Parts & Wreck

by Mark Henry

  Wade was a pervert and to prove it, he’d decided to blow himself.

  “Wow,” she said, incredulous. “You are super-flexible. Do you need a moment to finish that BJ or are you going for the balls-deep challenge?”

  “Wha-what?” Wade stuttered, extricating himself from the tangle of denim and boxers and stabbing his feet one after the other into the black boxer briefs. “I was just changing. Jesus!”

  Luce flounced atop the bed. “You know where’s a great place to change? The bathroom.”

  Wade felt the blood rise up his throat to his cheeks and was instantly angered that this woman had flustered him so. How had the power dynamic shifted so completely?

  “Cut the crap!” he yelled, standing with his hands on his hips. “You know full well I wasn’t doing anything weird. How was I supposed to know you were a quick-change artist?”

  “I used to be a magician’s assistant,” she said with a deadpan tone, her eyes wandering up and down his body, scanning the maze of crosses, the overlapping black lines, the swirls. The celtic maze of his muscles.

  “Dammit!” Wade’s tolerance for whiplash wit was quickly wearing thin. Whatever attraction he’d had for her was most certainly miscalculation, a weird trick of the light. Perhaps their drinks had been spiked.

  A roofie. That could happen. He’d heard about that.

  But now his head was clear and Luce wasn’t a cute girl in need of rescue from some asshole; she was the asshole.

  Wade suddenly felt chilly, naked, as though he’d been caught in the elements and was on a countdown to death by exposure. He rushed to his side of the bed and buried himself under the covers giving her the barest of peeks at his back.

  “Are you going to pout the rest of the night?”

  “You just stay on your side and keep your opinions to yourself. I’m done with your bullshit.”

  Luce stared at the back of Wade’s head, noticing a scar that ran from the crown through the thick forest of hair and ending in the center of a cross. She stared at it, wondering how he’d gotten it and reminding herself that the job was hard enough, she didn’t need to make it more miserable for Wade. He’d already been through so much and even more than she was aware of apparently.

  “Are you sleeping?” Luce reached across the bolster and poked Wade in the center of his gigantic cross tattoo.

  Wade jumped and spun around, rotisserie-like, and glared. “What?”

  “I just wanted to say I’m sorry.”

  The man’s face remained immobile, the glower hammered on like an iron mask of bitterness.

  “Okay then,” she said, rising up onto her elbows. “You don’t do apologies?”

  “Oh I do them. I just don’t buy yours.”

  “Are you sure? Mine are on discount right now.”

  “Funny. That’s exactly how your apology feels, discounted. Like you had to do it. Like it was expected. Do you have some rule book that you’re trying to follow?” He picked up an imaginary tome and began to thumb through it dramatically. “Because there’s a footnote you’re missing under the line that says make sure to humiliate your partner mercilessly. It’s not even in small print.” He ran his finger across an invisible sentence as he fake-read. “You’re bound to piss him off.”

  “You realize there’s not an actual book in your hand, right?”

  Wade slapped his hands down on the bedspread and ground his teeth. “Jesus!”

  “Okay. Okay. I get it. You only like me messing with you when you’re doing things that are only marginally weird. But never when you’re naked. I didn’t know that rule. I promise not to comment on any future silhouettes of squatting and/or gratuitous ass flashing. Swear to God.”

  Luce tried to impress her sincerity by giving him the wide-eyed stare of an anime puppy—not an easy look, but when it paid out, it paid big.

  Wade seemed to soften. “That’s a start, I guess.”

  He sank down into the mattress as only a man of his size could on such a hard surface and trapped the edges of the covers in his armpits stretching them tight across his muscular chest and the map of black crosses that stippled and hugged the curves of his throat.

  “I’m glad. Are we okay?”

  His head fell toward her and he nodded slightly before closing his eyes.

  Luce smiled and turned into her pillow, the fifty-thread-count case only exfoliating her cheek a little bit—she probably wouldn’t need emergency treatment.

