Reinhardt the Bull

The first splash hit Manfred’s face, and a forceful stream ran down the navy blue and black-striped tie resting like a ribbon of night on the white cotton shirt. Reinhardt spread his legs in the door of the stall. He had last worn a civilian tie to his mother’s funeral four years ago, but the lawyer owned a rack of silk ties in colours and designs to complement his tailor-made suits. Huddled against the marble wall under the showerhead, Manfred pulled his knees up as urine saturated his shirt and tie, followed by a drenching of the fine-wool fibres of the suit jacket. Reinhardt had allowed him to remove his Italian shoes, but not his socks, which matched the tie. He told Manfred to lower his knees while he pissed over the silver belt buckle and the lawyer’s groin. The man could do nothing to ward off the torrent. He had been ordered to keep his hands behind his back. Reinhardt directed the still-strong stream once more at the lawyer’s face. He had been saving it up for this moment. Open, he commanded.

The piss bubbled out of the man’s mouth and soaked his Van Dyke beard. He choked, spluttered, his face showered by the hot liquid, his eyes closed, his entire body trembling in a kind of private ecstasy, lapping, swallowing as much piss as Reinhardt aimed down his throat. “You pathetic pig, drink it; show me how much you love me, faggot!” Reinhardt shouted, obeying the lawyer’s wish to hear his commanding abuse while giving him a golden shower. His bladder finally drained; Reinhardt zipped up. A speculum designed to keep the mouth open, he decided would be useful for the next session. He had a couple at home, but he had already used them on other pisspigs, so the lawyer would have to buy his own. It wasn’t wise to share intimate toys.

Listening to the lawyer’s strange whimpers of satisfaction, Reinhardt dredged up a gob of spit, aimed it at Manfred’s still open mouth, and splattered his lips and chin. He sat on the toilet. The fabric of his fatigues tightened over muscular thighs. The lawyer shivered on the shower floor, licked his lips, hands behind his back, his tie and jacket saturated. Standing quickly, he smiled over the sheen of his military boots, which Manfred had earlier caressed and polished with his tongue.

What you ate affected the smell and taste of piss and semen, Reinhardt knew, so he avoided brassicas and asparagus before a session. Always careful about what he ate, he had consumed a protein drink and swallowed vitamin supplements before arriving at the condo, combined with two bottles of beer, which guaranteed the build up of piss. He wondered if Manfred tasted hops even as the odour of urine long exposed to the air intensified. He just paused above the lawyer, spitting again, wrinkling his nose against the smell. 

“Don’t move, my little pig, until I let you out.”

***

In the galley kitchen gleaming with granite countertop and steel appliances, Reinhardt opened the fridge door. Wanda was supposed to be home by now, as the couple had agreed to take time off work for fun. He could do anything he wanted with the lawyer, and he had every intention of pushing boundaries. What he wanted now was to fuck the lawyer’s wife, fast and hard, then fuck her again while her husband watched, ball-gagged and shackled. Since they met at the bar a couple of months ago, this was only his fourth visit to play dominant bull to the submissive couple.

He suspected Wanda delayed on purpose, his impatience adding to her excitement. After drinking another beer, he’d probably have to relieve himself. He’d piss on the lawyer again, maybe in the tub, or even on the white Berber carpet of the living room where he now stood. Make Manfred strip and spread himself like a flagellant before the altar on the beautiful rug; make him say a few worshipful words to his swell-muscled bull, who would then spray liquid gold over the naked body while Wanda protested. He might have to bind her to prevent interference. She’d like that, probably expected it, something she had mentioned in their preliminary discussions about scenarios, even if she lamented over her fine furnishings. 

Reinhardt heard the front door to the condo open. Was it time to give the cuckold Manfred permission to move? Lead Wanda into the washroom? Get her on all fours by the toilet, lift her skirt, and ram her cunt from behind like a German Shepherd mounting his bitch while Manfred huddled and soaked in the shower stall watching his bull in action? A couple of hours had passed already since his arrival. Preliminary play with the lawyer had taken up most of the time. Drenching the cuckpig had lasted less than a minute. Reinhardt sucked the beer down. He wanted his bladder full. He had been paid 800 Euros in advance for two hours, but if he really got into the action, he gladly extended a session, no extra charge.

