“Tonight’s the night,” I recited to myself, dick sliding in and out of my throat.

It’s hard to be too anxious about anything when you’re focusing on not gagging. But I had a plan: give head, use tongue, swallow, then come up and ask him. All without choking.

Swirling it around in my mouth, I couldn’t help beginning to get nervous again. We’d been doing this for almost three months and it was only about a month ago that I got that awful, vaguely indigestive feeling that I kind of definitely wanted more. He was funny, and smart, and nicer than most ponytail-sporting guitar players I’d fucked around with before. He didn’t do the thing where he disappeared for days on end then texted me paragraphs about how he “just needed some space from the world.” He never even texted after midnight, except for that one time.

We had met at one of those friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend parties, the kind at which you always hope to meet someone because it’s a room full of strangers about your own age. I didn’t go home with him that night—I made a point of not going home with him that night, because I am trying to turn over a new leaf, dammit—but I gave him my number, and he texted me the very next day. We went to dinner. I went home with him that night.

I was pretty sure that night that I’d be happy only seeing him a few more times. He was impressive for about an hour, but hearing him talk long enough, it became clear that all his music knowledge, philosophy knowledge, it’s all just a veneer just thick enough to hide the fact that he’s a big dumb nerd just like me. I certainly don’t want to date me. But after several more porkings than I anticipated, he started to grow on me. You know the way. Like weeds.

Just as I began reciting the words in my head—“So I’ve been thinking, what are we doing here? Because I was wondering if you might want to—” his dick began pulsating and my mouth filled with that salty taste. I swallowed, because I’m a keeper, and came up for air. Braced myself.

“So, what are we doing here?” He had beaten me to it.

“Because...I’ve been seeing some other people. I like what we have going on here, I just wanted to make sure we’re on the same page.” I finished swallowing.

“Yeah, same.” I smiled and took my top off.

#flashfiction #fiction #sex #friendswithbenefits #romance #erotica

Sorry to those who have read the story that was here previously. I decided to turn the story that I had published here into a larger piece I would like to publish one day, so I decided to take it off the internet. If you are interested in seeing the whole project once its published, follow me on Twitter @WizardOfWaffles or on my website laurakincaidmusings.wordpress.com. Thank you.

One Friday I came home to a locked door and my living room lights on, their grubby yellowness peeking out from the blinds the same way I did when there was a noise outside like a car screech. I didn’t leave the lights on. I never left them on. I confirmed this when I found a man at my desk.

“One second,” he said.

He pulled out a watch, examined it, his face grimacing at the sight of cheap plastic and a small gray box below the 9 and 3 which printed digital numbers. He slapped it to his wrist.

“So,” he said, coming around to me. “You’re home.”

“I’m home,” I said weakly.

“You’re going to want to stand back,” he said. “Or I’ll kill you. Take off your blazer." I did. "Give me your phone." I did. "Sit on the couch." He didn’t have a gun or a knife. No sadistic Richard Nixon mask. Just a gray hoodie and red gym shorts, and a young face, much younger than me, with a high hairline indicating a future war of attrition with hair loss. This shouldn’t matter but he was white.

His threat to kill me still stinking the air, I tried to imagine how he was planning on doing it if I resisted. The only ways I could conceive was his wrestling me, overpowering me, and choking me to death, or by taking some object from the room, probably not a heavy book, probably a pan, or the glass owl decoration on the shelf, and bashing me repeatedly over the head.

That was generally how I pictured myself dying, anyway. Not literally, but in gist. A stranger. An unsuspecting location. Me, tired from a long day, without professional self-defense training or a weapon. Almost wanting it.

I was one of those people clenching their fists when cars drove by, imagining a window rolling down, a pistol opening fire. I was one of those people sitting in a movie theater wondering about the ill-looking group behind, occasionally snaking up their hands to protect a throat from razors in the dark.

It wasn't that I lived in a trash neighborhood. This was the Energy Corridor, a street that contained two types of buildings: business centers for-rent and remodeled apartments. Everything else was grass and acacia trees and gray streets and walkways propagated by young people in Van Heusen collared shirts and faux-silk ties, either harmless, handsome yuppy couples or business associates, all chatting about daily mundane excitements: the health benefits of rambutan, that new cinema slash brewery on Romero, DIY parenting advice, a resurgent interest in yerba matte. They were clean and fresh, energetic, trimmed, as happily socialized as dogs at the park, the kind of people who might be an associate manager's junior cashier and exude success.

