Balustrade

by Mark Henry

  “About as subtle as a poke in the eye.”

  “A dick in the eye,” Jack said and they both busted up laughing.

  4

  Hilary scoured the front facing of the room for drapery, blinds, some sort of screen to separate them from the gray figures they'd passed. She wanted to scrub her eyes from their sockets to erase the trace memory of the bodies writhing in those beds, gyrating, pistoning flesh and far too much fluid.

  But quite possibly the most terrifying was the looks on their faces, the ecstasy, she guessed it was, the blissed out, eyes rolling into the backs of their heads pleasure of it all. It was too much for her.

  She crossed to the far wall and slapped it. “Where the fuck are the curtain pulls...or the curtains for that matter?” She turned to find Jack smiling sweetly and shrugging.

  “I guess there aren't any.”

  “You know what that means,” she said.

  He nodded.

  “Zero privacy!” Hilary threw her arms up and paced. “Did you hear that bit about levels of clarity? She was talking about us performing for others. Letting them watch. Assess our fucking.”

  “Lovemaking,” Jack corrected.

  Hilary shrugged. “Whatever! This place is crazy. And what is that thing in the middle of the floor? Did you see it? I mean, really get a look at it? I don't think we're safe here!”

  Jack crossed the distance between them in a few strides and wrapped her in the kind of embrace she rarely accepted. He pressed his lips to her cheek and whispered, “Everything will be fine. This is a new experience for us, so of course, it's scary. I wouldn't be here if I wasn't willing to take the kinds of risks necessary to keep you, Hilary. I'll do anything to make this work and if that means learning how to be intimate, to open up then I'll do it.”

  Hilary's heart raced and she clung to him, wanting the closeness of something familiar, someone familiar. It just happened to be Jack and for once in a long while she wasn't completely uncomfortable with that fact.

  “Fine,” she mumbled into his chest and then pushed back. “But I'm not turning myself over to these people to be their side show freak.”

  He acquiesced with a slight nod. “It’s been a long drive. Why don't you take a shower, relax? Then we’ll go down and see what this whole indoctrination thing is all about.”

  “That sounds good, but—” she pointed toward the call button on the wall. “Don’t even think about pressing that.”

  Hilary withdrew and stepped into the bathroom, a singular space of privacy in the otherwise open spectacle of the guestroom. She ran her fingers along the vanity, her eyes grazing the various soaps and lotions, the plush robes hanging on hooks. The pale blue glass tile. The pine plank floor.

  There was even a steam room feature to the glass shower, which Hilary quickly set to steaming. She leaned against the counter, listening to the hiss, the mattress squeaking slightly from the other room, Jack falling back ontothe bed.

  “You napping?” she called as she slipped out of her clothing. He mumbled something, but she'd merely asked to place him in the space, figure whether she had some time to herself to relax, to slip away from the situation, from him. Hilary often took little breaks from her time from Jack. It was the only way she could stand another second with him.

  She slouched against the tile, shut the door and closed her eyes, allowing the soothing warmth to envelope her. The hot mist swirled the room away and let her drift.

  Hilary wondered occasionally whether things would have been different had she not miscarried their only attempt at a child. She hated to think that way. Hilary never expected to be one of those women that simplified relationships down to a biological determinant. Parents were still lovers, and so often, at least amongst the couples she knew, the minute they let that intimacy deteriorate in exchange for becoming teachers, coaches, production designers—they might as well call it quits. Hell, who was she to make those judgments? Hypocrite. It didn't take a child to replace that need. Anything could do it. Work. Working out. Church.

  Fetishizing boredom.

  Her sigh caught on the mist and twisted away along with her awareness. Warm rivulets of sweat trickled, wet, snaking down her throat, her shoulder blades, the sluice of her arching spine.

  And then his hands were there.

  The feel of his thumbs on the inside of her knees jarred Hilary awake. She gasped and straightened. Jack let out a soft shushing sound. He was naked and on his knees on the shower floor. The stance was supplicant; knees pressed tightly together, feet balled up underneath him, balls jutting up between his legs, his cock thickening but soft, lounging against his thigh. She felt the pressure of his desire and his intent and let him spread her legs apart.

