STORY 1: DORM DEMON
The phone was propped on my stomach, volume low, screen way too bright in the dark room, and I’d been wet for ten minutes before anybody on it took anything off. Magik on her back on some stone floor, blonde hair everywhere, and Darkchylde over her. Same face almost. Same body but bigger, meaner, darker skin, claws. The demon one dragged those claws down Magik’s stomach, slow, leaving pink lines, and then put her mouth on one of Magik’s tits and bit. Magik’s back came right up off the stone. My own nipples went so tight under my shirt it hurt.
God. It’s the same girl. Just… worse. Darker.
I had my hand flat on the outside of my shorts. Just pressure. The cotton was thin and already stuck to me, pulled up into my lips, and when I rolled my hips the seam dragged right over my clit. Puffy. I could feel how puffy I was through the fabric, hot and full under my palm, like I’d been at it for an hour instead of not at all.
On screen Darkchylde shoved two thick clawed fingers into her and the wet came through the phone even with the volume down, and my stomach clenched. I pushed my waistband down with my thumb and slid under it. Slick already, thick, coating everything. I parted myself with two fingers and dragged one up the whole length of my slit, slow, bottom to top, and stopped right beside my clit. Didn’t touch it. Sat there and felt it beat.
Then the cock. “oh… fuck…” came out of me before I could stop it. Thick as my wrist almost, dark, ridged down the underside, the head flared and swollen and already wet, and she laid it on Magik’s belly first like she wanted her to see how far up it was going to go. Then she fed it in. Inch by inch. Magik’s lips stretching pink and thin around the head, giving, giving, and the rest of it sliding in after, so much more of it than seemed possible, until those heavy balls sat against her ass and Magik’s mouth fell open in this broken little “ah…!” with no breath behind it.
How is she taking all that. How is that even fitting.
I brought my finger up out of the blanket. Shiny to the second knuckle in the screen light. I smelled it before I meant to, warm and sharp and a little sour, and put it in my mouth. Salt. Me. I sucked it clean watching the cock come back out of her slow and shining, Magik’s lips clinging to it on the way out like they didn’t want to let go, and the taste went straight back down between my legs and squeezed. “mmm… that’s me…”
Back down. Little circles at the base of my clit, not the tip. Soft, then harder, matching her strokes, and every time it bottomed out Magik made that sound and I made a smaller one. Then I stopped dead and held my fingers flat on my clit and just felt it throb against them, hard little beats, my thighs trembling with how still I was keeping them. “hh… hh…” My shorts were ruined. I could smell myself under the covers, warm and heavy.
Hold it. Make it last.
I kicked the blanket down to my knees and the shorts went with it, shoved off one ankle. The phone tipped and I caught it and propped it on my thigh, and the light fell down over me. I looked. Glossy. Flushed dark and swollen open, my lips fat and shiny in the blue light, the inner ones stuck together with how much I was leaking, my clit peeking out of its hood, hard, twitching every time I clenched. A bead of cream sat at my hole. I watched it slide and drop onto the sheet.
Look at you. Look at the state of you.
Darkchylde had Magik’s legs shoved up by her ears now, folded in half, hammering into her, and from that angle I could see all of it. The shaft dragging out of her streaked white. The thick cream ring at the base, pushed higher every stroke. The head catching her rim on the pull and popping back in. “oh god… so wet…” Two fingers in, and they just went, no push at all, and the sound was small and wet and only mine. My walls fluttered and gripped. I spread myself open with my other hand so I could watch my own fingers go in while I watched hers, and my clit stood up shiny between them, jumping every time I curled.
I stayed there, fingers buried, hips coming up off the mattress. My pussy pulsed on them in slow heavy beats I could feel in my teeth, every one squeezing more wet out until it ran down between my cheeks and soaked a cold patch into the sheet. The ache sat deep and low behind my clit, dumb and greedy. Two fingers wasn’t it. I wanted to be full, stretched like that, something that thick holding me open, and just wanting it made me clench, and a hot little rush slid out over my knuckles. “please… oh… please…” Please who. Please what.
