Gerry thrusts once more, hard, his face contorting as he grinds out a scream between clenched teeth.
The rain washes over me and the wave of my orgasm grips me. I’ve never come so hard, but I’m standing outside myself. I don’t recognize the sound coming out of me. I’m not even aware that I’m making the sound out loud, until, abruptly, the tableau shatters.
Gerry turns towards the window looking right where I’m standing and hollers, “What the fuck?”
He releases the belt and reaches down to pull up his drawers and trousers. I back away, still rocking from my climax, but suddenly grown cold. I glance up just as a bolt of lightning sears the night and blinds me. The crack is almost immediate. So close, so close. It’s struck something nearby.
“What, Gerry, what?” Pamela’s screaming. She has no idea what’s happening.
“Fucking pervert. There’s a guy out there, a fucking perv.”
It can’t be. I can’t be caught. I won’t be.
Pamela’s babbling. “Oh, no. No-no-no. Oh, God. Did he see? Oh, my God. Oh, shit.”
By the time Gerry gets to the window, I’ve wrapped my slicker around me and dashed down the walk between the house and hedge. The splashes of light are still burned into my retinas, the way a flashbulb leaves a white imprint. I run and stumble, going down on one knee and pain knifes into my leg. My palms scrape the gritty concrete sidewalk. I crawl scrambling to my feet again, tripping and staggering towards the street. I can’t think and just race into the streaming sheets of rain illuminated by streetlights. I hear a door slam. He’s giving chase. He’s going to catch me. He mustn’t catch me. Can I outrun him? No chance. He’s half my age and an athlete. I just run. I have to get away from him.
I race towards the wooded park where all the mothers bring their children in the light of day. I can lose him there. I sprint between the trees into a particularly dense copse. He won’t find me there.
Gerry Barker bawls through the pouring rain and murk. “You fucking pervert. I catch you, you’re dead.”
But I’m hidden now. There’s no way he can find me. The storm is protecting me. The storm always protects me.
My heart isn’t thudding any more, but I’m still shivering. Wrapped in my thick chenille robe and huddling in my favourite easy chair, I’ve tried to warm myself. A half-filled snifter of brandy sits close to hand on the end table. It was full when I started it. Even so, I’m still chilled. The shaking won’t stop. The fear feels like ants crawling all over me and worms wriggling inside my gut.
I go over the scene again and again, a stuck record playing the words over and over.
You fucking pervert. I catch you, you’re dead.
I waited in the woods until I was sure Gerry had given up and gone back home, back to his slut-bitch. It was her fault. She made him so hot he couldn’t control himself. And when he gets that way, I can’t stop myself. I want her to get what she has coming to her.
But tonight was different. I’ve never felt it so intensely. The storm was perfect. The scene was perfect, best ever. But it was too much for me tonight. I got carried away. I’ve never done that before; made noise. I’ve always managed to remain silent, dead silent.
But he couldn’t have seen me clearly. Not my face, or else the police would already have been here pounding on my door, and I’d be under arrest.
If Gerry knew who it was, I wouldn’t be sitting here wondering how this could have happened.
But I can’t take the chance anymore. Now they know. Now they know someone watches them. They’ll be cautious. They won’t let themselves be seen any more and they’ll be looking out from now on. Will they tell their neighbours to be on the lookout, too, or just keep quiet about it? I can’t be certain. Supposing they lie in wait, set a trap?
Fuck them. They’ve spoiled it. They’ve spoiled it all.
And Gerry calling me a pervert. Fucking bastard. He always was a snotty prick. Thought he was so cool just because he was good-looking and the girls threw themselves at him. Stupid bitches.
And now he’s worse, the prick. And calling me a pervert. What about him? Him and sweet, prim little Pammy? He was the one getting a hard-on whipping his wife’s fat ass. And her pretending she’s some trained pony, dancing around and shoving her cunt at him.
Not exactly Ward and June Cleaver, now, are they? All that fresh-faced innocence they show the world is a lie, a filthy lie. Pamela all wide-eyed and honey-blond sweet, and she’s nothing more than a whore parading her wares for that cocksucker, Gerry. I’d feel sorry for him, except he isn’t worth it. I was wrong thinking he was special. He’s the pervert, not me.