  “I thought you were napping,” she said, a tinge of nerves fluttering in the words.

  “I was,” he said, those eyes now heavy lidded, fingertips tracing closer to her sex. “But now I'm doing this.”

  Hilary thought to swipe his hand away, but resisted. She was supposed to be making an effort and she intended to follow through. It wasn’t like Jack was always terrible at oral sex. Occasionally, he could figure out which spots needed attention. And they were in the last bastion of privacy in this bizarre place.

  “Okay,” she breathed and shifted her hips, giving him an easier approach, resting her knees against either side of him. Skin on skin. Jack's eyebrow arched and a wicked grin took to the corners of his mouth. He gripped her calf and rested her leg atop his left shoulder.

  Hilary moaned softly as he planted a trail of soft kisses toward her cunt, his hand cupping her ass in such a way that she felt cradled, secure—as though he knew exactly the right position to proceed. Despite herself, Hilary began to believe Jack could make this happen. Make her squeal again, come, like she had before when they were younger, when there was love, to find that place of abandon she'd thought was long gone. A flush of enthusiasm coursed through her and she sank into Jack's kneading palm as he descended, spreading his tongue wide across the whole of her cunt, taking it in, covering her quivering folds in a single languorous, lascivious lick.

  A gasp caught in Hilary's throat and her hands flew up as if to coax it out, she stroked her neck, then her breasts as Jack parted her pussy lips and explored her depths, the shallows, the hollows, stroking across her textures with a tongue that seemed somehow other, unfamiliar, yet so perfectly at home.

  “Jesus,” she moaned. “Have you been practicing?”

  His shoulders shook with a quick laugh, he pulled away to respond, but Hilary found that she missed his studied craftwork and gripped the sides of his head, drawing him back. “No. Don't. Just. Just.” She couldn't find the words. Steam swirled around her open mouth momentarily, and then, “Eat it.”

  Yes. Those. Those were the right words.

  Jack lapped at her with a newfound abandon, sucking at her labia, making deliberate slurping noises, sucking, drawing her juices in the spooned cup of his tongue and drizzling them over the tender shift of flesh covering her throbbing clit before sucking it clean, swirling his tongue in slow circles. Hilary reached down to stroke herself, to reveal that most sensitive organ, but Jack looked up, eyes serious and took her by the wrist, placing her palm flat on her belly.

  “Not just yet,” he said. “I need to taste your sweet…”

  His voice trailed away as his attentions were drawn back to the hand clutching her ass, lifting her brusquely from the tiled seat and Jack maneuvered himself lower, hunching with an animalistic grunt. Hilary swallowed a whimper as Jack's tongue began to lick her ass, tasting her puckered secret in such a wholly subservient way that, to be honest, shocked her.

  She held her tongue.

  Jack certainly didn't. She yelped—actually yelped—when his tongue slipped inside her anus. He fucked her like that, his ample tongue flittering in and out for what seemed like an eternity. She raised herself off the seat, taking the pressure off his palm, keeping him firmly transfixed inside her.

  “Oh fuck,” she
groaned. “Oh fuck, yes.”

  Jack chuckled and withdrew his mouth, hooking his thumb into her ass with an unfamiliar bravado that somehow heightened the strange aching pleasure. With his other hand he reached for something beside her. Jack—being Jack, overly fastidious—produced a soft terry washcloth, which he licked roughly before lowering her and plunging his tongue inside her pussy again, his fingers trapping her clit and rubbing so fucking slowly.

  He twisted his head, hunting for a perfect angle, and filling her hole with divine traction. She watched him move and maneuver. His brow tensed in concentration, so intent was he on her pleasure, on making this right for her. He stirred something in her in that moment. Not a rekindling, but rather jarring a memory loose. Her sex trembling with wanton need, her head swimming with memories and a respect that she'd felt she lost in regards to their physical intimacy.

  What was the saying about old dogs?