Darkchylde flipped her onto her stomach and spread her with both clawed hands, and I watched the head sit at her hole, fat and slick, pushing, and then the whole length sink in from behind until the balls pressed up against her. Magik’s face mashed to the stone, eyes glassy, drool at the corner of her mouth. I matched it. Fingers in time, deep when she went deep, and my belly drew tight and my thighs started to go, and I pulled my hand out. Made myself. Lay there with my knees shaking while Magik’s back arched and she came, her whole body locking, a sob tearing out of her, and my clit jumped in the air like it was trying to go with her.
Cream on my fingers. Thick cloudy strings stretching from my knuckles back down to me before they broke. I brought them to my nose. Warm, musky, me, so much stronger than before. I licked them, “mmh… god…” one knuckle then the other, tongue flat, slow, and my hips kept twitching up after my hand like they were chasing it. Empty. So empty it ached.
One finger. Just the tip, circling my hole, dipping in an inch and out. Then two, shallow. Then my thumb on my clit, light. Darkchylde was talking now, low, her mouth at Magik’s ear. “I’m going to keep you like this. Keep you full. Keep filling you till you can’t remember being empty.” Every word made my walls flutter on my fingertips. I pinched my nipple through my shirt, hard, and the little bite of it made me squeeze so tight I had to stop again. Had to. Lay there with my knees falling flat to the mattress, holding myself open with one hand, the other still and buried, feeling every pulse.
She’s going to keep her. She’s just going to keep her.
On screen Darkchylde went deep and stayed there, grinding, and I could see her balls draw up and the shaft throb where it disappeared into her, pumping, and white came out around it, out of Magik, running down. “ah… ah…! yes…” I smeared my wet all over my clit and went fast, hard, right on the tip, fucking myself on two fingers with the heel of my hand slapping wet, belly tight, toes curling, thighs locking, almost, almost there, almost…
The desk lamp went brown. Just for a second, buzzing, like the whole building browned out. Then back.
The phone rang.
FaceTime. Loud. Bright. I jerked so hard my fingers slipped out and the phone nearly went off my thigh. “fuck…” Heart slamming. Clit throbbing so hard it hurt, one more circle, one, and I would’ve… Maya’s name. Sasha’s. Group call. I stared at it. Fingers wet.
I could just decline.
I answered. Because if I didn’t they’d just call again and again, Maya called nine times once about a parking ticket, nine.
Screen split. Maya left, hoodie, messy hair. Sasha right, half her face, eating something. Both in their rooms. I yanked the blanket up to my chin and tried to look like a person, like a normal… My hand stayed under. Between my legs. Not moving. Just… there. Swollen and slick under my palm, my clit beating against it like it was furious with me for stopping.
“Finally,” Maya said. “We were gonna start without you. What were you doing, watching porn?”
Stomach dropped straight through the mattress. “Shut up. I was napping.” Too thin.
Too thin, she heard that. I could feel how wet my fingers were, how swollen. “What time are we doing this?”
Sasha laughed with her mouth full. “Nine. Maya’s bringing the wine. The six dollar shit again because she’s cheap.”
“It’s not cheap, it’s efficient,” Maya said. “And I bought it. Two bottles. If you want something that doesn’t taste like regret bring it yourself.”
I shifted. Fingers dragged, barely, and the jolt went straight up through me and I pressed my lips together till it passed. It didn’t pass. It sat there and throbbed. “Nine’s fine. I’ve got the board. The plastic one. Don’t start.”
“The Target special,” Sasha said, grinning. “Spirits are gonna love that. You still doing the ghost thing?”
“Yeah. Sheet’s dirty from last year anyway. Maya, devil horns again?”
“Obviously. Sasha’s doing fake blood. Try not to get it all over your floor this time.”
They kept going. Costumes, cups, food or just wine and whatever was in Maya’s fridge, the string lights, leave them up or… Sasha said the orange made everyone look like they had jaundice. I nodded. Said yeah. Said whatever. And my hand, every time one of them laughed I moved my fingers a little, then a little more, back inside properly, slow,
guilty, you’re guilty, look at you, just enough to keep it there. Every slow curl tugged low in my belly and my thighs fell open under the blanket by themselves.
Stop. You’re so fucking wet. Stop.
