I got out of the car, opened the back door on the driver’s side and got in. I tried my best to will my erection away. Dawn rose up off the seat and pressed her back against the roof. She turned around and kicked the passenger seat as far forward as it would go to give herself more room. Barcie made a slithery movement and was suddenly resting on her elbows, her head above my lap, her fingers working the button and zipper of my jeans. Dawn rested her ass against the back of the passenger seat, reached down, unbuttoned Barcie’s shorts and pulled them and her underwear down her thighs. The girl’s white ass was so bony I told myself it reminded me of a concentration camp prisoner’s and thought that would do wonders for stifling my erection but the girl had tugged my jeans and underwear down far enough for my cock to pop out and I felt the slightly cool air hit it followed by the heat of Barcie’s mouth and before I knew it I was hard and no longer looking at Barcie’s bony ass but letting my eyes run up Dawn’s tanned thighs and resting on the crotch of her shorts before traveling up her stomach and taking in her small firm breasts. She was watching me look at her. I immediately felt shame and embarrassment.
Dawn made a cone of her hand and began pressing it against Barcie’s cunt.
Barcie’s mouth was doing things to my cock I’d never felt before.
“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Dawn said. “You don’t have to be afraid to like it. Barcie’s never gotten any complaints.”
It did feel good. This poor, unfortunate looking girl was giving me head while Dawn did god knew what to her. Why should I act like I wasn’t enjoying it?
“Yeah,” I said. “It feels really good.”
“You gonna come?”
“Yeah. I’m gonna come pretty soon.”
I was pretty pent up. It had been a few days since I’d even masturbated. Months since I’d actually touched a real girl.
I watched Dawn’s hand continue to press against Barcie. I looked down at Barcie, her head moving up and down, all the cords standing out in her neck. Dawn’s fingers began disappearing.
“I’m coming,” I said. I wasn’t trying to be dramatic or anything. I just thought the girl should be given the choice if she didn’t want to drink me.
“Go ahead and come in her mouth. That’s what she likes. She’ll milk you dry. Unless you want to come on her face.”
But my muscles had already constricted. I felt Barcie jerk a little with the initial shot. She did her best to keep going but ultimately pulled her mouth off me to gag while Dawn, now in up to her elbow, began punching her arm in and out of Barcie. Barcie’s eyes were closed, drool and come dripping out of her mouth, as she squealed and moaned. Dawn’s arm moved faster and faster until Barcie collapsed on the seat in a shivering heap.
The car was filled with a humid, smelly silence as we all sat on the backseat.
I slid my pants back up and fastened them.
Barcie pulled her cigarettes and lighter out of her shorts on the floor, not bothering to put them back on.
Dawn held her fisting arm out in front of her and studied it.
“I like the way it looks as it dries,” she said.
“Can I get one of those?” I asked Barcie.
She handed me a cigarette and I lit up.
“How was it, Barse?” Dawn asked.
“Nutritious.” Barcie smiled.
Dawn said, “You know all of Gethsemane’s cop cars are equipped with cameras inside and out?” She pointed at a red light on the dash. “So, congratulations, Brett, you’re officially an accomplice.”
“My name’s Brad,” I said.
* * *
Once we were ready to go, Dawn reassumed driving privileges. She told me I had to sit in the back, “like a criminal.”
I felt dazed and weird and like anything I said would be something else for Dawn to humiliate me about so I just looked out the window. Dawn’s constant banter became a human equivalent of the road’s hum, countered only with Barcie’s slow, laconic responses. I hoped we’d be going back to Gethsemane after our stop in Kettering. Barcie had asked Dawn if the people we were picking up would be ready and Dawn said they were, she’d just texted them.
I imagined a whole society of young people, never really sleeping, never really eating, sitting around and feasting on anxiety while waiting to be rousted from their permanent semi-stupor by the vibrating of their phones. I think I dozed off for a bit.
