Innocence

by Samael Wolf

  And then it all just spilled out of me the moment I opened my mouth to tell her what had happened to my cane. She let me hold on to her arm tighter than I necessarily needed to for guidance and didn’t complain when it got hard for me to talk about the way the man, Officer Orkin, had looked at me like he’d wanted so badly to shoot me for interfering. I told her how I’d begged for the woman to call a shelter and get out of there, and what she’d said about how she couldn’t call the police. It came out in broken sentences with long pauses and heavy silences, but eventually we were standing on our doorstep and the story was told.

  We stood there for a minute before she finally said “come here,” and pulled me into a tight hug. Normally I don’t care much for being embraced. It feels too much like being confined. This time, however, I just let it happen, resting my weight on her with a sigh, trying to ignore the little tickles her presence stirred in me. I felt like I should cry, like it would only be proper after how much had happened and how badly it had affected me, but I was just tired, and now a little uncertain about how much she was touching me, as if I hadn’t been clinging to her for at least half an hour already.

  Esti pulled away and cupped my face in both hands, causing me to stiffen uncertainly until I realized she was trying to make eye-to-eye contact. I think she realized how silly that was too, because after an awkward pause, she turned my head and kissed me on the cheek. “Okay, I was going to say something profound, but I’m not sure how to do that with you, so I’ll just say it: don’t beat yourself up for not doing more. You did everything you could. And you probably saved that kid’s life.”

  I wordlessly demurred, but it was hard to phrase a proper objection when the cheek she’d kissed was tingling pleasantly. I didn’t feel particularly heroic, especially when I couldn’t be sure Jeffrey or his mother would live through the night after what I’d seen. “We should probably get inside,” I said, willing this side of the topic to end before I had to actually acknowledge it somehow.

  Esti nodded and produced a key to unlock the door, following me in and shutting it behind us. The apartment was still and quiet, and I could faintly feel human presences above on the second floor, too isolated by walls and shut doors to see or hear properly. Jesse and Cassie were probably asleep, both of them having classes early in the morning. I groaned as I remembered that I did too. Waking up early after today was going to be deeply unpleasant.

  “Did you say you’d caught the guy’s name?” Esti asked abruptly, while I was pulling off my shoes.

  I thought a moment and couldn’t recall if I’d told her or not. “His uniform said ‘Orkin,’ which I’m guessing is his last name.”

  Esti made a thoughtful noise. “Okay. I’m going to see if there’s any way to do something about him that doesn’t involve going through the rest of his department.”

  “Like some sort of oversight committee?” I asked wearily. The thought had occurred to me too. “I don’t think Seattle has one.”

  “I’m sure there’s something we can do,” Esti replied with more confidence than I felt. “Don’t be so pessimistic. I’m sure it’ll work out somehow.”

  I sighed. “I hope so, I really do.” I did my best to smile for her benefit. “I should go to bed. It’s hard to feel very good about anything when I’m this tired. Thank you, though.”

  I made my way to my room, which was adjacent from hers. I nearly sighed again as I took the pieces of my cane out of my purse and set them by the bed, knowing I’d have to find time to replace the elastic cord the next morning. Although I can function pretty well with my synesthesia, I liked to use it to help me ‘see’ things at ground level. Realizing Esti hadn’t gone into her room, I turned to where she was standing just outside my door.

  “Hey,” she said, and then paused a moment. I inclined my head and waited while she apparently had to sort out her thoughts. As if taking that for an invitation, she stepped past the threshold into my room, lifting a hand letting it rest on my arm. “What if I stayed with you tonight?”

  Um. “Um,” I replied intelligently, not at all prepared to deal with her innuendos right now. “Th-that’s okay.” I sat down on the bed to disengage from her before my arm went numb from that sensation of sparks dancing through my skin.

  “Is it?” Esti stepped closer, and I realized I had nowhere I could retreat. “I’m worried about you being alone right now. You’ve had a bad shock and a lot of adrenaline that had nowhere to go. I think it would be good for you.”

