

The future came seventeen days later and took everything from this planet.

Everything but us, and those who were chosen in the other forty nine communes across the planet.

The air was always sweet. We understood this was a gift from the future. Something that would nourish our bodies beyond what food and vitamins could provide. It kept the women young, soft and supple and the men strong and hard. My hair was growing in black again and I was able to make love to my wife like I had never had the authority to do before. But more than that, we were a collective. And as we all accepted this as our reality, our beds were more suggestions than assignments. And sex became something integrative and without gender. 

Tony was my first. He and his wife shared a bunk with Shannon and I, and we found ourselves in primitive knots of thrusting, sucking, coiled jubilation that I would have never believed to be so rewarding.

We were the new Romans. And this bomb shelter was our Eden.

Buck was the only man who did not benefit from the gift of the future. The weight of his purpose meant long hours writing in notebook after notebook. Shannon shared a pillow with him one night. They talked and fondled one another, but he told her that he couldn’t release a drop. As good as is felt, he had to remain whole.

His wife then took the seed of all of us in a way that led to no one knowing who’s had won out. Buck was an amazing father, too. Despite having no biological stake in those babies.

Shannon became pregnant within three weeks, despite our struggle to have babies for the fourteen years prior to that awful, wonderful night. We are expecting our third now, as the five year anniversary wakes us with the sweet, bubbling call of two dozen babies and toddlers.

It is finally time.

Buck, having aged fifteen years in five, stands at the hatch door.

The lights on the machine visible from the window.

“We are all green, friends. Who would like to see the sun?”

 

 

Image courtesy Family-Foods by KyleAndTheClassics via DeviantArt

Vows

image

The sky rumbles. Villainous chuckles of fate superceding dreams, as I waited, willing the sky to cooperate but grateful for the taught canvas above my head.

The tent had meant borrowing against my 401k, but I’d been unable, or more unwilling to deny her the dream her first husband and lack of parents had refused her. A wedding, after all, is the most important day in a woman’s life.

One of them, I hoped.

It was an impressive sight. Forty feet wide and twice as long. Stillwater was the tent style. Or manufacture. I hadn’t been privy to all the details, only the rental invoice. I remember my stomach lurching when the pretty, strawberry blond printed our final order in the glamorous two story rental showroom after an hour of picking our tent, lighting package, table shapes and sizes, chairs and dishes and fabrics and colors. My head was still swimming, seven months later.

But rain did mean the garden ceremony would be moved into the house.

Thunder might mean we shouldn’t be under the massive tent as well. The installers had provided some warnings.

I ignored the memory prickling in the back of my mind.

Nothing would stop this day.

My phone buzzed, and as I fished it from the inside pocket of my tux, a second message was coming through.

I have handled the disjointed frustration of my mother who had wanted a doctor, but had raised an accountant. I’d dealt with the sadness of my college sweetheart when I’d said I didn’t want to marry her. I’d even muscled through the violent hatred of my first fiance when I realized she was never going to be mother material.

But Jenna’s disappointment was something I knew would crush me.

Please save the peonies
We could line the hearth, couldn’t we?

My smile made my eyes close. I loved this women with a fury that caused a simple text about flowers to give me a hard on.

The flowers had been the only thing she could pay for, and she’d made every penny count. I didn’t get the fuss, but the way her face had lit up when we walked into that florist made understanding a frivolous thing.

It took the wedding planner all of twenty seconds to come up with a plan for them, and as she took them from my sweaty hands, I glanced around for what catastrophe I might stave of next.

If only.

It’s truly amazing how dark the world can become with heavy cloud cover. A summer storm is not an odd thing in July. And even as the wind picked up, I refused to worry.

Jenna was the most beautiful bride I’d ever been privy to see. Even as she bent over my punctured chest, rain smudged and tear stained, the shimmery white fabric of her dress wicking blood from the wound like tissue paper absorbing watercolors. She was exquisite.

I stood and watched her, rain pelting in from the side of the splintered tent.

I didn’t feel the lightening strike. I didn’t hear the snap of the pole at my back. I didn’t understand what had made my knees buckle as I turned around and watched myself fall.

I just kept practicing those vows we’d written.

Nothing would stop this day.

Fourteen Years – a drabble, 100 words

Bloody Knife by WhiteEyedFrog
Bloody Knife by WhiteEyedFrog via DeviantArt

It took more force than I’d expected. The blade was sharp, but even with my full strength behind it, I barely got four inches in.

That was enough. As he fought against it, it sliced deeper, and vibrated with each sinewy centimeter. He scratched and clawed at my arms, my neck, but I clung to the wooden handle, slick with the warm, wet life oozing out of him.

The air was thick and acrid, so I held my breath.

There was very little life left within me anyway.

I had died a little every day for the last fourteen years.