Didn’t. I couldn’t stop seeing it either, Magik’s thigh, Darkchylde’s hip, that wet shine where they were joined, and my cunt kept fluttering on my fingers, so close it hurt, the kind of close where your stomach goes tight and your thighs want to…
God, you’re dripping. Still. After all that… from watching her get used.
“Lena.” Sasha, leaning so close to her camera half her face went blurry. “Why are you breathing like that? Did you just run up the stairs?”
Everything stopped. Everything but my fingers. They stayed in, curled, and my thumb sat right on my clit and I couldn’t lift it off, if I moved anything the blanket would move. “Walked back from the gym,” I said. “I’m dying.” Holding so still my thighs shook with it, and inside, where they couldn’t see, I was clenching on my fingers in little pulses I couldn’t stop, and every one pushed my clit up into my thumb.
Breathe through your nose. Slow. Slow.
Do not come. Do not come on FaceTime with them looking right at you.
“Since when do you go to the gym,” Maya said.
“Since today.” Another pulse. My eyes watered. Sasha squinted one more second, two, and then laughed and let it go, and the breath I let out shook all the way down.
Sasha said something about the planchette, last time it didn’t even move, Maya told her shut up, and I laughed too sharp and the laugh moved my fingers right over my clit. “hnn…” Cough. Made it a cough. “Sorry. Dry throat. Nine’s good. I’ll be here.” Voice cracked on here.
Please don’t notice please don’t please.
My fingers were sitting right where I was swollen and every breath my thumb brushed and it went straight up my spine and I was right back at the edge, with them watching, with Maya’s face two inches from mine on the screen.
Blank face. Blank. Blank blank blank. Maya on the wine again, battery acid last time, and I went “mhm” and it could’ve been agreeing or… My hips wanted to rock. I didn’t let them. Not all the way. A tiny shift, fingers deeper for half a second, and what answered made my eyes water and I stared at the ceiling over the phone instead of their…
Their faces. You can’t even look at their faces. Stupid.
They wrapped it fast after that. Maya had to charge her phone. Sasha was gonna finish her snack and pass out in an hour. “Text when you’re heading over,” I said. “And bring cups. Real ones.”
“Cups. Real ones. Got it,” Sasha said.
Call ended. Black for a second, then the video popped back, paused right where I’d left it. Darkchylde buried in her to the root, thick and dark, the veins standing out along the shaft where it stretched Magik open, Magik’s lips pulled tight and shiny around it and a creamy ring at the base. I stared at that ring. “oh… fuck… look at that…” I shoved the blanket off again. The wet patch under me had spread to the size of my hand, cold at the edges, and when I let my knees fall open I could see what holding still on that call had done to me. Swollen worse. My lips fat and dark and sticking to my fingers, my clit poking all the way out of its hood, red, so sensitive the air on it made me twitch. My hole squeezed tight and opened again, and a slow string of cream slid out of me onto the sheet.
Fingers back in, slow, and my breath caught. Didn’t press play. Didn’t need to, it was stuck behind my eyes, how she took it, how the darker her just used her, easy, like she was made for… like she wanted it even while… Thumb back. Same tight circles, harder now, my walls pulling my fingers deeper,
I’m the one moving them, nobody’s making… it’s me. Hips rocking, nobody watching, all the way up into my hand, “ah… mm… yes, there… ah…” my belly drawing tight, thighs starting to shake, right there, right…
Three hard knocks on my door.
I froze with my fingers buried and my thumb on my clit and my whole body right at the lip of it. “fuck… fuck, fuck, fuck…” Into the pillow.
No. Not now. You were right there.
Another knock. “Lena? It’s Theo. From Psych?”
Pulled my hand out, shiny to the knuckles, and the smell of me came up with it, warm and musky, and went straight down to my clit. It throbbed. I wiped my fingers on the sheet slow, like I could keep it. Shorts off the floor, inside out, didn’t care. My clit throbbed with every step to the door and my thighs were sticky where they rubbed, and I opened it about four inches and stood behind it.
Theo. Backpack on one shoulder, hair wet like he’d just showered, that hopeful face. “Hey. Sorry. The midterm’s Monday and you take, like, actual notes.”
Say no. Say you’re sick. Say anything.
“Yeah. Sure. Hang on.” He stepped in while I was still deciding and the door swung shut behind him.