  I licked my lips nervously, under no delusions that her words, especially that last assurance, were innocent. I was just starting to realize that she was serious. Despite how many people have flirted with me over my teenage years, my actual experiences in this situation were pretty slim, and mostly limited to the sweetly smiling blonde right in front of me. Unbidden, sense-memories of the taste of that candy gloss flashed through my mind and a shiver drove down my spine.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said automatically, leaning away a little further as if it would help at all. When had she gotten so close? “I-it’s okay, really, you don’t need to st-stay.”

  “You have such a cute stutter when you’re nervous,” she all but purred, kneeling between my legs and leaning forward onto the bed with her hands propping her up so that she hovered over my lap like a cat getting ready to settle. “If you really don’t want me tonight, then… just say so, but convince me when you say it, Sanmei. Be honest. Do you really want me to go?”

  Oh God. Oh God.

  I couldn’t.

  The words just wouldn’t come, and not because I’d suddenly lost my ability to speak. I tried several times and I certainly made noises, but what ultimately squeaked out of me, unwillingly, was the truth. “No,” I whimpered, my face burning so hot it nearly hurt.

  I wasn’t sure what to expect. Esti teased, Esti flirted, but this was the first time she had ever made overtures and then acted on them. I half-expected her to laugh and end the joke, or at least to tease me for being so reluctant. Instead, she reached up and cupped my cheek, leaning up on her knees and kissing me so lightly that at first I thought it was just her breath upon my lips. “Then I won’t,” she whispered, and I was lost. Somehow she flowed up onto the bed, pushing me backwards in the process until she straddled my hips, and her hair fell all around us. When she kissed me again, it felt like sinking into velvet sheets, a soft descent into a dark cloud that enveloped me on all sides.

  I hardly knew what I was doing. I kept expecting it to end, either to wake up or to find out I’d misconstrued everything. I was afraid to touch her at first, but she had no such constraints and everywhere her hands and fingers went, I felt… something I couldn’t name, and couldn’t possibly contain, and couldn’t possibly have enough of. I’m not even sure how I got out of my clothing, but I do remember watching her easily pull her shirt over her head. I was utterly entranced. I’d wanted this for so long, but never had I expected it to actually happen, and now that it was, I couldn’t believe how much more there was to it than I had imagined. It wasn’t a thing we did, it was a journey that went everywhere and yet never left my bed, each step proving more amazing than the last.

  When at last she gathered me into her arms, my back resting against her shoulder, and I felt her left hand gliding down between my legs, I held my breath. I knew what it felt like when I touched myself there, on those late nights when sleep was elusive and the day had been full of delights that lingered in my memory. I knew what it felt like to be teasingly caressed over clothing, as Esti had once done as we jumped and bounced and writhed to the music that suffocated and drove us onward. I had no idea—

  Oh God!

  All the air squeaked out of me only to be drawn back in gasp that sounded like I was on the verge of tears, and I was. I wasn’t experienced enough to say whether she had a lot of practice at this or whether I was just putty in her hands, but I hadn’t been prepared for how intense it could be. I think she could have led me to orgasm without an ounce of effort, but someh
ow she teased it out longer and longer until I gripped at her with shaking hands, barely able to form a coherent thought in my mind. My synesthesia seemed completely overwhelmed. I saw colors and shapes that made no sense as the world dissolved into what I could hear, what I could smell, what I could taste, and heavens above, what I could feel.