  …

  Luce woke in the abandoned pizza parlor of her prank date with Aaron Statlender, complete with the ruffled ball gown spreading out around her, a lacey seafoam green. It fluttered and twirled on its own—in case you were unclear we’ve moved into a dream sequence. She lifted the skirt to reveal the shoes she’d been wearing earlier. Gray Chucks, the ends of the laces ratty and spotted with a single splash of blood.

  Sitting at the table, though, wasn’t her pubescent crush, but someone nearly twice the boy’s feeble size. Dark and brooding and drumming his fingers beside the flickering votive in the center of the table.

  “You look beautiful, Lucid Montgomery,” Wade said, gazing up at her with those smoldering brown eyes.

  Luce listened for the sounds of pranksters scurrying in the bowels of the kitchen. She even craned her neck and body to look behind Wade, seeking out the snickering hulks of Polly or Aaron or both—and seeing and hearing nothing, approached the big man cautiously. She felt the overwhelming sensation of being trapped inside her teen form, presenting herself to this über masculine thug.

  “Ya-you,” she stuttered. “You look good, too.”

  “I do,” he agreed. “I look fucking amazing tonight.”

  “Um. Ego much?” Luce approached the table with trepidation, her shoes scraping a rhythm on the dusty abandoned floor. She took a seat and placed her hands on the table, glancing around nervously for Hitch to come and rescue her from an aggressive devirginizing.

  Whether it was the light flickering in his eyes or her feeling somewhat smaller, meeker than her years had worn into her, but Wade appeared brutish and horny. When he grinned it was with parted teeth, his tongue tracing the peaks and valleys of his incisors, bicuspids, molars.

  But like Polly and Steve, Hitch was nowhere to be found. It was just the two of them, meeting here in this dark spotlight while their bodies lay separated by the thinnest of threadbare blankets, by Wade’s tight gray underwear and her own thin tee and panties.

  Wade reached across and stroked the tops of Luce’s hands, the sensation so soft and sensual. The migration of butterflies. A whisper of a breeze.

  She felt her nipples thickening beneath her strapless bra—only it wasn’t strapless, it was as it had been, a very regular cotton B-cup that Luce had cut the straps off and hoped wouldn’t slip down around her waist.

  He turned her hands in his and traced the fine lines of her palms with his calloused thumbs. She shuddered.

  “I’m going to be gentle with you now, so you’ll know that it’s possible, Luce. But when I take you, when I toss this table aside and honest to God take you, it’ll be so hard, you’ll know it’s not sex or making love. You’ll know I’m not being sweet or worried about your feelings. You’ll know you’re being fucked.”

  Luce’s mouth hung open as the words washed over her, the deep timbre of his voice rippled in the darkness and formed an actual word that hung before her, fat and cartoonish.

  Fucked.

  If this had been Aaron—and Luce couldn’t have ever imagined an exchange like this happening with the boy—she probably would have laughed. Aaron didn’t “fuck”—not in Luce’s estimation. Aaron fumbled. His attempts at force would have ended up with his erection stubbed out on her pelvic bone.

  But not Wade.

  If anything, Wade knew how to please a woman and himself. He knew how to fuck.

  “Uhhhh.” The pathetic sound hissed out of her before she could slap her hand around it and push it back into her mouth.

  And then he kept his promis
e.

  The table went flying, crashing to the floor. The glass votive holder shattered somewhere in the distance. Luce clutched at the bodice of her gown, expecting the kind of ripping she’d heard happened in romance novels—she’d only recently taken up the genre. But Wade didn’t grab her, rather pushing into her space, looming over her, eyes black with desire. Luce glanced down at his trousers, the glistening silver buckle and the tented bulge of his erection.

  What did he expect, that she’d just unzip him and get to work? What kind of a girl did he think she was? Wade was even a bastard in her dreams.

  But he had her pegged.

  Luce watched her own shaking hands make for his pants, as though disconnected, blind seeking touch. The room around them had taken on a faint glow casting Wade’s form into silhouette. But Luce didn’t need to see to grope. His thick cock strained beneath the fine wool, the friction of the fabric tickling her fingertips, static-sparking. Wade let out a groan, at once soft and somehow feral, a sound that might escape a hidden den in the forest, the kind you’d run from, if you had any sense.