Secretary

There are billions of people on earth, and at least a third of them live their whole lives without being known. People know their names and faces, but their heart and their soul? They keep those hidden.

The idea is privacy and protection. At some point, most people un-brick the walls and pull back the curtains for some special person who, typically, does the same. Intimacy begets a connection that can be joyous and nurturing.

It also allows someone close enough to truly know you. And therefore know exactly how to hurt you.

Some people have been marked by the devastation of those moments where it all goes wrong. Sometimes, at their own revealing. Sometimes, by proxy. In youth, we learn directly through the experiences of our parents and siblings, as much as our own.

Those who have seen that damage refuse to let anyone in. They hole themselves up forever inside their own mind. And every so often, that buffer between them and people around them becomes a tool and their ability to repel the pressing need for intimate bonds becomes a skill.

In a few rare cases, that skill becomes something else entirely.

She was one of those few. And probably one of the strongest to possess it.

I was none of the above. Or, at least I believed I was.

Brian’s business had started as a joke between friends in college. The kind of joke that leaves you reeling when, five years later, he is one of the top 100 Most Successful Men in America under forty.

I was the kind of friend no one ever expected to amount to much. Not that I couldn’t or wouldn’t be successful, but my heart was too soft, my mind too open. My one and only skill was knowing if an idea was good or bad. That joke had been Kristy’s idea. And when I said it would work, the laughter was all but unanimous.

Seeing the business value in having someone like me around, Brian made me a partner. I got the deciding vote on new endeavours, and, in exchange, he got the deciding vote on everything else.

In the wake of the recession that shook the globe, we didn’t fold, but sought to give the world a reason to buy our product over others. Years before, I’d told him that I’d like to start a non-profit, at some point, because I never felt comfortable making a fortune knowing how many humans were starving. He recalled this, in the summer of 2008, and devised a means of donating a portion of every sale to a charity of our creation, therefore marketing the company to the masses as a business with a noble purpose.

The process was complicated and Brian had to keep me in check often, reminding me of financial reality and dismissing me whenever I got carried away talking about the people we helped.

“Fuck, Marc. Do you really think I care about this shit? It’s not about them, dude. It never was. It was a marketing ploy. An amazing one.”

“But, we are really making a diff–”

“Save it for a speech. Let me enjoy my beer.”

I lost myself to it, ignoring the stories and lives of those around me, focusing solely on the next mission or gift or cause or fire that Brian would allow me to throw myself into.

And then came Katrina.

Our friend Paul, who’d been a writer for the Times when everything went sideways, had been handling phones, press relations and travel. But got ball-and-chained and moved across the country. I had to hire someone, and fast. The phone is not my friend.

She came highly recommended by several political campaigns and was a personal assistant for a year for someone whose identity she wasn’t allowed to divulge. I later discovered it was a CEO in one of the major banks, but that was as much as she would admit. Nor would she say what had happened.

I was sure she’d be perfect before she’d even opened her mouth. Introducing Katrina to Brian was the kicker. He got to decide on everything else, remember.

Yes, he’s my best friend. But he can be a monster when it comes to women. He’d cast a nice wormy hook, and if she took the bait, that would be the end of it. She’d get fucked, and so would I. Warning her put me in the precarious position of admitting all of that.

“Brian is very… I’m not sure just how to say this.”

Crossing the street, I noticed her shoes. She’d worn heels to interview with me, but now she was in flats.

“Please Marcus. I’ve been doing this since I was fifteen. I’ve brushed off men at every job, without making them feel brushed off. I do my research. I know how to dress to dissuade attention without making it obvious.”

As we reached the restaurant, she stopped me with her hand on the inside of my elbow. Her smile was coy and sweet as she looked up from beneath her lashes. I hadn’t noticed her eyes before, but now I couldn’t break from her gaze.

My entire body responded. Every hair seemed to reach for her. My pores wanted to drink her. My mouth watered to taste her and my blood pounded inside my ears. My cock swelled ferociously while my hands tingled with a wicked desire to touch her skin, feel her inside and out, bring her to orgasm until she couldn’t breathe. My stomach roiled from the intensity of it.

As she stepped back and laughed, my cheeks burned.

“I also know how to achieve it.”

Katrina rolled her shoulders and stepped up again with her fingers wrapped around the door handle. I swear, I felt the grip as if her hand was inside my shorts.

Then I sagged with relief as all of these sensations suddenly flitted away. Like I’d imagined each one.

“You hired me because I wanted you to. And Brian will love me but not desire me, because I don’t want him to.”

For a moment, I stood inexplicably still, caught with the heaviness of trying to recall something that did not want to be discovered. But as she grinned at me and motioned inside with a flick of her head, I thought I’d simply found Brian’s female equivalent.

We sat at lunch for over two hours. Katrina ran the meeting, making prolific notes and discussing her role between the company and the charity with a confidence that was impressive. Brian, unimpressible as he generally was, smirked at her as she closed her pad folio. I gritted my teeth at this sign of him preparing his fishing line.