The room smelled like me. I caught it the second the hallway air was gone, warm and thick and sharp, sex and sheets, and it could only be one thing.
He can smell it. He has to.
My face went hot all the way down my neck. The notebook was on the desk, right by the bed, right by the damp sheet I hadn’t even pulled the blanket over. I flipped it open and he leaned in to look, his shoulder almost on mine, close enough I could feel the heat off him through my shirt. No bra. Nipples so hard they hurt. I crossed one arm over them and pointed with the other.
“So this is chapter six, the conditioning stuff, and these arrows are…” My voice was fine. Mostly. Every time I shifted my weight the shorts pulled up between my legs and dragged over my clit and my cunt clenched, empty and slick, and I had to stop talking for a second. “…the examples. She puts those on the test.”
“Can I take pictures?” He was already doing it, page by page, slow, bending closer to get the light. I stood there with my thighs pressed together and felt myself throb against the wet cotton every time he turned a page. A slow drip slid down the inside of my thigh. I didn’t dare move to stop it.
“It’s warm in here,” he said, not looking up.
“Old building.”
Six pages. Seven. He thanked me twice and said he owed me and I said sure and smiled until the door clicked behind him.
Forehead on the door. My thighs were shaking. Ten minutes explaining arrows to a boy with my own wet drying on my legs and my cunt squeezing every time he leaned closer, and he never knew. Or he did.
Shower. Now.
STORY 2: WANTON WOODS
Owen’s car smelled like pine air freshener and Danny’s feet, because Danny was riding up front with his feet on the dash in socks with little tacos on them, and Nadia kept leaning up between the seats to swat them down.
It was Owen’s booking. His card, his name on the rental, because senior year he’d announced we were real adults now, twenty one and twenty two and done crashing on somebody’s parents’ couch for Halloween. Two nights. One cabin. The five of us.
I was in the back on the hump, Nadia behind Danny, Jess on my other side. The trees stood so tall and close the sky was a gray stripe up top, and the road kept swallowing us deeper in, and every time Owen took a curve Jess’s thigh slid against mine.
Swallowing. Why does everything sound dirty today.
I laughed at something Jess said, a little snort, and Owen’s eyes came up in the rearview and found mine. Brown. One second. Then the road.
It went straight down through me. My nipples drew up tight inside my bra so fast they stung, and something warm dropped low in my belly and settled heavy between my legs. I sat on my hands. His knuckles on the wheel. That curl of hair at the back of his neck I’d been staring at for two hours.
Brown. You’ve known they were brown since September of junior year. You’ve drawn that curl in the margin of your bio notes.
“So,” Danny said, twisting around with his phone held up. “Wanton Woods. That’s what locals call the woods behind the cabin. Every Halloween people hear stuff in there at night. Moaning. Screaming, but not scared screaming. Nobody ever sees who. And there’s a guy on here who says he heard his own name.”
“Raccoons,” Owen said.
I laughed. My thighs were pressed together.
Why are your thighs pressed together.
It wasn’t the word moaning sliding into me and going straight down. It wasn’t my pussy clenching once, slow, on that word, while Owen’s eyes flicked up to the mirror again. Not to me this time. To the trees.
Jess leaned in, her mouth right at my ear. “He picked the cabin, you know. He wanted the one by the woods. You two could go in there together, get lost…” low, wicked, “hear his name moaned in the dark…”
I shoved her into her door and she cackled, and my whole face went hot, my neck, and lower, a slow heavy squeeze between my legs and then the warm slick of it in my underwear. I felt it happen. Right there on the seat.
His name moaned in the dark. In your voice. You’re getting wet on the hump with Danny’s taco feet on the dash.
Then gravel popped under the tires and the cabin came up out of the trees, dark wood, a porch light already on, and behind it the woods going straight up against the back wall.
Inside it was a plaid couch, a rug with a cartoon bear holding a fish, antlers over the fireplace, a pinecone clock that ticked too loud. Danny claimed the loft and ten minutes later Nadia went up too, to “see the skylight.” Jess dragged me into the bigger room and threw herself onto a squeaky quilted bed under a painting of a deer in snow. “You’re welcome. He looked at you in the mirror like nine times.”
Nine. She counted. You counted too. You got seven.
