By Lisabet Sarai
(Based on a dream)
It has been growing for the past three months, silent but
deadly, like some tumor eating away at my soul. Lila noticed, I'm sure, when I
came back from my trip, that I was quieter, more inward-focused than ever. I
guess she chalked the changes up to the fact that I'd been visiting my mother.
In any case, she didn't ask, much to my relief.
I fell back into her arms with a feverish desperation she
probably found gratifying. “Seems like you missed me, baby,” she'd tease,
gazing up from her favorite spot between my thighs, her café
au lait cheeks smeared with pussy juice. She wiggled the fingers buried in my
cunt and I spasmed into yet another furious climax, forgetting, for a few
seconds at least, my betrayal.
With uncharacteristic roughness I flipped her onto her back,
burrowed into her bush, gnawed on her clit, until she thrashed and screamed and
begged me for a bit of mercy. I drank deeply of the wine that poured from her
tender flesh and sought oblivion in her helpless fluttering around my fist.
Not since our first wild days together had we come together
in such frenzied passion. Our fiery couplings left us both drained and sore. In
the aftermath of these conflagrations, as we lay tangled in the soaked sheets,
still interpenetrated, I'd rake my fingers through her tangled curls and think
about how much I loved her, how desperately I needed her. The words I knew she
wanted to hear stuck in my throat, though, like some half-chewed chunk of meat
I could neither swallow nor disgorge.
Our bodies spoke, in the most direct of languages, but
as the weeks wore on, it became harder and harder for me to say anything at all
to my lovely Lila. At dinner, she'd try to draw me into conversation,
chattering about the Murakami novel she was reading, or the new Almodovar film
down at the Lido, or the latest office scandal at the ad agency where she
worked. Even my monosyllabic replies took enormous effort. All I could do was
gather her into my arms, fondle her ripe ass, suck her earlobe into my mouth
until she shuddered with desire, and finally, drag her off to bed.
Until tonight.
She wants me. She pants as I twist a plump nipple
through her teeshirt. Her skin is moist and warm under my wandering fingers. If
I can just worm my hand into the front of her jeans, I know I'll find her wet
and ready. Right now, I need that more than ever, the wordless certainty of her
surrender. But tonight, she pushes me away.
“No, Gretchen. We've got to talk.” She sits back down
in front of her dirty plate and swallows the last of her wine. “You've got to
tell me what's bothering you.”
I sink to my knees beside her chair and try to unzip
her fly. “Tomorrow. I'll tell you tomorrow, baby. Let's go to bed.”
She slaps my hand. “Stop it!” Then she clasps my fingers
in her own and raises them to her lips. “Trust me, Gretch. Talk to me. What's
wrong?”
She raises me to my feet, then propels me into the
chair next to her. I don't resist. I'm too busy trying to breathe. Guilt is
smothering me.
“It's
nothing, baby. Let it go.” I don't want to tell her. I can't tell her.
She'd never forgive me.
“Damn it, don't lie. Something happened on your trip
west, and it's driving you crazy. You've been like a zombie ever since you got
back.”
“Come on. Zombies don't fuck the way we do.” I try to
chuckle, to turn it all into a joke. My voice cracks with the strain.
She shakes her head, making her curls bounce. “Did
your mom start in again, about you being eternally damned? A daughter of Satan?
You should know better than to listen to her...”
“No, no – it's not her...” I want to sink through the
floor. I consider the possibility of dragging myself from her grip and storming
out the apartment. A half-dozen
beers at Sandy's Pub might dull some of this pain... But the look on her face,
focused concern and real distress, keeps me pinned in place.
“What, then? I know you're a very private person,
Gretch, but if you can't share this with me – I'm your lover, for Christ's
sake! You'll feel better afterward. You know what they say about burden shared...”
A glimmer of hope. Was she right? But then, she hasn't
heard the story yet...
“I – I can't...”
“You can. Take a deep breath and begin. Pretend I'm
not even here. I promise I won't say a word.”
I extricate my hands from hers and swallow the lump in
my throat. She's so earnest, so beautiful, so terribly in love with me. I'm
about to shatter her.
“It – it happened on the way back. Somewhere on I-80 –
Kansas, Nebraska, one of those places. I was planning to stop in Kansas City
for the night. About sunset. I needed a bathroom. The rest area seemed empty.
Didn't bother me, not at the time...”
I stop. It's coming back, coming up like vomit. I
can't fight it anymore, and I think it will choke me.
Lila keeps her promise and stays silent, but her eyes
beam encouragement.
“He – he was hiding in one of the stalls. Waiting.” I
stop again, trying to swallow the panic and the self-disgust.
“Oh, my god...” she whispers, pure pity in her
eyes.
“He let
me pee, then dragged me out of the stall and pressed me up against the sink.
Young guy, skinny, with hair like straw and blond stubble. But he was strong,
stronger than me, and he had a knife...”
“Oh, Gretchen, darling...” Her arms are around me, but
I can't feel them now. I'm back there, in that grubby rest area toilet, the
cold tip of his blade nudging the underside of my jaw. 'Take down your pants,
dyke,' he'd ordered and what could I do but obey, with his steel teasing my
skin? 'That's a good girl. Wouldn't want to have to cut a pretty gal like
you...'
I shivered. The blade slid down along my throat to my
carotid. He smelled like sweat and diesel. 'Gonna give it to you good,' he'd
crooned as he rubbed his slippery knob over my bare ass. A bit of a drawl, but
compelling, too, oozing with self-confidence. 'I'm gonna show you what you've
been missing, dyke. Gonna fuck you till you scream and beg for more.'
I remember the instant he pushed into my cunt from
behind, the feeling of being sliced open, even though he held the knife steady.
I wanted to scream, I did, but I was afraid of his oily power and his sparkling
blade so I let him fuck me, let him, let him, rough and hard, slamming my hips
against the cold porcelain of the sink as he fucked, fucked, fucked, the knife
like pricking my skin in time with his thrusts...
Lila holds me tight. I bury my face in her breasts,
soaking her tee shirt with my tears as I remember it all. The way he left me,
in the dusk-dark ladies' room, crumpled on the floor with his spunk all over me
and the shape of his fingernails carved into my ass. The way I scoured my skin raw later that night in the motel,
unable, it seemed, to wash his stink from my flesh. The terror and guilt that
wracked my dreams, where again and again he commanded me to bend over and I
still couldn't say no...
“Go ahead, baby, go on and cry.” Lila's voice sounds a
hundred miles away, as she rubs her cheek over my crew cut and peppers my
forehead with soft kisses. “It's okay now. You're safe. And I'm here. I'll take
care of you.” “
She's soft, seductive. She thinks she understands.
“I'm so glad you told me. Everything's going to be all
right, darling.”
You're wrong, I want to tell her. You don't know the worst of
it.
I should follow through, tell her the whole truth.
It's strangling me.
I'm weak, though. I let her cuddle me, let her believe
that her comfort can save me. Just like I let him fuck my traitorously soaked
cunt, until I came as hard as he'd promised, piss and disinfectant in my
nostrils and the taste of blood in my mouth.