But the smile she’d given in return burned up the moment like a laser. Then lunch ended without incident, and Brian actually congratulated me on such a great find.

So, I shrugged off my concerns and walked back to the office with Katrina, feeling pride and success. Accomplishment at finally having judged another human well.

Oh, the irony.

It was weeks before I thought about that moment in front of the restaurant again. But I started having surreal dreams that woke me with a raging hard-on and a splitting headache.

Who puts stock in dreams? They are just your subconscious way of processing your experiences. I tried to believe it.

And as we worked closely together, Katrina loosened a bit with me. But she was diamond hard with Brian. She never budged an inch when he was around. Which only strengthened my attraction.

I spent more and more nights, alone in bed, picturing those long, strawberry blonde waves, falling decadently over her pale skin which somehow looked impossibly delicate beneath the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose and soft curve of her chest. Her ocean green eyes peered up at me through thick lashes and her raspberry pink pout would break into a smile before she bit down on her lower lip.

The fantasies became so intense. Things I’d never considered before. I found myself in the restroom at least once a day with my cock in hand and visions of her swimming through my head, naked and writhing, struggling and screaming, moaning and crying. I thought I was losing it.

In important moments though, my thoughts and visions of her would dissolve and I’d be able to work. So I threw myself into it. Only, that just brought me near her more often. I found myself losing chunks of time occasionally. Opening my eyes to find 28 minutes gone, and my fingernails firmly dug into the armrests of my chair.

I was getting very close to making an appointment with a shrink.

Bun one afternoon, sat at my desk watching her, trying to figure out what was happening to me, she suddenly looked up and caught me staring through my open door. I watched her blow me a kiss before slouching down in her chair, hitching up her pencil skirt and spreading her thighs wide.

She sat at a table-style desk, open beneath, so I could see the lace of her panties between her legs. Sitting up uncomfortably, but unable to shift his eyes away, I watched her fingers wrap around her water bottle. Feeling the inexplicable pressure around my cock, I gasped loudly as she slipped her fingers into her panties below the desktop.

She lifted the bottle to her lips and swirled her tongue around the capped tip. I experienced it as if she were kneeling in front of me. She rubbed herself furiously, whispering for me to come take her, slipping her panties off and inserting the tip of that bottle into herself and working it in and out until my cock was about to explode.

It ended as quickly as it began when she was startled by the ring of the phone. She silenced it, before glaring at my fingers gripping the edge of my chair so tightly that my knuckles had gone white. The she slipped into the bathroom.

While she was gone, but I was cemented into my seat, I wrote down exactly what I’d experienced and slipped the page into my jacket pocket before she returned.

It was 11pm that night when I read the page that I found, quite by surprise.

I didn’t remember any of it. Not even writing it.

But my fantasies of her that night were even more vivid than ever before. And when I woke, sweaty and thrashing around on my mattress, still feeling her clenched around my rigid cock, I decided to start writing everything down. Everything I could.

Almost a year passed. Very little was written.

She stood in my doorway with her hair piled into a bun and wearing that blouse that was meant to drape, but clung instead, begging to be ripped from her then used to violently restrain her so that she could be used and pleasured. It mocked me, that fucking blouse.

I glared at her. But she smiled.

“You are a tough shell to crack, Marc.”

Trying to look away, I didn’t trust my ears. Months of visions and dreams had blurred together with moments that couldn’t possibly be real. I had come five times that day already, but hadn’t released a drop of semen. I didn’t want to look at her, but she never gave me a choice.

She sashayed through the door and dropped a sheet of paper on my desk.

“I’m giving my notice.”

I continued to stare, carefully grinding my teeth to prevent myself from speaking. I still couldn’t be sure this was real. Or a trick. I have no idea what would’ve happened if I’d ever let go. And I’m still not clear on the why.

“I hope you’ll provide me with a glowing reference.”

It wasn’t really a request, I felt her attempting to implant the words inside my brain. It was the worst part. Knowing, but not knowing.

I had resorted to communicating with her solely by text or email, working from home as often as possible, and with my office door closed when I was there. It had become my life goal to evade her. To prove to myself that I wasn’t insane.

Or that I was.

“You don’t need to stay two weeks. If this is real, today should be your last day.”

I managed to drag my eyes away from hers to look at the page on my desk. It was a typical letter of resignation. I gripped the edge of the warm wood and waited for her to leave.

But she sniffed, making me look up.

“Why do you hate me? What did I do to make you hate me so much?”

My eyes grew wide as a tear slipped down the crevice between her nose and cheek.