I flopped down next to her and the frame let out a long low creak and we both went still.
“This bed is gonna tell on everyone,” she whispered.
By the last trip to the car the sky had gone bruised purple. I stopped on the bottom porch step with the box of paper plates and candy on my hip. The woods were maybe twenty steps away, and the porch light stopped dead in the gravel short of them. A creek ran somewhere back in the dark. The cold hurt my teeth.
Go inside.
I didn’t. I stood there breathing little clouds at the darkest place between two trunks, and something in there looked back. I felt it on my face, my chest, and then it slid down, slow, and stopped right between my thighs and stayed there, heavy, warm, a palm that wasn’t a palm, and my nipples went tight so fast it stung. “ah…”
It’s cold. You’re cold. Except it wasn’t cold where it was looking.
“Mel?” Owen, holding the screen door open with his back. “See anything?”
“No.”
Liar.
He came down a step and took the box and his fingers bumped mine underneath it. “Jesus, Mel, your hands are freezing.”
He set the box on the rail and took my hands. Both of them. Rubbed them hard and fast, then lifted them up and breathed on them, his mouth right over my knuckles, hot breath going through my fingers.
His mouth is right there. Move your hand one inch and your knuckle’s on his lip.
The warm went up my arms and down my whole front and landed exactly where the woods had been looking, and I squeezed my thighs together on the step.
“Better?” he said, not letting go.
“mhm,” I said, which isn’t a word, and he smiled like it was.
In the pink bathroom Jess sat on the tub doing eyeliner and tossed me her black top, the strappy one, thin straps, cut low. “Wear mine. So he looks.”
I put it on. It was tight across my chest and my nipples were still hard from the porch, two little points pushing the thin fabric out so anybody could see. My lips were red without anything on them and my pupils were huge.
You’re going to sit across from him all night with your tits basically out in your best friend’s shirt.
I put a flannel over it, unbuttoned.
Out the little fogged window over the toilet, way out in the black, came one long low sound. So faint it could’ve been the pipes. It went up at the end, a breath let out slow through somebody’s teeth, and it came from all the trees at once.
Jess kept humming. She didn’t hear.
I did. My nipples pulled tight under her thin top, and between my legs I clenched, once, slow, and went slick all over again, warm into my underwear, while Jess drew a wing on her eyelid two feet away.
You heard that. And you got wetter.
I ran my wrists under the cold tap until they hurt.
The bottle was Nadia’s empty lime soda, the tall green glass kind from the gas station, and Danny laid it on the bear’s stomach on the rug and called it truth or dare spin the bottle, hybrid, you won’t do it you eat a ghost pepper candy, and he shook the little bag of them he’d bought at the register. Nadia said who made you commissioner and he said I bought the candy and she said I bought the bottle, Daniel, I drank that whole soda in the car for this.
We sat in a circle on the floor with the fire behind Danny. Owen directly across from me. Of course. Sleeves pushed up, a mug of cocoa between his knees, forearms gold in the firelight, and every time I looked up there he was and whenever I glanced down there was the bottle and anywhere else I looked it was the black windows with the woods pressed up on the glass. Jess’s cocoa sat warm in my stomach, too many marshmallows, piled on top of the other warm, the porch warm, the hands warm.
Don’t look at his hands. You know what his breath feels like on your knuckles now and you can’t unknow it.
Danny spun first. Jess.
“Dare.”
“Lick the antlers.”
She climbed the hearth in her socks and licked one prong, slow, bottom to tip, eyes on Danny the whole time, and Nadia screamed and Owen laughed so hard he tipped over sideways and Jess hopped down and wiped her tongue on her sleeve and said “Tastes like dad.”
It went around. Nadia called her mom and said I love you in a baby voice. Danny ate a ghost pepper candy instead of texting his ex and cried real tears into the rug. Owen got dared to let Jess do his eyeliner and she did it so thick and smudgy he looked like a sad goth raccoon, and he didn’t wipe it off. He just sat back across from me with those dark smeared eyes catching the fire.
It’s eyeliner on Owen. It’s not hot. It’s a little hot. It’s really hot, and he’s looking right at you.
Then Jess spun and it landed on me.
“Dare,” I said, because truth with Jess is worse.
