Flytrap

by Stephanie Ahn

  I walk around the car to the right side. Once again, the woman is sitting there, this time with her sunglasses shading her eyes.

  “Payment?”

  I hand over the sack, just barely before the car starts squealing out of the lot. This new kid crows with laughter as he drives; he scares me way more than the last one.

  As the woman takes the urn out of the sack, I hastily fasten my seatbelt. “Is he old enough to be smoking?” I shout, nodding at the kid.

  “I keep telling him to quit,” she says gruffly, shaking her head.

  She spins the urn around in her hands, expertly, like she knows exactly what to expect. She frowns at the chipped rim, but doesn’t comment on it. Then she nods at the driver—we screech to a stop in a parking lot next to a dog park. This time, my seatbelt cuts into my shoulder as it stops me just short of flying forward.

  She and Gorgeous exit the car. Gorgeous is in a leather jacket and tight-fitting jeans—even tighter when he bends over to pop the trunk. Wow, that is a bubble butt. I feel the childish urge to pout in envy, even as he reveals a smooth black cello case loaded into the back of the car. The woman clicks it open.

  It’s a harpoon gun. Built like a regular rifle with a wooden stock, but with a wickedly barbed, shimmering metal projectile tacked to its end.

  “I—I don’t know how to fire this,” I stammer, staring at it.

  “That’s alright,” she replies, gruffly. “It’s cursed—‘May the wielder’s aim always be true.’ ”

  “Why is that a curse?”

  “Because it’s always used in fights the bearer cannot win.”

  “Wow, that’s…” I rub my knuckles into my forehead. “…I guess it’s exactly what I asked for, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. And we always deliver what is asked for, nothing more, nothing less.”

  I take the case, hefting it over my shoulder onto my back. It’s a solid, strangely comforting weight, like my old guitar. As I turn to go, Gorgeous wolf-whistles.

  “So, you’re trying to kill a demon?” he calls.

  I turn. “Yeah, why?”

  He tosses me something, underhand. I fumble to catch it, getting my finger hooked on a loop of metal. The trigger guard. It’s a handgun. Fully loaded. I look up just in time to catch another thrown object, this one made of flexible straps: a shoulder holster.

  His grin is crooked and sharp. “I think this is going to be interesting. I wanted to throw some chips in the pile.”

  “So you’re betting that I’ll win?”

  He laughs, shifting his legs—his thighs do this distracting, bulging thing. “Absolutely not. I just think it’ll be more fun if it’s a fair fight.”

  I huff. “You’re rude.”

  “It’s one of my most attractive traits.”

  “You mean, apart from all that sex magic you’re oozing?”

  His eyebrows go up, and his mouth makes an O. It takes the edge off of him, how silly he looks when he’s caught in his bullshit.

  I raise my chin and give my own charmingly cocky grin, flicking a stray hair out of my face. “I know sex magic when I feel it, man. Where’d you learn it?”

  His surprise dims, his eyes twinkle, and he laughs. “Fertility deity. You?”

  “Succubi. Berlin, when I was twenty-one or twenty-two.”

  “Eeyy, so you know how to party! If you survive, you should join me and my friends on a rager.”

  “If I survive.”

  The kid with the cigar, still in the Cadillac, obnoxiously revs the engine. Gorgeous’s mother disappears into the backseat as Gorgeous jogs for the passenger side. He twists back to salute me with two fingers. “Break a leg!” He’s still closing the door when the car careens backward out of the parking lot, screeching.

  It barrels down the path, parallel to the fence surrounding the dog park—but instead of turning right, onto the main street, it goes the other way—right into the park’s closed entrance. The gates blast open with the sound of clanging, rending metal—someone screams—and the hood of the car vanishes, then the carriage, then the back. Then poof, the car is gone, leaving only a destroyed gate and the sound of dogs yipping excitedly as they race for freedom.

  I stare, disbelieving, for a second. Then, I smile. Yeah, I guess that isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. Then the smile turns to a frown as it occurs to me to yell—

  “Hey! You couldn’t have at least dropped me off at home?”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  One For the Road

  A few shopping trips and a long train ride later, I flitter around my apartment building, catching my landlady coming out to take out the trash.