My entire body flooded with the primal need to comfort and soothe her, make the tears stop. Tell her whatever she needed to hear…

But my mind caught the crest of that wave. Just the peak. Where there was still oxygen above it. Before she began inundating me with the visions of my arms wrapped around her, my nose in her soft, vanilla scented hair, my lips capturing hers.

I shook my head, hanging to the thread of belief that I would not and could not fuck her or something devastating would happen. I knew with every fiber of my being that touching her would be the end of me. And who knows what else.

“How can you be so cruel? You were so kind in the beginning, so sweet and funny and–”

I glared at her again, my fingernails digging into the desk.

“I may be cruel, Kat. But if I am, something made me that way.”

It was the first time my voice felt like my own in weeks. And at those words, something broke.

In her.

Between us.

And electrified me.

My thoughts were as clear and bright as they’d ever been. All of my memories returned to me, some of them so shocking, I wish they hadn’t. Her desire to make me take her had devolved her into something almost pitiable. Almost.

My desire for her had not waned, but the talons of it had shifted. I felt my fingers at the edge of the desk and flattened my hands over the top. I began moving my fingertips in small circles as her eyes grew and those beautiful lips parted.

She watched my hands as I felt her nipples beneath them.

Her breath came in shallow bursts as her her own fingers danced across the hem of her skirt.

Realization popped between us and I smiled at her. The fear I’d stomached for months glittered behind her eyes now, like fireworks. Her lips began to move, but no sound escaped.

“Is there something you’d like to say, Katrina?”

I felt the wave of anxiety roll off of her like a cool breeze.

The power of manipulation can be a disgusting thing. But in the right hands, perhaps it could be used for good. My mind filled with Robin of Loxley ideas. Would it work on men or only women, if I used it?

As Katrina kneeled in front of me and began to unbuckle my belt, I looked down into the oceanic eyes that had mesmerized me for so long. I could let her have what she’d wanted so desperately all this time. I could use her as she’d wanted to use me.

“No, no,” I whispered.

And as the last little strands of that incredulous gift made their way from her to me, I took her hand and helped her to her feet.

“There are better ways to use people, Kat.”

With my hand at the small of her back, and my lips against her ear, I told her to go home and do nothing.

“It’s your last day. Enjoy the freedom.”

I chuckled at the light in her eyes and the wrinkle between her brows that I’d never once seen in 12 months.

“I’ll call you, Kat.”

She licked her lips and I simply couldn’t help myself. Power is the best kind of revenge. I pictured her, perched on the arm of the couch, waiting for her cell phone to ring.

That freedom, perhaps, was not liberating at all.

Destiny

My feet swung idly beneath the kitchen table as he made my favorite sandwich. His fingers separating the slices of seven grain bread she loved but never eats. He unscrewed the lid and pried off the inner cap of a giant jar of her homemade peanut butter, which she also never eats. The air filled with that unmistakable aroma, which made me sit up and sniff the air. My lecture about how peanuts aren’t really nuts made him chuckle before aiming his gentle, comforting gaze at me.

“Do you know what they are then, miss-know-it-all?”

He always pointed out that I didn’t know it all. But for a six year old, I knew an awful lot. I just couldn’t always remember everything I knew. He told me they are called ‘lay-gooms’ as he drizzled honey from Mr. Montgomery’s farm over both pieces of the bread. Then chuckled again when I asked if they were beans, then.

He continued the preparation, making one for me and one for her, which she wouldn’t eat and I’d have to go bury in the compost later. It didn’t matter how often she refused to eat, he always made a sandwich for her, too. Every few days, she’d surprise us by eating a lot. He said her body knew when it needed something, even if her mind didn’t.

She scrubbed at a spot on the counter that had been there forever. She was up, which was better than not. And she was calm, which was a lot better than not.

She never talked when I was around, but I knew she could, because I’d heard her through the register vent in my room. I slept on top of it some nights, when it was really cold. Or when I was full of wishes.

I heard her the night before. Crying. I heard Papa too. Begging her to let him hold her.

I once asked her why she didn’t act like a real mama, but she hit me. And he told me I was never to speak to her again unless she asked me a question. I didn’t tell him that I’d tried to hold her hand. That was the real reason she smacked me.

Watching her try to get rid of that silly orange spot on the Formica, I started to giggle because her skirt was tucked into her panties. Papa slid my plate in front of me with a glass of milk and three apple slices in the little red apple bowl he said Mama had made for me before I was born. Back when she was normal.

He pressed his finger to my lips and shook his head.

“It’s not nice to laugh at others, little pickle.”

I frowned, looking up into his giant brown eyes. He was gentle to a fault, only raising his voice as a last resort. He was only a bear when he needed to be.

My lips smirked without my intention, but I looked away, realizing he’d have to fix her. Which meant touching her.

I braced myself to hear the worst.

But it didn’t come. He whispered, but all I could here was pickle. As I looked back, his expression made my nose wrinkle. My little heart beat against my lungs.

