Want a Dance?

There was a brick wedged in the dressing room’s fire door, keeping it ajar. Serena nearly tripped over it, out of the putridly aromatic club and into the cold smoggy alley. A woman in a plaid bikini top and schoolgirl skirt sat on the gray concrete step, smoking.

“Hey. Mandy, right?” Serena took out her cellophane pack. 

“Yeah. You’re Serena,” she said. “On break already? You’ve only been here an hour.”

Serena grunted like a wolf as she lit the cigarette between her two neon-pink talons. “I couldn’t take it anymore. I slept all day then woke up feeling like shit.”

She sat down next to Mandy, which made Serena notice the contrast in their personas. Serena’s role was the tall statuesque blond. Mandy was the “little girl” all the older men fetishized. Together they must have looked like a comedy team. 

The thumping bass from Angelina’s set made the concrete slab vibrate. 

“Did you eat anything?” Mandy asked. 

Mandy was nice, but Serena didn’t think much of her. She was scared of her own shadow. Serena kept track of who got lap dances each night and Mandy was always at the bottom because she wouldn’t be aggressive.

“My dinner was a lime energy drink and that shit does nothing for me anymore. I feel so out of it. I might just go home.”

“It’s not worth it if you’ve already paid your house fee.” Mandy’s tinny voice made Serena grit her teeth.

Serena took a pull. Her stupid 100s were so long that if she didn’t smoke fast, the manager would yell at her. 

Back in the dressing room, they could hear Angelina complaining about her feet. Heather, the MILF, interrupted.

“Let me see those… oh, honey-child, you should get some better shoes. Something durable and sturdy, with an ankle strap. And don’t do your make-up here. There’s no dressing room as good as the one at home.”

Serena blew a plume of smoke into the night air. “I was never that bad, was I?”

Mandy shrugged. “Doesn’t take anyone long to learn the ropes. We’re not doing science.”

“I don’t know if you can say that about Angelina. Have you seen her make-up? It’s so cheap, looks like kids’ watercolors. She needs to get that stay-proof stuff. It’s expensive, but it works.”

Mandy took one of her last puffs. “Some of the make-up I go cheap on, like blush and eyeliner. Stuff that doesn’t sweat off.”

She stood, wobbling on her glittery platforms. As she swung around, her shoe knocked into a metal coffee can next to the slab. Flat dollar bills fluttered out like leaves in the wind as it rolled away.

Mandy froze. “Oh no. No-no-no-no-no-no-no-no.” 

She scrambled after them. Her silver sequined mini-dress hugged her ass as she bent for each bill.

Serena watched with confusion. Mandy seemed absolutely harrowed, hyperventilating as she chased after each dollar like she was in a money booth. As if even losing one would be punished.

Catching her breath, head flicking side-to-side, she said “Do you see any other dollars? Did I get them all?” 

“Um, I think so?” 

Mandy stuffed them into the coffee can and placed it upright. It was full of singles, some clean and some crumpled. 

“What the hell was that all about? What is that thing?” Serena asked.

“It’s for… maybe Heather can tell you better.”

Serena furrowed her brows. “Tell what better?” 

Mandy didn’t say. Serena followed her back to the dressing room. 

Heather, Angelina, and a few other dancers were crowded around the mirrors, touching up their eyelashes. Serena’s eyes throbbed from the bright vanity lights on the wall of mirrors. “Heather, what’s the deal with the coffee can?”

“The coffee can?” Heather said. “Shit, no one’s told you about that yet? No one showed her?”

“I knew,” Angelina said, as if she expected a commendation.

“It’s a miracle you’re still alive. You better put a few bucks in tonight.”

“For what?”

Heather rubbed lotion on the stretched skin of her bolted-on breasts. “Each of us puts a tip in the coffee can during our shift. It’s kind of a ‘good luck’ thing.”

Serena scoffed. “You’re joking. What do you do with the money?”

“Nothing. It’s gone the next day,” Heather said with enthusiasm. “But the can stays.”

“You’re kidding,” Serena crossed her arms. “Hasn’t anyone bothered to find out what happens to the money?”

The girls looked at each other. “It’s for Tara,” Angelina said.

“Tara? Who’s Tara?”

Heather bit her lip and looked around. The other girls crossed and uncrossed their legs, looking away like dogs avoiding eye contact. Serena scowled like a mother angry at her child. 

“Someone better tell me who Tara is,” Serena said.

“Tara’s a dancer. Was a dancer. She worked here a few years ago.”

“So you’re leaving all this money out for Tara? Why? She can’t earn it herself?”

“She… she died.”

“You’re kidding,” Serena said. “You’re leaving out tips for a ghost?” No one respnded. “How’d she die?”

“You just… you just better start feeding the kitty from now on,” Mandy said in a whisper. “Otherwise, bad things could happen.”

Serena laughed. “Like what?”

No one answered. Mandy piped up, “One time I forgot, and the next night I only made ten dollars because the DJ booth broke down in the middle of my set.”

“I put in five dollars in accidentally. Next week, I had an eight hundred dollar night,” Angelina said.

Serena smirked. A night like that wasn’t rare, as long as you were smart enough to work during a bachelor party or when some third-string athlete walks in. She had nights where she made eight hundred. Some nights she made eighty. All the girls had ups and downs, so this didn’t impress her.

“Then what about me? I haven’t put anything in and I’m fine,” Serena said.

The girls looked at each other. “Maybe she gives you a grace period to get your act together.” Mandy shrugged. “Or maybe she forgives ignorance.”

Lord knows there’s enough in here, Serena thought. 

Heather stepped closer. “Look, just put a dollar in. We all do it. You’ll sleep better knowing you did. We all will.”

“No,” Serena sneered. “I’m not giving away my money for nothing. You’re probably funding some homeless lady’s crack habit.”

“It’s not a story,” said Mandy. “It’s real. Please, Serena.”

Stupid Mandy, pleading with her little girl eyes, those money-makers. 

Serena held up a dollar from her table–a crisp and fresh single from the changemaker behind the bar–and held it so everyone could see. “All right, fine, if you all are going to be bitches about it…” 

She stepped through the gap in the fire door, squatted in her mini-dress, and plopped the dollar in. When she turned back, they were all grinning with relief like idiots.

Serena remembered the Chinese woman that lived next door in her apartment when she was a kid. One day, she caught her prying the number four off her door. Little Serena stared and asked “What are you doing?” 

The woman jumped. “Number four. Bad luck,” she said, 

“Number four?” Little Serena couldn’t see how numbers could be good or bad. She watched her a while longer, then left down her hallway to play. The deepest thought she had about the incident was “How was she going to get her pizzas delivered now?”

***

Serena put a dollar in the jar every night, only because someone was usually taking a break at the same time and would glance between her and the coffee can. These stupid girls with their stupid superstitions. She didn’t notice any significant change in her luck, bad or good, and no one spoke of it again.

Tonight was full of ogling college jocks and lurkers in the back. Fifty dollars later she was giving a lap dance to a middle-aged office worker. Serena loved those types–single professionals with lots of disposable income. They knew it was all a fantasy and kept their hands to themselves. Total opposite of the college jocks who would challenge each other with how far they could bend the rules, testing their manhood. Not that they’d know what to do with one.

Tonight DJ Hankenstein was subbing for someone spending the night in jail. He’d worked for the club in the past so the manager had no issues calling him in. 

After she was done with the lap dance, she went back to give the DJ his tip and brought along a beer. 

“Good night tonight?”

“Okay,” Serena shrugged. “Do you know any girl named Tara? She used to work here.”

“Tara? Oh… yeah. Man, I miss her. She had this beautiful blue dress with bells on. On her ankles, little tinklers on her bra and panties. And she shook in time with the music.”

“You know what happened to her? Someone said she died.”

“There was a fire,” he said apathetically.

“What fire? In the club? I didn’t know there was a fire.”

Hankenstein looked away. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it. So Serena leaned forward, making sure her tits pressed against each other. 

He took a drink of beer. “I wasn’t there at the time, but the way I heard it, two morons started a fight next to the bar. One thing led to another. And I don’t know how but suddenly it’s on fire. Maybe from a cigarette or someone threw a flambe cocktail in someone’s face. I’m sure the building’s not up to code, so it went up like a straw house.” He downed the rest of his beer. 

Serena imagined the way they kept the bar had something to do with it too. Every time she touched it, her fingers came back sticky with years of spilled liquor. 

“I bet the office manager collected great on the insurance,” Serena said.

“Maybe. Anyway, everyone got out. But then Tara started freaking out. She kept trying to go back in and girls kept trying to hold her back. I think her dress was still in there? But then the girls were like ‘Where’s Tara? Where’d she go?’ She was gone and I guess she ran back in there ’cause no one ever saw her again.”

“But they found her body, right?”

He shook his head. “She was the only fatality. People said they could hear her screaming, but no one ran back in. By the time the fire department came, the screaming had stopped. First thing after they re-opened, I asked one of the girls where she was. She just started bawling.”

Serena suppressed her chills. “Sorry I asked.” 

“Should’ve seen her around Christmas time. ‘Carol of the Bells’, man…”

***

Goddamn rent, goddamn cigs, goddamn bills. Strippers were supposed to be rolling in cash. Thousand dollar nights. And here she was hanging up on another debt collector, reminding her of a credit card she hadn’t used in years. They were like librarians harassing her over an overdue book. She threw her cell against the dressing table. 

It was too much. She’d do anything to get a hit, but she didn’t even have the cash for that. Her dealer wouldn’t even take a blow job at this point–he’d had too many. 