I take another sip of brandy.
The rain has tapered off. My window is open. I can hear everything dripping; there’s no other sound, now, except a few crickets chirping, and a dog barks in the distance. The calm after the storm. A light breeze wafts in like a sigh in the wake of a tumultuous orgasm.
I start feeling comfortable in the glow of the single lamp beside me. The storm has passed and I’m feeling more in control again. But everything’s changed now. It won’t be safe any more. They’ve ruined it. Gerry and Pamela Barker, Mr and Mrs Perfect Suburbanite in their neat little stick house, have spoiled all my fun.
Or have they?
The wood stove is cold, dormant for the summer. I stand up and go over to the bookcase against the wall and retrieve the box of matches then sink back down into my chair.
I slide the cover open and extract one lucifer. The rasp of it against the box arouses me and the head igniting makes me catch my breath. The brandy helps, but this? A tide of warmth surges inside me, as I stare into the flame transfixed, until it threatens to singe my fingers and I blow it out.
I toss it into an empty candy dish by the lamp then strike another. One by one, I light the matches, clench the muscles in my cunt each time, savour the throbbing then blow it out, until there is little pile of blackened sticks in the dish. Little charred stick houses.
Canvas Back
Craig J. Sorensen
I love Ollie’s Bargain Outlet. I don’t go there with anything specific in mind, but I never know what I’ll find. Still, when I needed a Chilton’s manual for my twenty-year-old Swiss cheese Chevy Suburban I found one for two bucks.
They live up to their motto at Ollie’s. Good stuff. Cheap.
Before I start sounding like a commercial, let me explain.
It was long after my red period. I was working big, deep gallery wrap canvases in bold colors. I was obsessed with an abstracted form that implied the motion of tall grass in a field on a windy day. I called it, rather pretentiously, my wheat period. My current high-relief impasto technique and taste for pricey Sennelier oil paints left little of my limited funds for anything else. It might have more aptly been called my ramen noodle period.
But every man has his limits. For the third morning in a row I’d woken up with a gouge in my ass from the spring that stretched through the cover of the fleabag queen bed I’d found two studios before. I was finally pissed enough to do something about it.
Enter Ollie’s. I decided to give it a shot. Maybe they’d have a queen mattress in my price range. Luckily they did.
“Can I get some help with it?”
“Pick up for customer.” The pimple-faced teen’s voice echoed in distorted strains through the cavernous space. He pulled back from the microphone and looked out into the store. “Little Leeny will help you.”
Little Leeny was neither. She stood around six feet tall and had atlas shoulders. But her face was sort of pudgy and girlish with skinny lips atop a deep chin. Her eyes matched the dark sapphire posts through her left nostril and her long earlobes. She bound her bright red hair tight atop her skull so it splashed like a red gerbera daisy from its bright green band. She didn’t linger like the other employees though business was slow. She worked like a woman who had known how to go hungry.
Leeny didn’t say a word as I pointed out my new mattress. Her Secret powder fresh deodorant mingled with sweat
and Irish Spring soap as she set it on the flat cart.
“Let me help you with that,” I said as the wheels fell silent by the back of my Suburban.
“I got it, hon.” Her voice was high and girlish. She tossed the mattress in like a throw pillow. She gave me a strangely sweet smile that seduced me to smile back.
“Fuck.” My voice came back in a long echo. “Fuck!” My most recent painting was a true piece of shit. I’d known it all along, but I worked on like it would somehow resolve itself. It didn’t. “Goddamn it!” I rubbed my fingers hard into my scalp.
I had a new mattress, but little else. I was out of canvases. I had a sale coming in another week, and just enough crap in the improvised kitchen I had set up at the end of the large main room for sustenance. The side effect of less important pursuits like buying mattresses and food was that sometimes there wasn’t enough left to do the important thing. Paint.