He sat the plastic plate and cup beside her, same as me, with three apple slices in the little Winnie the Pooh bowl that used to be mine. I remember him feeding me corn out of it once, and her throwing her china plate at the ceiling above our heads, raining tiny, white shards all over me. And into my little bowl.

His face suddenly had a big red line from his forehead, down his cheek where a big piece had fallen and sliced right into his skin. I’d never seen blood before.

You can still see part of the scar, if you look really close.

It was an awful memory, I shook my head to dislodge it and focused on the shiny, red porcelain bowl that held my apples. On the bottom, there was a hand-painted message to me. Her Destiny. She’d had my name picked out for years, crocheted a blanket with flowers on it the week she’d found out she was pregnant.

She’d known. For years, she’d said she’d known.

I looked back up at Papa who sat down across from me and bit into his own sandwich. Biting into mine, I giggled when papa smiled at me with peanut butter in his teeth.

Mama glanced over, abandoned the stain, and carried her plate and cup to the end of the table. Dr Henry calls it ‘ingrained behavior’. I like Dr Henry because he teaches me big words and always sneaks me MaryJane’s from his suit pocket.

“It’s nice to all sit down and eat as a family.”

His eyes didn’t match his tone as he stared at Mama. I imagine he spent most of his life willing her to come back. Pleading with God to let her suddenly wake up normal. Negotiating his soul. If only something, anything could give him back the woman he loved.

They’d bought this giant farmhouse with plans for a brood of ten. From all recollections, she’d been the most amazing woman on earth. And no one had to tell me, I figured out on my own that I was the reason she was now simply a shell of her former self.

I had killed her without taking her life.

Dr Henry came that afternoon. We talked for half an hour about what Mama had been doing during the last week. No outbursts, no hitting, no breaking things. Then he squeezed a candy into my palm, and told me to go look up the word ‘gravity’ in the big purple dictionary.

It was the same, every week. He would come, bribe me from the room with sweets and a task, then he and Papa would tie Mama down so he could examine her and give her medicine.

Papa closed the door behind me.

I tried to occupy myself. Summer was easier because I could run around outside. But it was cold and raining, and I left my doll upstairs in my room. I pulled the huge book from the shelf and opened it on the floor, thumbing through the G’s and underlining the word with my Strawberry Shortcake pencil.

Gravity: a very serious quality or condition : the condition of being grave or serious

I didn’t get to read the rest.

Her screaming and cursing was muffled, but startled me just the same. There was a thud, and grunting. She screamed again and I heard a soft crack, like a thin tree branch breaking under the weight of a man. Papa bellowed words I’ve never heard him use before, choking and coughing.

Dying.

I wasn’t supposed to know how to unlock that door, but I did.

I shouldn’t have been able to reach the knife drawer in the kitchen, but I could.

I couldn’t possibly have been strong enough to defend him, everyone said so for months to follow.

Papa didn’t wake up for hours. I laid there beside him, staring into her eyes, something I’d never been able to do before. My arm and collarbone were broken, but the pain started to feel just hot after a while. I thought maybe it had gone away, but he squeezed me hard enough to bring it back when he woke.

Dr Henry and Mama never did.

Six years, three months and twenty three days after I killed her, I finally finished the job.

That’s the really shitty thing about Destiny.

 

Sucker

You wouldn’t have paid any attention to them. A mouse and her quiet keeper.

She was short and plain. Long denim skirts with pale, button-down blouses. Her sandy hair, braided, then rolled into a bun, and tan ballet flats peaking from beneath the frayed hems of her skirts. If you stepped close, you’d smell the Thieves oil she used in place of hand sanitizer, and perhaps the faint odor of cinnamon and cider vinegar in her hair.

But Claire wasn’t likely to let you come that close.

Her counterpart, the male version of invisible, was much the same in jeans and plain, v-neck tees, except that he wore gray Cowboy boots. Cory’s gleaming smile was inviting, if you noticed him. But you wouldn’t. Until he wanted you to.

Or until she wanted you to.

Selling them Tic Tacs and bottled water, every evening, with the occasional can of dip, I contemplated what they were like in private.

Standing behind a cash register for ten hours a day will turn you into a daydreamer, voyeur, or the best combination of the two. And I found them to be good fantasy fodder, driving away in their shiny yellow SUV that didn’t seem to match up with their rusty pickup truck attire.

Pretty, in the way young church girls are, I sometimes wondered about her bras and panties. Perhaps she didn’t wear any. Maybe she wore the expected white cotton. But my money was on lace and silk. The diamond necklace and earrings she wore eluded to a femininity that was simply kept comfortable beneath the soft, lived in fabric draped loosely over her frame. She hid beneath those clothes, so that only Cory could enjoy her shape.