She glanced at the back door. No one would know. No one could accuse her of theft–it wasn’t anyone’s money. In fact, by contributing, that made it partially hers. 

Maybe it was a rainy day fund for the dancers. For anyone who needed it. It wasn’t like they’d know.

She stayed until the dressing room was empty, then picked up her purse and left out the back. No one in the alley. She snatched every last dollar out of the coffee can and headed back to her car.

***

Serena got her hit and felt like a million bucks when she came in the next day. 

She walked in biting her bottom lip. The only person who said anything was the house manager who asked “Where’s your house fee?” Serena presented it from the cash left over. 

She danced until she was tired of the dullards and the dudebros refusing to tip. Her feet were sore, her legs were aching, and she was tired of watching everyone else clean up. She yanked her bag on her shoulder and stormed home. 

If the night wasn’t bad enough, the stupid car radio kept futzing out. The speakers emitted a weird jangling buzzing sound that itched her ears. She’d smack the dashboard and the sound would return in the middle of the next song. 

By the time she arrived at her apartment, she was ready to call it a night. She grabbed two fuzzy navel wine coolers from the fridge and chugged half of one before plopping on the couch.

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the damn remote wasn’t working. The batteries might have been dead, but she didn’t know where she kept new ones. She finally got off the couch and pressed the power button.

The ringing again. Did the TV make that noise? Was it doing another of those forced updates?

Want a dance? Someone whispered.

Was that her TV? The volume must have been down. She fiddled with the buttons until her list of recorded reality shows appeared. Her fuzzy navel was drained before the intro to Sibling Swap had finished.

Two bottles later, Serena turned off the TV.

Want a dance? The voice said again.

Serena knew she was drunk, but not hallucinating. 

“Who’s here?” 

In her haze, she had the presence of mind to get the pistol from her drawer. “I have a gun. If you come in here…”

Silence. Her door was shut and locked. She checked everywhere a person could hide–behind doors, in cabinets. Searching a one-bedroom apartment didn’t take long. Maybe someone next door was playing music too loud. The walls were wafer-thin after all.

“Heather, is that you? Mandy?” 

Nobody answered. 

The power went out. The neon lights from her window gave day-glo outlines to a few corners. 

Serena froze. It didn’t mean anything. Her crappy apartment lost power all the time. Just needed to wait for the super to flip the circuit breaker.

Gun still in hand, she backed into her bedroom. She set it next to the sink while she brushed her teeth, scrubbed off her make-up, then forgot about it. The first step she took into the bedroom was accompanied by the tiny sound of jingling bells.

She froze. The next step. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Another. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. 

The apartment was way too quiet. She should have called one of her friends to come over, but it was three in the morning. Instead, she backed into bed, holding her phone out like a talisman against evil.

Want a dance? The ringing of bells.

She sat up. “Who’s saying that?”

Ring. Ring. Ring.

Want a dance?

Serena lifted her covers. Nothing but air. When they fluttered back down, the tiny face appeared. The fleshy cheeks were burned, charred like crisped chicken. Eyes jellied and whited. The mouth dropped open. Its snake-like tongue stuck out and lapped.

Want a dance?

Serena shrieked, shook her arms, and fell out of bed. Before she landed, she fainted into unconsciousness.

***

Serena could hear them in the dressing room as she marched down the hall. 

Heather ran past Angelina, who ran past Angelina. “Where the hell are my tassels?”

“I didn’t take them. Did someone tell the DJ my song?”

“Bitch, tell him yourself. I’m not your slave. Mandy, are you going on as Noire or Diamond this time?”

“Sierra.”

“You better not be doing another euro-techno-shit song.”

Just a typical night in the club. Everyone looked up when she yanked the door open.

“Which one of you fuckers was doing it?” Serena yelled.

“Doing what?” Heather asked.

“Scaring my ass off. Who did it? Was it you? I bet it was you.” She pointed at Heather. Angelina stood between them. 

“What? What?” Heather said.

“Cutting my power. Sneaking into my room. I can call the cops on you.”

“What are you talking about?”

The club manager burst in. “What is going on here? What’s all this screaming?” 

Everyone yelled at once. Serena screamed over them, “I don’t know what she did, how she did it, but she went to my apartment and scared the shit out of me.” She turned to Heather. “Where’d you get the bells, huh? What it all for a joke or to teach me a lesson?”

Heather held up her hands. “Bitch, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I took the money out of the coffee can.”

“You did what?” Heather gasped. 

“You took the tips for Tara?” Mandy said.

“It wasn’t anyone’s money. It was just sitting there doing nothing.”

The manager’s face was red as a cherry. “I swear to god if someone doesn’t get out there, I will smack the shit out of all of you.” 

No one volunteered. 

Serena rolled her eyes and huffed. “Don’t think this is over,” she said to the girls, looking over her shoulder. 

Assembling her black lingerie while walking, making sure all the tear-away bits were secure, she headed to the stage. Of course, she was the only one to volunteer to get up there. She was the only one who worked for her money. All the rest of them lazy and accusatory. 

DJ Hankenstein’s boomed over the PA, buzzy and irritating. “Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be mesmerized by the luscious long limbs and spellbinding grace of Serena!”

Serena put on her game face and stepped out from the curtain. There were hoots and hollers from the crowd, although she couldn’t see them well as her eyes adjusted to the stage lights. She began dancing, writhing her body up and down, throwing out rock kicks, as Hank spouted pithy lines like “She’ll make you late to work and early to dinner,” and “show her you love her, put some gritty in that kitty.”

In the black gloom, all she could see were arms reaching out, holding dollar bills. She plucked them out, gave a little smile to each one, a little ass shake, and secured them in the garter on her ankle. 

After a while, she realized she was getting out of breath. How long was this song? She was happy to keep taking dollar bills from the stage, but at some point she’d need some water. 

 Something smelled like burning wood. Stupid kitchen staff must have left the wings in the microwave too long. 

Hands kept popping out, more than there should have been. She smelled roasting meat.

Each arm was covered in thin charcoal scales over strawberry-red flesh. Grease-black fingerbones gripped dollars between their index and middle fingers.

Serena stopped dancing. There were no exits. She was trapped in a fishbowl with only the stage and corpse hands wanting a dance. This was not an illusion, not a dream. The hands reached out for her, rising in the darkness.

Serena screamed and ran backwards, colliding with the curtain. There was no split–she couldn’t get out. They were closing on her. 

Then she was backstage. The hands of other dancers and the manager were holding her from running, trapping her. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Heather said. “Calm down.”

“What drugs is she on?” the manager said.

Serena realized she was screaming uncontrollably, then stopped. 

“Fine. Fine. Everything’s fine,” Serena said. Then she headed to the dressing room. 

***

The manager told her to go walk off whatever she was on, but to make sure to come back and finish her shift or he’d keep her tips. Serena didn’t even argue with him, she was too dazed, too overwhelmed. 

After half an hour of walking the city in a big brown coat, she felt more herself again. She must have had some kind of LSD flashback or something. Too many chemicals was affecting her brain. She was always able to tell a hallucination from reality before. Why couldn’t she anymore?

At the end of the night, near four in the morning, Serena returned to the club, entering through the fire door. The coffee can lay on the step, empty. Serena sneered at it. Stupid rumors were playing tricks on her. And she wasn’t going to let a ghost separate her from her cash. 

The dressing room was empty–Serena appeared to be the last dancer for the night. Everyone else had gone home. The room smelled like old pheromones and perfume. 

Up on the stage again, Serena wondered who she was dancing for. There was no one around the stage. For all she knew, the club was empty, but there might have been people in the back she couldn’t see. Nonetheless, she performed the standard routine, rolling around, primping like a model down the runway, clutching the pole with her legs in various positions and spinning around. 

Then she heard the gentlest tingling of a bell. 

Her legs were wrapped around the pole at the time and she nearly fell off on her ass. How did she hear that–it’s not like the club was dead quiet. Obnoxious R&B bass still thrummed out of the speaker, unpinged by bodies in the way. 

“Want a dance?”

No, this was just another illusion. Another acid trip by her mind. She’d drink some electrolytes when she got home and this would all be fine. Just a flashback. 

“Want a dance?” The bells got louder, ringing with fervent intensity. As if to say they would not be ignored. 

She smelled a fire, wood and the sharp acridness of burning plastic. She ignored it. Smoke clouded the black, blurring it with gray. She ignored it. She wasn’t letting daydreams get in the way of making bank. 

Flames crackled. Someone was banging on a door. Her tongue tasted like cigarette ash. Nope, she wasn’t going to let this fool her. 

Even the blistering on her skin was an illusion. The pain, that was a creation of her mind. A few times, she couldn’t resist the urge to cough, but she kept it suppressed most of the time. You couldn’t let anyone get you down.

Mind over matter.

Piranha Dad

Stanley P. Finch, a man whose existence was a carefully balanced ledger of order and domesticity, found profound solace in the anachronistic hobbies that filled his sparse free time. His hands, usually nimble with a calculator, found a different kind of precision in re-caning the delicate ribs of Victorian-era umbrellas, their intricate mechanisms yielding to his gentle, practiced touch. The scent of linseed oil and aged silk was as comforting to him as the subtle click-clack of his antique adding machine. Evenings often found him hunched over a workbench, meticulously rigging the sails of a miniature barquentine within the confines of a glass bottle, a task demanding an almost surgical patience. His home, a two-story ode to sensible suburban living, was less a house and more a vibrant, echoing chamber of life, perpetually overflowing with the joyous cacophony of his six individually named and intensely energetic children—Barnaby, Penelope, Theodore, Daisy, Mortimer, and little Clementine—and their equally boisterous, though infinitely more grounded, mother, Brenda. Stanley considered himself truly blessed, a veritable king in his meticulously organized, financially sound, and undeniably peculiar kingdom.

