Telling Tales

by Charlotte Stein

  Yeah, it’s really me all right. I think it was taken when we all went to Whitby that one time, and the wind on top of the cliff had blown my hair into an untangle-able mess. It’s all crammed in a curly heap on one side of my head, and I’m laughing as though I know it, and by God I can’t think why anyone would want to keep a picture of something like that.

  I look ridiculous. I look…happy. Lord, was I ever that happy? My eyes are as bright as buttons and I’m wearing something of Wade’s I think—a big black cable-knit jumper sort of thing that can’t possibly have been mine.

  And then I realize with a start that it was Cameron’s. It was his jumper—the one with the hole in—and he gave it to me after I got soaked by a wave, walking by the insane ocean. After we’d bought fish and chips and eaten them in a hurry under the shelter of some shop awning, and then I remember being filled with a burning warmth when Wade put an arm around me and rubbed my shoulder, as though sensible of how cold I must be.

  Of course it occurs to me then that Cameron has very different memories of this day than I do. I think of Wade and how he made me feel, but Cameron obviously thought about his jumper, me laughing, me running away down over the grass toward the old church. I can see it all now so clear, like a video-recorded version of real events. Everything hyper-real and too bright, me looking back at the person filming, hair flying. Sleeves too long for my arms.

  Jesus Christ, I think I’m crying. I don’t even know why, either, because it’s not as though there’s something particularly sad about finding an obviously well-loved picture of yourself in a friend’s book. Only there is, there is, because he’s written Tenar on the back and I didn’t know. I had no idea.

  God, why didn’t he ever say anything? Why did he have to be so quiet and strange and unknowable?

  The question makes me furious, suddenly, and before I know what I’m doing I’m flicking through the pages of his other books, looking for answers. And I don’t even feel bad about it, either, because he went through my stuff. He went through my bags and read stories I never intended people to see, and he deserves this. He deserves me riffling through his drawers, finding only socks and more computer manuals and other stupid stuff, because he’s stupid, he’s an idiot, I hate Cameron Lindhurst.

  I hate him even more when I find his stash of handwritten stories, underneath a mess of meaningless paperwork and folders full of nothing. My heart is kind of rattling in my chest by this point and I really have no idea what I’m thinking, but I remove the elastic band he’s put around this great green hardback writing pad anyway.

  I have to. He said he’d stopped writing, but he was lying. This thing is new, I can tell. I’ve filled enough books with my own writing to be able to tell. And then my palms tingle and my armpits do that prickly thing again, because I realize something a little disturbing. Or maybe not disturbing, exactly…more like…not quite right.

  Because he’s this big computer guy, he’s so much of a computer guy that he’s worn the “A” off his keyboard, and yet he’s filled this nice green hardback book with handwriting. He’s used a pen, with good, thick blue ink, as though he wanted to really feel the words coming out of him.

  I realize with a little a start that I can hardly wait to see what he’s written. It’s prying and it’s wrong and of course I know it, but all I can think of is that word mystery again, and then I’m flicking through the pages like some sort of furtive maniac.

  Certain words jump out at me immediately. Mainly because his “Cs” are these massive scything things, so it’s hard to avoid the “cocks” and the “clits” and the “cunts.” And he hasn’t skimped on them, either, no matter what he tried to claim—the books are filled with nothing but.

  It’s the second revelation I’ve had about Cam that I don’t know how to deal with, and all in the last half hour. I look up at the bedroom door and see myself coming in here only a short while ago, with one completely formed notion of Cameron in my head. Sexless, distant Cameron who did not take pictures of his friends and keep them forever, and who did not write dirty stories that I feel almost too embarrassed to read.

  Though I know I’m going to do it anyway. I couldn’t resist watching him and I can’t resist this here, now. It really is like an episode of Poirot—like unraveling a thread I didn’t know existed, and on the end is some sort of mythical beast. A unicorn, maybe. A dragon, perhaps. Or possibly some kind of unearthly hybrid of both, because the first story is called “Bad Girls” and it is so the opposite of the Cameron I thought I knew I don’t know what to say.