Before Wanda touched his back, he smelled her perfume. When she pressed against him, Reinhardt flinched. Her arms reached around his chest, her faux fur coat sleeves bristling with static electricity. He would humiliate Manfred again while Wanda bore witness. That was part of the deal; that was what they both wanted, their bull taking control. He grabbed her hands to prevent them from rubbing his nipples.

“What’s the matter?”

“Nothing, bitch, just don’t. Get me a beer.”

He was rubbing his crotch as Wanda approached with a beer. He wondered about the height of the balcony to the waterless fountain almost directly below. Reinhardt grabbed Wanda’s neck; her body relaxed, stepped closer while he guzzled down half the bottle. He gripped her shoulder.

“Let’s go on the balcony.”

“It’s chilly outside.”

“Leave your coat on.”

He didn’t slide the glass door shut as he spun her around on the balcony and kissed, his unshaven cheeks abrading her smooth skin. Slipping his arms under her coat, he lifted Wanda onto the railing.

“What the…what are you doing?”

Holding her tight with one arm, he raised her left leg around his waist, secured her close to his chest, and fingered her under her dress. She struggled to break free, her struggle part of her fantasy, but he leaned her backwards over the railing, pushing three fingers into her cunt. Her scream Reinhardt interpreted as encouragement, not protest. In the tavern where they had first met after he had answered their queries on his personal website, and later negotiated the terms of the arrangement, they’d agreed on a safe word, uttered only when she wanted the action to stop. She was trapped by her own excitement over being precariously balanced on the balustrade. If Reinhardt let go of her waist, she’d somersault over and plummet several floors to her death. Removing his wet fingers, and with the prestidigitation of a magician, he retrieved a rubber from his pocket, tore open the package with his teeth, slipped it on, and pushed his cock into her receptive body. He preferred bareback, but she had insisted during their negotiations. Since they paid for him to do what they wanted, Reinhardt had agreed.  The customer was always right.

Her voice muffled by the whirring of an approaching helicopter. She was trying to scream between gasps for breath, so he picked up speed in his fucking. If the traffic helicopter pilot flew overhead, he’d see Wanda hunched over a balcony railing in a brown fur coat, hanging onto to a soldier who, despite the chill, wore only a green army-issue T-shirt and fatigues. Reinhardt raised his eyes, squinting in the late afternoon winter sun, loosening his hold on the woman who groaned and clung to his neck, both legs cinched so tightly around his waist that she’d hurtle over the railing with him firmly locked between her thighs if he didn’t maintain control. Death by fucking.

“Oh, please.” Wanda’s voice was scarcely audible; he couldn’t tell if she was begging for her life or for his cock. He kept up a steady and riveting thrust, his cock feeling as hard and big as Thor’s hammer. Her fur coat dropped off her shoulders and hung like a bearskin draped over the railing, her red hair coming loose from its pins. The helicopter hovered overhead. 

He released the woman, who instinctively clasped the cold iron railing, and jackhammered her cunt, sweat dribbling down the back of his neck even in the cold. He wanted to be finished, since he was getting bored, and besides, the husband was in need of more attention, and he decided that he’d only give the couple an extra hour, free. He slammed into Wanda, who screamed when he let go. Yes, she had admitted in the tavern, she wanted it hard. Her legs slipping away from his waist, her upper body began falling backwards, but Reinhardt pulled her up and off the railing and onto his explosive cock. He finished the hard fuck with three upward thrusts, lifting her off her feet, which kicked over a stand of dead plants in ceramic pots. They cracked on the concrete. The chopper lurked upward, swerving to the right. The condom dangled from his semi-flaccid dick, heavy with his superman spunk.