Yet, beneath the perfectly pressed pleats of his khakis and the perpetually perplexed furrow of his brow, there swam a secret so profound, so utterly bizarre, that it defied the very fabric of his meticulously constructed reality.  As the last rays of twilight bled from the sky, and the final bedtime story was read, an undeniable, primordial urge would stir within Stanley. With a furtive glance at the sleeping forms of his progeny and a hushed “Goodnight, dear” to a snoring Brenda, he would descend into his specially constructed basement. This was no ordinary subterranean space; it was a reinforced, soundproofed chamber, dominated by a gargantuan, industrial-grade aquarium, its murky waters swirling with an unseen current. Here, with a shudder that was both revulsion and anticipation, Stanley would shed his human coil. His skin, once soft and unremarkable, would ripple with an alarming speed, his teeth elongating into razor-sharp points, and his mild-mannered hazel eyes would ignite with a predatory, phosphorescent yellow. In these clandestine moments, Stanley P. Finch, the paragon of suburban normalcy, ceased to be, replaced by a sleek, iridescent torpedo of muscle and insatiable hunger: a full-grown, Amazonian piranha, eager for the ethically sourced, humanely dispatched, and surprisingly substantial livestock Brenda routinely acquired from “The Exotic Meats Emporium” – a euphemism for a surprisingly discreet back-alley operation.

The true moment of bizarre revelation, however, arrived on a blustery Tuesday evening, mid-game of a particularly cutthroat round of Monopoly. Young Timmy, perpetually on the verge of a tantrum, launched a miniature plastic top hat across the living room in a fit of pique. It sailed through the air with surprising velocity, arcing perfectly before splashing down into Brenda’s prize-winning collection of iridescent guppies, housed in a meticulously maintained, brightly lit aquarium in the corner. Before anyone could utter a syllable of protest, a subtle tremor passed through Stanley. His eyes, fixed on the board and mid-pronouncement on the depreciating value of Baltic Avenue, flickered with an alien gleam. Then, with a lightning-fast, almost imperceptible blur of movement, he was at the tank. A flash of silver, a disturbing gurgle, and the guppies, along with Timmy’s errant top hat, vanished into the swirling water. Stanley, seemingly re-emerged from his momentary trance, merely blinked, a single, glistening drop of water defying gravity on his impeccably clean chin. The family, still reeling from the shock of Timmy’s outburst and the sudden, inexplicable absence of aquatic life, simply attributed the phenomenon to a particularly agile and heretofore unknown family cat. Stanley, for his part, cleared his throat and calmly inquired, “Now, who owns Park Place?” His secret, for the moment, remained safe, swirling just beneath the surface.

Taboo

The downside of hooking up with your housemate is that when he brings someone else home you hear it. I’m all for compersion but earlier that night he’d said he would be in my bed. What happened: I was having a shitty night and texted him about it while he was at the club with the boys. 

“Be home at 2:12,” he said, the precision inspiring confidence, “and then I’ll give you all the snuggles you deserve.” 

At 2:20 he called me. “Hey roomie,” he said. “There’s a girl outside, do you mind letting her in?” 

I did, but I did. 

“Hiii,” she says, there on my stoop, shifting her weight from one foot to the other like she has to use the bathroom. 

She is gangly, I think, and then I think I’m a bitch for thinking it. 

In college hooking up with a housemate was taboo. We had an expression, “House booty is bad booty.” People would call it incestuous, and I hate that because that’s not what incest fucking is. 

The downside of being good at sex is that the guys who don’t want to commit to you text you out of the blue at one in the morning and you think it’s because they actually care enough to check how you’re doing but it’s actually because they just want to put together a threesome with you and the person they got serious with. It feels shitty, and I tell my housemate about this and that’s why he said he’d comfort me before he blew me off. Then, because I have no filter at three in the morning, I tell him that feels shitty, too. He knocks on my door in the middle of the night but I don’t answer, just turn my music up louder, like he’s my fucking father. 

Long ago I got it into my head that when it comes to sex, all experience is good experience. I had to believe that to survive some of those experiences (closet, basement). When I was eight a girl sat next to me on the school bus and told me I was ugly and I did feel it with my thick thighs and braces but I didn’t want to cry in front of her so I laughed instead, wild and without mirth, head thrown back then doubled over, insane laughter, and I didn’t stop until she looked scared and moved away. Long ago I started fucking like that. Like anything is cool and nothing hurts. The other person always taps out first. 

As I lay there listening to my housemate’s squeaky bedframe and gangly girl’s chatter I look up at the ceiling. I own this device that projects stars as little green lights, swirling. Looking at this artificial cosmos I think of how growing up I learned to pray, and how I still talk to God, even though I’m not sure He’s real, in full paragraphs—but some nights, like tonight, all I say is please. Eventually I can’t hear them anymore and I turn off the star projector. One star, one winking light remains. Envy’s green eye: my smoke detector. Heat rises, I think as I take the batteries out. Come to the thought of setting a fire.

I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.

Reginald Sterling, a man whose intellect was a finely-tuned Stradivarius in a world of kazoos, considered the morning light slanting across his mahogany desk. It was, he mused, a perfect representation of Q4 revenue projections: promising, yet highlighting the dust on his Fabergé egg paperweight. He buzzed his intercom.

“Penelope, my dear,” he began, his voice a rich baritone that had calmed numerous markets, “would you be a gem and bring me the preliminary data on the Düsseldorf acquisition? I wish to dissect its entrails before the ten o’clock. Also, a double-shot macchiato, dry as the Sahara, please. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

The words tumbled out of his mouth like drunkards from a pub, unbidden and unwelcome. Reginald froze. His own voice echoed in his ears, a bizarre, vulgar coda to an otherwise perfectly reasonable request. Where had that come from? He was a man of impeccable self-control. His bowels were fortresses of decorum, his trousers pristine fortifications.

A long, profound silence stretched through the intercom. Reginald could practically hear Penelope’s perfectly-coiffed head tilting in confusion.

“…Right away, Mr. Sterling,” she finally said, her voice strained with the effort of ignoring the inexplicable.

Reginald leaned back in his leather chair, his heart hammering a frantic, atonal rhythm against his ribs. He tried to rationalize it. A transient ischemic attack? A momentary, stress-induced aphasia with a curiously specific, scatological theme? He cleared his throat and tried an experiment.

“The quality of mercy is not strained,” he recited softly to his ficus plant. The words were clear, crisp, Shakespearean. He breathed a sigh of relief. It was a fluke. He continued, “It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

It happened again. The phrase latched onto the end of his speech like a linguistic remora, a foul, barnacle-like appendage to his otherwise flawless elocution. A cold dread, colder and more dreadful than a negative earnings report, seeped into his bones. This was not a fluke. This was a condition. A curse. An absurdist, existential predicament of the highest, or rather, lowest order.

Just then, his office door swung open. In swaggered Jack Walker, a man whose ambition was matched only by the vapidity of his insights.

“Reggie, old boy!” Jack boomed, plopping into the chair opposite the desk. “Heard you’re heading up the Düsseldorf deal. Big one. Hope you’ve got the stomach for it.”

Reginald regarded Jack with the cool disdain of a philosopher observing a particularly simple-minded mollusc. “Mr Walker, your grasp of corporate finance is, as ever, breathtakingly naive. The Düsseldorf acquisition is not about ‘stomach,’ it’s a nuanced play of leveraged assets and cultural integration. It requires a scalpel, not a cudgel. Your thinking is so linear it could be used to tile a bathroom. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

Jack’s smug grin faltered. His eyes, small and piggy, darted around the room as if searching for a hidden camera. “What… what did you just say?”

“I was explicating the manifold complexities of transnational mergers,” Reginald said, his mind racing. He had to control this, to deny it. But the more he spoke, the more inevitable the foul conclusion became. “It’s an epistemological tightrope walk, you see. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

Jack stared, a slow, malicious smile spreading across his face. He had found a chink in Reginald’s armor. A very, very weird chink. “Right. Well. Good luck with that, Reggie.” He scurried out of the office, visibly vibrating with fresh gossip.

The ten o’clock meeting was the main event. In the boardroom sat Herr Schmidt and his two lieutenants, Klaus and Dieter. They were formidable Germans from the Düsseldorf firm, men who valued precision, punctuality, and a complete lack of emotional incontinence.

Reginald, armed with a laser pointer and a brain firing on all cylinders, was magnificent. He wove a narrative of synergy and growth, a tapestry of financial projections so beautiful it could have hung in the Louvre. He deconstructed market anxieties, parried logistical concerns, and painted a future so bright, so profitable, that the Germans were visibly thawing. Herr Schmidt, a man whose face was a monument to sternness, even allowed a corner of his mouth to twitch upwards.

“And so,” Reginald concluded, stepping away from the screen, his arms open in a gesture of triumphant finality, “you can see that this is not merely an acquisition. It is a synthesis. A fusion of German efficiency and Anglo-Saxon dynamism that will create a new titan of industry, a veritable colossus bestriding the global market. The potential is not just significant; it is transcendent.”

The Germans nodded in unison. The deal was his. He had done it. He beamed, a feeling of pure, unadulterated victory washing over him.

“I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody.”

The silence that followed was not just a lack of sound. It was an active, malevolent entity that sucked the very air from the room. Herr Schmidt’s monocle, which Reginald had assumed was a permanent fixture, fell from his eye and clattered onto the polished table. 