  A secret crush on me was shocking. This is…unbelievable.

  But they like him enough to pin him down and fuck him like some loose little slut, I read, and then I have to stop. I stop, and close the book, and try to pretend it doesn’t exist. Did he really write the words pin and fuck and slut? About a guy?

  Though really when I think about it, those words aren’t the most shocking part. No, the most shocking part is that this story he’s written, this apparently filthy story—far filthier than I’ve ever got down on paper—is actually really, really good. Far better than anything he ever read out in class. The robotic weirdness is almost completely gone, and what’s left behind is this:

  They smell like summer when they walk through the door, and he can just make out a hint of the lake too. As though they’d been swimming in the barely-there clothes they’ve got on, though he knows they haven’t. They’ve been swimming in no clothes at all, because the ones they’re wearing are hardly damp and now they’re in here, giggling and murmuring things he can’t quite hear.

  Like let’s and fuck and with Ben.

  Only it’s the strangest thing, because the more he thinks about them fucking with him, the more he can’t focus on anything else. His mind fills with elaborate scenarios before they’ve even gotten anywhere near the couch he’s pretending to sleep on, and when they finally walk over it’s almost like a relief. As though he knew it was going to come to this sooner or later, and now that it has he can breathe out.

  “I think he’s hard,” one of them says, and he knows it’s Lydia. Lydia with her mess of dark hair and her almost-green eyes, gazing down at him like he’s something that needs devouring.

  He wonders, idly, if she knows he wants to be devoured.

  “Definitely hard,” the other one says, and when she giggles he feels an odd little trickle of fear run down his spine. As though cool, indifferent Lydia could be cruel, but her little blonde friend could be crueler.

  Much crueler.

  “Touch him,” the blonde one—Mindy—says, and he hears Lydia make a soft, noncommittal sound. As though she can’t decide what’s best, in this sort of situation. Should she wake him, and ask him if any of this is OK? Or should they just plunge right into whatever dirty things they feel like doing?

  For one wild, unbearably free second, he hopes they’re going to go with the latter. Go the whole hog he thinks at them, but then a hand goes around his obviously stiff cock, quite suddenly, and he wishes he hadn’t been so rash with his thoughts.

  He isn’t wearing much—just a thin pair of shorts—and the hand is rough and jolting. Whoever it is squeezes, hard, and yet another delirious thought shoots through his mind—the hope that it is Lydia rather than Mindy, grasping and groping him through his clothes.

  But then Mindy squeals that he’s really big and stiff, and that strange and unwanted hope is dashed. It’s Mindy squeezing him, and then Mindy stroking him, and finally it’s Mindy actually jerking him off through his shorts.

  Although when he finally dares open his eyes, it’s Lydia he sees. And it’s the sight of her—eyes burning down at him, breasts almost visible through the thin material of her vest, skirt showing too much creamy thigh—that sends a strong current of pleasure through his body.

  “Have you been dreaming dirty dreams, Ben?” she says, and it’s almost a kind question, really. Not half s
o cruel as Mindy’s tugging, working hand on his cock or the sight of Lydia’s body through her clothes, like something he’s always wanted but ever out of reach.

  Only then she turns to Mindy and tells her to unzip his shorts and get it out, so really he doesn’t know what to think.

  At the very least he has to protest, but when he tries to she claps a sudden hand down over his mouth, as though he’s the woman and she’s the man and this is all some very different sort of scenario altogether.

  “I’ll hold him down,” she says. “You do it.”

  However, when she speaks she doesn’t address Mindy. She looks down at him, that same devilish delight in her eyes, and something inside him veers left when it should be going right. He should be telling her to stop, now. He should be throwing her off—he is, after all, far bigger and stronger than both of them put together—but somehow he doesn’t seem to be doing anything like it.