“Oh, please, don’t leave me, I’ll do anything,” Wanda whispered in his shoulder, slack and needy. Just like her husband waiting in the shower stall. There were so many things he planned on doing, so many things they didn’t even know they yearned for. He now owned them. They said they wanted a bull, ein Stier, to own them; that was part of the play, and the husband wanted to be humiliated, any way Reinhardt chose. With his face blushing over their drinks in the tavern, Manfred had whispered his desire for golden showers, as if confessing to a rare and abominable obsession. Craving to be cuckolded and degraded by a soldier wearing his boots, a common fantasy which Reinhardt took advantage of when the opportunities arose and charged more for his efforts. The wind picked up. Reinhardt shivered. He opened the door and gently pushed the wife inside, her coat falling to the floor, where it lay like a dead animal.

“Get me another beer, cunt. Bring it to the washroom. We’re not done yet.”

Un amour moche

Severine had a big nose and sky-high cheekbones. I only noticed the rest of her when she took off her dress. She wore her swimsuit underneath it. There were still bathing establishments along the Seine, in those days. She dived in without a splash, and disappeared below the dark, turbulent water.

Her father had bought her an apartment on a twisted street that led into Place des Vosges. Even her huge, luminous dwelling existed to intimidate and oppress.

Shortly after she’d installed me at her place, she said she had another lover, a Moroccan, or Algerian, in any case some former French colony. He knew how to sodomize her the way she needed it. The guy was married, with kids, so they could see each other every and then, when he could get away from his responsibilities. That evening, he was free.

This made me pretty angry.

Other evenings, she went for dinner at her parents’ place, in Passy. I wasn’t invited. 

To enrage her father, she’d told him she was living with a disreputable foreigner, a long-haired beatnik. To rub salt in the wound, she added that I’m half-Jewish.

She told her other boyfriend that part too, to madden the poor guy. I wanted to beat him up. I could’ve tailed Severine to find out where he lived, what he looked like. If he knew Severine’s address. All he had to do was show up there, and brain me with a tire iron. Her father would’ve doused us both with gasoline and roasted us alive, damn the consequences. He must’ve known some high-ranking cops.

None of this did anything to diminish my desire for Severine, which made her laugh, cruelly. I imagine she also made Ali, or Mustafa, or whatever the hell he was called, suffer. She tortured her father, who smiled in his army uniform from framed photos on the walls of her glorious pad. 

Those two couldn’t change their relationship with her. I could, and did. I left her a note, scrawled on the cover of her treasured first edition of Proust. Goodbye, you fabulous cunt.

Years later, I saw her again, in an out-of-focus snapshot on one of the so-called social networks. Still strangely gorgeous, with a few extra pounds on her, elegantly dressed, sitting on the lap of a gentlemen unmistakably from Parisian high society. There was nothing else on her page. No need for it. 

Whenever I return to Paris, my aimless rambles always end up in Place des Vosges, like an ant who follows the chemical trails left by his queen.

An artist friend describes Paris as a beautiful town full of ugly things. For me, Severine is Paris. Paris is Severine.

On the métro back to the airport, I always think, goodbye, you fabulous cunt.

J’aime Paris. 

Vive les femmes.

Ozzmandroid of Oz 

For Lesli Spivey and Michelle Fairchild

Kandy Fontaine, Slutty Detective, stood over the steaming guts-pile that had once been the body of her partner, Joe Oouroboros, late of Bone City PD.

“Oh dear,” she said to herself. “This is not good.”

Fontaine’s long-suffering boss, Sergeant Kent Buttklenche, stood over her, wishing there was a way he could legit grab her by that fine-ass pussay in a way that would honor the Orange Man.

“”Are you even paying attention to the crime scene at hand?” asked Fontaine. “Stop drooling over muh tittays and ass–just because I’m a Slutty Detective that dresses a propos is not an invitation for you to blatantly Big Bad Wolf muh bod. I’m a professional just like you.”