  “Ajumma? Ajumma!” I stage-whisper.

  “Ah, it’s you!” Ms. Baek says in Korean, her eyes crinkling happily. I bow to her; she waves, then continues to shuffle to the dumpster in her rubber slippers. I drop my stuff to help, hefting her plastic bag into the dumpster as I speak in Korean too.

  “Annyeonghasaeyo, ajumma—have you seen any strange people around here? Wearing sunglasses, hoods and hats, odd hair—like my college friends, from a month ago.”

  She smooths out the wrinkles in her skirt. “Yes! They were here, but they left.”

  “Are you sure they left?”

  Junhyun walks out behind her, where he’s been swirling around the building doing recon. He gives me a thumbs up. Gone, he confirms.

  “They asked me to call them if you came back,” Ms. Baek continues, obliviously, pulling a business card out of her cardigan pocket. I suck the inside of my cheek through my teeth.

  “Are you going to call them?”

  She looks up, into the concern in my face. Then, with a quick flick of her wrist, she tosses the business card into the dumpster. “I said I would, but I must have lost their card.” She smiles beatifically. “Oh, well.”

  I bow, over and over again. “Gamsahamnida, ajumma, gamsahamnida—”

  I rush up to my apartment on the fourth floor with my giant duffel bag of supplies and get to work. I’m sitting on the floor, screwing the top back onto a Christmas ornament, when Junhyun floats through the wall.

  What are you working on? he asks.

  “Weapons.”

  Weapons? For what?

  “To kill a demon.”

  To kill a what?

  He swivels, like he hears something. Seconds later, the faint murmur of voices drifts from the hallway. I grab my crowbar off the floor and approach—but when I look through the peephole in my door, I see a head of auburn hair a little ways down the hallway, arms in blue sleeves confusedly outstretched as they accept a heavy mesh bag from a chattering Ms. Baek. More talking, more bowing; then Kate comes down the hallway, stands directly in front of me, and presses my doorbell.

  I almost put the crowbar down on the kitchen counter, then reconsider it. What if she’s a manipulation tactic of Beelzebub’s too? Like Addy—I mean, Chloe. Chloe Hargrave…

  I knew Chloe’s call was a trap, but I still went to meet her. Still went with her to the hospital, still watched Beelzebub be pulled out of her stomach and slaughter the room. But if I hadn’t, what would have changed? Maybe Dolly would have found some other way to put Chloe in my path. Maybe Chloe would have had that C-section without me in the room, and everyone would have died anyway. Whatever I am, I’m not smart enough to add up all the “what-ifs” and come up with a better scenario. I follow my nose. Always have, always will.

  As the bell rings again, I slide the crowbar onto the kitchen counter and open the door.

  Kate smiles a little bashfully, holding up both the mesh bag and a paper bag of takeout. She’s in leggings and a powder blue, fleece-lined aviator jacket. No heavy coat, so she must have driven herself here. “I, um, don’t want to seem like I’m stalking you, but you told me where you live last time, and last time you came to find me—I mean, you didn’t, but we met anyway and went to my place, so… so, I
just thought—”

  It feels like years since I last saw her, even though it’s only been a day. But it all comes flooding back, everything I’d somehow forgotten in the past twenty-four hours—the softness of her, her freckles, her laugh, her dick deep in my guts—and I pull her into the door by her shoulders and hug her tight. She seems surprised, giggling into my chest. Maybe I’m being weird; I pop a quick kiss onto her forehead as I let go.

  “Sorry, I—I was a little stressed.”

  “No need to apologize. I think I met your neighbor. Ms. Baek? She, um, gave me some fruits.” The mesh bag is full to bursting with spherical pears. I take it from her and pull the pears out onto my kitchen counter.

  “She probably likes you because you’re Korean.”

  “Sounded like it. She told me I speak better Korean than you.”

  “Of course she did.” I peck her cheek, and she giggles.

  She peers around my shoulder, at the mess of Christmas ornaments, rags, mason jars, and bubble packaging on the floor. “Getting an early start on Christmas?”