Reginald did not blink. He simply bowed his head – once, regally – then gathered his notes with the solemnity of a man accepting exile. The Germans rose. No one spoke.

Two weeks later, Reginald Sterling was on the cover of Forbes. 

Jack Walker’s attempt to leak the boardroom incident had backfired spectacularly. Instead of seeing a man losing his mind, the market saw a disruptive genius shattering corporate platitudes. His affliction was now hailed as a paradigm of authentic communication. 

At a press conference celebrating the finalized Düsseldorf deal, a reporter asked for the secret to his success. Reginald smiled serenely. “It is simply a matter of ruthless focus and unwavering belief in your core strategy. I just shat my pants. Don’t tell anybody. They already know.” 

The room erupted in applause.

Zillowtopia

“BRING ME LEBRON! HURRY UP, STU!” Stacey Schmaltzberg screams at her husband while her fingers work furiously inside her purple cotton panties. She leans back in her leather office chair and stares through squinted eyes at the laptop computer perched on the desk in front of her.

“Cavs, Heat or Lakers?” Stuart Schmaltzberg asks eagerly, standing behind Stacey in their home office.

“I don’t care what team, Stu! JUST GET ME MY FUCKING LEBRON!” Stacey shouts while her fingers pick up speed.

“Okay,” Stu replies as he hurries through the office door. “But I have to go to the garage and get the dolly, so it may take a few minutes.”

Stacey eases into a steady rhythm and bites down on her lip with her eyes closed. After a few moments, she opens her eyes and stares back at the laptop screen, where a Zillow.com web page reads, “Zestimate: $775,000,” under her Boca Raton property address. Stacey parts her lips and moans softly, then closes her eyes and slides her fingers in deeper.

“OK peaches, I got your man!” Stu announces excitedly as he pushes a small handtruck into the office. Strapped to the handtruck is “Lebron” – a 6’8” dark brown thermoplastic elastomer male sex doll wearing a red basketball jersey with a gold number 23 printed on front. Lebron is naked from the waist down with a fully-erect penis. Stu quickly unstraps Lebron from the handtruck, then lays him on his back in the middle of the carpeted office floor. He looks up at Stacey with a smile and exclaims, “Bring it on, showgirl!”

Stacey pushes up from her chair, slides off her panties, then hurries over to Lebron and steps over him so she’s straddling him with her feet planted on either side of his bare hips. She bends her knees and descends toward a sitting position as she grabs Lebron’s long thick shaft. But she stops mid-squat and looks up angrily at Stu. “He’s dry as a desert, Stu! Lebron is supposed to be self-lubricating! I can’t dry-dock this fucking Clydesdale!”

Stu stammers, “Sorry, hon, but his lube ran out after the Cohens’ pool party last month and I forgot to replace it. But I can go get Mad Max or Conan or Elon. They’re all fully-lubed and ready to go.”

“For fuck’s sake, Stuart!” Stacey screams as she sits down on Lebron’s thighs, still holding his shaft. “Just go get the Uber from the bathroom. And hurry up!” Stacey starts to grind her crotch against Lebron’s muscular thigh.

“What Uber? Why do we need an Uber?” Stu asks in confusion.

“The Uberlube, you fucking moron! It’s sex lubricant, Stu! It’s in my medicine cabinet next to the Voltaren. Now hurry up!” Stacey shouts as she grinds harder against Lebron’s thigh.

Stu runs off to the bathroom and returns seconds later holding a small plastic bottle. He quickly uncaps the bottle, bends over and squeezes clear lubricant onto Lebron’s protruding penis, then uses his other hand to spread it around evenly.

Stacey grabs the bottle out of Stu’s hand, squeezes some lube out onto her fingertips, then reaches down and rubs her fingers between her open thighs. She raises to a kneel and moves herself over the head of Lebron’s penis, then slides down his shaft until her pale, flabby, cellulitic butt cheeks rest on his upper thighs. She rips a loud fart against Lebron’s testicles.

“Help me get going, Stu,” she says to her husband as she leans forward and places her hands on Lebron’s broad shoulders. Stu sits down on Lebron’s knees behind Stacey, then presses his hands against her bare butt cheeks with a gentle shove to move her up Lebron’s shaft. Stacey begins to ride Lebron and moan, “Ohhh fuck, Lebron.”

Stu stands up while Stacey speeds up her rhythm. She squeezes Lebron’s jersey in her fists while she rocks back and forth, spewing out loud open-mouthed grunts. After a few moments, she tries to turn over onto her back with Lebron’s penis still inside her but is unable to complete the pivot. 

“Help me, Stu! Fucking help me here!” Stacey yells out.

“Are you going reverse cowgirl?” Stu asks.

Stacey stares up at him incredulously. “Really, Stu? Does this look like a reverse fucking cowgirl? Now get over here and flip us, goddammit!”

Stu hurries over and hoists Lebron over on top of his wife while she lies flat on her back. She bends her knees while Lebron’s bare hips and thick-muscled butt part her thighs. 

“Oh Jesus, I strained my back again!” Stu yelps out, grabbing his lower back.

“Fuck your back, Stu! I’m so close right now I just need you to push him so I can finish off!” Stacey pleads from beneath Lebron. “And you should have sprung for the electric hip thrusters if you were so worried about your back, you cheap bastard!”

“It would’ve cost an extra $500 and we were trying to save for Jonah’s bar—”

“Just shut the fuck up and push that black ass for me, you goddamn tightwad!”

Despite the sharp pain ripping through his back, with tears welling up in his eyes, Stu kneels down and clenches Lebron’s butt cheeks with both hands, then thrusts Lebron’s hips back and forth between Stacey’s thighs while her moans intensify. “Oh yes, oh yes, oh my Jesus fucking YES!”

Stacey’s moans become one continuous high-pitched wail while Stu’s back pain escalates with each forward thrust – a sharp dagger piercing through to his spine. 

“Ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-ohh-fuckkkkk!” Stacey belts out, bucking her hips until she climaxes in one final scream, “AHGHHHHH!” Completely exhausted, she gasps in air as her body tension releases and she collapses back to the floor. “Okay, Okay, Okay,” she pants.

His back on fire with excruciating pain, Stu collapses forward onto Lebron – causing his full body weight to push Lebron down onto his wife.

“Get off me, Stu, you’re crushing me! I can barely breathe, now get the fuck up!” Stacey shouts from beneath Lebron.

With his last ounce of energy, Stu pushes himself up and rolls over onto his back next to Stacey and Lebron, breathing heavily with his hand on his chest. “Oh my God, I think I’m having a heart attack,” Stu groans painfully. 

Ignoring her husband, Stacey pushes Lebron off of her while sweat pours down her pudgy red face, streaming over her loose jowels and down her neck. “Get me a towel, Stu,” she says as she catches her breath. “I’m sweating like a pig.”  

Stu doesn’t answer, lying flat on his back with his hand pressed to his chest, breathing slowly with his eyes pinched shut and face twisted in pain.

Stacey sits up and her soft gut laps over her pelvis, settling in just above a thick patch of gray pubic hair. She takes a deep breath, then stands up and hobbles to the bathroom while Stu remains in a prostrate position on the floor.

After toweling off and putting her clothes back on, Stacey steps over Stu and Lebron, then plops down heavily into her office chair. She refreshes the laptop screen and types something into the Google search query box. She selects a website and looks at it quickly, then picks up her phone.

“Hello, you’ve reached Home Equity Hunks, South Florida’s leading home equity lender, making all your financial dreams come true,” says an automated voice on the phone. “If you’re an existing customer, press or say 1. If you’re a new customer, press or say 2.” Stacey presses 2 on her dial pad and the automated voice continues, “If you’d like to hear options for a new—” Stacey presses 0 before the voice can finish. After a brief pause, the voice resumes, “I’m sorry, but—”

Stacey interrupts the automated voice, frantically screaming into her phone, “Operator! Human being! I WANT A LIVE FUCKING PERSON!”

“Please hold for a dedicated loan hunk,” the automated voice says.

“Oh Jesus, hurry the fuck up,” Stacey groans. “I don’t have time for this shit.”

After about thirty seconds of soft hold music, a live voice pipes up, “This is Chaz Beaumont, loan hunk number 028746. And whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with today?”

Stacey says her name and asks, “I sent my loan application in yesterday morning and still haven’t heard back. What’s going on?”

Chaz replies, “Ma’am, the loan review process typically takes at least ten to twelve business days, and then—”

“I don’t have that much time!” Stacey shouts. “My daughter’s summer camp tuition is due in a few days, and then we have to buy our plane tickets to Paris. I need the money now!”

“I understand, Mrs. Schmaltzberg, but this is a regulated process and we—” 

Stacey cuts him off. “I have the new Zillow valuation for our house – $775,000 – it’s got more than enough equity for another fifty thousand cashout. This ain’t my first rodeo, Chaz.”

“Well ma’am, I’ll see if I can get the review process accelerated for you but I’ll need some basic information first. What’s the total mortgage debt on your house, ma’am?”

Stacey pauses, then mumbles, “About $520,000.”

“And how much did you buy the house for, ma’am?”

After another pause, Stacey answers, “$310,000 about fifteen years ago, but Zillow says it’s worth almost $800,000 now.”

“Well you’re obviously no stranger to home equity loans,” Chaz chuckles. “Have you borrowed from Home Equity Hunks in the past, ma’am?”

“No,” Stacey answers irritably. “We used another home equity lender for the first two loans, then Cashout Studs for the third one. But we can’t—”

“Don’t tell him about the Loan Depot assault charge and restraining order,” Stu whispers into Stacey’s ear, having risen from the floor to join her at the phone. “It might disqualify us.”