The intermittent popping of the beer cans kept waking me up. I didn’t know if my half-sleep state was distorting reality or if the girls really managed to pound that many beers before we got to Kettering. Kettering wasn’t that far away. They’d pounded like five beers each. I’d come to with the pop of the can and then again a couple of minutes later when they rolled down their windows to throw the cans out. I really wanted one and knew it would help calm my nerves and make the situation a little more tolerable but I stopped myself from asking. It wouldn’t end with one and I would ultimately get stupid and lose all initiative. The same as if I’d taken a sip of the whiskey back at Travis’s. I tried forcing myself to doze back off but it wasn’t working.
Dawn pulled the car into the driveway of a definitively middle class neighborhood, which Kettering seemed to have in abundance. She pulled out her phone and typed something, probably letting whoever know we were here to pick them up.
I remembered my text to Travis and was pretty sure my phone hadn’t vibrated with a response. I didn’t want to pull it out in front of Dawn, although I wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like she was going to beat me up and take it from me. At least, I didn’t think she would. I made a note to check it the first chance I got.
A heavily muscled young guy and a small young woman emerged from the house.
Dawn and Barcie got out of the car. Barcie didn’t stand so well. Dawn seemed unaffected.
“You’re gonna have to drive,” Dawn told the massive guy. “We’re too wasted.” She didn’t slur or sound the slightest bit drunk and I wondered if she was just concerned about being over the legal limit. But who pulled over a cop car? Maybe she was just too lazy to drive anymore.
“That’s cool,” he said. “You want to just do it here?”
“Nah. I’ve got someplace better.”
“Right on.”
While everyone seemed distracted, I quickly slid my phone out of my pocket and clicked the button to turn the screen on.
No text from Travis.
Dawn said to the girl, “Nice to see you again.”
The girl didn’t say anything. She just blinked and smiled.
The girl was really pretty but in a completely different way than Dawn. There was something about Dawn that seemed slightly exotic and, maybe, a little tomboyish. This girl seemed preppy and clean, like she’d just wandered out of a sorority. Blond and blue-eyed, her body was lithe and petite.
Everyone got back into the car: the guy behind the steering wheel, the girl in the passenger seat, Barcie to my right and Dawn to my left.
“Oh, guys, this is Brad,” Dawn said.
“Hey, man, I’m Klint with a ‘K’. This is Taylor Dream. She’s gonna be real famous.”
“Great.” It wasn’t the best thing to say but I didn’t even really know how to respond to a statement like that. Klint’s alpha frat vibe made me immediately uncomfortable and there was something weird about the girl too. Maybe they both just seemed too normal.
“Isn’t Taylor pretty?” Dawn asked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Relax, bro,” Klint said as he backed the car out. “I’m the only one who fucks her.”
“It’s okay,” Dawn said. “Brad doesn’t like to fuck real girls. He likes jerking off more. Would you jerk off to Taylor?”
My face was again hot with embarrassment but I knew she wouldn’t let it rest until I said something so I just said, “Sure.”
“How would you want to see her get fucked? Rough? Do you want to see her get tied up? Do you want to see her choke on some guy’s huge cock? Do you want to watch her get fucked by
some gross old fat guy? How about, like, ten gross old fat guys? Oh, I bet you want to see her take it up the ass, don’t you?”
I didn’t say anything.
“You’ll have to excuse Brad. It’s probably hard for him to think about sex right now. He’s already shot his load into Barcie’s mouth.”
Klint glanced into the rearview and said, “Yikes.”
Something about that rubbed me the wrong way. I cleared my throat and said, “I don’t really pay a lot of attention to the guys in the video. I’d like to see her get fucked hard, definitely in the ass. But when the guy finishes I’d like to see her put on a strap on and fuck the guy in the ass.”
Dawn smiled. “I like that idea.”
“I am not taking it up the ass,” Klint said.
“We can talk about it when we get there,” Dawn said. “Speaking of which . . .” She pulled out her phone, pulled up a mapping app and placed it on the laptop below the dash.
Then she leaned her head against the window and seemed to doze off. I don’t think she actually dozed off. I think she just closed her eyes. The car was silent for the duration of the ride.
