FOUR STORIES:
1: SEETHE
Seething with angry anxiety, Sara trod rapidly towards the train station,eyes invariably looking to the sidewalk as she navigated her way to work. The city always seemed an alien environment to her, like she was an underwater tourist in a submarine, immersed but not included, swimming through a medium that constantly strove to eject her. Or maybe the problem was that her own frictionless surface caused the material of reality to slide past without ever actually impacting her in any very profound way, just glancing blows that streamed away before she could fully interpret the stimuli into coherent and discrete matter.
Tangled in a mass of limbs, she fought faceless commuters for her position at the turnstile. Stick in the card, rotate the bars, climb up the stairs, trapped behind the agonizingly slow fat lady with the huge, access-blocking packages of whatever. Is it always the same fat lady, Sara wondered. Is it the same fat lady in front of me at every flight of stairs? She knew it was. The same fat, smelly, dirty-assed pants in her face. The same battered and over-used shopping bags taking up the precious rest of the width of the staircase. A landed fish, gasping and breathless, squirming painfully upwards, making Sara miss the train that was always just pulling in. She walked to the furthest edge of the platform and waited for the next.
The wind from the train's passage whipped her hair into her eyes, a bare inch from the end of her nose, as it slowed to a stop. A flood of lemmings poured out the doors. Sara leaned into the tidal flow of humanity and swam for a spot on the far side, staked out her territory and dropped her backpack to the floor at her feet. Thump. Dead weight. Full of the stuff of her life, her real life, the one inside her head where the world couldn’t infect it. Sometimes she would open it during the ride and pull out a treasure of some kind to fondle on the way. A book, music, a piece of paper and a pen, the pleasure only reduced by the threat of their being soiled by someone looking at them, or asking her a question. What are you reading? What are you writing? Are you drawing a picture of those pigeons? When this happened, Sara would hunch over her things and bare her teeth in the feral sneer of a cornered opossum, driving away the unwelcome noise with a promise of violence. Mostly though, she didn’t expose herself. Just knowing that she carried safety with her at all times was enough.
Today, she stood and stared out the windows, occasionally glancing around the car at the other inmates, always avoiding eye-contact while still carefully examining everyone in range. They writhed around her, a stew of eels and shit, humming and breathing and making little murmuring noises that almost sounded like words. Sara closed her eyes and let the susurrus meld into the soothing mechanical sounds of the train and its passage through the liquid atmosphere. It became the muffled comfort of a heartbeat heard through amniotic fluid, the flickering on the other side of her eyelids like the flash of sunlight on the surface of the lake. The bell announcing her stop hooked her brutally back. She retrieved her bundle of self from between her feet and secured it across her body, safe as possible from the muck she waded through.
Struggling upstream, she cut a path outwards against the crushing weight trying to get in. She wasn’t going to make it. Sara expanded, throwing spines out in all directions. The ooze of flesh parted in haste, and she tore a path to the stairs, only to find the same fat ass rolling slowly down ahead of her. It bounced in extreme slow-motion, each wave that rippled across its expanse individually discernable, a wake streaming out from the vast polyestered crack. Mesmerized, she slipped downward behind it, not even realizing she was going the wrong direction until she had followed it half a block. Sluggishly emerging from her reverie, she stood for a time watching the ass and shopping bags drift away. Only the dim realization of duty turned her back, the vacuum of her objective slowly overpowering the lure of somewhere, anywhere else. Stunned, Sara twisted round and foundered her way back up the street, flotsam with a destination.
The glassy cold enclosure of the store loomed ahead, a two-story structure somehow grimly overshadowing the taller buildings all around it, a vast miasma of poison gas pouring from the open doors in the guise of soothing music. The cheery notes writhed in her head like impaled worms, throbbing redly as she slid sideways and flat across the threshold, forced two-dimensional by the pressure inside. Sara slipped along the floor, a discarded paper doll, vainly trying to avoid the manager's attention. Futile. He knew she was late. The only fully-rounded object on the premises, he rolled over her and blocked access to the back room. As she snapped her fractured bits back into place, auto-grovel on high setting, she attempted unsuccessfully to slip past him and don her uniform. Resigned, Sara stood and offered muted apologies, entranced by the rubbery quivering of his lips and the oily sheen of his obese, angry face. Eventually tiring of his tirade, the manager oozed wetly back behind the counter, spilling greasy obsequiousness all over the customer he had left waiting.
Sara punched in and slowly changed into her uniform, its sharp edges slicing into the wounds left behind from the day before. With no time for mental preparation, she forced the jagged point of the headgear brutally through her skull, enduring the pain by virtue of long practice. Ignoring the blood saturating her frayed limbs, she pinned her nametag through her left ventricle and carved a crooked pumpkin smile into her face with the box-cutter she kept in her left front pocket.
Finding her assigned place in the service line, Sara turned her flat side outward and started taking orders. The crunchy crackling of customer stupidity vied for supremacy with the tumerous throbbing of canned background music. She had to shout to be heard over the din of screaming buzzers and shrill timers and the regimented stomping of the robots in the queue. After hours, eventually it all became white noise and finally silence, as her synaptic pathways fused into a tangled mass of overheated wiring. Her shift was over. Time to go.