“And your annual household income, ma’am?” Chaz asks methodically.

Stacey answers, “Well it fluctuates since my husband is in between jobs right now, but—”  

“For now you can just tell me the adjusted gross income number on your last tax return, ma’am,” Chaz responds flatly.

After a long pause, Stacey mumbles, “About $85,000.”

“And what do you do for a living, ma’am?” Chaz asks.

“I’m a legal assistant at a foreclosure defense law firm, and a sales associate at Bloomingdale’s in Boca Town Center on weekends and holidays,” Stacey replies.

“Let me put you on a brief hold while I speak to my manager, ma’am,” Chaz says.

Stacey looks over at Stu with a scowl. “If we don’t get this money, it’s your fucking fault. You’ve made about thirteen dollars in the last twenty years, Mister Mom. Apparently I missed the chapter of the fairy tale where Prince Charming quits his job and sponges off the Fairy Princess for the rest of his fucking life, Mr. Harvard MBA!”

Stu looks down in embarrassment. “Stace, please, you know I—”

Chaz is back on the line. “Thank you for holding, Mrs. Schmaltzberg. I just spoke to my manager. Unfortunately we’ll be unable to accelerate the review process for your loan application. You should receive a formal response from us within fourteen days. Now is there anything else I can help you with today, ma’am?”

“Listen to me, Chaz!” Stacey pleads, “We need – I mean NEED – this money now! Do you have children, Chaz?”

“Well, no ma’am, but—”

“Then you’ve never had to pay $50,000 for a bar mitzvah, or $15,000 each summer for Lake Winnipesaukee sleepaway camp, or $10,000 for a vacation to Europe for a family of four. Life is very expensive these days, Chaz. And we’re still the only family we know who doesn’t have a backyard pool – we have to use the fucking community pool! And we drive a seven-year old Mazda and a six-year old Honda while every time I turn around I see a brand new BMW, Mercedes or fucking Lexus. Literally everyone has one. The Schaumbergs just bought a Porsche for their sixteen year-old daughter. IT’S FUCKING EMBARRASSING, CHAZ!”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Schmaltzberg, none of those things sound like real necessities. Just some friendly advice, ma’am, maybe you should try living within—”

“FUCK YOU, CHAZ! You know nothing about me! I work like a dog, two jobs—”

“Goodbye, ma’am.” The line goes silent.

“Asshole!” Stacey screams into the phone, then glares at Stu, “Go get the firepower, Stu, we’re going into battle mode.”

“But hon, we can’t have another Loan Depot situation. We’re lucky we didn’t go to jail over that. We need to think of the kids.”

“Fuck Loan Depot, fuck Home Equity Hunks, fuck the fucking kids!” Stacey shouts. “Now go get ready and meet me at the car in ten minutes! Move your ass, Stuart!”

Stacey takes a deep breath, looks in the hallway mirror and composes herself, then  walks out the front door.

Jodi Simon, the Schmaltzbergs’ nextdoor neighbor, stands at the edge of her yard as Stacey hurries down the driveway to her car. “Oh hey, Stacey!” she shouts. “Does Jonah know where he’s going to college next year? Rachel has it narrowed down to Duke, Emory and Vandy – still trying to decide.”

Stacey smiles over at Jodi. “Jonah got into those ones plus UF, Miami and a few more. But we’re so overwhelmed getting ready for our trip to Paris next month and then Leah starting at American Heritage after she gets back from sleepaway camp in New Hampshire, we just haven’t had time to even breathe let alone think about his college plans right now.”

“Wow!” Jodi replies, “American Heritage just raised its tuition to over forty thousand. You guys must be doing pretty well.”

Stacey nods with a smile and humble shoulder shrug. “Well, Stu’s hedge fund is doing okay I guess. I don’t know anything about that money of finance stuff but apparently it’s paying the bills.”

Before Jodi can say anything else, Stacey turns to her car and says, “Sorry Jodes, gotta go – late for one of Stu’s work things – but let’s catch up soon. Bye!”

Nosy little bitch, Stacey thinks as she steps into the car, shutting the door behind her as Jodi waves and then turns back to her yard.

Waiting in the passenger seat, Stacey looks down at her phone and shakes with fury, squeezing it so hard that her knuckles turn white, at the Facebook post staring back and boring into her skull. As soon as Stu opens the driver-side door and steps into the car, she sticks her phone into his face and shouts, “Look at this! The Silvermans are in fucking Barcelona to celebrate Ethan getting into Miami! We need that money, Stu! We need it fucking now!”

When they arrive at the Home Equity Hunks corporate headquarters, occupying the entire top floor of a high-rise office building in downtown West Palm Beach, Stacey hurries into the lobby clutching her Zillow printout with Stu in tow. “I need to speak with a senior loan officer immediately – it’s an emergency!” sheey says to the office receptionist.

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist replies in confusion. “Do you have an appointment, ma’am?”

“No but I’m sure a loan officer will want to speak with us when I show him this appraisal,” Stacey says proudly, holding the Zillow report out in front of her.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you’ll need to make an appointment if you’d like to meet with a loan officer. You can do so on our website. This is a private office and—”

“Well where the fuck am I supposed to go in the meantime, lady?” Stacey screams. “Back to the house with no pool? With shitty little cars in the driveway? What kind of life is that?”

The receptionist presses a button on her desk phone and speaks into her headset. “I need you guys in the lobby, Steve, we got another live one out here.”

Stacey turns to Stu and reaches her hand out. “Time for Plan B, Stu. Give it to me.”

On command, Stu reaches into his black trenchcoat and pulls out an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. “Uh Stace, maybe we should just—“

“Stop whining and give me the goddamn gun, numbnuts!” Stacey says as she grabs the AR-15 out of Stu’s hand.

The receptionist stands up from her chair with her eyes wide and mouth half open. Her head is blown apart before she can scream. Blood, brain and skull fragments splatter the wall behind her as Stacey’s (still smelly) finger rapidly works the AR-15 trigger. Stacey heads toward the door leading from the lobby to the interior offices.

Two armed security guards enter the lobby from the interior door with their guns drawn. Stacey mows them down with her AR-15 before they have time to react. They drop to the floor like flour sacks, their bloodied bodies riddled with bullets. Stacey steps over them and walks through the door.

AR-15 blazing, Stacey marches down the hallway and into the individual offices along the way, shooting anything that moves. Rapid gunfire followed by horrific screams fill the air as the body count piles up. Employees hide behind office furniture and cower in corners while Stacey continues her bloody rampage, screaming with a maniacal grin as her AR-15 fires off two rounds per second. Stu trails her, finishing off any survivors with a Glock 9 millimeter.

“Please, no!” Vern Cromwell, CEO of Home Equity Hunks, pleads from behind his leather office sofa after Stacey enters his corner office from the hallway. “Please, ma’am, put the gun down! Just tell me what you want!”

Keeping her AR-15 trained on Cromwell, Stacey removes the folded Zillow report from her front pocket and tosses it onto his desk. “Our house was worth 775K as of this morning. It’s probably worth over 800 by now, maybe 825. We just need a little home equity cashout.”

Cromwell unfolds the Zillow report with shaking hands and studies it briefly through his reading glasses. “What do you owe on the house and what’s your annual income?” he asks without looking up.

Stacey tells him.

Cromwell looks up at Stacey, then over at Stu, who’s just entered the office from the hallway. Cromwell raises his eyebrows and laughs. “Sorry but are you two fucking idiots? I mean, I thought I’d seen everything in this business, but you two morons have the financial intelligence of a mentally retarded billygoat!”

Stacey’s AR-15 clicks empty when she pulls the trigger to shoot Cromwell. “Get me more ammo, Stu!” she shouts behind her.

While Stu fumbles through his trenchcoat searching for an ammo clip, Stacey looks down at her phone. Horrified by what she sees, she throws the phone against the wall with a blood-curdling scream. She leans back against the wall and collapses to the floor, lowering her face into her hands as her body rocks with violent sobs.

“What’s wrong, poodle?” Stu asks. “I can’t find the extra clip, maybe we left it in—”

“Forget the ammo and just look at my fucking phone!” Stacey wails from the floor, pointing to her phone.

Stu picks up the phone and squints at its cracked screen. “I can’t see – what is it, peaches?”

“The Teitelbaums just bought a fucking plane! A FUCKING PLANE, Stuart! I just saw it on Deborah’s Instagram.” Stacey tilts her head back and closes her eyes. “Just kill me now,” she mutters.

“So what, Stace? Since when do you want a plane? We can’t even fly one.” Stu replies with genuine confusion.

“It doesn’t matter, Stu. Can’t you see that it doesn’t … fucking … matter!” Stacey cries out while shaking her head. 

Stu and Vern Cromwell watch Stacey silently, neither moving an inch.

Stacey thinks for a moment, then looks up at Stu. “My life insurance money – that’s it!” In one fluid motion, she grabs the AR-15 from the floor (forgetting that it’s empty), sticks the muzzle into her mouth and presses down on the trigger. The gun clicks empty.

“Uh, sorry to interrupt, ma’am, but most life insurance policies have a two-year suicide exception,” Cromwell explains. “When did you buy the policy?”

“About ten years ago,” Stacey replies. After a brief pause, she asks, “What floor is this?”

“Fifteenth floor, ma’am,” Cromwell answers.

“And that window – is it shatterproof?” Stacey asks, pointing to the floor-to-ceiling window wall.

“I don’t believe so,” Cromwell replies with a chuckle. “But I’ve never tried to find out.”

