Fallen House

https://i0.wp.com/img10.deviantart.net/3a73/i/2009/038/4/1/fallen_house_by_schneeengel.jpg
Fallen House by schneeengel via DeviantArt.com

Peeking in the windows
Of broken houses
You make your judgments
Assumptions
Based on perception
Instead of knowledge
Marking the walls with the
Graffiti
Of your supposition
No compassion for the souls
Who reside within

You think you know
That your circumstance
Gives you the right
To use
Someone else’s world
To convey
Your twisted message
Fueling the fire inside your heart
With the silence
Of that house
When really
Your muse is screaming
Trapped
Inside

One day you’ll know
How it feels
Some day
Someone will
Throw paint on
Your battered shell
Use YOU
As the
Un-indemnified muse
For their art
One day
That day
Maybe you’ll understand
What it’s like
Inside

A fallen house

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.

Bent

the glassy liquid
between her and I
ripples
with every stone
I throw
desperate to get her
attention
longing to swim to her
but afraid
of the depth
she floats upon
this pebble falls
straight through
the darkness
landing again in my
open hand
time and time
again
until it doesn’t
her eyes rise
to meet me
she is awake
and fear grips me
even harder than before
what will become
of me
when she swims
to the shore
will I be cast out
set afloat upon waters
only she could navigate
or will she take my hand
the liquid between us
not meant to divide
but to wrap around
and unite
she is
my reflection
and she tells me it is time
I must go ashore
for I am not broken
but bent
it is time
to be the bender

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.

Lunar

image
http://www.deviantart.com/art/moon-34321798

Crack open the moon
You’ll find me
Inside
Rubbing the glitter
Of twilight
Into my lips
Combing the shades
Of sunset
From my fur
Dancing to
The song of the
Crickets and frogs
In the grasses
Of lunar ecstacy
Find me
But leave my
Broken moon
Come rescue
This grey girl
From the cold
Hard loneliness
Of winter nights
Howling in the
Dark, or
Frosty spring mornings
Shivering in the
Mist
Let us walk along
The edge of reason
The shores of logic
The bridges over
Rationality
Until
The sultry purple
Sky of dusk
Reminds us
That
Tomorrow
Always comes
And the future
Could be
Far brighter
Than
That feral feeding
Orb
We call
Our moon

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.