Crumpled and sweaty, soggy with pus oozing from suppurating wounds, Sara changed out of her uniform. She grabbed her backpack and folded over, accordion-style, to inch her way across the shit-soaked, filth-encrusted floor of the store. The pain of reinflation as she forced her way across the threshold was even more vivid than usual. As her flesh popped wetly back into its natural shape she tried to scream, but all that came out was a shrill moist whistle, like a lobster dropped in the pot. Waves of humanity flowed around her, not noticing as she clawed her sticky way out the door and onto the sidewalk. Sara lay there gasping, the foreign stench of the air around her forcing up great heaving strands of slime and yellow gore from her decompressing lungs.
Unintentionally soiling the shoes of passersby, Sara curled into a fetal ball as she tried to avoid the vicious kicking of an angry stockbroker. His pointed toe sank deeply into her side, sticking. He swore under his breath and struggled to free himself. She flailed impotently at his leg, sickly horrified by the intrusion into her body. His foot emerging with a sucking splat, he spat on her once and hurried away.
She scrunched up against the wall nearest her, panting and waiting for her deformed torso to fill back in. Sara sat in growing horror as the hole continued to gape and drip, not popping back the way it usually did. She scrabbled frantically around for small pieces of garbage. Her fingers closing on a piss-stained old newspaper, she crumpled it up and stuffed it between her ribs. She levered herself to her feet, retrieved her pack and staggered down the street towards the train, bouncing randomly off of people and buildings and air.
She twitched towards the station slowly, losing stature, shrinking exponentially in relation to her goal. The substance of herself leaked unstoppably from the poorly patched gash in her side, leaving a luminous trail on the concrete. By the time she got to the turnstile, Sara was so tiny that no one noticed her crawling through without sticking her card in the slot. Ants raced maniacally past as she trudged onward to the mountainous stairs. Once at the foot, she stood staring numbly at the infinite height she had to scale. A vast shadow suddenly eclipsing the fluorescent glare from above, Sara adhered like old gum to the shoe of the fat lady stepping on her.
Her unintentional hitch-hiking left her only a few paces from the top. Scraped off onto the rubberized treads, Sara lay recovering for a few moments. Struggling to her feet, she squished all the fingers of her hands together into hooks and cast them up, her arms reeling out into fine invisible line. She hoisted herself up the last few miles and threw her hooks through the closing doors, squeezing through the crack as it whooshed shut. Breathless from exertion, she lay on the floor of the railcar, closing her eyes against the unbearable glare of the eternal lights.The familiar rhythm soothed her. Sara felt herself expanding. The few remaining particles of her microscopic body started to lose cohesion. Heating up, her molecular bonds grew tenuous and floated lightly apart. Her essence disintegrated, mingling with the surrounding air. Some of her substance was inhaled by the fat lady, some adhered to the graffitied walls, causing the paints to flare with a brief surge of color. At the next stop, an angry stockbroker stepped off , kicking her miniscule backpack out into the night, to lodge in a sticky pile of pigeon shit on the ground below the overhanging metal roof of the station platform.
2: EVERYDAY
Every day, it seemed, or at least most days, he came into the coffee shop where Pamela worked. He would buy a large coffee, make some random small talk, try to look down her shirt and then leave, after dumping a coma-inducing amount of sugar into his cup. There were a number of customers with similar behavior patterns, and mostly she didn’t particularly notice any of them. This guy was different. He was a skinny little thing, for one. Barely taller than Pam, and bony arms and legs like sticks with the bark peeled off. Average-looking in the face, nothing special or remarkable there.
What set him apart, appearance-wise anyway, was his hair. Long and purple and very fluffy, like a troll-doll. His hair, and the bandanna he always wore, up high, covering the top of his forehead all the way back to the middle of his skull. Always the same bandanna, and he never came in without it. He would buy his coffee, stare at Pamela a little bit, make some half-hearted attempt at conversation, then leave. He seemed at best meek, at worst pathetic. She wasn’t sure where to classify him in her catalog of people, so he held a small micron of her interest, like an insect you can't identify, but don’t care about enough to look up.
Pamela had been working there for six months, maybe, when he finally made his move. She was stocking pound bags of pre-packaged coffee in the retail area when she heard a tiny noise behind her, as he diffidently cleared his throat. "Hey, there," she heard him squeak as she turned around to face him. "How are you today?" He looked like he was about to pass out from anxiety.
"I'm fine," Pamela replied, and started to turn back to her task. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him visibly gather his courage, meager though it was. "My name is Jeff," he stammered. "What's yours?"
Amused, she turned back and gave him her full attention. "Pamela," she told him. "Why? What's up?" And what are you thinking, she wondered.
He burned scarlet, from the collar of his shirt all the way to the lower edge of the mysterious bandanna. Even his ears turned red. Pamela imagined he was blushing all over. She wondered impassively what that would look like, his sickly white limbs suddenly flushed with blood. She watched in detached fascination as he swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing like a hooker giving a blow-job. "Oh, I just wanted to say hi," he replied, the pitch of his voice escalating with his level of nervousness.
"Well, hi," she said, and started to turn away again, bored with the struggling of this feeble insect, pinned helplessly to the wall of his own defects.
"Would you like to have a beer after work?" he blurted out suddenly, loud enough to make her cringe. "I mean, with me. Would you like to have a beer with me after work today?" His voice had returned to an almost normal volume, now that he had finally leapt over the edge of the abyss and asked her. He had asked her and it couldn’t be taken back. He stood mutely, waiting for the anticipated rejection of him and his lamely executed proposal.