Before Cromwell or Stu can stop her, Stacey lowers her head and runs toward the window. From a full sprint, she dives at it headfirst from just two feet away. Wait’ll Deb Teitelbaum sees the new yacht we’re gonna buy with this money, Stacey thinks, smiling to herself as she launches. Stupid bitch’ll probably jump out the window.

Plugged

Standing behind her desk, Miranda wondered if students noticed that her gait had changed, even her tone of voice. Earlier she had locked herself in the washroom cubicle, took the package and lubricant out of her briefcase, followed the instructions, inserted the well-greased plug into her ass, wincing when it pushed through the sphincter, pulled up her panties, waited as she adjusted to the sensations, flushed the toilet, washed her hands, and then walking slowly, entered the classroom down the hall, three minutes late. Clenching her buttocks, she didn’t want it dislodged at inopportune moments.

A student sat in the front row, legs spread wide apart to give prominence to his crotch, the white statement in English on his black T-shirt loud and clear: MANWHORE. While Frida at the back of the class read out a passage in her halting English from the assigned story, Miranda wondered what the term meant and how it applied to Reinhardt. Did the youth sell his body? With his Germanic good looks and muscularity, he’d probably have customers lined up. His huge muscles were the most noticeable feature about him, and he wore clothes like the skin-tight T-shirt to draw attention to them. Reinhardt also drove a black muscle car to school, all noise and power; a fuck machine, really. The boys and girls couldn’t resist and Reinhardt knew it. Miranda privately admitted that she wasn’t immune to the student’s charisma. She fantasized about the student fucking her on the desk, her cunt thrumming and clenching around his cock. 

But the T-shirt seemed blatant and rude, even in this age of sartorial provocations. Really, discretion and appropriateness were obsolete notions for these students. Not that she should talk about appropriate behaviour, given the butt plug slipping in her anal canal every time she took a step. Miranda couldn’t quite describe the feeling aside from the fact that she liked the pressure, the up-and-down movement, and images of being tied down, maybe, or panting on her hands and knees and getting fucked by a student. Oh, it would hurt…at first…she had to prepare for the inevitable. Then she brought herself back from fantasyland to the blackboard and fluorescent lighting of a classroom smelling of student sweat and indifference.

With difficulty, Frida finished the passage. Miranda knew that Reinhardt had slept with Frida who wanted to be his regular girlfriend, but Reinhardt regarded love and romance as traps. She certainly knew the lad’s opinions. Fucking was great; guys needed to play, didn’t matter who their partner was; everything was permissible; it was all cool. Sex was nothing more than fun and games unless you wanted kids. Everyone should have fun; blowjobs were necessary, Reinhardt had written in his student journal, or words to that effect. Rough play, also great. The assigned topic was “Love and Sex” in a story of their choice, total freedom of expression allowed. Horny Reinhardt’s entry had startled Miranda awake from the semi-narcoleptic state she fell into when reading student papers. Reinhardt had simply used the story as a jumping-off point to write about his own sex life: about how much he loved shooting his load every day anywhere with anyone; a blowjob a day, at least one, even in the college library; fucking older teachers even, confessions which Miranda suspected the boy had pumped up like his arm muscles. Why? To impress her? To slip his cock into her cunt?

According to his journal, Reinhardt the MANWHORE (was that not also an insulting term?) had already fucked three or four girls and a couple of boys in the class. Everyone knew some professors slept with their students, but unless the students complained, no one else did, aside from the standard clucking of tongues and envious whispers behind their backs. Did Reinhardt ever use butt plugs? Could she safely ask that question?

Her students skittering with hormonal energy, immersed in the entertainment and advertising world of sex, Miranda wondered how they concentrated on physics labs and English essays when cocks crowed and cunts glistened. She struggled to attach herself to the moment, to keep from drifting away in reverie like a canoe broken loose from its mooring, to cut the ties here, to sever herself him from her inauthentic life. She sat down, if only to keep the plug in. Her master Kurt had bought it and commanded Miranda to conduct her last class with the device plugging her ass. Why should she plug herself? Miranda had protested, answered by Kurt’s slap across her face and mocking: like you don’t know, bitch. Just do it. Yes, she had obeyed, for obedience and submission thrilled her, and it seemed natural to follow master Kurt’s orders. And now, the plug secured all the way up, her buttocks clenched and unclenched and clenched again. Kurt had borrowed her car for the day after dropping her off at school in the morning, and Miranda would meet him in the parking lot after class. 

Time dragged. Some days she didn’t think she could go through the routine anymore. Before meeting Kurt, her sense of dying by increments had been tangible, and she would have died having lived an ordinary, unmemorable life. Liberation offered by Kurt and his  electric allure beckoned and led her into a new, transcendent life. She shifted on the seat, feeling the plug like a cock in her ass. Kurt had promised it would happen. Patience.

Kurt broke into and took over her tedious life. Electrons sizzled in the atmosphere. The leaden sky cracked and sunlight roared through. Wear the plug; it’s a start, bitch. Your ass needs training and a good fuck like any cunt. And so now she was practicing, getting ready. Yes, after showering this morning, directing the full force of the spray up her anal canal, although she didn’t think it could be as effective in cleaning it as an enema, she had inserted the butt plug, involuntarily gasping as the bulbous part squeezed past the sphincter, and pushed gently until all five flexible inches snuggled in her rectum. The flange at the end prevented it from going up any farther. Before dressing for school and driving to Kurt’s place she removed it, washed it, and promised Kurt that she would insert the plug again before class. He seemed annoyed and threatened punishment, which made her cunt wet, but he said this time it was okay. As long as it was in her ass when he picked her up later. 

Miranda knew there would be a larger plug after this one had served its purpose for a week or more, and after that conditioning, something larger still, and ultimately the real thing. A heavily-veined, bulbous headed throbbing cock. Like a soldier, Kurt had said, preparation and readiness were everything. Miranda imagined the size of Reinhardt’s cock; it grew impossibly large, like a horse cock, and her heart beat faster over the thought of it breaking into her like a stallion mounting a mare in heat. Not ideas she should be thinking about during class, she admonished herself. Of course, Kurt’s dick was equally admirable and she loved the feel of it in her cunt and mouth.

Miranda spoke faster, wanted time to speed up, so she could exit the classroom and meet Kurt in the teacher’s parking lot. They would drive back to the apartment and pass an hour or so together before Kurt left for the armory. Perhaps she would have to remove the plug and hoped the tip wouldn’t be covered in shit, knowing she’d be embarrassed in front of the soldier. She would stay at the apartment and prepare for tomorrow’s classes, watch videos, clean the tiny kitchen, and be awake when the soldier returned before midnight, and fucked and spanked her. Miranda’s mouth went dry, and she had difficulty concentrating on marking papers.

She lifted her ass off the seat imperceptibly and pushed down, as if she were fucking herself in front of the dazed students. The discomfort became mildly pleasurable. Some of the students, including Reinhardt, must have a secret life as well, special interests and games, besides ordinary fucking. Well, Reinhardt was not so secretive in his journal, but Miranda suspected more bravado there than truth. He did have muscles, though, and a bulging crotch which she couldn’t help noticing. He wrote that he wanted to star in porn films. Perhaps most of them were still too young, not yet sucked down into the bog of jobs, convenience, compromises, and pensions.

They had not experienced the randomness of death and violence like blood oozing out of smashed heads, bones splintered and crushed, or children’s limbs ripped out of their sockets, as Kurt had witnessed after the Taliban bombed a girl’s school outside Kandahar. The students’ digital gadgets connected them to nothing except mirror images of themselves. Hey, you brain-addled fuckers, Miranda could almost hear herself speaking in Kurt’s voice, connect with this: and she’d bend over, pull down her panties, and moon them with the butt plug plopping out of her ass.

“That’s it for today,” she announced, “have your journal entry written for next class. Be honest. Write whatever you think would interest me, but be true.”

Slamming books and scraping chair legs, their voices released like chattering birds, they filed out of the room, and she noticed how a group of admirers gathered around Reinhardt, the manwhore. Miranda was startled by the wink Reinhardt gave her, as if teacher and student shared intimate knowledge. In a sense, they had: allowed to write freely in their journals without fear of a teacher’s censorship and disgust, Reinhardt had been very free in his sexual confessions. Miranda had commented favourably and encouraged him to write more along the same lines. She fingered herself as she read his journal.

They had even enjoyed provocative conversations in Miranda’s office where Reinhardt, responding to her probing and questions about the entries, relaxed and spoke his mind and spread his legs wide to allow his teacher to admire his crotch, which he sometimes touched, although Miranda tried not to direct her eyes there. Reinhardt seemed willing to cross boundaries, to demolish the limits, if granted permission. Intimations slipped out with his words and flickered in his eyes. You should write more about this in your journals; Miranda had praised his frankness. Improve your English. What would Reinhardt think if he knew that his teacher, with her ass plugged, was on her way to a soldier’s apartment, a soldier who was her master? Would Reinhardt like to play with them? Would he bring Frida and would want Kurt to fuck her? Did she shave her pussy? Would Reinhardt wear leather boots? Deep-throat his professor, if Kurt gave his permission? Piss on her face and tits? The questions remained unasked, but Miranda still hoped for answers. All boundaries splintered and shattered ever since she met and submitted to Kurt. The word enslavement seemed to be more and more accurate, and Miranda whispered it like a confession of love.

She fancied taking risks with Reinhardt the manwhore. Ask the youth openly: have you ever thought about fucking me? Rumours abounded. She had heard about one or two colleagues sexually involved with Reinhardt. That Reinhardt was into anything. Did he dominate them? Did they submit willingly and joyously? Do you get boners in class? Is your cum heavy and luscious like Kurt’s? Maybe she should introduce the two. After collecting her things from his office and stuffing her brief case with student papers, Miranda stepped out and the butt plug slipped; she could feel it pop out of the sphincter. She reached behind and touched the flange of the plug inside her panties: yes, it was slipping out. She pushed it back in. 