She’d been waiting all night. “Sit in Owen’s lap for the next round.”
“That’s not a dare, that’s a seating chart.”
“Then it’s easy. Go.”
Danny pounded his thighs. Owen didn’t laugh. He just opened his arms a little, palms up, raccoon eyes on me. Like, if you want.
Take the candy. It’s one candy. Your mouth burns for ten minutes and you live.
I got up. Six steps around the circle in my socks with the fire hot on the backs of my legs and I sat stiff on the edge of his knees like a chair I didn’t trust.
“You can sit,” he said right behind my ear. “I won’t break.”
He put a hand on my hip and pulled me back. Into him. My back on his chest, his thighs under mine, his arm across my waist and his heart going through his hoodie into my spine, fast, faster than mine maybe. The zipper of his jeans was right under me, pressing through my leggings, and I held so still.
Then his hand stayed. Flat on my hip bone, big and warm through the thin cotton, heavy, resting. He didn’t squeeze. He didn’t move it. It sat there and I felt every one of his fingers separately, the pinky on the top of my thigh, the thumb on the bone, and the longer it sat there the more of me went to it.
“Mel’s freezing, look at her,” Jess announced, and threw the scratchy plaid throw off the couch at us. She tucked it over our laps herself, sweet, evil, and went back to her spot.
Under the blanket nobody could see his hand. I could feel him know that.
I moved. A little. Barely. Settling, the way anybody would settle.
His arm tightened and his breath stopped on my neck and came out shaky, and under the zipper something shifted against me.
Oh my god. Is that. That is. That’s Owen.
It didn’t happen all at once. It grew. A soft shape first, then thicker, then a hard ridge pushing up into the seam of my leggings, slow, filling in under me while Danny argued about the rules and Nadia threw a pillow at him. I could feel the length of it lying along me. I could feel it twitch. “hnn…” Small and needy, and I turned it into a cough before it was all the way out.
Don’t move. If you move he’ll know you felt it. He already knows you felt it.
The bottle landed on Nadia and Danny dared her to kiss him, and she grabbed his face in both hands and kissed him with her mouth open, slow, and it went on, and on, wet little sounds, Nadia breathing through her nose, Jess going “Okay! Wow! Okay!”
And under the blanket Owen’s thumb moved.
Once. One small circle on the bone. Then it stopped, and waited, and I sat there with my heart in my throat, and it did it again. Slower. Around and around while he watched them kiss and I watched them kiss and neither of us looked at each other.
He doesn’t know he’s doing it. He knows. He totally knows. His thumb knows.
Then his hand slid. Off the bone, down into the crease where my thigh met my hip, and stopped there flat and heavy, his fingertips lying along the top of my thigh with only my leggings between them and the place I was getting wet. He didn’t go further. He left it there, so close the heat of his palm came right through to my lips, and I could feel myself swelling under it, puffy and hot, soaking into the seam, right on top of him.
He can feel that. He has to. You’re wet on Owen’s lap in Jess’s slutty top and his hand is an inch from your pussy and Danny is right there.
That’s when I heard it. Under the fire. Under Jess and the kissing. Way out past the black windows, one long low groan, so faint it could have been wind in the chimney, coming up out of the ground slow. Nobody else turned. Nobody else stopped.
My pussy clenched on it. Hard, on its own, a deep slow squeeze I felt all the way up inside, and it pressed me down onto him, and under me he pulsed. A throb, right up into my seam. His fingers flexed on my thigh.
“mm…” Out loud. Quiet. Only he heard. His breath went out against my neck like he’d been punched.
Shut up. You can’t do that here. They’re right there.
His thumb started again, in the crease now, a slow stroke along the edge of my leggings. Down. Hold. Up. Every time it went down the side of his hand pressed my lips together through the fabric and my clit throbbed against the seam. Down. Hold. My thighs were shaking under the blanket. I pressed my knees together and that sank me back onto him harder, and he went rigid under me, and his thumb went down one more time, slower, further, his knuckle right at the edge of where I’d soaked through, and stayed.
One more inch. One more inch and you’ll come apart on his lap in front of all of them.
Nadia pulled off Danny’s mouth with a wet click and said “Your turn” totally calm, and the round was over.