Pamela faced him again. She stood looking at him for a few seconds. On the one hand, she didn’t really want to encourage this flea to believe he had a chance in hell of fucking her, and yet there was still the bandanna to be considered. For months she had been wondering what could possibly be underneath. She had whiled away a number of bored hours with her co-workers, discussing different possibilities. Was he balding in an unattractive fashion, yet unable to give up on the image of himself with long hair, a rocker? Was he hideously deformed? Did he just like to have his hair out of his face? Did he even realize how ridiculous the stupid bandanna made him look? Probably not. She sighed. Oh well, she thought. Might as well play this one out. "Yeah, okay, Jeff," she said to the quivering pile of spineless jelly lying on the floor at her feet. "I'm off at ten. I'll meet you at the bar across the street." She resumed stocking, unwilling to witness his scampering retreat.
- - - - -
At ten, Pamela finished closing the store, set the alarm and locked the front doors. She looked across the street towards the bar she had indicated to Jeff earlier as the location for their, she shuddered to think of it, their date. She stood indecisively for a few minutes. Was this really worth the hassle, she asked herself. She grabbed her earlier decision in both hands and shook it. It remained firm. Pamela drew a deep breath, braced herself for the inevitable unpleasantness, crossed the street and went inside.
Jeff was sitting at the bar by himself. It was, typically, dark, smoky, and crowded with tattoo-boys and trixie-girls all having a hellish good time. Pamela only ever came in here to drink after work, in the furious fashion of an alcoholic in denial. Usually she sat down and had three or four drinks, finished in the space of ten minutes or less, before bolting out to take the train home.
She pushed her way through the mass of people and sat beside him. He had already seen her, no doubt eyeing the door in a fever of anxious anticipation. He pretended nonchalance as he swiveled on his barstool to greet her. "Hey, there," he said, and patted her on the arm. He'd definitely had a few to brace up his flagging courage. "Already finished? I lost track of the time!"
What a crock! Pamela thought, almost snorting in disgust. It was painfully obvious to her that he had been checking his watch maniacally, sure of being stood up, desperately hoping, regardless. "Hey, yourself," she smiled at him brightly. Time to pour on the charm, if she was to ease him out of his headgear in a friendly fashion, without him bolting. "I'm sorry if I was a little late. Some asshole customer took hours getting out of there. I finally had to get a little mean." She shrugged cutely, letting her skirt slip a little higher up her thighs as she sat beside him. She ordered a beer and a double shot of cheap whiskey and let him pay for it.
"Oh, I can't imagine that you would ever be mean," Jeff said, and leaned closer. "I think you're about the nicest girl I know!" Dismayed by his own forwardness, he retreated instantly into his beer, slamming it down to cover his embarrassment.
Pamela laughed out loud. "Yeah, I'm a nice girl, all right!" She snickered into her whiskey, then drained both shots at once. Better to be drunk for this one, she thought.
She bought the next round, making sure that Jeff had a shot as well as a beer. She figured if he was drunk, well, it might be easier to get him into the alley for a quick make-out session, culminating in the accidental removal of his bandanna. It would be worth letting him touch her, only a little, to know once and for all what was wrong with his head. "So, what do you do, for real," she asked him. "I mean when you aren't being a mindless retail clerk?" She leaned close, as though she were deeply interested, and made mad eye-contact.
"Well," Jeff replied," you know how most people give up on the idea of being a rock star, sometime in their early twenties?" Pamela nodded, wondering what inanity was going to come oozing out of his mouth this time.
"Well, I never gave up," he said. "I will be a rock star before I die!" He nodded once to punctuate the profundity of his statement and waited for her reaction.
Repressing the almost irresistible desire to laugh out loud in his face and mock him to tiny little pieces, Pamela took a long pull of her beer and wondered how long he had spent coming up with that line. What a hook! "Well, I do all kinds of other stuff too," she said. "I only took that job to pay the rent until I can get a better. At least it leaves me time to paint and write."
"Yeah, my ex is an artist. It turns out she was a heroin addict, though. I thought she loved me, but she just made me broke." Jeff sighed deeply and ordered another round. Pamela, already well down the road to quiet intoxication, was trying to figure out how to make her move and not scare him off.
She decided on the motherly sympathy route as being most likely to draw him out. "Awww, poor baby," she exclaimed. "I’m sure you deserve much better. You deserve someone who loves you for you." The corner of her mouth twitched spastically with the need to laugh. She reached for her latest untouched shot on the bar and downed it as the only antidote to hilarity.
Turning to face him, Pamela reached out and gently brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. He started away at first, then shivered slightly as she caressed his ear and neck. His eyes were closed, his lips parted, his breathing audible. She ran her hand up his face and, pressing two fingers up under the bandanna, started to slowly lift it back and away from his forehead.
Jeff's reaction was almost frightening. His eyes popped open, and faster than a snake, he snatched her fingers away with one hand, while using the other to reposition his headband to its former location. But not before Pamela had gotten a tiny glimpse of the bright terrible light, now hidden.
She laughed uncomfortably and pulled her hand free. What the fuck was it she had seen? "I'm sorry," she said, thinking furiously. "I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable." What the HELL was he hiding? Her need to know had become almost painful. She shifted away from him on her stool and tried to get the bartender's attention.
"No, no, that’s alright," Jeff said. He ran a tentative hand up her spine and rested it on her far shoulder, squeezing sweatily. "Let's go somewhere else, it's too loud here." He pawed her neck spastically a few times, an indication of his desire. "I need to pee. Meet you at the door."