Two hours max, the instructions said, at the beginning. It was a flesh-toned acrylic plug, shaped like an arrowhead, smooth and round, but tapered so the narrow part slipped past the sphincter with least resistance, discomfort beginning as the thicker part squeezed in. 

In the parking lot, Kurt had his arm outside the driver’s window, flicking a cigarette. Once she sat in the car and buckled, the butt plug secured against slippage, Kurt took another drag before starting the engine. He wore an army-issue T-shirt and Miranda admired her master’s biceps. 

The soldier switched the gears and the car moved into the road. Miranda stared at the boot pressing the accelerator. It needed to be polished. With her tongue, if master desired. Go with the fucking flow so I flow with fucking, Miranda recalled words from Reinhardt’s journal. Kurt squeezed her knee, and looked directly at him.

“You wearing it like I told you?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Good. You can play with it in your ass while I’m driving. You have my permission, bitch.”

Miranda clasped her hands, the butt sliding up as she pushed down on the seat, and nodded yes; she was doing what the soldier allowed her to do. She worked her buttocks, slowly fucking herself. An image of Reinhardt’s heavily-muscled arms holding the wheel of his car, the famous fuck machine, blocked out any compunctions. Lifting and lowering her ass, up and down as if she was actually fucking herself on Reinhardt’s relentless horse cock, feeling it, feeling it, getting used to it, and then Kurt replaced him and trained her like a recruit. As Kurt drove to his apartment, she imagined Reinhardt unbuckling his belt, pulling down his jeans, bending his professor over the hood of his muscle car and plugging her ass with his horse cock, plugging it with her master Kurt’s permission. Kurt gripped Miranda’s thigh and squeezed. She began breathing heavily and moaning. He blew smoke out with the words: 

“You’ll always belong to me, bitch. Keep fucking yourself.”

The Gymnast and the Night Demon

Jane was sitting at her table thinking dark thoughts about herself when the doorbell rang.  She cautiously looked though the peephole and viewed a pleasant looking dark skinned man with a package in her porch light.  Something about his appearance made her feel safe, so she opened the door.

The man introduced himself “Hello, I’m night demon Jerome here to help you.”  Jane started to laugh at this absurdity, but stopped as she saw Jerome change in appearance and get much larger.  The man or thing before her now was over seven feet tall, muscle bound with hair sticking out of his clothes.

Jerome apologized for his subterfuge and explained “I knew you wouldn’t have let me in if I came in my natural appearance, so I transformed.  Do not worry, I will not harm you, I know your problem, and will solve it for you.”

Jane couldn’t think of a rational response, so she said “Sure, my problem, you’d solve it.  First, what is my problem, how do you know what it is, and how will you solve it.”

“In the order that you asked:”

“You are a high level gymnast – made the Olympic team, in the Olympics and other tournaments, you’ve placed second or third, but never a first.  Because of the discipline required your menstrual cycle is messed up.  You’ve never had a serious romantic partner of either gender, and because of your appearance you are only hit up by perverts, mostly old males, who want sex with someone that looks like a prepubescent boy.”

“I found out by listening to you talking with other gymnasts about your problem.”

Jane interrupted “How did you do that?  I’ve never seen anyone like you before.”

“As a night demon, I can take several forms, as you should know.  During daytime, I disappear.” 

“The package I brought in is the beginning of your new diet.  I learned that you will retire in a year at twenty-five.  While you follow my prescribed diet, your body will transform to that of a sexy mature female.  It will make gymnastics a bit more difficult, but you can still compete until retirement.”

“I thought of two more questions.  Why should I believe you and why are you doing this?”

“In order that you asked, again.”

“Isn’t it more likely that I’m telling the truth than that I could do the shape-shifting you observed?”

“I’m one of the good demons whose purpose is to bring sexual healing to deserving humans.  Not that we don’t enjoy our job.  We frequently treat ourselves and our projects to rapture.”

Jane wasn’t a believer yet, but she had a request which might convince her.  “Can you change back to the man I saw at the door?”  He did, and she said “Please hug me on your way out.”

Jerome complied and pressed against her body with his arms around her waist.  The heat of his body and the erection she felt through their clothes gave her a full body orgasm.  Fifteen minutes later, he was gone and she found herself dazed on the floor.

Around a year later, Jerome came back to visit Jane in the original form she had seen him.  The new Jane was a happy beauty.  Jerome told her “Looks like the diet worked.  You are radiant.  How about the romantic front?  Afraid I’m had too many other projects to check in.”

“There are two guys who are serious about me.  Joe is a baseball player who strikes out in bed sometimes, but when he is on, he hits home runs.  He swings a big bat.”  Jane chuckled at that.

He is really good about getting me warmed up.  We experimented a lot and we know where the hot spots are.  We are both into nipples and necks and some other places I don’t want to tell you about.”

“Ted is a Yoga instructor who is an expert at all of the best positions.  He can do a slow burn or white heat.”

Jerome smiled and said “Sounds like my work here is done.”

“Not until I’ve thanked you appropriately”.  Jane led Jerome to her bed.  After a couple of hours of moaning and groaning, and friction leading to fire, Jerome departed.  Jane woke up the next morning thinking about a decision between Joe and Ted and whispered “Thanks Jerome”.

Tiny Fearsome Hurricane Force

Surprised I knew her language was Tagalog, she asked me out, so we met at Barley’s in Knoxville’s Old City for pizza and beer. She was so tiny she got drunk on one IPA and we had to go to Java City over on Jackson Avenue for coffee to let her sober up for the drive home.

We only kissed that first night, but that led to many more nights. She was a 23-year-old in-demand stripper, a single mother, and she wanted badly to be married. It took two weeks before she let me come to her place in the projects behind barbed wire fences and patrolling cops, but after that first time, she wouldn’t let me leave. She clung to me and passion ran deep. She was a goddamn tiger in bed, a lover and fighter. When she fought, storm clouds gathered and she was wicked fierce. But Holy Christ, these were the most violently explosive orgasms in history and that girl was the horniest person I’d ever met. She needed it at least five times a day and was always wet no matter what or where. It seemed like Heaven, at least for awhile.

(Yeah, I knew I was in it for all the wrong reasons… I’m not proud of it.)

After eight months of passionate tussling, of my continued refusals of marriage, of my telling her I wanted only an uncommitted relationship “for the time being,” having just been burned in a very long-term, decade-plus relationship, she apparently ran out of patience and told me out of the blue that she was moving to Michigan with an old boyfriend to get away from me and the city. An old boyfriend who was her son’s father. 

She called me at my new job and asked me for cash. I barely had any money – I’d been broke as shit for a year. I’d moved across the country at a bad time and hadn’t found work doing crap. Hell, I’d been staying at her place in the ghetto, braving both the cops and the bangers, sharing her mattress on the dirty bedroom floor. However, I’d recently gotten a crappy gig bouncing at a biker bar for $6 an hour, working very late nights and getting a few bruises for my effort. I wasn’t a huge guy, but I’d always broken other people’s bones faster and easier than they broke mine. 

Still, broke is broke. I told her I didn’t have any cash, but she said she knew I must have some money. She said “Just give me some – I’m moving. I need some cash, baby.” With flickering lashes and the whole show, which worked on me every damn time. Kicking myself for being such a sucker, I told her to meet me in the big Walton’s parking lot, now next to a freshly razed old supermarket.

She drove up in her purple Kia upon seeing me standing by my ancient black once-sporty Nissan. She got out and I asked where Cam was. 

“With Steve,” she said.

“Already? You didn’t waste much time. You just told me about this last weekend!”

“Well, he’s got a new job lined up in Michigan. Plus he has a huge cock and is pretty awesome in bed.”

“Shit baby, when did he get into town?”

She admitted it was about three weeks ago.

I said, “So you’ve been messing…” and didn’t need to finish the rest as she casually nodded yes.

How long had she been cheating on me? Was dick size the culprit or was it commitment issues? Shit, how huge was it? Like Ron Jeremy-sized? She was barely five feet tall, less than 100 lbs. I thought we were a good fit, so to speak. I realized I really didn’t want to know the rest.

Whatever. I sighed and handed over my last $300 in cash, leaving myself with literally a dollar and three quarters. I emphasized it was only a loan. She snatched the bills from my hand, got back into her Kia, looked back at me, said “Thanks” and drove off.

I never got my money back, in fact never saw or heard from her again. But then I wasn’t surprised. She wanted to get married; by God I hope she did.

Violent Devotion

I.

The word of love is a mystery that sneaks up on most. Worship can be better understood. I found you when hope had died ugly, trembling with fear. We struggled for what felt like an eternity, trying to decide who would win. It was a very terrible thing, and I regret ever calling it affection, the blood that dripped from our wounds tasted bitter. I want to be kind, sweet, harmless. I want to put this rage away, inside a book of fairy tales no one reads anymore. I want to strip this of all the horror we cultivated, dress it up like a thing of beauty. It’s no use, it’s deformed, a fruit of gore, rotten. 

I think about all the things I told you, the lies I built like a castle, with faulty structure, just waiting for the right time to come down. I remember biology class, my high school self struggling to stay still, a story of spiders on the whiteboard. Their cannibalism was a tale of terror, detached, no emotions involved. It’s not how we work, strange humans filled to the brim with feelings.

I cry as I eat you.

II.