She stood in front of me late one Sunday evening as he strutted to the cooler to grab four bottles of water. Two more than he usually bought. Her shirt was opened three buttons, and her fingers ran over the teardrop pendant on her necklace, drawing my eye to her collarbone and the scent of her wafted over me through the humid, unconditioned air swirling lazily through the open glass doors.

“This heat is awful. You must be miserable without any AC…”

She’d never spoken to me before, and the lilting gentleness of her voice melted over me like syrup on a snow cone. My surprise must have been evident, because she blushed and brought her fingers up to hide her pert and very rare smile.

I felt Cory watching, but I didn’t want to waste a second glancing at him. Claire was leaning forward, looking at a display of lollipops on the counter, giving me a view of the coral pink bra hidden inside her taupe shirt.

The site of her, blossoming like springtime, was intoxicating. Men can be beautiful to look at too, but women will make your teeth ache. That woman, especially.

Cory strolled to the counter as her fingers lifted to turn the little acrylic lazy Susan packed with 1″ globes of flavored sugar on sticks. His fingers ran up her back and she shivered.

“You wanna sucker, sweetness?”

Her smile twisted into the kind of smirk reserved for private jokes and knowing glances. His hand cupped the back of her neck as he leaned forward and whispered in her ear.

“Watermelon or strawberry?”

She sighed, but her eyes found mine instead of his.

“Cherry. I bet Manda likes cherry.”

I swallowed and wondered if they could hear my heart pumping away inside my chest. I’m not the girl people flirt with. I’m probably more invisible than Cory, to be honest. Plain as a pancake, always wearing a smock or coveralls. Working two jobs to pay off my mom’s house as her brain turns to soup in the nursing home. My dream to actually make something of myself blew away with the smoke of my thirtieth birthday candles. Men didn’t notice me. And women in this town were more likely to become nuns than lesbians. But right then, both of these pretty people were looking at me like I was the lollipop.

“The cherry is good. But the blueberry is my favorite.”

The Tennessee was too thick in my voice, something I shouldn’t have hated but did. My cheeks burned as Cory pulled one cherry and two blueberry from the stand. I glanced up at him and he fixed me with a look that could’ve melted the trays of chocolate bars on the front of the counter.

“You close up in a few, dontcha Manda?”

Blindly scanning the barcode on his waters, I thought I must be hallucinating from the heat and the fact that I’d worked 16 hours straight. They couldn’t actually be flirting with me.

“Yeah, but I can’t lock up until the lot is empty.”

He grinned at me, and I glanced at Claire, whose fingers had abandoned the pendant and were now skimming the lace edge of her pretty bra. His hand around her neck had gone into her hair, and her face was an absolute knot of want and hope, with tiny threads of anxiety wrinkling her brow.

“What if the person in the lot was waiting for you?”

My eyes wouldn’t stay in one place, and neither would my mind. I pulled myself to look at the screen in front of me to find their total, but Cory’s fingers went around my wrist and the contact made me jump.

“Or maybe we could meet up at Jim’s for coffee in twenty?”

He unwrapped the suckers, slowly, one at a time. Lifting the cherry to Claire’s lips where her tongue swirled around it before she took it in her mouth. Then, one of the blue one’s went into his own with a slowness that made my knees week. And as he lifted the last to my own lips, everything south of my navel throbbed and clenched.

Staring at him, pacified by the cloying sweetness that coated my tongue and telling myself that I was foolish to believe that they were actually asking me to meet them, I nodded.

Yes, that’s all I did. Nod.

Cory slid a fifty onto the countertop then under my hand before his fingers traced goose pimples into the surface of my arm, then neck, then cheek. Claire’s hand slid down my other side. I thought my eyes might jump right out of their sockets as she rose on tiptoes, over the counter, and her breath came hot and wet against my ear.

“I hope you really will come.”

I was shaking as they walked away, arms wrapped around each other, whispering until they were on the other side of the building. I popped the candy from my lips and found that, somehow, during all of that, Cory had wrapped a slip of paper around the stick of the sucker.

If you do, I’ll make sure you do.
Over, and over, and over.
423-555-9105

It took me a second, too.

You get used to seeing things happen to other people and when they happen to you, you either deny it, stay safely ashore, basking in mediocrity, or you sprint into the ocean, thinking only about how good the change in temperature feels and never about the sharks in the water.

Especially when they look like waves.

I rushed through a fifteen minute closing routine in five and a half, stripped in the bathroom to shave my legs and pits with a disposable razor and gave myself the world’s fastest whore bath, thanking God I worked at a convenience store that carried decent soap. My short hair looked pretty good, considering the humidity, and my freshly washed face would just have to suffice. Girl’s like me don’t carry makeup in our purses. I don’t even own a purse. Not that I’m butch. You know. Just lazy and cheap. A wallet and chapstick fit conveniently into the pocket of my smock.