  Run for your life.

  Instead, Luce unzipped Wade’s pants.

  She sort of flinched as the tab reached the last teeth, as though his penis might spring out like the killer at the end of a horror movie. She glanced up at him, wincing.

  He smirked. “You’ll have to fish it out of there.”

  Luce held up a hooked finger. Wade made a much larger hook with his whole hand. Luce winced, her attention drawn back to the massive bulge bowing his fly open. The white boxers inside separated to reveal a seductive mélange of dark hair, pink flesh, a flash of vein. Tender skin stretched tight over his corded pulsing cock.

  Luce dug it out and watched as it sprang hard before her.

  She shook her head, no.

  “No?” he asked, cocking his head.

  “It’s too big.” The sound of her voice sounded ridiculous to her. Too childish. Luce had to struggle to gain control. The dream was getting away from her, a tornado of ridiculous adolescent resistance.

  “Nah. It’s not, is it?” Wade shrugged, seeming to assess it for the first time.

  Luce asserted herself beyond the scope of the silly dress, the obvious inferno now raging around them, burning the abandoned restaurant to the ground. The goddamn metaphors were piling up and Luce hadn’t even gotten the fucking she’d been promised.

  Luce took his sex in her hand, and stroking it, smirked back at him. “Must have been the angle. It’s not nearly as large as I thought. But definitely serviceable.”

  Wade nodded. “Now we’re talkin’.”

  Luce leaned forward and took him into her mouth, spreading her tongue across the tender flesh beneath his thick head and fluttering. Wade groaned again, loudly.

  “Yes!” he cried. “Like that. Just like that.”

  She took him deeper, pistoning her lips up and down his shaft, relishing every inch of him, and wanting more than she could ever have. Her hands found his belt and tugged it open. She pulled his pants down to his ankles. Released his cock long enough to slip him out of the trap of his boxers before falling on it once again, sucking, fluttering her cheeks against him.

  Wade let out a pained moan as she took him deeper than before. She gripped his muscular ass, kneading his cheeks as she dragged her lips against him, focused on his fat mushroom and rocking her head back and forth, using the whole of her mouth to coax the shouts of pleasure from him.

  She sensed movement on her left. A dark form. Familiar.

  Hitch watching, silhouetted by the blazing room.

  She rolled her eyes.

  Luce had never much enjoyed giving blowjobs, but this was different. She felt powerful, in control and she’d certainly shut his ego down. Wade was lucky to choke out a few gurgling “oohs” and “ahhs” as she made his tool tremor and twitch. If she didn’t have a dick in her mouth, you’d be able to tell she was grinning ear to ear.

  She gripped the base of his big prick, toyed with his balls and gave the glistening slit a few playful licks.

  Wade smiled down at her sleepily and said, “I’m gonna take a shower. Are you gonna grab us some coffee soon?”

  “What?” Luce let go of his dick and he evaporated. The fire dimmed to ashy remnants. Falling away in an instant.

  “Coffee? You drink it to wake up in the mornings.”

  Luce pried her eyes open against the morning crust to see Wade wrapped from the waist down in the ratty blanket that had separated their sleep and the morning sun spiked through the curtains like the laser scopes of a sniper team.

  “Jesus.” She grabbed her purse and dug for her jawbreaker.

  Chapter Nine

  A certain odor collected around the odd gathering of street kids, tourists and the pair of clandestine vivisectionists in the coffeehouse, pungent and earthy with a hint of Boone’s Farm, but the coffee was fantastic and for Wade, it seemed, that was all that mattered. Luce couldn’t complain, the drink was amazing.

  “This is delicious,” Wade said, rinsing the shot of espresso around his mouth.

  Luce looked up from her latte, foam mustache tickling her nose. “Somewhere between homeless and broken toilet lies Bulletback Espresso. Where did you find this place?”

  Wade covered the scarred table between them with folders full of medical records—covering sex doodles and gang symbols.

  “I’m privy to all sorts of insider information.”