Pamela had to piss too. She went down the hall to the ladies room and waited in line. Maybe Jeff would be gone by the time she finished. She wasn’t sure if that was what she wanted or not, unwilling to think too carefully about what she had glimpsed beneath the bandanna. Ducking out the back door was still an option. Finally getting to her turn, she finished her business quickly. She faced herself in the mirror and tried to decide what to do. She was scared, she admitted to herself. All of her instincts told her to get the hell away, but she couldn’t resist. She had to know. She washed her hands, opened the door and headed out to the front of the bar where Jeff was waiting.
"Sorry," she said, giggling. "I guess I had to pee too." She tittered again, into her hand, and leaned drunkenly against him. "Where we goin'," she asked, wrapping her left arm and right hand around him and pressing close. He pressed his free hand into hers and led her down the street.
"To my apartment," Jeff told her. "We can be alone there. My roommate is out of town for the weekend."
He guided her down the street, stopping once to kiss her. It was like kissing a grouper fish, slobbery mouth all open against hers, tongue shoved almost down her throat. Suppressing her gag reflex, Pamela kissed him back, amused at his inexpert groping of her ass. Pressed against a wall, she could feel his erection hot against on her thigh. She pushed him away. "Let's go to your house," she breathed into his ear. She had never intended this to go so far, but some part of her had to know what he was hiding. She had lost control of the situation, as if she was a passenger in her own body. Her disgust at his touch was distant, her reactions automatic. It was like watching a movie that she was also somehow part of, compelled to stay til the very end.
Led by her captive hand, she followed him to the next block, up a flight of stairs and through his front door. It was a typical poor rocker-boy apartment, crappy couch, big stereo, TV and VCR area. Dirty. Maybe what looked like underwear off in the corner. They were totally alone together. Time to try again.
Almost unbidden, Pamela's hand reached to his face again. Caressing lightly upward, she slowly pushed the bandanna back, over the hedge of his fluffy hair and off. Jeff turned to look right into her eyes, his pupils dilated til she could see nothing but black. Her gaze shifted gradually up, to the shining dome of his forehead, up, to the hairless expanse beyond, up, to the blast of brilliant light coming from the small hole on the top of his head. He bent forward, to offer a better view.
Unable to resist, Pamela pressed one eye to the glowing orifice. Within was an Easter wonderland of bunnies, eggs and springtime. It was a glowing and beauteous landscape of life and happiness and lovely, screaming sunshine. Mesmerized, she relaxed into the vision, face plastered to his bald, clammy head, a child again.
His hands slowly undressed her, possessing every private part of her unaware body. He slid his sweaty fingers into her wet and unresisting cunt. Spreading her legs apart, he laid her down, still staring hypnotized into his sugar-egg candy brain. He hunched over, penetrating her waiting hole with his painfully hard cock, orgasming almost the second he crammed his shaft all the way in. He lay on top of her for a moment, breathing heavily.
When he had recovered his strength, he stood upright, pulling Pamela with him. Her one eye was still glued to the vision in his head, the other open but unseeing. Jeff licked his lips. He opened his mouth wide.
Wide, wide, wider. With a spasm of his abdomen, he ejected his stomach from his mouth, in one motion engulfing Pamela's body completely.
Twitching, gulping, Jeff slowly digested her unaware flesh. As the sun edged into the bottom of his second-floor window, he sighed deeply. Retracting his stomach, he spat Pamela's bones onto the floor. He licked his lips and fingers, as if he'd just had a giant-sized serving of buffalo wings.
Stripping naked, he lay down on his oversized dumpster-dived couch. Grabbing the remote, he clenched his left hand around his semi-erect cock and pressed play. The raped teen cheerleaders DVD he had rented last night picked up where it had left off. He relaxed back, satisfied, and stroked himself to an already-satisfied climax. With a small sticky pool of cum on his belly, Jeff passed out drunk, one hand on his balls, one on the remote, with his bandanna lying on the floor beside, waiting for him to wake.
3: LATE
Late, he called me, as I lay bored in the midst of the chaotic semi-squalor of my life. "I'm done with work, on my way," he said, the inevitable static of wireless connection making his voice into a strange staccato thing, scratchy and slightly resonant. I could hear the constant undertone hum of tires on pavement. He was driving. On his way then.
Since I was already dressed, I merely lay where I was, in the tangled, sweaty, sex-stained linens that served me for bedding. When would I ever learn to leap before I looked, I asked myself, staring blankly at the cracks in the wall, familiar as my own hands. I waited without anticipation. Always it was the same. We would go to his house, fuck, and then maybe watch a movie or torture small animals.
Even as I was thinking about it, my fingers stole, almost unbidden, into my panties and casually fondled my clit. The front door buzzer startled me, interrupting my dispassionate masturbation. I pried myself out of bed and buzzed him in, while walking around looking for the mate to the shoe I already had on.
I heard his tread, heavy-sounding on the uncarpeted wooden stairs. The front door was unlocked, but, as usual, he stood there a minute and waited for me to let him in. As always, I was most pleased to see him, and kissed him right as he walked in. "How you been?" I asked, as I continued to search for my errant footwear. "Oh, pretty good," he replied, and immediately launched into an oddly involved but amusing tale about the crippled boy he had anally raped the night before. I pocketed my house keys. "… and as he was screaming for his mommy, I shoved the shit-covered condom right into his mouth."