But I had a new t-shirt in my car. And when I got to the diner, I snuck into it and sprayed myself down with a bottle of essential oil air freshener my mom made me several years before her brain completely gave way to the Alzheimer’s. It smelled of lemongrass and basil. I was surprised it was any good.

The shirt was blue, with the Blueberry Fall’s logo on the left breast. The irony was cute.

The diner was empty except for Claire and Cory. He stood when I walked in, and her smile was enough to make me say, “Let’s just go to your place”.

But, I didn’t.

We talked and drank coffee for two hours. I thought I’d blown it when Claire laid her head on Cory’s shoulder and whispered that she wanted to go. But as we walked out to the parking lot, her fingers intertwined with mine.

At my car, Cory wrapped his arms around Clair from behind and stared at me as her fingers lifted to my cheek. She wanted to kiss me, but his lips were distracting. He took a step forward, pressing her against me, grabbing the back of my neck.

“You want us both or just her. No wrong answers here.”

I couldn’t bring any words to my lips, so I shifted, and showed him my answer. My right hand fisted in his shirt, I pressed my mouth to his and slipped my tongue to meet his. Claire’s nose rubbed along the curve of my neck as she whispered how good I smelled. But as her fingers slipped beneath my top, Cory pulled back.

“Follow us. We’re a mile east of Bogden on Westmill.”

I watched them climb into their SUV, sagging against the driver’s side door of my Honda and thinking this was too good to be true.

You know what they say about that.

I followed them, drunk on the possibilities, assuming it would be a one time thing, but hoping it might be more. I had a whole new fantasy before I even hit Westmill Road. A whole new life plan.

He had told the truth on that little note. But the price I paid for those orgasms probably wasn’t worth it.

It was like a dream, that first night. A human pretzel, writhing beneath decadent, satin sheets, tasting and touching until we were all too exhausted to move. Even the next morning, as Claire revived me, her fingers bringing both Cory and I around. He pulled her between us, then threw us on our backs, making a meal of both of us and then emptying himself across our skin.

I never noticed the knives and ropes. Perhaps they weren’t there.

Monday was my only day off. But it was a luxury to have the same day off every week. I guess they’d probably watched me long enough to know this. I had nowhere to be. And I didn’t want to leave.

Until she locked me in.

You would have never suspected them. And no one ever did.

I wasn’t the first. I won’t be the last.

Maybe, someday, one of us will escape. For now, I have to settle for my Sunday’s, because that’s the night we met. And so, it’s my night.

He always makes me come on Sunday, and I’m always his breakfast on Monday. But the rest of the week, I’m hers.

And I see plenty of those ropes and knives now.

But she’s always sweet enough to pacify me with one of those disgusting blueberry suckers.

Forbidden

Lying there, spread out like a butterfly, I watched her, watching you. Staring at her soft, pale curves, my mind swam from her femininity. I was rigid with arousal and this voyeuristic need that I never understood.

Her lips moved as she spoke to you, but her words did not reach my ears. Instead, the luscious, wet sound of her fingers between her thighs filled my head. Dipping and stroking in a rhythm that would commit itself to my memory. Along with the sighs and sweet, intoxicating moans that made me touch myself every time I heard them through the wall. Even in the early morning hours when she woke.

By daylight, she was so composed. Almost inhuman in her perfection. Sleek blond waves held back in beaded barrettes or enamelled chopsticks she bought on Etsy. Soft and flawless makeup. Jewelry and dresses reminiscent of another, more sophisticated time in history. And heels, all of those little, kitten heels.

But then, at night, when the heels came off, she became something very different.

When my father met her, she’d been a history teacher at my high school. My history teacher. And, as pretty as she was, no one liked her. She was so uptight and aloof, never getting personal with anyone. But he saw her. Right through her. Had her blushing and giggling ten minutes into that parent teacher conference. And they were married three months later.

He was tough on me. At fifteen, I never had time to think about girls because I was focused like a laser. I was writing cell-phone apps at ten, and had moved onto robotics by thirteen. The world was one giant opportunity to me. And, being my fathers son, I saw it all spread out before me like one great Monopoly game.

Natalie changed everything for both of us.

She cooked us roast chicken for dinner the night my father proposed. They had only been on six dates.

Watching tears slip down the cheeks of this emotionless mannequin of a woman was surreal. She’d told me just a week before that electronics where nothing if I didn’t know where they came from. She’d just given me a D on a World History exam, and I was arguing the necessity of such knowledge. But I sat at her desk feeling like I was arguing with one of my robots. She was unbudgeable.

As he slid the ring on her finger, she wiped her cheeks with her napkin, then looked at me, forehead drawn into a map I’d never once seen before. My heart hammered in my chest as she stood up and came over to me. Ingrained manners forced me to my feet as she rose, and I glanced toward my father who stood and watched her with an expression I’d only seen in movies and on television. For all of it sweetness, it was the most awkward moment of my life, granting permission to my father to be married.