  And then she did something with her fingers and that was it for me. I hurt my throat crying out. I buried my face against her and cried, and she didn’t stop, and I didn’t want her to, and it happened again and I could hardly breathe and I had to find my pillow and press my face against it or I was going to scream and she moved with me and I was on my stomach and she had me pinned and she didn’t stop and this time neither did my orgasm—

  Some… hours? … later, drenched in sweat, every sense filled to capacity with her essence, I had to beg—somewhat unwillingly—for it to end. My mind was a disorganized tangle of nonsensical images. My image of Esti was one of proportions I couldn’t fathom. Her colors were all wrong and it seemed like she had gained extra limbs, but I was too tired and overwhelmed to try and make sense of the hallucination. I couldn’t even begin to count how many times she had brought me to orgasm and I had no idea if I had been able to reciprocate at any point, nor did I have the strength to try. She brought me water and I drank greedily, but somewhere in the process of trying to put it on my bedside table, everything went well and truly black and I knew no more.

  Chapter Three

  I woke up slowly, driven unwelcomingly into consciousness by an unbearably repetitive musical jingle. My watch wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I found it on the floor beneath the table and blearily pressed buttons until the alarm stopped, then collapsed back into my pillow. It went off again in five minutes. This time I roused long enough to notice how oddly cold I was before switching the alarm off properly. I drifted back off wondering why my room smelled of perfume.

  I slept hard, which wasn’t at all usual for me. Typically I woke up with the sunrise and got to ‘watch’ as the room changed colors while I got ready for the day. I can’t really see a sunrise, unfortunately, but I can kind of see a glowing haze in the air as the sun first comes up. I’ve never seen the moon or the stars, either, except in pictures. The changing of the celestial bodies was too subtle to wake me up today. My dreams were a gentle tangle of sense-memories and the vague impression that I was seeing colors or shapes, but with no distinction between actually seeing them and only believing I was seeing them.

  At some point I awoke a third time to see that the sun was well and truly up. It occurred to me that I had probably slept through the entirety of my class, but for some reason, I couldn’t find it in myself to care. I did get up long enough to use the bathroom, nearly bumping into Esti on the way back. You’d think I would have felt exceptionally awkward after the previous night, especially since I hadn’t gotten dressed when I got up. For some reason, though, I was still just too tired to bother with emotions as inconsequential as mortifying embarrassment, and I guess it showed.

  “Back to bed with you!” Esti ordered, turning me back toward my door and giving me a gentle shove. I didn’t need any encouragement. I don’t think I even closed the door behind me as I planted myself face-first into my pillow. I was out before I finished pulling the blanket over my naked body. This time I didn’t even dream, although I could somehow sense that time was passing. If I’d had the capacity to care about anything just then, I might have been alarmed at how much of it elapsed before I finally found myself awake for good.

  I felt absolutely rotten. My head ached, my stomach felt cramped and nauseated, and I was sore from lying in bed for so long. The door was indeed wide open, and what’s worse, Esti had left a note for me on my table. I weighed whether it was worth being embarrassed and decided against it. I doubted I had any secrets from her after last night. If I hadn’t felt so ill, the thought of what had happened would have been far more enjoyable than it was. With my brain having been replaced by a cactus, it took running my fingers over the scrap of paper twice to jog my synesthesia into clarifying the text into something that made sense.

  You seemed pretty out of it when I left the house so I decided to let you sleep. You used up a lot of electrolytes and stuff last night, so be sure to eat something with salt and protein and drink lots of fluids. I hope you enjoyed it. Do it again sometime?

  Below that was a crudely drawn face that, I figured out after a minute, was supposed to be winking suggestively. “Okay,” I mumbled listlessly and shuddered as the vibration from my own voice set off something down my gullet, giving me another pang of nausea. I hope I haven’t come down with something. If I did, I either got it from her, or maybe gave it to her. Either one didn’t bode well for doing anything like that again at any time in the near future, much less following Esti’s advice to eat and drink something.