Sgt. Buttklench let our a strangled yelping sound from deep in his throat. He had been found out–so exciting, he’d need to visualize the scenario of his exposure in micro-detail later as he pumped furiously away at the mushroom shaped Man Cannon many had compared to that of The Orange Messiah.

“Yes, of course, Detective Slu–“

Detective Fontaine had meanwhile slipped on the nitrile collection gloves and was reaching into her late partner’s guttiwuts to nimbly seize on a clump of dishwater blond hair that had been repeatedly dyed blue black…

“Our perp would be in his 70s H.E.L.,” she ejaculated, spilling her white hot words helplessly over the scene of her hog-tied, ball-gagged delicious young body on a black velvet carpet. “Had E Lived,” she added, annotating herself. 

“Oh no, you didn’t just go there,” she said. The eye-daggers she sent her superior pierced his scrotum like a diamond bullet and kept on going, sending fragments to deeply embed themselves in his crotch.

Sgt. Buttklenche yelped and, unable to control the spasms of Butthurte that cored themsleves deep in his inner child–she knew exactly what it took to wound him–his well-seasoned (often with chives and exotic Orientalist spices) mind continued to process the evidence. 

“So what we’re saying,” he said at long last, “is that the Ozzy Mandroid has struck again.”

“Of course that’s what we’re saying,” spat out Detective Fontaine, “Captain Obvious.”

“That’s Sergeant Captain…to…” Sgt. Buttklenche was babbling freely. “I just let loose a thin trickle of butt-hurt butt-jizz that’s leaking out muh ass like you and your sisters in the Muff-Dive Sorority just cream-pied me with a whole bunch of infected prison spunk in a turkey baster.”

“Yuppers,” said Fontaine, but she was distracted.

A long shadow had poured itself across her peripheral vision. Something abominable had joined the scene. The perpetrator had returned, fresh from a return visit to Oz in which it had re-visited all its old stomping grounds and stomped them once more into Abstract Expressionism, with special emphasis on Ozma of Oz and the Tik Tok Man of Oz. Ozzmandroid hated the pair, who he had seen fucking to the Zeena Shreck piece “Bring Me the Head of FW Murnau, Alex S.Johnson, you brave and brilliant lad who brought it first in the pages of HORROR SLEAZE TRASH: PROSE IN POOR TASTE.” Their cum-fest had re-ignited past trauma he had from reading Johnson’s other work, such as the novelette “Ozzymandias of Oz.” While wildly inaccurate, Johnson’s work struck him as, in the end, the only fictional tribute to him that had any sort of impact whatsoever. 

“Vengeance from the grave, killed the people you once saved, is that correct,” said Detective Fontaine. As she did so, she lay on her back and throttled her sopping clit like they were going to stop making them. “Amirite.” 

“Why yes…how could you fucking tell…I love you all…fuck my former life…being a…Ozmandroid is a great relief and much fucking better than having the Parkinson’s shakes. I feel better than fine. I am the Iron Man they promised you.”

“Ozzmandroid, you are the master of metal and the true metal god,” said now-Sergeant Fontaine, her superior having succumbed to his delicate crotch condition and imploded spontaneous.

“Fucking thank you,” said Ozzmandroid. He paused to scrape some iridescent flung pieces of Buttklenche off his heavy boots of lead. “I just wanted to play rock and roll, you know? Then when Lemmy left…”

The two of them cried tears of blood.

Suddenly God appeared in the heavens above. He reached out with the Iron Fist. At first the two were sore afraid, but the fist held a rose.

“I fucking love you and miss you desperately, mate,” said Ozzmandroid.

“Oh, don’t be such a fucking pussy,” said God, swatting at a cluster of flies that had landed on his muttonchops. “You ARE the Iron Man.”

A floating doppelganger of the director of Lucifer Rising, Kenneth Anger himself, drifted into view. The sky cracked open like a vortex and a sliver of black nightmare flew down from the sky and speared Sgt. Fontaine into the Ozzmandroid.

“I think I’m going to ascend both of you to Heaven n’ Hell along with my matey Ronnie James Dio,” said God.