  I push aside a wheeled plastic tub with my foot, almost tripping over a stray wooden dowel along the way. “I like to be prepared. Your family celebrate Christmas?”

  “Well, they’re capitalists first, Buddhists second. They like the gift-giving, eating, and passive-aggressively comparing the size of their house against my aunt and uncle’s.” She takes off her jacket and bares her shoulders, revealing a halter top. I can’t resist thumbing the freckles on her shoulders, just because I can—her breath catches. I look at her, she looks at me, and we both know what the other is thinking.

  We have a meal first, falafel with turmeric rice. I watch her as she stacks her trash in a neat pile, then meticulously peels one of the pears Ms. Baek gave her. She bites delicately so as not to smear her lipstick; so differently from the way she fucks, but then again, even her chaos is ordered. Maybe that’s why I like her so much right now. When I’m with her, her control makes me feel controlled, like a leashed dog who just has to heel and keep step with its owner. Lilith and I played games, and that was fun in its own right—but these winter days, I’m too exhausted for sparring, for the theater of push-pull. I just want to do the girlfriend equivalent of trotting around a shopping mall, carrying Kate’s purse for her.

  She starts kissing me between bites of food—quick little smooches, sweet and fruity from the pear juice. I respond with kisses of my own, until we both zoom in at the same time and knock noses—she bursts into laughter, grabbing me by the sweater. We sweep some trash onto the floor as we stand up, twirling unsteadily toward the bedroom

  “Hey, weren’t you wearing this sweater the last time I saw you?” she mumbles into my throat.

  “Yes, and I’ll admit it’s pretty gross and sweaty, but this time you can take it off of me.”

  I sit back on the bed, and attempt to seductively pull my sweater over my head—but I get stuck, the collar somehow caught in my ponytail and covering my ears. I flail, very unsexily.

  Kate, laughing, says, “Put your arms up.”

  “Huh?” I say, unable to hear her through the fabric.

  “Manseh, manseh!”

  My arms automatically shoot for the ceiling. I’m quiet as she tugs the sweater off me. A memory comes to me, unbidden.

  “Manseh! Manseh!”

  My baby sister—my parents could never get her attention from across the room, so much so that my mom screamed at my dad until he took her to a pediatrician for tests. But I knew the secret; I taught her that “Manseh!” meant celebrating, meant putting your arms up as high as they could go—so every time I needed her to come to me, I’d shout “Manseh!” Her big round head would turn, with that funny little wispy mohawk she didn’t outgrow for a year, and she’d come running over, her pudgy arms stretched up. I’d pick her up and spin her around, she’d squeal, and I’d tuck her under my arm like a football and carry her to wherever we needed to go.

  “Oh… woah,” Kate says, staring, holding my sweater in both hands.

  I eject the memory like a cassette tape. “Huh?”

  “Is… what’s this?” she asks, reaching for my stomach. She traces the pattern of Lilith’s sigil with her thumb, as though checking if it’s really there.

  “Oh—that’s a scar.”

  “A scar? Really? Like, surgical?” She bends to look at it more closely. I lean back.

  “Kind of. You know, like, scarification, body modding? Like tattoos? It’s basically just that.”

  She runs four fingers down from between my breasts to the waistband of my pants, feeling the ridges of the two lines that cut horizontally across my ribcage, the circle around my bellybutton, the three smaller rings right below. I shiver, goosebumps rising on my waist.

  “Did it hurt?” she asks.

  “Yeah.”

  “As bad as this?” She lifts her hand, brushing the webbed burn scar on the side of my neck.

  “No. Nothing has ever hurt more than that.” And then I crush my mouth to hers, partially to distract her, partially to distract myself—because Kate might be thinking of my scars, but I’m still thinking of Seoul, of my family that’s not my fucking family anymore.

  We stretch out on the bed with her on top of me, and I grope her waist—mmm, she has such tight abs—and she undoes the strings of her top at the back of her neck. I breathe in the brown sugar of her perfume, the salty tang of her sweat from being in the heated apartment. I suck on her pulse point, palm her firm breast—she moans, and giggles, and moans again.

