On her back with her arms stretched out above her head, she lightly snores then wakes a few minutes later to find me observing her nude limbs like the voyeur I am. The mattress is soggy, and she squirms about giving me the evols. Lighting a cigarette, I go to speak, but the words don’t come. They’re never with me at the best of times, and right now my mind and mouth are somewhere in the spheres of liquid that squirted from her body before making off out the window like fleeing ghosts. Somewhere, out there, I exist in all places, and yet whenever I seek them out, they’re elsewhere. Looking at her belly as she snatches the smoke that’s perched upon my lips, I remember so many things, and yet when I go to put my finger on them, I can’t make sense of them at all. Tugging at my arm, I look at her as she touches herself.

“Before you chuck this mattress out, I want you to come in me.”

Her features are delicate yet stubborn.

“We could do it on the floor? Or the settee?” I suggest, but she’s having none of it.

“No,” she says with a huff, “you do it, and you do it right here.”

“Why?” I ask, but she ignores me as she so often does.

“Come in me and then let’s take a shower together. We can do food after. I’m tired, though, so maybe we can nap when we’re done? I want chicken. The place on the corner. The one that gives extra portions.”

Stroking the curls of her hair, I straddle her and look down at my cock.

“I don’t want you to go for long though,” she says while eying my cock in much the same fashion, “you’ve left me feeling quite peculiar, and you need to get rid of this mattress. If you leave it, it’ll start to stink.”

It was only a thin mattress, and it was full of bodily fluids. Some mine, mostly hers. I’d hoped it’d been good to go for the rest of our lease, and yet the past few times she’d squirted, it took longer and longer to dry out. Now, it seems, it was permanently damp. We didn’t have another, so I guess we’d be sleeping on the sofa until I picked up a new one. Payday was two weeks away, though, and even then, there were so many bills to pay.

“Okay,” I say.

“When did you last masturbate?” she asks. I think of lying but think again.

“Yesterday. In the morning when you were out shopping.”

“Hmm…” she mumbles with a disapproving look. “I guess it could be worse. Now hurry up and give me what I want. Well—give me what’s left.”

Parting her legs, I glance out the window, and as sunlight washes over me, the sound of my memories mixes with Meeko’s inner wind chimes, and yet again, my mind knows no rest.

A Journal for Damned Lovers UK

A Journal for Damned Lovers US

Anthology UK / Anthology US