"You did not," I said, gasping painfully with uncontrollable hysterical laughter.
"And made him suck it clean, then put it back on and used it again," he replied. I was laughing so hard I fell right on my ass. Oh, there was my shoe, beside the flaccid inflatable plush couch that some jerk of a tool gave me, right before I left him for his 14 year old sister.
"I have a surprise for you," he whispered as we walked out the door. "In the back if my truck."
I ran outside and tried to see through the tinted windows of the camper shell. "No peeking," he told me, and pulled me to the cab. He shoved me into the front seat face-down and lifted my skirt. After a momentary fumbling with fastenings, he unceremoniously shoved his hot stiff cock into me. With the passenger-side door wide open, he pounded me, the insane rocking of the truck a testimony to its deteriorating suspension. He pulled out and came in the crack of my ass, while a middle-aged couple walking their dog turned aside in horrified shame.
He casually zippered up and wandered over to the driver side. As I fingered myself and licked off thecum, he pulled away from my building and started to drive north. "Where are we going," I asked him, as I turned back and tried to look through the duct tape and trashy plastic that separated the cab from the camper top. He backhand slapped me, hard.
"NO PEEKING!" He took a hard right onto the expressway and accelerated to 80. There was almost no one else on the road. He drove for awhile in silence, then put in a tape of some repetitive electronic noise stuff. I masturbated and pounded my head autistically against the dash. We drove for a couple of hours, and even though I wondered where the hell we were headed, I knew better than to ask. I already had a sizeable bruise I was going to have to explain at work tomorrow. I’ll just say I ran into a door. Some things are classics for a reason.
By this time we were well into the dark back ways of winding Midwest country roads, cornfields all around, the occasional raccoon running across the road ahead. He always tried to hit them, but they were always too fast for him and he would swear under his breath, the look of hate only making me hot. He finally turned down a dark and obviously seldom-used dirt road. I could hear something thumping around in back as we went through the crater-like potholes.
Finally he stopped. Silhouetted in the headlights was a ramshackle shack, fall-down and years-abandoned. "Well, here we are," he smiled and got out, going around to the back of the truck, jingling his keys suggestively.
In agonized suspense, I ran to see what he had brought for me to play with. Blinking in the glare of the flashlight was an overweight mullet-sporting redneck, possibly a trucker from the looks of the squashed gimmie hat lying on the floor beside him. I squealed in delighted anticipation, literally dancing with joy. "I love you," I told him, as I took in the assortment of devices and tools that he had thoughtfully included with the gift.
"We better get started." He pulled the meat out of the truck by the rope around its ankles, unconcerned with the possible head trauma inflicted by the fall. "Don’t break him yet," I implored, hurriedly gathering as much in my arms as I could, chainsaw, block and tackle, hammers, hemostats, small wrenches, oh there was far too much for me to carry in just one trip! I took a load to the shack, leaving a trail of scalpels and wet-naps behind me. The table was already there and set up. I laid out the implements in the careful order I had learned after many beatings. Everything had to be just so.
"I had to chloroform the fat fuck again," he said, as I spread absorbent fresh sawdust on the floor of the shack. "Come help me move him inside."
The dead weight and sweaty fear-stink of the meat filled me with loathing. We dragged it into the building and left it on its piggy face. I set up the ropes and we hoisted it onto the table, its flabby fish-belly spilling over the sides of the shiny stainless surface. Working together with the smooth coordination of long practice, we cut away the piss-stained clothing and suspended the trucker from the loudly protesting roof supports. "I'm not sure it'll hold," I said, eyeing the creaking beams with experienced skepticism.
"It'll hold for long enough," he said, and bent me over the table. He roughly shoved his cock in my ass, driving my thighs painfully against the sharp metal edge. His head banged rhythmically into the meat, where the bulging obese groin oozed from out between the ropes. As he came closer to orgasm, jack-hammering my ass, the trucker slowly woke to an awareness of his surroundings. It struggled futilely against its bonds, its muffled sounds of terror pushing me over the edge into blinding ecstasy. As I screamed in pleasure, he fucked me even harder, punching the fat flesh-bag suspended above us, finally pulling out and shooting his hot sticky load all over the meat's face.
"Go put it on," he ordered me, using the leftover rags of the trucker's clothing to wipe his dick off with.
"Do we always have to do it this way?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer. He lifted his fist and I ran out of the shed to change.
When I returned, I saw that he had also donned his customary costume. "Put on the ears too," he told me.
"I have them right here," I replied, showing him. "Don’t worry, I'm all ready."
He moved into position, holding the book high to catch the light from the shoddy old oil lamp set on the window sill. He looked magnificent, the light shining on his horned helmet and well-polished clown shoes. His only other adornment was the trucker's stiff and dirty tube sock dangling from his penis.
I put on my Mickey ears and straightened my petticoats and square-dancing frock. I opened my book to the marked page. "Okay, shoot," I said, and it began.
He hummed and cleared his throat.
"To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--…"
I had heard him deliver these lines a hundred times previously, and still the thrill of it was new as if I was a virgin again. I never read Shakespeare alone anymore, because it isn’t him.
"Good my lord, How does your honour for this many a day?" Practice and strict discipline have made my Ophelia much more believable than the first time we did it.
As we worked our way through the scene, the trucker became more and more frightened. I could see his eyes bugging out and his rolls of flesh jiggling with terror. A stream of piss trickled onto the metal tabletop below him. I moved aside, out of range of the backsplash and spoke my final line.