I was surprised when the cop car pulled up in front of my apartment nearly a half hour later. My first thought was not that she had brought me home but that she lived in the same building. I quickly dismissed that as absurd. I would know if the sheriff lived in the building. I would’ve noticed a police car parked in front or a uniformed man exiting or entering the building without removing someone in handcuffs. Besides, my building was not really for professionals or families. It was for poor people and old people. There were only about twelve apartments in the old three-story building and it was only about half full at any given time.
“We’re going to need to use your apartment for a couple hours,” Dawn said.
What was the point in arguing? At least I was home. She hadn’t lied about that.
I led them to the door of my building. Dawn said she and Barcie needed to get some stuff out of the trunk and would be up in a few minutes.
I led Klint and Taylor Dream up to my sad second floor apartment. I had this momentary fear that if I stuck around I was going to be asked to participate and was pretty sure my head was going to explode if I had to be in the same room as Klint for more than five minutes. It was nearly six in the morning. The sun was coming up and the birds were chirping outside.
“Well, folks,” I said, “I’m exhausted.”
I pulled all the covers and pillows from my bed. Klint had brought the case of beer up with him and I grabbed one of those too. I took everything into the bathroom. I knew if I didn’t disappear before Dawn came up she wouldn’t let me leave. I didn’t lock the door because I figured they would need the bathroom. I threw the covers in the bathtub, pulled the shower curtain, chugged the beer, and drifted off.
When I woke up the first time, the shower curtain had been pulled back and Taylor Dream was on her knees, naked, vomiting into the toilet. Dawn stood in the doorway, filming it. I woke up again to see Klint, naked and staring into the vanity mirror, breathing hard and flexing, blood running down the backs of his legs. I thought he was shaking and looked pale but that could have just been my imagination.
I woke up for the final time sometime that afternoon. I was still in the bathtub but I was soaking wet and imagined everyone pissing on me at some point.
My phone sat on my chest.
There was one text message and three missed calls.
The text was from Dawn Bando.
Nice to see she’d added herself as a contact.
The calls were all from work.
I opened the text.
It was a photo of my text to Travis on Travis’s phone.
“Are you awake?”
Did that mean she had Travis’s phone?
The text accompanying the picture said: “Remember to ask me about Schrodinger’s cat.”
Humiliation Reel
“We done had three people call in today,” Ted Billups said. “It’s the busiest time of the year.”
“I know. I’m really sorry. I’m going to get the truck towed today. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
I had called work before even getting out of the bathtub. Now, lying there, I wished I hadn’t. I was wet and there was a dank foul smell in the bathroom. I was pretty sure it was coming from me.
“You’d best or I’m gonna have to hire me some new folks. You heard from Travis?”
“No. Why? Did he call in too?”
“Didn’t bother callin. I tried textin him but I just keep gettin pitchers of a hairy ladies’ parts.” It was hard not to laugh hearing Ted Billups say those words. “I don’t know if that’s his way uh quittin or whut.”
“I’ll see if I can get hold of him.”
“I best not see you boys out runnin around together.”
“I wish I had a car to run around in.”
“Welp, I better get back to it. Gonna be a long day.”
“See you tomorrow. And thanks again.”
“Yep.”
I clicked off. Today was a pretty good day to miss. Today was Chamon day. Their kids had been home from school on summer break for the past couple of weeks. They had an irritating daughter, about seven, who followed me around the house and asked what I was doing the entire time I was there, despite the brevity of my answers.
“I’m watering plants.”
“I’m trimming plants.”
“Still watering.”
“Still trimming.”
Their mom never suggested to her that she might be bothering me. Never offered up any alternatives for her to go and do. It made it even more irritating because the girl was typically staring into the screen of her phone while she accosted me. Creepier than the girl was her older brother who sat in the corner of the living room scratching at various parts of his body. He had bloody patches on his face, hands, and arms. A corona of dead skin surrounded him on the dark wood floor. So somebody else would get to deal with that.