Owen’s hand went back to my hip. Then it was gone. I got up so fast I almost fell, my leggings peeling warm off him, and went back to Jess and grabbed the bag off the rug and ate a ghost pepper candy I didn’t owe anybody, so I’d have a reason for my face.
“You okay?” she whispered. Sweet. Evil. “You didn’t have to eat that.”
“I’m gonna kill you,” I said. My eyes were streaming.
Across the circle Owen had pulled the plaid throw into his lap and left it there. He was looking down at his hands. Then at me. Eyeliner smeared, firelight on half his face, his mouth open like he was going to say something. He didn’t.
By midnight nobody was doing dares anymore. Jess had her head in my lap, the fire was low and red, the pinecone clock was ticking, and my leggings were still damp where I’d sat on him.
Still. An hour later. You can feel it every time you shift and you keep shifting.
The minute hand clicked onto the twelve.
And from the woods, a woman. Low and long. “Ohhh…” dragged up out of somebody’s chest and shaking at the end like she couldn’t hold it.
Jess’s eyes opened in my lap. Nobody moved.
“Raccoon,” Owen said. His voice was all wrong.
Again, closer, loud enough now that nobody could pretend, “ah… ahh…!” two high notes and a wet helpless whimper under them and then a gasp like she’d been pushed into something, filled with something, and my whole body went hot from my scalp down. Then a man. Or something like a man. A groan so low I felt it in the boards under my thighs before I heard it, coming from every window at once, like the whole woods was doing it, and the woman riding on top of it going “Please… please, please…” faster and faster until it broke in half into a scream that turned into a moan that just kept going.
“That’s somebody having really good sex out there,” Jess said, sitting up.
“It’s a speaker in a tree,” Danny said. “It’s a prank.”
“We’re the only tourists,” I said. My voice came out thick. I didn’t know it.
Your thighs. Stop squeezing. Everybody can see you squeezing.
Nobody was looking at me. They were looking at the window. But I was clenching anyway every time she cried out, a hard deep squeeze I couldn’t stop, matching her, my clit throbbing up against my soaked seam, my nipples aching inside Jess’s top so bad I wanted to put my palms on them and couldn’t. My leggings were soaked through now, slick and hot. “nn…” I bit it off.
You’re wet from a stranger moaning in the dark. You were wet from Owen and now you’re wetter from a sound. God, I’m such a slut. In Jess’s top. In this stupid cabin.
“Okay,” Danny said. “So who’s going.”
“I’ll go,” Owen said, already at the window. “Probably just kids. I’ll bring a flashlight.”
“You’re not going alone,” Jess said, looking right at me. She grabbed the bottle off the rug. “Bottle decides. Last spin, last dare. Whoever it lands on goes to the tree line. Looks. Comes back and tells us.”
Outside the woman sobbed something sweet and ragged. Nobody said no.
Jess spun it.
It blurred. Green glass rattling on the cartoon bear, round and round, and the groan from the woods got louder while it spun, shaking the window in its frame, the woman climbing “oh… oh… oh…!” Slower. Past Nadia. Past Danny. It rocked up to Owen and sat there pointing at his knees, and Jess made a sound, and then it tipped. Rolled one more slow lazy turn.
Nobody’s touching it. Nobody’s touching it, Jess’s hands are in her lap. Across the open rug, right to me.
Stopped. Neck aimed right at my knees.
The moaning cut off. Like a held breath.
I could hear the fire settle and Jess swallow and my own pulse thudding between my legs like a knock.
Owen was leaning forward with his lips parted like he wanted to say don’t. Or come on.
And out the black window behind him, way back where it was darkest, the same spot I’d stared at from the porch step, something very quietly said my name.
Low. Slow. Patient.
Melody.
I stood up. Nobody made me. The pull was there, low and warm under my navel, and I stood up into it on purpose, which is different from being pulled, I swear it is. Jess grabbed my wrist. “Mel. I made up the rules, I can unmake them.”
“You can’t unmake rules,” Danny said, but quiet.
Sit down. Eat the ghost pepper candy. Cry in the pink bathroom. Go to bed with Jess and let the bed tell on nobody.