"O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown!
The courtier's, soldier's, scholar's, eye, tongue, sword;
The expectancy and rose of the fair state,
The glass of fashion and the mould of form,
The observed of all observers, quite, quite down!
And I, of ladies most deject and wretched,
That suck'd the honey of his music vows,
Now see that noble and most sovereign reason,
Like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh;
That unmatch'd form and feature of blown youth
Blasted with ecstasy: O, woe is me,
To have seen what I have seen, see what I see! "
He walked back into the shack, applauding vehemently. "That was wonderful!" He pulled me close and kissed me passionately. "Lets clean up here and go have breakfast at Sambo's," he suggested.
I inserted the catheter into the meat, and hooked up the I.V. drip. He went outside and returned with the small battery-powered television he had left by the truck. Tuning it to the Christian Broadcast Network, he placed it on the table facing up, where the meat could see it. Holding hands, we walked to the truck. I sat beside him on the hood, my head on his shoulder, as we watched the sun rise over the corn.
"Lets get outa here." He turned the key in the ignition and we drove away into the dusty summer morning.
4: MILES
Once, a very long time ago and in a far land, the name of which I don’t recall, there lived a young and handsome man named Miles. As such men are wont to do, this particular young and handsome man decided to go off and seek his fortune. His kissed his tearful momma good-bye and set off to discover what the world could offer him.
Miles traveled some few months, from here to there and on to elsewhere, never staying anywhere long, although many farmer's daughters and tavern wenches plied their sly female tricks to keep him by. None of these ladies tempted him greatly, which is not to say that he didn’t enjoy a warm night or two when opportunity offered itself.
Round about halfway into the aforementioned some few months, Miles was strolling jauntily through a sun-dappled spring forest, whistling tunelessly as he traveled down the faint track that served as roadway here. He came to a small, strangely dark clearing, and stopped, arrested by some quality of stillness or odor. He wasn’t entirely sure why, but he ceased whistling and called out, "Hail, hail! Is anyone here?"
The ensuing silence did nothing to reassure him of the unoccupied nature of the little grove. In fact, the sense of presence increased until he turned in fear, about to bolt back the way he had come. He ran smack into a hairy, smelly something that recoiled away and blocked his escape.
"What do you want from me," Miles cried in anguished revulsion, cowering back and shaking. "Me?!!" replied the thing, "why would I want anything from you? You are the one who came blundering in here, disturbing my nap!"
"Oh," apologized Miles, for his momma had taught him some manners, she had. "So sorry, old chap. I didn’t mean to wake you. Please forgive my rude interruption of your rest."
The thing was pleased by this elegant discourse. "Well then that’s quite all right," it said. "What is a fine handsome young man like yourself doing in a strangely dark clearing such as this, and what shall I call you?"
"Why, I'm Miles," came the reply, " and I'm traveling the world in search of my fortune!"
"Tell me the nature of the fortune you seek," requested the thing. "Perhaps I can help you, having heard of a fortune or two to be had in these parts. Perhaps one of them is yours."
Miles pondered briefly. "Well, I suppose the fortune I had in mind involved fame and maybe wealth, perhaps a beautiful bride, and definitely power over all that I survey."
"Well," said the thing, "I have heard tell of a princess being held captive by a foul black knight, in a castle filled with blackguards and ruffians."
Surely she is no longer pure!" sniffed Miles disdainfully. "My beautiful bride must be virginal."
The thing scratched its head in thought. "How about a lovely maiden, cursed in infancy by a vile witch, condemned to a magical sleep until wakened by love's first kiss?"
"Witches!" exclaimed Miles. "I don’t hold with magical doings. My momma always taught me that such things were unwholesome and beneath us anyway. Haven’t you a fortune more suited for a gentleman?"
"A widow with a charming, unwanted step-daughter, whom she forces into slavery to herself and her two odious daughters?"
"Slavery? Do you mean she is a servant? Her hands will be unspeakably rough."
"A petite child, stolen by fairies and then returned, whom only true love can free from eternal longing and ennui?"
"Fairies! That is very nearly as bad as witches," sneered Miles. "Let her find true love elsewhere. I'll not have my lady longing for anything but myself."
"A dragon terrorizing a tiny kingdom, the hand of the princess being offered to anyone who can slay the beast?"
"Much, much too dangerous," replied Miles, surveying his well-formed limbs with satisfaction. "I might get injured or killed."
And so it went, with Miles rejecting, for one reason and another, all of the thing's fine offerings. Finally the thing had exhausted all but one. Wanting to return to his nap, and regretting ever getting into this conversation, he offered up the last fortune of which he knew. "I hear whispers in the trees at night that the wind is searching for true love to warm her chilly heart."
Miles instantly ceased smoothing his thick, luxuriant hair and stared at the thing in confusion. "The wind, did you say? How can a man wed the wind?"
"I'm sure I don’t know," replied the exasperated thing. "All I can tell you is that she moans sadly through my forest at night, calling out for her true love to come to her and make himself known."
Miles was entranced with the very idea. "Well," he told the thing, "this one certainly has possibilities! Thank you, old chap! You’ve been quite a help. I'm most grateful!"
The thing waddled off into the forest, to resume his long-delayed nap. "Good luck," it called back. "You'll need it."
"I wonder what he meant by that," thought Miles, who immediately started planning his campaign to win the heart of the wind itself.