I started rifling through my stash of finished paintings in the hope that a blank canvas was mixed in. In the musty storeroom, I unearthed the remnants of my red period, back when I used pastels and large, toothy papers. Back then I obsessed with the figure and a classic technique. I smiled as I recalled the pleasure of having a model in front of me as soft waves of Technicolor dust rippled down the paper.
Little Leeny popped into my head. The nametag said “Colleen”. She wore loose navy coveralls and scuffed steel-toed boots. Her long hands sported chipped cherry red polish on stubby nails that punctuated long, strong hands. I figured her to be in her mid twenties. What skin I could see was porcelain pale, smooth with a satin shimmer.
Strong but girlish, sturdy but fair, contrasting eyes and hair. I still had a big box of pastels and a small stack of paper stashed somewhere. I decided to revive my red period.
Little Leeny grinned skeptically. “Are you serious? You want to paint me?”
“For real.” I forced one side of my mouth to curl into a neo realistic smile.
“How much?”
“Ten bucks an hour.”
“How many hours?”
“I dunno. At least three or four.”
Leeny’s eyes lifted up to the Spartan roof of Ollie’s. “This is a joke, right?”
“I don’t joke much.”
“Oh? How ’bout fifteen bucks an hour.”
Up to this point I had assumed Little Leeny wasn’t terribly intelligent. I realized how wrong I was as I measured the depth of her eyes. “How about twelve.”
“What the hell, you’ve got a deal. Where and when?” She shook my hand like a longshoreman.
As I recited directions, she pondered. “Near that old furniture factory?”
“In the old furniture factory.”
One of her red eyebrows lifted high.
“I forgot to ask one question. When do I get paid?” Leeny pushed away from the door jamb as I opened up.
I measured my response. “Well – that’s another matter. I’m selling a piece in another week, so I’ll have the money then.”
“Nothing up front?” She started to turn away. Her tight jeans framed a perfectly rounded butt.
“Wait, wait.” I went to the old bright blue cabinets I had found in an alley near a demolished house. I forced my stash drawer open and found my last drops of “emergency cash”: a ten and a five. “Fifteen now, the rest when I get paid? It’s going to be at least eight hours, so at the end that’ll be –” I started to calculate.
“Eighty-one bucks. One question. Why me?”
“You’re interesting. Your skin is amazing.”
As Leeny laughed her steamy breath vaporized. She shrugged, pulled her hand from the pocket of her cracked vintage leather flight jacket and took the two bills. She stuffed them in her jeans then blew in her hands. “Am I going to end up looking like something from a Picasso?” She scanned my wheat period paintings.
“I do realistic works too. You won’t have both eyes on one side of your nose.”
“Makes no difference to me. It’s your dime.” Leeny continued inside. She made a pretty O with her lips and blew as if to see if her breath was still visible. It wasn’t but she poked her finger in the trailing breeze of wintergreen anyway. “If you want me in anything less than a coat, you’ll have to warm it up in here.”
“This is about as warm as it gets in the winter, but you’ll be sitting under the lights.” I pointed to the spot in the middle of the factory, which was illuminated like a spotlight on a dark stage. Leeny’s mouth slowly curled to a frown. She finally shrugged and took off her coat.
“Shit.” I focused on her left arm. “I fuckin’ hate tattoos.”
Dad’s ’88 Buick hissed and I jumped out. The bump on my head had not yet begun to rise, but I could feel it coming. That didn’t bother me. The sound softly decayed, and I looked up and down the country road. There was a house a half-mile or so back. I walked slowly toward it, and paused from time to time to kick larger rocks along the way.
The suspicious man inside stood with his arms folded while I used the phone in the entryway. On the wall was a gallery of Navy photos. I scanned from them to the crudely rendered tattoos on his forearms. On one was an anchor. On the other was a nude woman drafted in thick, tasteless lines. It was much too crude to be a portrait. It was more symbolic, like the anchor. I finished the call and waited.
It was probably only ten minutes but it seemed like two hours, as I anticipated what I would receive when I got home. Dad was going through his black and blue period and had been for as long as I could recall. “Scott, this is going to hurt me more than it’s going to hurt you,” was his mantra. On this occasion he would be right. He broke two bones in his hand.