  Instead, his body thrums and thrums, and a sound comes out of his mouth. It’s an embarrassing one too—a real low and deep down groan—but he can’t stop it. Mindy has gotten his shorts open and he can feel air on his bare and humiliatingly stiff cock, but more importantly Lydia has still got her hand over his mouth. And after a moment she puts a knee against his shoulder, as though she suspects he’s about to struggle and try bucking them off.

  “That’s good, baby,” she says. “Just stay still and take it.” He has absolutely no clue what they expect him to just stay still and take, but God, those words. His body trembles all over, minutely, just hearing them. Lydia—sweet little Lydia—behaving like this, being this fucking dirty, fucking making him…it’s unreal.

  Even though he sort of knew it would come to this, all along. He could see it in her—this need to tease and torment, this desire for games he can barely fathom—only now that they’re being actualized he finds himself on uncertain ground. How far is she going to go exactly?

  Take it implies something very specific, he knows it does. Like maybe they’re going to do the kind of things that only girls usually get. Maybe they’re going to lube their fingers and fuck his body in a way he’s never thought of before, no, God, no, he’s never thought of anything like that before, not ever.

  And he’s certainly never thought of other things, like maybe something bigger and thicker, sliding into him.

  He thinks of those words again—take it—and bucks beneath their restraining hands, but then something hot and slick brushes the head of his cock and it’s like a relief. It’s like one, but maybe not quite all the way to being one.

  Still, it feels good. And it feels even better when he manages to push himself against the bonds of Lydia’s hand and sees Mindy with her skirt all the way up around her waist, the hair between her legs so fluffy and fine it’s barely there, sinking down onto his cock as though it meant nothing at all to do something like that.

  “Ohhhh God,” she moans, and there’s something thrilling about that. Something that makes him want to be smug, because she has her eyes closed and it obviously feels good to slide down on his cock like that. It must, because she starts rocking almost immediately, and when he glances up at Lydia she’s biting her lip.

  Then after a moment she tells her friend to hurry, and he understands in an arousing rush that she means to take her turn next. They’re both going to use him for a quick, hot fuck, and something about that makes him almost delirious.

  They don’t like him enough to talk to him or share themselves with him or ask him how his day was. But they like him enough to pin him down and fuck him like some loose little slut.

  “Oh fuck he feels so good,” Mindy pants, and he can see her tits jiggling underneath her T-shirt as she bounces up and down on him, and her little porcelain doll face is creased with concentration, and sometimes, sometimes he can see flashes of her slick, red pussy as it parts and slides around his cock. All of which should have been more than enough to get him off. He’s tugged himself to far, far less—just the thought of Lydia running a rude hand over his covered cock has been enough, in the past, to make him come.

  But right here, now, his orgasm is a distant, waiting thing. It coils, in anticipation of Lydia being where Mindy is right now. And even when Mindy moans that she’s coming, she’s coming, and Lydia says something that makes him flush, like I didn’t think he’d be this good, he doesn’t let his orgasm off the leash.

  Not yet. First he wants Lydia. Even in these mortifying circumstances, with Mindy hopping off him as though he’s suddenly become the latest ride at Disneyland, he wants Lydia. He can practically feel his body straining toward her as she takes Mindy’s place, those creamy thighs straddling his hips, her eyes all over him.

  He gets just the barest flash of her cunt, and then her hot little hand is on him. Stroking, briefly, before she aims the swollen head at that wet space he wants to be in most of all.

  “Go on,” Mindy says, and as she does so she threads a hand through his hair and tightens it, tightens it. Almost like pulling, but not quite. “Just slide it in slow.”

  For a moment he wonders what she means, but then it occurs to him why Lydia is hesitating. It’s because he’s big, much too big, and though her cheeks are flushed and her nipples are stiff and poking through her vest and she’s obviously, unbearably turned on, she’s hesitating.