-----
The spring fled gently into summer, and Miles strolled across the land, singing ballads to the beauty and power of the wind. He offered flowers up at small shrines that he made to her. He wrote long, elaborate poems enumerating her many graces. He declared his love far and wide, crying into the night so that she would hear and come to him. Simple villagers avoided him, thinking him mad. For months he roamed far and wide, until one day he collapsed in despair, weeping bitterly into a snowdrift as he gave himself over to death.
"Why are you crying?" A whisper caressed his neck, the biting storm suddenly becoming a soft warm breeze enfolding him.
Miles lifted his head from his tear-drenched knees. He looked around in anger, ready to damn to hell the person who so disturbed his freezing, horrible, tragic death. The words died unspoken on his frostbitten lips as he beheld before him in the snow a woman more beautiful than any he had ever imagined in his most secret, sweaty dreams. She was pale as early dawn and dark as moonless night. "It is you, finally you’ve come to me," he rasped, then fell at her feet in worshipful desire.
"I've heard you singing of your love," she stated calmly, her voice both compelling and chilly. "I have heard you, yes, and perhaps you have won me. But how do I know you are true?"
Miles slowly rose to his feet. He leaned forward and kissed her on themouth. "Marry me," he said. "Marry me and let me hold you in my heart forever."
"Forever," she said. "You are mortal, I am elemental, for us to marry would mean you would have to take inside of yourself a piece of my power, to keep you untouched by time. It will change you. It will hurt. Are you willing to do this?"
Miles was consumed by lust. Lust for the woman before him, yes, but mostly lust for the power she offered. Here was the payoff! Master of all he surveyed, and immortal as well! He would be young and handsome forever, creating storms to humble all the world! There would be none who would not bow before him and obey his every whim! "Let us be wed tonight, my love," he cried, "for I am your willing slave, now and forever!"
The wind enfolded him into her arms and became a fierce twister, spinning him madly about. Miles was squeezed and spun, ever tighter and faster. It was agonizing. He screamed until his voice was torn away. He felt a pain unlike any he had ever imagined. She joined herself into him in shuddery invasive tendrils of screaming anguish. His breath became a torturous icy penance. It went on and on. "Forever," he thought. "She said forever." He lost all awareness in the utter totality of torment and fear.
Then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped. She stepped away from him, slipping backwards through the sky, a ripple through the clouds, a woman no more. Miles slowly gained a new awareness of himself. He was no longer a man, he was more. And less. "What have you done to me!" he shrieked at her in helpless fury. "What have you done with my finely muscled limbs and thick, luxuriant hair?" He wept, but no tears came forth, only a fine, cool mist. He raged, and flew uncontrolled across the sky. She followed.
"Why, we've wed, my one and only," she said. "And as a gift to my husband, I've given you my most favorite piece of myself. I've made you into the endless wind that blows along the jagged coastline by the sea. The best I had to offer you, my dear. Now I must return to my duties. I will visit you as often as I can." She blew away in happy satisfaction, singing a song of true love found at last.
Miles screamed and tried to follow, to demand that she return him to his rightful self. But instead he became a violent storm, lashing futilely against the coastline, venting his impotent rage upon the swollen waves.
His insane fury lasted a very long time. When he had finally tired of it and ceased his futile tantrums, he started to think. "It is true that I didn’t get exactly what I expected from my wife," Miles told himself, "but now I am truly immortal, and perhaps I too can learn to take a human form, just as she does. If I please her enough, perhaps she will make me more powerful as well, granting me more than just this limited little coastline. Why, in time I may become as powerful as she, and then I will rule all the Earth!"
So Miles then cultivated patience, and devised cunning plots with which to tease more gifts out of the wind. When she finally returned to him, as she had said she sometimes would, his demeanor was all affection and desire. "Let us fly together, my sweet," he whispered amorously, "then perhaps you can show me how to manifest as human, and I can love you as a man does, here on this beautiful coast."
The wind was truly charmed by his behavior, and showed him the trick of taking corporeal form. They lay together in the rough sedge-grass by the rocky shore, satiating their mutual lusts.
As she readied herself to leave him, he sighed sadly and stared vacantly at the sea. "Why are you unhappy," the wind enquired, "is our love not all you could desire?"
"Ah," Miles sighed again. "It is indeed all that I desire, but for one thing." He looked into her eyes and said, with deep sincerity, "I ache when you are gone. Why must you absent yourself from me for such lengthy days and nights?"
"Why, because I'm the wind," she responded with some surprise. "I have many duties that I must fulfill, else the seasons will not flow and the flowers will not seed and the world must finally die. Surely you see that I cannot neglect my responsibilities, not even for you."
"Then let me share them with you!" Miles cried. "I will gladly take the burden of half of your duties, if only I could spend all my days with you!" Miles threw himself to the ground at her feet, and gazed up at her flawless face. "I will do anything to be with you always!"
The wind was deeply touched by this declaration, and gathered him into her cool arms, kissing him even as she melted back into formlessness. "I will think on this," she stated, "perhaps I have been too long alone. I will see you when I can, my love." A vortex spiraled around and away from him, and she was gone.
"Well, well," Miles told himself, "and so all goes as it should." He flew off into the sky to blow gently on the coastline and dream his dreams of endless power.
- - - - -
One day, not long after his conjugal visit, Miles was idly tossing dune grasses back and forth, when he heard a smooth and soothing voice inquire, "What is your name then, you who pounded me so angrily for such a very long time?"