I want to try on your skin, pull it out slowly like a sticker from a beloved notebook. Wear it like a form fitting jumpsuit, glue it to myself so you can’t have it back. Move with your arms and your legs, speak with your mouth, summoned words going up from the skin of your throat, your neck but my will. It would be fun, I promise. You’ll be nothing but exposed red muscles, veins throughout your body, a living and breathing science book image. But I’ll take care of you like that. I’ll put you inside a box, closed tight so no one can see you, I’ll give you food everyday through an opening on the wood, you’ll be warm and cozy while I walk around.

I’ll tear your life to pieces, self destructive and unkind. Your job will be nothing but a distant memory, all the love in your life left traumatized. I’ll use all your knives until they are blunt, cutting chunks of your plans, eating them raw. Is this how we end? My eyes watching through your eyelids? I’ve learned the way you move, your tics and repetitions, the rise and fall of your voice, the tone you use when you want something. I’ve practiced, every night. Twisting my sounds to become yours. I move my hands while I talk too, I make the same jokes you do. This is a form of admiration, I hope you are flattered. You are a debt that is owed, and I’m the collector. I take you with greed, anxious, wanting. 

I dislike you just as much as I desire you, with all of me.

I write you in my memories, the main character in a film, the world revolving around you, the universe bending to your will. I feel like Bluebeard, keeping you locked inside, my puppet, my prey. I like it, I play the part well. I hang the people you love from the ceiling with joy, imagining your face when you see your life cut in two. I picture you in their place, hungry and lonely, malleable, clay ready to be molded into something else. 

You’ll cry of course, feeling trapped in the warmth I wrapped around you, it’s how it always goes. But I’m not moved by tears, never have been. I just watch your hope go, running away while your body stays.

III.

I’m the monstrous fisherman that captures the mermaid, unwilling to give up my possessions. I wrap you in my net, mouth watering with greed, dissect you like a fish, bleeding on the wood of my boat. Isn’t it funny, how I don’t hesitate? I’d do it again, just for you. 

I take stock of you, like cattle. Count all your fingers and your toes, think about which one I’ll cut first. It horrifies you, of course. But this is a return to nature. I kill you as I love you, make you my favorite meal. I scoop out your insides and turn your corpse into a home, your flesh my roof. 

I must be the one to do this.

You could never stomach me.

The Coffee Shop

Frank was not looking for a real relationship. Whenever things reached that stage with someone he was dating, he found an excuse to bolt. He feigned melancholy for a few days, but often – too often actually – had to endure the wrath of his exes and their friends about his dispassion, his heartlessness, that he just used people and walked away, that he should have said something at the beginning, that he was an asshole. 

Walking to his car one evening, he was approached by two men. “We’re trying to find a drug store,” one said. “Do you know where the nearest one is?”

As Frank turned to point, the men grabbed him and threw him to the ground. They started kicking him, and one said, “This is for our sister Rachel, you piece of shit? You know, the one you gave herpes to, then dumped!”

Frank, covering up to avoid their kicks, said, “Who cares? Everyone has herpes, haven’t you heard? Did you want a drug store to re-up her acyclovir?”

This enraged the brothers, and they beat him so badly he couldn’t stand up. They left, and after about twenty minutes, someone saw him lying on the pavement, helped him up, and called the police. When the officers arrived, Frank explained, unconvincingly, that it was an argument about a woman, no big deal, no police necessary. The cops looked at him like he was crazy, helped him into his car, and laughed as they walked away. 

After a few weeks, he met Sharon in line at the coffee shop. She turned to him and made a joke about the man in front of them who just ordered a half-caf, half-decaf, almond milk latte with several more instructions about proportions and foam. She had a rough edge to her, a foul-mouthed irreverence that Frank found attractive, even sexy. She called the almond milk latte guy a “douchebag,” and the woman he was with an “under-fucked cow.” Frank felt himself becoming shy in her presence. She could be overbearing and a little intimidating, but she treated him like a kindred spirit, as if they shared secrets, and this drew him in and kept him interested. 

One morning as Frank walked into the coffee shop, Sharon called to him and asked him to stand with her in line. “You don’t have any place to be, right?” she said. “You wanna sit with me for a bit?” 

They made small talk and he learned she had been a model and a dancer, and now worked as the office manager for a big downtown law firm. “I think all the partners are evil,” she said at one point. “But my job is pretty easy, and the pay’s good. I think all employment is exploitive to one degree or another, so I’d just as soon work for scum, and feel justified in fucking off as much as possible. Without drawing any undue attention, of course.” Frank never heard anybody make this argument before, and was intrigued. When he talked about his work managing a collection of Beatles memorabilia for a wealthy eccentric, a job he basically enjoyed, he thought he sounded childish and small in the glare of Sharon’s larger-than-life bluster and detachment. 

Frank was charmed by their conversation, and after she touched his arm for the second time making a point, he blurted out, “You wanna go out some time?”

“Sure,” she said with a big smile that seemed to light up her face. “I like to work for bastards with money, but I like to fuck guys who do something fun and interesting.” Frank couldn’t tell if she was mocking him.

“Wow!” he said. “That was zero to sixty in two-point-four seconds. I was thinking dinner or a movie, but okay. What night is good for you?”

“How about right now? Let’s go back to my place and see what happens.” She took his hand and put his middle finger in her mouth. “This is your lucky day,” she said. “There’s a sucker born every minute, but a swallower is hard to find.”

“Did you just make that up, or do you say that to all the guys?” 

They put on their coats, got in Frank’s car and drove to Sharon’s house in what seemed like a blurry minute and a half. The whole ride, Sharon kept trying to unbutton Frank’s shirt or unzip his pants, and he half-heartedly resisted. She licked his ear and kissed him on the cheek. “I like you Frank. You seem like a good guy. But I want to get seriously fucked. It’s been too long.” 

Frank almost said, “That makes two of us,” but thought better of it. Instead, trying to be funny, he said, “Well, I’m glad I could help you out, ma’am.” What a geek, he thought. 

Then Sharon turned wistful, which surprised Frank. “Look,” she said, “I’ve been with a lot of guys. Psychos, narcissists, clingy little mama’s boys, commitment-phobes, … I even married two of ’em. Once divorced, once widowed, and I’m not going for strike three!”

“I wasn’t planning to propose,” Frank said with a smile.

“Good!” Sharon shot back. “I’ve had my eye on you for a while, and I picked you out for two reasons. One, you’re not too hard on the eyes, which doesn’t hurt. And two, I’ve seen you in the coffee shop, the way you are with the baristas and the other customers. Considerate, soft-spoken. Not some bellowing bro’ who thinks time stops when he enters the room. That kind of behavior shows up in the bedroom too, which works just fine for me.” Frank nodded as he took the compliment, aware that the beating he took a few weeks ago had humbled him to some extent. 

A smile slowly spread across Sharon’s face. “Just remember, I’m driving this bus, Frank. And you’re lucky to be along for the ride.”  

“I know, I know” said Frank. “I have to say this all comes as a little bit of a surprise. I pretty sure you’re out of my league.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Sharon said and rolled her eyes. “You men and your leagues. Wait a minute. You’re not into fantasy football too, are you? Never mind, don’t answer that.” 

They started making out as soon as they were inside the door, and in the standard cliché of Hollywood rom-coms, undressed each other as they made their way to the bedroom, leaving clothes strewn everywhere. She had a dancer’s body: flat stomach, muscular thighs, small breasts with perfect nipples. Frank caught a glance of his naked self in the mirror, and decided he looked okay, if a little overweight. His cock was erect, and he thought there’s always something odd about how a man presents when aroused. Vulnerable, easily manipulated, a little dim. Women, by contrast, had hard nipples and wet pussies. So strong and dignified by comparison. 

“Admiring yourself, Frank?” Sharon said, catching him looking in the mirror. “C’mon, let me do some admiring.” She stroked his cock with one hand, then put her other hand on his chest and pushed him back onto the bed. She kneeled on the floor at the foot of the bed and took him into her mouth. Frank closed his eyes and let his head roll back. As she massaged his balls, Frank had a moment of panic thinking he might come too fast. Sharon must have sensed it too, because she jumped up on the bed, put her arms around Frank’s neck, and flipped him over so he was on top. “Not so fast, my horny friend,” she said, “It’s my turn.” She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him down until his head was between her legs. He started licking her clit then slid a finger up inside her when he felt her hand on his head. “Don’t fall in love with me, Frank. I don’t need the aggravation. And I’m certainly not going to fall in love with you.” In that moment, Frank realized that Sharon could coax his erection or kill it, whatever she wanted, in seconds. Sharon must have seen the deflated look in his eyes. “That’s the last time I’ll bust your balls, Frank. I need you to stay hard for me.”

They became regular fuck buddies, meeting once a month, sometimes more, initiated unpredictably by one or the other of them, for what they jokingly referred to as S.O.D. – Sex On Demand. Over time, they got increasingly adventurous in bed: toys, restraints, candle wax, anal, both hers and his. In Frank’s mind, this was a real, live relationship, and it wasn’t. Their arrangement was as inscrutable as Sharon was. As unrestrained as she could be, she was also hard to read. Whenever Frank was with her, he often couldn’t tell if she was angry, amused, melancholy, pensive, or a million miles away. One thing he did know, the times he cuddled with Sharon as they shared a post-coital sexual haze were some of the best moments of his life. Was he falling in love? He wasn’t sure he even knew what that meant. 

Frank’s phone buzzed. It was a text from Sharon that said, “S.O.D. 7:30?” He responded with a heart emoji, followed by an eggplant emoji. He thought for a second, then added another heart emoji and hit send.