  “You got lube?” she gasps. “You took a bit of warm-up last time—not that I’m complaining.”

  “I kind of like doing it without lube,” I murmur. “I like being held down through the pain.”

  “Mmm, I like that you like that.”

  Still, I flail to the side of the bed. “Here, I have strawberry-flavored Astroglide. If I can just—reach—”

  Kate leans over me to reach the lower bedside drawer. She tugs it open, then stops. “…Holy shit.”

  My heart rate goes zero to sixty. “What, what is it?” Shit shit shit. That wasn't the right drawer, was it? Shit, how do I explain whatever she found—

  She dips and comes back up, holding a dildo. Big, red dildo. My brain flushes with soothing cold water, even though my body still rushes with adrenalin.

  “Oh, that’s just Clifford. Clifford the Big Red Dick.”

  “C-Clifford—?” She starts laughing and can’t stop.

  “Yeah, my sister got it for me for Christmas last year. As a joke. I got her a body pillow of her favorite anime character.”

  Kate inspects Clifford, turning its enormous length this way and that. "This is high quality silicone, must have been expensive."

  "Yeah, but I could never fit that, so—"

  There's a sharp twinkle in Kate's eyes. The corner of her mouth lifts as she peers coyly at me from beneath her lashes.

  “I can fit it.”

  My eyes widen. “…No fucking way.”

  “I mean, it’ll take some warm-up, but…”

  I’m already sitting up, my arms encircling her waist. “You can’t just say that and expect me not to get ravenously curious.”

  She bops me on the nose with the tip of the dick. “Alright then, sailor. Warm me up.”

  And I do, eagerly. She comes on my face and once on my fingers. I play with her nipples until her eyes water, kiss her until we both run out of breath, fuck her with my fingers until I can get four of them in her, slathered with lube and spotting my sheets and just losing myself in the easy wetness of it all, moaning into her tits as my fingers squeeze in and out of her.

  And then I get out my harness, and she just… sinks down onto me.

  It’s been a while since I fucked a woman like this. I wasn’t kidding when I said I’m a dick-loving bottom, and Lilith had a preference against penetration, so this is… new, yet n
ot-new. It’s hot. Kate’s the one riding me, but somehow I’m still the one losing it—I can hear myself saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” over and over, sweat dripping down my temples, hoarse gasps tearing at my throat and convincing me that I desperately, desperately needed to cream inside her. It takes some wrestling with tangled wires, but we get out my magic wand vibrator with the big rubber head. I press it to her clit as she gasps and struggles and grips my arms, forcing me to sit up—she clings to me with the vibrator rumbling between us, shouting, her chin on my shoulder, her nails digging red crescents into my back. I feel her jaws open wide like a tiger’s, her tears and spit dripping down my shoulder as her legs lock around my waist and squeeze the breath out of me.

  And I don’t let her know that I’m crying too, because I will miss this. Wherever I’m going, I will miss this.

  She breathes hard on me as I switch the vibrator off, her ribs rising and falling against mine. “Ohhh. Oh my god. Hrrrrgh. Oh my god.”

  “God never made you come as hard as I just did.”

  She smacks my shoulder. “Oh my g—shut the fuck up!”

  I envelop her in a bear hug, tickling her while she can’t get away—but then she bites my shoulder so hard I have to let her go. She proclaims victory with another shiver-inducing bite, then rolls off the bed to go rummaging in my closet.

  “What… are you doing?” I say, dangling my head off the mattress to watch her upside-down.

  “Finding something to wear.”

  “Don’t you have something to wear?”

  “Yes. How about this?” she says, holding up a hanger with a worn, dark-colored varsity jacket on it, the sleeves a dirty white. I roll over and look at her right-side-up.

  “I mean, sure? That’s from high school.”

  “High school!” She grins, shoving her arms through the sleeves. They’re a bit too long, and she has to scrunch them back to keep going through the closet. “What sport did you play?”

  “None, I bought that off the rack in Hongdae. Figured it’d make me look more like a dude—made it easier to be in public with my girlfriend. I had my hair in like, a bowl cut, and I tucked it into a cap.”