“Good cross check in ecstasy, mate,” said God. 

Nico suddenly appeared, her eyes bug eyed wide open with pinned pupils laser-pointed at the trio from her sunken Death Space where she resided permanently in the dark with guttering black candles and a rictus grin perma-frosting her face like a marble index out of William Wordsworth.

“I’m zo happy you vill be choining ussss for all too-morrow’s paaaaties….” Nico cackled, then passed out once more.

Guilt Trip

The ATM was a drive-thru, sparing me the hassle of getting out of my old Honda. I had used this very machine an hour and a half ago. A two-hundred-dollar withdrawal from my checking account. The money was already gone; now it belonged to the blonde escort in the smoke-colored Charger riding my ass.

I owed “Sexy Sammy” fifty bucks. The two hundred had gotten me your standard suck and fuck. I had pumped away between her chunky thighs, pulled out, and dumped my load on her sizable tits. I had finished like this with other sex workers, perhaps three or four, with no problems whatsoever. 

But Sammy—well, she wasn’t having it . . . 

No sooner had I emptied my ball bag than she frowned and said, “That’ll cost you extra.” I had laughed dismissively. “I ain’t kiddin’, baby,” she had continued. “You paid for half and half. I didn’t say nothin’ about you poppin’ off on my titties.”

She hadn’t been joking. She had, however, been full of shit. But I was hesitant to protest. Her online ad had read Totally Independent Provider, but that could’ve been more BS, and the last thing I needed was some irate pimp showing up at my apartment to collect. 

This is why a lot of guys preferred the incall; they didn’t want the girl to know where they lived. Incalls were cheaper, but the risk of a sting operation was much greater when you went to her location, usually a motel. One too many episodes of COPS had given me a fear of walking into a trap, hence my willingness to pay extra and have the party at my place. 

Now, inserting my debit card into the slot, I regretted this decision. Fifty dollars was nothing to sneeze at. Still, I didn’t want to get my ass kicked, or worse. It all hinged on her ad, and whether or not I believed her claim of independence. 

Sitting there behind the wheel, my finger roved over the keypad. I regarded the computerized screen as if it were a smear of fresh dog shit on the sole of my shoe. I felt emasculated, felt like a total pussy for going along with this without so much as a peep of dissent. We had agreed on two hundred dollars for head and straight sex, which she had provided. I had paid her. End of story. I didn’t owe the bitch a goddamned dime. 

“Fuck this,” I muttered, plucking my card from the machine. I threw my car in drive. The Charger’s headlights made me squint as I peered in the rearview mirror, squint at Sammy, her face twisted with rage, as she got out of the car and rushed toward my open window. 

“Get back here, motherfucker!” 

I sped away, leaving her standing there in a short black dress which allowed for easy access. You wouldn’t have known from looking at her that she had a clit ring. 

Or maybe you would. 

***

I spent the remainder of my conscious night drinking beer and peeking through dusty miniblinds. My nerves were shot. I was a paranoid mess. Every car sound in the parking lot made my heart race. I imagined the worst, imagined some enraged flesh-peddler kicking down my door and pistol whipping me in front of the sofa. 

This went on for hours. It was just past two in the morning when I started to feel better. And this wasn’t just from being drunk, which I most certainly was. Sammy had had plenty of time to inform her pimp of what had happened. He could’ve come over and kicked my ass a dozen times already. This led me to believe that her ad had been on the level. Totally Independent Provider, I thought. The truth. She worked alone. 

Granted, she could always come back with some other guy, her boyfriend and/or dealer. But this was unlikely. She was too busy serving clients, too busy making payments on that smoke-colored Charger and feeding her opioid habit. 

By the time I got in bed and turned off the light I was feeling much better, convinced that I had gambled and won.

***

I opened my eyes to a hangover and somebody knocking loudly on my door. I preferred the former to the latter. Hangovers were nothing new. A late morning visitor, on a Sunday no less, was entirely unfamiliar territory.  