I don't know why I feared them. I think it was their agency, something that had wilted in me. Every day I would look in the mirror and see my stomach bulging a little further, see the stretch marks on my waist and shoulders like scars from an encounter with a tiger. I was alone in the apartment with no girlfriend and no friends and two cats and a job I moved here for and no longer wanted. My face was moving, too, distorting into something like my Dad's, something like an actor given makeup and prosthetics to make him look older.

I didn't like to talk to people. I was very conscious of the yellowing of my teeth (I couldn't afford dental and I drank way too much coffee). I kept my mouth as small as possible when I spoke. I never liked to expose my teeth anyway because one tooth had twisted in my youth as if someone hadn't screwed it in completely. Zombie teeth, I thought, when I examined them in the mirror. They looked like the teeth of the Walking Dead. My parents had asked me when I was eleven if I wanted to get braces. Nope, and that'd been it. They'd never tried again. Probably saw it as a gain. Braces wouldn't be another drain on the vacation budget.

I'd been more confident in my college years. That might be the worst of it – remembering this younger version of myself with social skills, friends, women, hair. My memories of good times had soured knowing that their participants (except for me) had extended their pleasures to the present. I knew they had, too – those successful people of my past. I no longer spoke to them but I watched them on social media. This one, a board game developer. This one, the Senior Analyst at Hexion. This one, researching the neolithic on an island in Greece.

This one, a middling middle school teacher trying to ignore his chins in the reflection of the television screen, who sometimes imagined men in gorilla masks sneaking up his stairs, knives-in-hands, or knives-for-hands.

Coming back to the robbery, the stranger at my desk, smiling now that he'd found my box of watches, was busy unstrapping them and putting them on his wrist, including my Bulova Silver-Tone, a gift from my Dad, expensive and impersonal. Dad hadn’t even engraved his name on it. No For my Son, no Love Always, Your Father.

"Relax," said the man. "We're robbing your house."

We? I scanned the room and noticed the glass clippings by the blinds. He, or They, had invaded my home in the middle of the afternoon, invaded through a sliding door that faced the street and was protected by a wall of spears. The "We" was confirmed when a woman walked in carrying a metal-cast tree with necklaces hanging from its branches. She was like him – attractive, but fading. Joggers, sneakers. A bad hair day avoided by a bun. "What do you think about this on the nightstand?" she said, indicating the metal tree. She saw me, glanced at her man, looked back at me. "You have a lot of your ex's stuff, don't you?" She shook the tree, the jewelry clinking like chain-mail and wrapping into little Gordian knots.

"How did you know it was my ex's?" I asked.

"Your clothes. Men's clothes. And you don't seem the type to own Java Tree throw pillows."

"That's sexist," said the man at my desk. "I picked out our pillows from that guy's house."

"The Mona Lisa ones? With Nicholas Cage's face?"

He pretended to be hurt. "You don't like them?"

I wondered if I laughed, if it'd be a sort of squealing noise, and they'd look at me as if I was a lunatic, and not a prisoner in my own home. I also wondered if they would stop me if I ran, or if they'd watch with mild interest and turn back to light banter and looting. But a strange, unfamiliar voice was tickling my brain meat with whispers of wait. Not wait for the right moment to fly. Not wait for the right moment to fight. Just wait. And also See where this goes.

At that moment, my cat, ever the ambassador, trickled out of the bedroom and rubbed against the woman's legs.

"Oh, hello!" She stooped down to pet his face. "This one's friendly. What's his name?"

"Remington."

"You named your cat after a gun," said the man. He was rifling through my work satchel, apparently not interested in my lesson plans or a reading assignment I had to grade.

"The other one's Jenny," I said. "She's probably hiding in the closet."

"That's a boring name when you have a cat named Remington."

"It's short for Genocide."

"I didn't come up with it," I added. "My ex did. I coaxed her into keeping them by letting her name one."

The woman picked Remy up, and I had a fleeting fear they were probably going to steal him, too. He was a proud cat, with a silver coat and light white stripes. "Who wouldn't want this handsome guy? Look at his fur. It's like soft steel."

"They were stray kittens and they were malnourished and dirty,” I said, launching into an anecdote so well-worn it was ripping at the knees. But the couple paused. I felt their eyes reassessing me, transferring me from some mental category, something like Victim, or Coward, or Burglee, to somewhere else. "They were living on one of my neighbor's porches. But then my landlord called animal control and they started rounding up all the feral cats and taking them to the shelter, so I took them in. We had some battles with fleas, with little rice-like wormy things that fell out of their butts, with each other. Especially with each other."

