curls bounce. Her mouth forms a perfect ‘o’. A car comes past, hoots at us. I give it the finger without looking. And then I yank down the top of Trinity’s dress so I can draw one of her nipples into my mouth.
This isn’t right.
Fuck it. I’m sure plenty of people have fucked on the highway.
No, this isn’t right.
It’s the way she rocks into me. So steady, so perfect. Like she gets paid by the fuck, blow jobs extra.
And that’s not her.
That’s not Trinity.
But I fuck her anyway, because it feels almost as good as the first time.
Maybe even better—this time there’s no strange uneasiness floating around in my head. Because back then, with her, it wasn’t just sex, and I still don’t know why.
People fucking. Sometimes consensually. Sometimes not. That’s all sex is to me. All it will ever be.
But it wasn’t that way with her.
It’s ridiculous, and pathetic, and stupid, but that doesn’t change how it felt.
Like it meant something.
Like it would mean something every single time.
Except now.
This feels different.
Empty.
Fake.
I slap her thigh, but I can’t feel that sting on my palm. She cries out though, and that helps. I fuck her harder, until her moans of pleasure become yelps of pain.
A normal man would stop. Maybe even apologize.
I’m not normal. Not even close.
Her pain is my pleasure. Nothing about that will ever change. She tenses around me, resisting me now. And that arouses me more than it should. More than what’s moral or acceptable.
When she starts begging me to stop, that’s when I finally feel a climax approaching. But it’s taking too long. Like it’s just out of grasp.
I pull back, wanting to kiss her again. Trying to capture something of the first time.
But the face of the thing I’m fucking is no longer recognizable. It’s still wearing the dress, but that fabric is dirty and tattered. Stained with blood and cum. The dead thing’s face is bloated, disfigured, brutally beaten.
I push away from it, a yell trapped in my throat, but my dick is stuck inside it.
It’s drawing me closer, arms wrapped impossibly tight around the back of my neck.
Its puffy, scarlet lips pucker as if for a kiss.
And then I’m coming inside it. The feeling goes on and on. Hollowing me out. As if it’s not my semen I’m ejaculating, but my organs, and my bones, and my flesh.
My eyes fly open, a horrified gasp rattling deep in my throat. I push into a sit, clamping a hand over my heart. I can feel every violent clang as it pumps adrenaline through my body.
Jesus.
My body’s stuck in some corporeal purgatory between Heaven and Hell. A dopey kind of pleasure from coming on the sheets. A skin-crawling horror from the memory of what I was pumping my load into.
I stumble out of bed, and almost crash into a wall I didn’t expect so nearby.
Where the fuck am I?
Then my memories settle, and I’m back in the real world.
A motel room on I-44. I’d driven until I’d almost fallen asleep at the wheel, and then driven some more until I’d found a place to crash that wasn’t my rental car.
Christ, that dream. No, that fucking nightmare.
I hit the shower before I’m even fully awake, washing the dream and the feel of decaying pussy off my dick.
I almost puke, but manage to choke it back.
Then I slide down the wall and curl into a ball, letting the water pound onto the top of my head until my scalp feels numb.
Until I feel numb.
It doesn’t help. Body and mind, they’re two separate entities.
I wish I could say the basement taught me that, but it didn’t. Mom and Dad taught me that. They believed in discipline of the corporal kind. Mom with a wooden spoon. Dad with his belt.
I wasn’t a naughty kid, I was high maintenance. Energetic. And they weren’t. When I wanted to play outdoors—they’d lock me in my room. I’d end up breaking things, and then they’d punish me, even though I knew they had enough money to replace anything I ruined.
Only years later did I figure out what the problem was. I had ADHD, and an acute sensitivity to sugar. They never gave a shit about what I ate in between meals. And they’d keep replacing the sweets I ate. Maybe they didn’t realize how bad it was. How it fueled my disobedience.
I guess I’m partly to blame. I never told them how it made my muscles ache and ache and ache until I had to