  Hilary gripped his graying locks in two great fistfuls and pressed him into her, watching the flush cross his cheeks as his hands trail up her stomach to her breasts, cupping them, fingers clamping, releasing, caressing. Her muscles clenched, tensing up, committing to a single purpose, a single sweltering organ, hot with passion.

  She came, then, there was no holding it back, a stuttering “guh” escaping her lips as she hunched into the orgasm. Pleasure pulsing through her, quaking, heightened she supposed by the stress of the past few hours, the presumed danger, Jack’s tongue. His fingers.

  Her cheeks tingled. She dragged her fingernails across her flush chest as the sensation dulled. Heavy-lidded she glanced down at Jack. He rested on his haunches, back flush against the tile and cock rigid between his legs. His breaths, heavy with lust and something else—exhaustion, perhaps. His head lolled against his shoulder as he scoured her flesh with his eyes.

  “You go on out and rest,” he said, the words in direct opposition to his visible need. “I’m just going to shower. Okay?”

  Hilary didn’t argue, rather nodding, smiling as pleasantly as she could and exiting, wrapping herself in the towel hanging outside the enclosure. Glancing back into the bathroom, she watched her husband bathe, water torrenting over a body designed for sex, lean and muscled. His cock still livid and distressed but untouched. She wouldn’t have said a thing if he’d wanted to jerk off. She’d have encouraged it.

  Strange.

  But then movement drew her to the windows peeking into the room and Glynnis standing stick still and staring. Assessing. Anger flooded Hilary’s brain and she launched herself across the room, tearing open the door, half expecting the woman to rush away but she merely stood there, holding her pad and pen, the most recent note on full display.

  Join her in the shower,

  eat her pussy,

  eat her ass,

  disregard your needs and desires…for once.

  Hilary’s mouth was hanging open, she realized. The text was so blatant, so ugly, the final words so hard and curt.

  She backed away from the woman, shaking her head in disgust. Glynnis merely shrugged and gave her a polite smile before turning her attention back to her pad and furiously scribbling another suggestion. Hilary slammed the glass door between them but the suggestive crossed the distance and pressed the pad up to the window for Hilary to see what she’d written.

  He's pleasured you,

  Now it's your turn,

  Tantalize him with your mouth.

  Hilary glowered. This woman was insane if she thought Hilary was as easily led and compliant as Jack. Hell, she hadn't even known the depths of Jack's compliance. He was a home box perm away from a sheep, apparently.

  “No,” she mouthed and turned her back only to find Jack lounging on the bed, cheeks red with passion, his cock still hard and protruding from the terry robe. “Jesus Christ, Jack. That woman can see your shit. She's not blind.”

  He grinned. “From the looks of what's going on in this place, she's seen plenty. One more isn't going to make a dent.”

  “Interesting choice of words.”

  “What did she suggest for you?”

  He nodded toward the window. Glynnis still held up the pad, she pointed to it with her free hand repeatedly, as though Jack's dick wasn't going to suck itself. Hilary flipped her off. Tightening her robe she turned to give Jack an earful only to find that he'd risen and caught her in hug.

  “Don't be angry,” he whispered. “They're just suggestions.”

  “I have a few suggestions for her.”

  “I know you do, baby. I know. Just relax. Remember what Dr. Madrigal said. If we're going to find a new way to love each other, it's going to take a shock to the system for us to forget the ways we haven't been. This is something new. You seem like you enjoyed what I did to you in the shower. I know I loved it, listening to you whimper like that, seeing your face slack with pleasure. Your pussy tightening up on me. I wanted to fuck you so bad just then.”

  Hilary felt a flush rise to her cheeks and Jack's cock twitch at her hip as he held her. She couldn't deny he'd turned her on to a degree she wouldn't have believed possible just a few short months ago, or even as recently as the drive through the bible beater gauntlet.

  But he had. He really had.

  She sighed but acquiesced. She would play along. “But I'm not comfortable doing the kinds of things we saw in those other rooms with someone watching. I just don't think I can do that. I'm not sure I want to, or would ever want to.”