"Actually," I said, "you're too late. My ex already robbed the place."

The woman gave the man a certain look.

"Well," said the man, my laptop under his arm. "We have some integrity."

They left the cats.

We talked some more, and soon my guests gathered my most expensive belongings into a central pile and sifted through them like when something valuable falls in the garbage and you have to move aside paper plates and orange peels to find it. Judging by their faces, they didn't find what they were looking for.

“We’ll make do,” she said.

The pile was packed into a few of my suitcases, and they left with all the urgency and familiarity of old friends heading to the airport. "See you around," said the man. I crept out to the porch and watched them roll down the sidewalk to a dirty Camry. Strangely, I felt no urge to shout or rush to a phone. When they were gone, I closed the door and was about to turn a series of locks into place when I thought of this threshold between the in and the out. On my side glacial curtains, sanitized air, foamy cream walls reflecting banana yellow light, clean but fraying carpets. On the other, open space, stinging floral winds, rain-slick bushes reflecting sunlight, a utopia of brick veneer surrounded by vegetation and cement.

A box for one, and a sandbox for all the rest.

I left the door – unlocked.

The stranger knocked upon the door,

A creaking, wooden throb,

And someone on the other side

Unlatched and turned the knob.

Uncertainty, a soft, "Hello,"

And, "May I use your phone?"

The person on the other side

Appeared to be alone.

An observation taken in,

No pictures on the wall.

He pointed somewhere down the way-

"Go on and make a call."

The thunder boomed; the stranger stalled

As wires were cut instead.

The gentleman began to sense

A subtle hint of dread.

A conversation thus ensued-

"So what has brought you out?

The rain has flooded everything,

And wiped away the drought.

Say, did you walk, or did you drive?

Why don't I take your coat?"

The stranger slowly moved his arms,

A sentimental gloat.

The water from the pouring skies

Enveloped cloth and shoe.

"Say, would you like a place to sleep?

I'll leave it up to you."

The person on the other side

Discarded his mistrust.

The stranger said his tire was flat,

And shed the muddy crust.

"The phone won't work," he also said.

"It could just be the storm.

Perhaps I will stay here tonight,

To keep me safe and warm."

The patron of the house agreed.

He hadn't seen the wire.

The chilly dampness prompted him

To quickly build a fire.

"You have a name? They call me Ed.

My wife was Verna Dean.

She passed away five years ago

And left me here as seen.

I guess it's really not so bad.

We never had a child.

I loved that Verna awful much,"

He said and sadly smiled.

"No property to divvy up.

The bank will get it all.

Say, do you want to try again

To go and make that call?"

The stranger grinned and left the flame

As to the phone he strode.

Within his pocket, knives and twine

In hiding seemed to goad.

A plan was formed- he'd kill the man;

Eviscerate him whole.

The twine would keep him firmly held;

The knife would steal his soul.

A lusty surge erupted hence;

A wicked bit of sin.

The stranger hadn't noticed yet

That someone else came in.

About the time a shadow fell,

He spun to meet a pan.

The room around him faded out

As eyes looked on a man.

A day or two it seemed had passed,

And when he woke all tied,

The stranger gazed upon old Ed

Who simply said, "You lied."

Reversing thoughts, the moment fled

And Ed said in a lean,

"No worries, stranger. None at all.

Hey, look, here's Verna Dean!"

He looked upon a wraith in rage;

It seemed his little lie

Combusted in a burning fit-

He didn't want to die.

So many victims in his life,

Some fifty bodies strewn.

And now he was the victim; now

The pain to him was known.

The stranger fought against the twine,

And noticed by his bed

The knife once in his pocket left

A trail of something red.

A bowl filled full of organs sat

As Verna poured some salt.

She exited with all of them.

"You know, this is your fault.

We demons wait for just the day

The guilty take the bait

And play with matches one last time-

I simply cannot wait

To taste the death within your flesh;

The venom in your gut.

So now you know the way they felt-

Hey, you've got quite a cut!"

The person on the other side

Removed his human skin-

Before his wife came back for more,

He offered with a grin:

"Say, stranger, is there anything

You'd like to say at all?"

I looked at all the blood and said,

"I'd like to make that call ... "