He blew all around, looking for the speaker. "Who is it that is asking my name then, you who shows himself not?" He transformed himself to man-shape and stood waiting for a reply.
As he watched, a ripe and sensuous female form slowly shaped itself from the waves that washed over the rocks and sand. "It is I who speaks to you," she declaimed arrogantly, "I who has borne the brunt of your rage. I am the sea that flows along the coastline here. Never before have I been forced to endure such violations and abuse!"
Miles stared at her in awe. She was truly more desirable than anything he had ever seen or imagined. Even the allure of his wife was nothing to compare. She was glisteny and wet where the wind was cool and clammy. She was rounded and full where the wind was willowy and graceful. She was formed of foam and deep green water. She was suddenly and forever the sole possessor of Miles' meager and self-serving little heart. "I am so deeply sorry," he cried. "I never knew you were there! How could I have harmed such a marvelous creature! Oh please, forgive me!"
Miles fell to his knees and wept with shame. The sea that flows along the coastline stepped closer and looked down on him for what seemed an eternity, and might have been at that. "How droll," she said, and laughed a tinkly little laugh that shredded his soul. "Yes," she drawled, "I might forgive you at that. But only if you tell me what drove you to such terrible anger, little man."
So Miles, still on his knees before her, told the story of his courtship of the wind, and of the consummation that had caused him such terror and agony, and of the way he had been deceived by his wife. "…for you see," he tearfully concluded, "she promised me power and immortality, and instead she has taken my mortal body away and left me chained like a dog, like a slave, to this jagged coastline, forever waiting for her return to ease my tormented boredom."
The sea that flows along the coastline listened to his tale of woe impassively. After he had finished, she pondered, for so long that Miles felt his heart shriveling with fear. "She must forgive me," he thought, "for if she leaves me I must die of sorrow." Still he waited, and still she stood looking on in contemplation. Finally, she spoke. "My poor sweet baby," she sighed, and kneeled down beside him on the sand. "How badly she has used you! And you, handsome, wonderful man, deserve so much more!" She pulled him close to her and kissed him deeply.
Miles was so inflamed with desire that he lost control. He pulled her hard against him and pressed her to the ground, groping and fondling roughly in his heated urgency. She melted away, leaving only a wet sticky patch beneath his belly. "Oh, no," he heard her whisper as she flowed back to the water, "you are wed to the wind. I could not live with myself if I caused you to be disloyal." Miles howled in agonized loss, unbearable desire tearing through his being.
"You must come back to me, " he shrieked to the waves. "I love you, and I will never love another!" There was no reply but the crashing of the surf.
Miles was disconsolate. He sulked around the coast, a feeble dribbling of a breeze, blowing only intermittently, with no force. He called out constantly to the sea that flows along the coast, imploring her to reconsider, she was his one true love! He felt he couldn’t live without her, and yet knew he couldn’t die. This state of affairs continued for what seemed ages. Finally, when he had all but given up, she appeared to him again.
"I too suffer from the lack of your presence," she told him. "I too love with all my being. I have thought long on this and I have found a way out of our difficulty. It is the only way that we can be together."
"Anything! I will do anything you say, if only I can have you," Miles declared, all thought and sense torn away by passion.
She leaned close to him and said softly, "You must renounce your marriage to the wind, and wed me instead." She laughed. "And I will never mistreat you as she did. When we are joined, I will share with you all of my power. But in return, you must share with me the power that the wind has given you."
Miles didn’t even pause for thought. "Yes, yes, anything you desire, I ache to bind myself to you!" He shouted into the heavens his denial of his wife. Perhaps the earth darkened slightly, perhaps it was just a passing wind-blown cloud. "Now," he said, "Let us be joined, I offer to you all of myself and my gifted power besides! Take me now!"
The sea rose up to an alarming height. It smashed ungently down upon his head and sucked him into its cold, lightless depths. He was tossed mercilessly in all directions. The water entered his every orifice, sucking out the wind's small gift. He was suddenly breathless and choking, drowning and struggling, rendered mortal again. He was dashed painfully against the rocks on the shore, over and over until the sea decided to spit him out again. Miles lay bleeding and naked, a man again, on the frigid coastline, while his erstwhile lover laughed and crashed heedlessly on the rocks around him. He struggled up out of the water and gasped for air. He could hardly comprehend what had occurred.
As suddenly as he had been consumed by the sea, he was engulfed by a vast and furious storm. He was beaten with hail and rain, storm-blown detritus smashing and tearing his huddled body. It swept past him and smashed into the sea with a fury no mortal has seen before or since. Screaming in righteous fury, the wind did battle with the sea for possession of the endless wind that blows along the jagged coastline by the sea. Seemingly forgotten, Miles crawled away, broken and bloody, naked, soaked and freezing.
He ran, then, as far and as fast as he could. He ran for many months, in a world so changed he no longer recognized it, for to an immortal, centuries pass like days. Lost and confused, he finally holed up in an abandoned cottage, where dressed in rags and discards, he waited. He waited for the wind to finally win her battle with the sea. Miles had no doubt that eventually she would, for the sea is fickle and easily bored, and would no doubt some day give up the endless wind that blows along her jagged coastline to pursue something more entertaining. He waited, knowing that someday the wind would come for him, he waited, and shivered in his rags in fear.
Texts copyrighted by the author, Jen. Ross 2004