Fearing the worst, I got out of bed and padded across dirty carpet in my T-shirt and boxers. Imagine my relief when I pressed my eye to the peephole and saw Indu, my Indian neighbor, out on the landing. I unlocked the deadbolt and opened the door. 

Indu had moved in a few months prior. We had little contact. I heard her coming and going, smelled her cooking, saw her packages piled in front of the door. Indu didn’t own a car. She had everything delivered. The few times I had seen her around the property she wore a backpack and walked with a fast and purposeful stride, like she knew exactly where she was going and how long it would take to get there. 

“Sorry to disturb you,” she said, her face etched with concern, her manner tentative. “You drive the red car?” 

“Yeah,” I replied. 

“Somebody busted the window . . .” 

I was nonplussed. My head foggy, legs weak. I needed a big glass of water and some coffee. 

“The police are on their way,” Indu told me.

That woke me up. “The police?” 

“I just called them. I’m surprised somebody didn’t notice it earlier . . .” 

I wasn’t. The tenants at the Las Palmas Apartment Homes tended to mind their own business. If somebody had even spotted my window, they had probably attributed it to a volatile domestic dispute, the wicked handiwork of a disgruntled spouse or girlfriend; in essence, none of their concern. 

I wanted to slap Indu for being a model citizen. She had unwittingly compounded my problem in a big way. Cops, I thought with a sinking feeling. Fucking great. I left her on the landing while I went to my bedroom and put on some shorts and sneakers. Then I followed her down the exterior stairs to the parking lot. 

My poor old Honda had seen better days. The driver’s side window had taken a serious ass whipping. Spiderwebbed glass remained in the frame, but enough had broken away to allow the bastard to reach inside and unlock the door. 

I crouched and peered into the cabin. The stench punched me in the face. “Jesus Christ!” I winced and retreated in disgust. 

Indu stood a few feet behind me, blessedly oblivious of the revolting odor. Lucky for her, there was no wind to speak of, not even the slightest breeze to carry the smell of fresh shit. 

I couldn’t believe it. The window, yeah. I could see Sammy coming back in the early morning hours to vent her anger on my glass. Keyed paint. Slashed tires. I could see all of that and more. But this . . . 

The deranged prossie had taken a dump on the driver’s seat. 

Despite having pulled away at the first noxious whiff, I doubled over and gagged. My hangover didn’t help matters, this and the brutal heat conspiring to make me puke on the pavement. 

“Ohhh,” Indu remarked. 

Poor girl. She was getting more than she had bargained for. Did she regret knocking on my door, regret involving herself in this tawdry affair of her neighbor’s? I imagined so.  

This was no way to spend a Sunday. 

***

No sooner had I stopped puking than the police arrived. The first officer on the scene was young and rangy, his hair buzzed like a soldier’s. He was polite and thorough. 

“I called,” Indu spoke first, then answered the officer’s opening questions, explaining exactly how she had come to discover my damaged car. I pictured the whole thing as she talked. Indu walking down the stairs, weighted down with that backpack of hers, going God knows where, when she suddenly spots my car and stops in her tracks. Out comes her smartphone and we’re off to the fucking races . . . 

I wouldn’t go so far as to call a hooker taking a dump in my car a godsend, but it did spark a line of investigatory reasoning which worked to my advantage. 

“This was personal,” the officer said, more to himself than me. “Overkill . . .” 

The word hung there between us. He was fishing, hoping I would open up and come clean. 

“Yeah,” I said, looking at my sneakers and scratching the back of my head, “Thing is—um—I’m pretty sure—well, yeah—I know who did it . . .” 

Meanwhile, backup had arrived. The second officer was black, heavy, old. He approached my car, stopping in his tracks when the white officer said, “I wouldn’t get too close, Monty. She don’t exactly smell like roses . . .” 

Arms crossed, the white officer stood there before me and listened patiently while I fed him a line of bullshit about an angry ex-girlfriend. 

“We broke up last week,” I told him. 

“Who broke up with who?” he asked me. 

“I broke it off,” I said

“Does she still live here?” 