My mother left when I was a baby, and had never attempted to have a relationship. But I did not want a mother. I had settled into an easy routine with my father, and he was all I needed. But I didn’t begrudge him his needs. My own had become impossible to ignore. 

My lips formed the questions that my brain didn’t. And the vision of her swam before me, looking like a young girl instead of the woman I thought I knew. My father looked younger too, having shaved off his graying beard and smiling constantly.

Monday morning, she’d been back to normal, except for sharp moments when she’d steal concerned glances my direction. As our worlds combined and the wedding was planned, those sharp moments turned into something very different for me. And probably wrong.

On their wedding day, she wore a beautiful vintage style dress. Layers of sheer white fabric with hundreds of white silk butterflies sewn all over it’s surface. I’d walked in on her fixing her stockings, after which she straightened my tie and kissed me on the cheek. It only took 30 seconds to solve the problem in my pants in the restroom before I had to walk her down the aisle. As she held onto my bicep through my jacket, and her fingers stroked tiny circles there, the problem tried to return. But thankfully, giving her away to the pending nuptials chased it away.

For six months, my life was something completely alien to me. She made hot breakfast and we rarely ate take out. She let go of my father’s housekeeper and took up all the cleaning, laundry and shopping duties herself. The massive, lush penthouse my father had bought when I was small suddenly seemed tiny. She was everywhere. Everywhere. On every surface and pillow, even in my own sheets.

She thought I hated her at first, because I didn’t want to be around her. But as she helped me with Calculus one evening, something my father had never been able to do, she glanced down at my lap and understood. I would’ve thought the multiple showers every day would have given it away.

She doted on us both, finding purpose in making a home, and as the summer months approached, my father told her to put in her notice at school. He wanted her home. Their whispered conversations in the kitchen where they thought I couldn’t hear or wasn’t paying attention replayed in my head every single night. His lust for her was clear and he’d have her wherever he wanted. I pretended to watch Big Bang Theory every morning as they stood together behind the island in the kitchen and his hands wandered over her body, giving her countless, silent orgasms.

Almost silent.

They never thought about the fact that I could see their reflection in the screen of my open, but powerless laptop. They turned me into a voyeur. Which was sick. But it was her. And I couldn’t get enough. So I didn’t care.

But then, one week before my seventeenth birthday, he died.

And she was stuck with me.

My mind turned into a black hole of guilt and excitement. I had her to myself. But only because of the loss of the man who’d made me into who I was. The darkness was deep, and locking myself inside it felt like the only option.

She tried so hard to break though. To be a mother. But I screamed at her repeatedly that she wasn’t. She didn’t understand. Neither did I. We should’ve grieved together. But I just kept shutting her out. Until I didn’t.

It was a wet day in late August. The schedule of my senior year had been planned out the previous spring. Splitting time between college courses, my remaining high school credits, chess club and working on the programming for my robot in my spare time. Nine days in, and it all felt utterly pointless.

She sat on my bed, coaxing me from beneath the duvet. She tried to say something, but as I sat up, her eyes which were already red rimmed swelled with tears. My arms came around her by instinct, and we held onto each other until she fell asleep.

My fingertips stroked her cheeks and lips as my body responded to her closeness. I left her to sleep in my bed feeling repulsive for my arousal. But the next morning, she woke me on the sofa with the softest kiss on my forehead and whispers that we’d get through it together.

She changed bedrooms, leaving the Master Bedroom for the ghost of my father’s memory, in lieu of the den next to my room. I’m sure she realized I could hear her every night. Crying herself to sleep.

Until the crying stopped, and something different started.

Jobless and alone, she had hours to fill every day. She took care of me. Amazing meals, clean clothes, lovely apartment, homework and trips all over Chicago whenever we wanted. But the laptop became an appendage after a while. I’d walk in to whispered goodbyes and hear her taking pictures in the bathroom. She started wearing her dresses again, instead of yoga pants and robes. She had color in her cheeks. Her eyes sparkled with life.

And she giggled at my dumb jokes.

Once I figured out who you were, I understood why you hadn’t come around. And instead of calling her out on it, I watched. I realized she was sexier when she was in love. And my own personal porn catalog just got better and hotter. Dildos and vibes and sexy strappy nighties and butt plugs. Even the spanking you’d begged her to give herself. The situation was more uncomfortable than ever, but I was so addicted to her. And you, really. Because of what you made her into.

Now three days before my eighteenth birthday, I wondered if anything would change. But in that moment, I didn’t care. I watched my little forbidden fruit as she played with her perfect, pink pussy, plugged to the hilt and writhing beneath her own fingers. The laptop on the mattress between her thighs, and her eyes focused… On me?

I stroked myself slowly, standing naked in her open doorway.

Waiting for her to come.

So I could go.