  And of course there’s some sort of misplaced surge of pride about that, but mostly he just hates his stupid, oafish body. Hates it hates it hates it until she notches the thick head of his cock against her warm and waiting hole, and slides down on it one breathless inch at a time.

  She’s incredibly tight—more so than Mindy was—but it’s not the feeling of her enveloping him that sends a spark of sensation all the way through his belly. It’s the words she says that really get him, the words—oh God Ben—because she uses his name as though he really exists and she sounds so desperate. So incredibly lust-choked.

  “I told you,” Mindy says and then he has to close his eyes, briefly, because he’s going to come. He’s going to come just thinking about them discussing him like some kind of sex object, like something they could use and discard. He’s going to come from feeling Lydia surrounding him, so slippery and delicious and, oh God, the sounds she makes…

  She doesn’t hold back, the way he always does. Mindy doesn’t even have to put a hand over his mouth, because he can’t get the words he wants to say out. Lydia just works herself on his cock, moaning and panting his name as she does, those glorious breasts of hers shifting beneath the material of that maddeningly thin vest.

  “Feels amazing, right?” Mindy says, but Lydia doesn’t answer. She’s going to come, he knows she is. He can see her shivering, and she’s staring at him with heavy-lidded, too-far-gone eyes, and when he arches up into her shallow, rocking movements, she gasps.

  More than anything he wants to put his hands on her, but there’s this weird feeling threading through him. It’s been there since the start, but it’s intensified as this whole thing has gone on—as though he’s not allowed to touch. He’s not allowed to move an inch, and if he does, they’ll stop. They’ll leave him like this, cock still hard, everything in him just hovering on the edge of orgasm.

  Which is awful, it is, he knows it is, and yet somehow it’s also…kind of darkly exciting. He can feel this dark excitement making a fist low down in his gut, and when she leans forward and wraps her hands around his wrists, it gets stronger.

  And what’s more, it’s like she knows.

  “You like that, huh?” she asks, and then she fucks down on him harder, fiercer, fingernails digging into his wrists. “You like that, don’t you, baby.”

  It’s the word, he thinks. The word baby, as though he’s somehow a woman again—being taken, rather than taking someone else. It makes him surge up against her, and when he does she gasps out his name and her eyes stutter closed. For one brief, delicious second he can feel her cunt clenching around his
cock, and then he’s spurting thickly inside her, great spasms of pleasure wracking his body and everything shot through with the sure and certain knowledge that this will never happen again.

  She’ll never do it to him again now that she knows. He could have gotten away with it if he’d maybe just let her fuck him and use him up like this, and not said or done anything in response to it. But he can see when she looks into his glassy eyes and then down his shuddering body that it’s not just a matter of him failing to protest. No, no, it’s worse than that.

  He enjoyed it. And now the girl he loves best in all the world knows.

  She knows.

  ***

  I think I sit there for a hundred years or so. I have to, because my ass has rooted itself to the chair. My brain has ceased functioning. I can’t even feel the cool air on my still only-covered-by-a-towel body, and though part of me is sensible that my hair is drying into a weird frizzy mess, and that I’m clutching this damned green book so hard my fingers are starting to bleed, there’s nothing I can do about any of it.

  This is Cameron. He actually wrote this thing in my hand. Of course, it could be that some troll from the X Dimension jumped inside his body at some point and started going for a career in erotica writing, but it seems unlikely, at best.

  Though not as unlikely as Cameron Lindhurst actually picking up a pen and scribbling these words down. They’re not even really scribbled, in truth. They’re written calmly and smoothly with barely any crossing-outs, as though he had the time to think long and hard about a story like this before he ever put pen to paper.

  You can tell he thought long and hard about it. And what’s worse is…I’m pretty sure the girls are not really called Lydia and Mindy in his head. I mean, Lydia’s identity is debatable—yes, I have almost-green eyes and, yes, I have dark hair but, no, I’ve never thought about making a guy feel bad about his predilection for domination—but it’s pretty clear that Mindy is Kitty. The names even sound the same, for God’s sake.