But before he drove me home for the inevitable, Dad paused to admire the gallery of Navy ships. The ex-sailor eyed Dad’s upper arm. Dad proudly pulled his sleeve up to reveal a dark green and red dragon tattoo.
“That’s a beauty.” The sailor grinned.
Dad smiled, but his eyes glared at me. “Thanks.”
Leeny shrugged. Her hand disappeared in her pocket and she pulled out the ten. “I’ll keep the five for my trouble.” Her coat gave the soft groan of hardened old leather as one arm disappeared inside it. I looked at that sturdy but very feminine body and her pale skin. That hair and those eyes. Damn.
“No, wait.”
She turned back and waited. I nodded softly, and she set the coat back down on a rusty Samsonite chair. I pointed to the brightly lit chaise longue. It was my models’ favorite platform back in the day. It had a pristine carved frame and its richly padded sangria red velvet covering was comfortable enough to sleep on. I was glad I’d decided not to sell it for noodles during one of my many “I’d eat cockroaches” periods.
Leeny kicked off her ratty tennis shoes and looked at the black fabric draped all around the chaise. She reached her hand under the lights, testing their warmth like the shallow end of a pool. She nodded then unbuttoned her jeans and let them fall. She hooked a prehensile big toe in one belt loop and ably tossed the jeans to the seat of the Samsonite. She peeled her tank top and tossed it atop the jeans. There was no hesitation to her stripping. There was a crude art to how she moved.
Unlike her left arm with the realistic bright red long stem rose that extended from elbow to shoulder, her right arm was bare. Contrasting the rose was a bright green and purple dragon who came into full view as her pale blue bra fell. He curled around on her broad back. The serrations of her spine were worked impressively into the dragon’s form. She removed her panties displaying the bottom of the dragon’s tail, which curled like a fishhook around the curve of her butt. “How do you want me?”
“Huh?” My eyes fixed on the bright golden Jaguar that stalked in tall bright green grasses, perfectly fitted to the outside of her strong right thigh.
“How do you want me?”
“Tattoos like that must cost a mint.”
“No, they were free. How do you want me?”
“Free?”
“Thought you hated ta
ttoos.”
“I do. Just go ahead and lie on your back. Cross your left leg over. No, turn your shoulders a bit more. Face toward me.” It wasn’t the best pose, but I had the damned tattoos obscured.
I sat on the old red barstool with the duct tape patch and pinned the first paper to a piece of ply in the jaws of my old easel. I took account of my soft pastel sticks carefully organized in their foam beds in shallow wooden trays.
She settled into the awkward position as if she were taking a nap.
I started drawing, and time stood still. She was so at ease as I filled in the outlines. Her small breasts and muscular stomach were so fair. Her nipples drew me to a stick of ruby red. Her hair made me tumble through cadmium yellow, red ochre and carmine. My left hand gathered the sticks between thumb and forefinger, then paused in passing to blend colors while my right skidded out fresh, bright streaks.
“I have to work in the morning.” Her voice broke my trance.
It was after 2 a.m. “Oh shit. Is that the time?” My sandy hands and clothes were smudged in Leeny’s colors.
“Yup.” She didn’t move until I nodded. “Mind if I look?”
“It’s still pretty rough, but go ahead.”
She tilted her head as she put on her panties. “S’okay.”
“You’ll come back, right?”
“Yup.”
Leeny was good to her word. Slowly, I introduced her tattoos into the paintings.
When I got paid for my dwindling stock of wheat period paintings, I gave her what I could. Twenty here, fifty there. It could not have equaled the hours she was there, but I’d lost track. She never really pressed.
Leeny was far and away the best model I’d ever worked with. She could hold a position for hours and never complained.
One night, while she sat on a black barstool with her back to me and I tried to capture her dragon, she told a story. “I met this up and coming tattoo artist in college, and he thought my skin was perfect. He wanted to tattoo me. I told him I couldn’t afford it. He said he just wanted to work on my skin to add me to his portfolio. That’s how I got the tats for free.”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica 10 Page 48