I removed everything from the tub, stripped off my clothes, and took a long, hot shower. After my shower I had to walk through the apartment to get clean clothes. By the time I reached my chest of drawers, I felt like I needed another shower. My first instinct was to just walk away from the apartment. Go to a hotel until I could find another apartment and know I would never see my security deposit again.
Thankfully there were no people in the apartment, but it looked like it had been the site of a weeklong party. There were ashes and cigarette butts everywhere. Beer cans. Dark stains on the floor and bed. I couldn’t tell if they were shit or blood or both.
Despite my nausea and sense of sinking dread, I was incredibly hungry. I had food in the kitchen area but couldn’t even think about preparing food, let alone eating, in the apartment until it had been cleaned.
I got dressed, grabbed my wallet and phone, and headed to the diner on the corner. I stopped by the bank of mailboxes just inside the main entrance. I threw everything in the trashcan by the door. There was a lost dog flyer taped to the door. It was a different lost dog flyer than the one from a couple days ago.
* * *
While eating, I tried to clear my head.
I had successfully pushed the girl from the photos out of my thoughts weeks ago so it had been a while since I’d had to think about anything other than what I was going to eat or read or watch on my laptop. It was easy to get overwhelmed. Now Travis had me thinking about the girl from the photos again. I didn’t have any feelings for her so the only thing I really associated her with was panic and fear. And now there was the shit with Travis and that girl from last night, Dawn. That had been insane and she had been on my mind since waking up. And what was the shit about Schrodinger’s cat? I knew a little about it but hadn’t given it much thought since, well, since I was about Dawn’s age.
I tried to push it all away until I powered through my meal.
I knew I’d have to spend a lot of time cleaning the apartment, probably the re
st of the day, and would use that time to sort things out. While I didn’t love the idea of cleaning up other people’s bodily fluids, I had never minded cleaning. I found something very Zen about it. Focusing on one thing and then the next until everything was neat and orderly. Maybe that’s why I didn’t hate my current job as much as I’d hated many other jobs. Landscaping is essentially being nature’s janitor.
Once stuffed on cheap and greasy breakfast food, I headed back to the apartment. I pulled out all of my cleaning products from beneath the sink and set them on the small stove, which was still remarkably clean. I filled the mop bucket with cleaner and water. I would probably need to empty and refill this several more times. I strapped on some rubber gloves and prepared to dig in.
My phone vibrated.
I took the gloves off and pulled my phone out.
It was a text from Dawn.
“Why didn’t you answer me?”
I was going to immediately respond with something like, “Dunno. Just woke up,” but stopped myself. Why did I have to respond at all? If I were smart, wouldn’t I just try to avoid Dawn forever?
I knew I couldn’t really do that.
Well, I probably could do it, but knew I wasn’t going to.
She might know what happened to Travis.
Not just that. It was everything else. True, if every night were like last night, I’d find it exhausting but . . . But more things had happened last night than I’d witnessed the last five years, easily. While I didn’t feel good about everything that had happened, I didn’t feel great about going to work every day, either, but still did it.
My phone vibrated again.
Another text from Dawn.
“Come down to the street.”
The phone vibrated again before I could even put it back in my pocket.
“I know you’re in there.”
I didn’t kid myself. I knew I was going to go down there, but there was something I wanted to check before I did.
I pulled up the browser on my phone and typed:
“sheriff bando gethsemane”
I half expected it to turn up nothing, but I was taken to the very professional looking website for the Gethsemane Police Department. The image of Sheriff Charles “Chuck” Bando, portly and smiling, but still dead-eyed, stared back at me. Of course it occurred to me this was public knowledge, meaning just because a Sheriff Bando existed didn’t necessarily mean the girl I’d met who called herself Dawn Bando was really his daughter. I quickly typed in the name “Dawn Bando.” The first link was to her MyFace page, naturally, and below that was a link to the Gethsemane High graduating class of 2017, which meant she’d just graduated this spring.
This Town Needs a Monster Page 4