“No way.” I shook my head for emphasis. “I kicked Gina out.”  

He asked me if I wanted to press charges. I hemmed and hawed, acting like I was really torn on the matter, acting like it was just chewing me up inside. 

“It’s entirely up to you,” he stated. 

“No,” I finally told him. “Gina’s got enough problems. I don’t want her to go to jail . . .” 

He scowled at my car, then met my eyes. “You’re a better man than me. Good luck, buddy.” 

His silent colleague seemed amused yet hardly surprised by the whole affair. No doubt he had seen it all. Both officers, I knew, had lost all respect for me. And I couldn’t blame them. What kind of man lets his ex-girlfriend get off scot-free after she breaks in his car and craps on the driver’s seat? 

By the time both cruisers wheeled out of the parking lot, Indu had returned to the safety and sanity of her own apartment. I went back to mine and searched the cabinets for cleaning supplies. I was in luck. I found a canister of Lysol fabric disinfectant which I had bought some months prior after coming home from work and finding rat feces on the couch. I didn’t have disposable rubber gloves, so I just used my yellow dishwashing gloves. Best of all, I had a mask left over from the pandemic. 

It was a foul job. The heat made it damn near unbearable. But I got thorough it without throwing up a second time. 

My cloth seats were black. You could hardly tell where Sammy had dropped a deuce. You could still smell it though; the Lysol helped yet failed to totally mask the odor. I opened up the last of my black trash bags and spread it out on the driver’s seat. Windows lowered, sunroof open, I drove to the dumpster and thew away two soiled rags, the gloves, my mask, and some jagged pieces of safety glass. 

I started to drive back to my apartment, then decided against this. My car needed to air out. I got a 20 oz. Gatorade at the corner store, then hit the interstate and put my old Honda through her paces. She shimmied at 60 mph, so I stayed in the right lane and kept her at 55, content to let the other motorists, of which there were few, pass me by as the wind whipped my hair. 

The trash bag was a temporary fix until I could get a proper seat cover. The sooner the better, I reasoned, taking the next exit and circling back the way I had come. AutoZone had just what the doctor ordered. The beaded seat covers were tan and breathable. Ideal, the florid clerk told me, for hot weather. I threw in a cheapo pine-scented air freshener. Everything came to just under forty bucks. The seat covers were thirty-five, a small price to pay for placing a protective barrier between my bony ass and a seat Sammy had used for a toilet. 

***

I stopped at a red light several blocks from my apartment, eager to get home, take a shower, and eat something, when I noticed the billboard . . . 

PORNOGRAPHY: GATEWAY TO HUMAN TRAFFICKING, the sign read, text above the closeup of a young lady’s face. Her terrified eyes met mine. Her mouth was covered with duct tape. At the bottom of the sign was a hotline to call should I suspect something of this sort. 

Despite driving through the intersection several times a week, I had never noticed the sign. Of course, it could have been new. Or I could have been lost in my own thoughts.  

I raised the Gatorade to my mouth, swilled the dregs. My stomach grumbled. I tried not to look at the young lady’s eyes, but they were like a magnet for my gaze. Even when I managed to look away for a second or two, glancing at the traffic light or the road ahead, I could feel her looking at me. 

The knuckles of my left hand had turned white on the steering wheel. The light was taking forever. I shifted in my seat. The beads massaged my back. What with the Gatorade and the new seat covers, I should have felt better than I did. 

Sammy was no victim. If anything, she should thank me for refusing to press charges. Because she was definitely the culprit. A guy would have rapped on my door or waited for me in the parking lot. Sammy was flying solo. Nobody was holding her against her will, nobody was making her do something she didn’t want to do. She wasn’t like the young lady on the billboard, her situation was entirely—

A bleating horn made me jerk. Heart hammering, pulse pounding, I regarded the SUV in my rearview mirror. 

“Okay, okay. Chill out, asshole . . .” 

I drove through the intersection, no longer in a hurry to get home, no longer in a hurry to do much of anything.