  Luce glared at him, a question at the tip of her tongue. Wade didn’t notice; instead took another sip, savoring it with an ecstatic smile. He rolled up his sleeves, revealing the inky tattoos, pulled a pair of glasses from his pouch, and slipped them up the bridge of his nose with his index finger. Luce studied his face, the square black frames having changed the sharp angles. Softened him as much as the overlays of black crosses made him look hardened, criminal.

  “Were we going to talk about the crosses at some point? The monastery?”

  He glanced at her over the top of the glasses. “Are you harboring fantasies? Is this about that dream?”

  Luce sat bolt upright. “What?”

  “Your dream? This morning?” Wade pulled his glasses off and zeroed in. “Were you dreaming about…me, by any chance?”

  “I don’t remember,” she said quickly.

  Wade grinned, but ceded. “The tattoos are protection. This one”— he pointed to a circle encasing a plus sign on his left forearm— “is gnostic. It’s pre-Christian. This one’s Maltese.” He turned his right wrist to show Luce a cross comprised of four notched arrowheads meeting at the points. “The eight points each symbolize obligations. Truth. Faith. Repentance. So on.”

  “The one on your back? The big one?”

  “The Cross of Eternal Salvation. The coin at its center is Saint Benedict. The demons come in many flavors. All of them older than Catholicism, so you have to throw those ideas out the window. We fall back on some of the old rituals but obviously we’ve moved on to other methods to defend against their assault on humanity.”

  “Scalpel.”

  “One of ’em, yeah.”

  “And the monastery?”

  Wade rubbed his nose and chin. “I started getting the tattoos when I was twelve, which is where the monastery comes in. My father died after a series of possessions. I got to know the clergy rather well during those years. Five, to be exact. The demons would come in waves and be gone for months before coming back.” Wade pushed back from the table and drummed his palms. “Oh fuck. Who knows? Maybe they never left. Maybe they just went dormant for a while. Slept. Anyways, it’s not exactly The Thorn Birds. Sorry to ruin the fantasy.”

  Luce winced. “Oh shit. I’m sorry, Wade. I was totally off base with The Thorn Birds. Everyone was.”

  Wade put his glasses back on and opened the first file. “Nothing to be sorry about. Let’s just get a plan together here.”

  But his voice was distant now, sinking in memory.

  She had a feeling it was more t
han just his father. Rachel perhaps and his wife. It was too soon to ask about that. Way too soon. Even Hitch agreed; he took some time out from scowling at a girl in a torn cocktail dress and a bandana to shake his head vehemently.

  Deciding to stay quiet, after all, she’d been through plenty herself, Luce reached across to touch his hand.

  Wade looked up, stony as the first time she’d seen him sitting across from his speed date. He snatched his hand from under hers. “I deal. Every day. I expect you to do the same.”

  Luce gulped. “Woah,” she said. “No need to go all Vietnam vet on me. I was showing tenderness not judgment.” Or at least she thought she was. “I’m sorry you tripped and fell into some feelings. I thought we were sharing.”

  Wade stared back at her for a moment and then sighed, nodding he said, “Let’s just get on with the job.”

  Fingers scrabbling over the files, Wade pulled papers free and stacked them, seemingly without purpose, slapping his hands down on the table occasionally and grumbling.

  “Astaroth,” Luce thought she heard him say once, before continuing his temper tantrum by bolting from his seat. “I’m going to the bathroom.”

  A retort could have easily followed but Luce restrained her normally out of control wit in an effort to be sensitive.

  “You’re a saint!” Hitch called from across the room.

  He’d achieved some sort of corporealness and had managed to lift the back of the girl’s skirt up and tucked it into the back of her panties, though, to be honest, Luce supposed the girl could have managed that on her own, possibly as a political statement.

  “A statement about what?” Hitch prodded.

  She doesn’t need a reason! Luce broadcast back at him gruffly.

  Her eyes were drawn to the art exhibit scattered all over the wall in no sort of order but consistent in theme: normal couples doing normal things. Riding bikes. Sitting on the couch reading books. Drinking overpriced caffeinated beverages.

  “Ugh,” she said, just as the busgirl shuffled up behind her cart of dirty mugs.