  He nodded empathetically. “Yeah, that’s probably a stretch. I get that. Let's just see how this pans out. How the indoctrination ceremony goes, and we'll go from there. Just go as far as we're both comfortable with.”

  Hilary relaxed into Jack's embrace and tried to clear her mind of the meddling voice of reason telling her to bolt, to leave Jack standing here in this glass walled cell, hard-on and all and march right back to the car and...

  And what? Exactly?

  Drive it into the wilderness, seek refuge in the arms of the grim minister and her flock of sodomite shamers? No. That seemed an even more dangerous route. They'd agreed to this without coercion and she was aware of her hang-ups to a large extent. Was it possible that this could be a good experience? She wouldn't turn away a few more of those orgasms, that was for sure. And Jack had been blisteringly hot; she couldn't lie to herself about that. His youthful exuberance was refreshing. If he'd expressed that kind of enthusiasm at home, she might not have become so bored with their sex life.

  So complacent. So...complicit.

  5

  After gorging on a delicious Thai curry with eggplant and steamed rice—delivered without being ordered, but in no means unwelcome—Hilary sipped her steaming chai and took an unnatural interest in Jack’s easy slumber. He lay sprawled on the bed, nude, his plate scraped clean beside him, his teacup on its side and empty. There was such peace in his expression that she wondered whether he might have taken something.

  A Xanax.

  She took another sip of the tea. So sweet and spicy with a hint of cardamom. The froth swirled like seafoam caught in a caramel jetty. On closer inspection, there was something floating in it. Something white, bony. Hilary squinted, turning the cup toward the table lamp, but under the glare it looked perfectly normal. The steam lifted off the surface in lacey filigree bringing with it the smells of foreign lands. She took solace in the moment, soothed for the first time since they arrived.

  Her eyelids began to flutter.

  Hilary snapped awake in Chantal’s office. Papers lay strewn everywhere, contracts scattered to the four corners like a massive game of fifty-two-card pick-up.

  “What the hell?” she straightened in the chair, reaching for one of the stray sheets and began to read.

  I, Hilary Carson, agree without coercion to let the devil fuck the soul out of me like the hippie whore I am. Actual sex acts may include (but are not limited to): fellatio, cunnilingus, intercourse, and general buggery.

  She scanned it again; certain she’d read it wrong, there was an aw
ful lot of Latin and then let it drift to the floor. She snatched another and another, crumbling them after noting that each featured the exact same agreement.

  A shoe scuffed on the floor behind her.

  Hilary gasped. Spun. Expected to see Chantal slowly shaking her head, but was horrified instead to see the dark figure of the Mother. The zealot’s sun hat covered her face like the black of the moon, her mud-spattered dress grazed the floor as she shambled forward, producing a wrinkled gnarl of a finger from her ruffled sleeve.

  Judgment and horror washed over Hilary and she fell from the chair, crawling backward as fast as she could, trying to put the desk between herself and the crazed fanatic.

  “But I didn’t know!” she cried.

  “He’ll fuck it out of you. And you’ll let him,” the woman said.

  Hilary clambered to her feet and shifted the writing desk around as the woman circled, using it as a shield. “Oh no. I’m definitely not into devil sex. I swear!”

  But as the Mother edged toward Hilary, the sunhat began to shift, exposing her jaw. A familiar shape appearing.

  “He’ll do it and you’ll be damned. Damned!”

  Hilary opened her mouth to proclaim her innocence and virtue—she would certainly not be letting the devil fuck her, regardless of any contract, that was insane, not to mention the fact that the devil didn’t exist—when the woman’s hat fell away completely, revealing her face.

  “No!” Hilary screamed.

  She clamped her hands to her mouth, stared at the unimaginable horror before her. Crags of skin, cheeks listing, eyes deep set and hollowed with horror. But it wasn’t the age of the woman that shocked her so, it was her identity. It was Hilary staring back at her, a withered aged version of Hilary, eyes struck wide with a warning, with an insane knowledge.