  Even getting dressed was an ordeal despite the fact that I didn’t even try to coordinate an outfit. I couldn’t figure out which end of my skirt went up, and I nearly put it on inside-out. Getting a bra on was a lost cause. By the time I succeeded in dragging a shirt on over my head, I wanted to go back to sleep and pretend I had no responsibilities for a week. I’d never been so completely out of it like this, not even the morning I woke up nine years ago with eyes turning gold and a world that felt like it was on fire. I could hardly focus, and my synesthesia seemed sluggish and out of sync, with images blurring at the edges. This had never happened before, and I was starting to worry a little that I might be a lot more sick than my body necessarily felt. I didn’t know. My brain worked differently than most people’s, so how could I predict what would happen if I got particularly ill?

  Sighing, I forced myself up and went looking for my purse, rediscovering the pieces of my cane again. I’d find time to fix it later, but right now I needed to e-mail my professors and that was going to be tricky enough. Dad had wanted to buy me a desktop computer, but I’d begged off after he got me a phone that I could already barely use. My perception doesn’t extend to computer screens. With nothing to touch, taste, smell or hear when text or pictures appear on the monitor, a computer is nothing more than an opaque box to me unless I use special software to make it accessible, and sometimes that software doesn’t work with whatever program I want to use. I’ve gotten to where I can write papers and do my homework on my netbook without too many issues, but for more complicated tasks, I usually have to ask someone to do it for me. Normally I could send an e-mail on my own, but with how I felt today...

  Twenty minutes later, I sighed and sat back to rub my temples. “Click send,” I mumbled and was rewarded with a jingle announcing the e-mail had been sent successfully. Almost simultaneously, there was an electronic tone from the parlor. It took a moment to sort out the sound. Doorbell. Right. I resisted the urge to ignore it and pretend I wasn’t home in case it was important to one of my housemates. Groaning, I reluctantly sat up and trudged out to get the door, opening it to find—

  “Sae?” I rocked back on my heels and nearly toppled over backwards, grabbing at the doorframe for balance. Her image swam in my mind for an instant before stabilizing, revealing her expression to be one of alarm.

  “Sanmei, you look terrible,” my coworker said bluntly, stepping forward. I was forced to give way as she entered the apartment, utterly taken aback by her intrusion.

  “Sae, not to be rude, but what are you doing here?” I asked as she kicked off her flats by the door. I was more than a little put off by her total disregard for etiquette. “How do you even have my address?”

  With no regard for my personal space, Sae put a hand on my forehead, making me flinch. “I got it off the computer when you didn’t show up or call in,” she answered blithely. “Hmm. You’re a little cold.”

  “You’re a little warm,” I countered, pulling away from her. My forehead burned uncomfortably, and gradually, warmth was joining it in my cheeks. Contrition overrode my annoyance. “I’m so sorry, I only just woke up a little bit ago and I’d just managed t
o get an e-mail to let my professors know I’m sick. What time is it?”

  “You ‘only just woke up’?” Sae gaped at me in horror. “How late were you up? It’s a little past six.”

  It took a moment for me to process this. At first I actually forced a giggle, thinking she was making a joke I didn’t get. When her expression didn’t change, then I did feel a chill. “Are you serious? I was up late, but it couldn’t have been later than…” I tried to estimate it in my head. Apparently now that I was up and moving, my body must have been waking up, because I started to heat at the memories that surfaced. “Maybe three. I know I was having trouble waking up and staying up, but fifteen hours?”

  That did it. “Oh God. I’m so sorry,” I said again, stunned into repetition. I ran a hand through my hair and winced as my fingers encountered tangles. “I can’t believe I slept so long. I’m going to call my doctor right now and see if I can get in today. Tonight. What happened at the shop? Did you have to close early?”

  “It’s fine; I got my sister to take your shift for the evening. Have you met her? Name of Ley, little shorter than me, brown hair, stutters a lot?” Sae chattered as she followed me. I got about a dozen steps back toward my room when suddenly everything tipped and I went down, or I would have if Sae hadn’t somehow got around me in time to interrupt my descent. I hit her with a thud and somehow she kept me from folding to the floor.

  “Careful!” she cried unhelpfully, helping steady me. “Sit down before you fall down.”