I put my boots on. The laces were wet and my fingers shook so bad it took three tries to double knot them, and when I stood up I felt it, the soaked seam of my leggings pressed right up into me, cold on the outside and hot underneath, sticking to my lips when I shifted, and my clit throbbed against it so hard I had to stand still a second with my hand on the doorframe and let it.
Owen got the flashlight from the drawer by the stove, the big yellow heavy kind, and clicked it on and off and held it out. Then didn’t let go. So we were both holding it, his hand on the grip and my hand on his hand, his knuckles rough from the climbing gym, warm.
“I’ll come,” he said.
“To the tree line.”
“Further. If you want.”
If you want. I wanted so bad it closed my throat. “Bottle picked me,” I said, and my voice did that thick low thing again, and he let go.
Outside it was way colder than before, like the yard sank into a freezer while we were inside. The moths were gone from the porch light. All of them. Everybody crowded out on the porch behind me, Nadia’s teeth chattering, Jess going “Oh my god, oh my god” under her breath, and Owen walked me across the gravel, crunch, crunch, his shoulder near mine, to where the light stopped like a wall.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Then I’m coming in after you.”
“Okay.”
“I mean it, Mel.”
His eyeliner had smudged almost to his cheekbones. He lifted his hand like he was going to touch my face and I stopped breathing,
do it, touch my face, do it, please, and he put it in his hoodie pocket instead.
I walked into the trees.
STORY 3: MIRROR MAZE
Connor’s phone buzzed on my nightstand for the third time and he didn’t stop, which I guess was supposed to be a compliment.
His face was in my pillow next to my ear, breathing hard through his nose, and every time he pushed in the bed knocked the radiator under the window. Clank. Clank. My laptop was open on the desk and the clock in the corner said 8:06.
Look at the ceiling. The water stain shaped like Ohio. Don’t look at the clock again.
Third date. Hibachi first, the place where the chef flips shrimp at your mouth, and in the car he said “you good with hibachi?” with his blinker already on and I said “I don’t mind.” I minded. I wanted The Wren, the back booth and a chai and two hours of somebody asking me stuff. I got a shrimp off my chin and his roommate’s fantasy league.
“Fuck,” he breathed in my ear. “Fuck yeah.”
It was fine. He was inside me and it was fine, a pressure and a rub, the condom dragging on every pull back with this dry little squeak, because I’d stopped getting wetter around when he kissed me twice and went for my jeans button. My hands flat on his shoulder blades, not holding, just there. His hips slapping soft and tired on my thighs. Sweat dripped off his hair onto my collarbone, warm, then cold, and he smelled like the blue cologne boys get in a gift set at Christmas, sharp and sweet, and I could taste it every time I breathed in.
Tell him. Slower. Higher. There. You’re twenty one, Lily, you’re a junior in college, you can say the word clit to a man who’s inside you.
I didn’t. I lifted my hips to meet him because that’s what you do and he groaned, “uhh, uh,” right in my ear, like I’d done a trick. His hand found my tit and squeezed once and let go. My nipple didn’t even get hard. Just sat there under his palm waiting for him to leave.
Slow down. Put your mouth there. Ask me.
And low in me something turned over at that, at the asking, warmer than anything he was doing.
Make the noise. You make the noise and he goes faster and then it’s over.
“mmh… yeah…”
He went faster. Clank clank clank. His breath went high and choppy, “oh shit, oh shit, babe,” and low in my stomach there was one flicker, one, a small warm twist that started and didn’t finish, and my toes curled for it and then let go because his whole body locked. He shoved in as deep as he went and held there shaking and grunting into my pillow and I felt him twitch inside the condom. Little jerks. Done.
8:09.
Four minutes. You’ve spent longer picking a show.
He rolled off and the cold hit my whole front, sticky where he’d been, my thighs still spread on the sheet with nobody between them. He peeled the condom off and knotted it and dropped it in my trash can. The wrapper stayed on the rug, torn silver foil, catching the desk lamp.
“Damn,” he said to the ceiling. “That was crazy.”
Was it.
He reached across me for his phone and it lit his face blue. “Did you finish?” he asked the phone.
Between my legs one dull slow throb, heavy and swollen and still waiting. “I don’t mind,” I said.
He took it as a yes. “Nice,” he said, typing.
I don’t mind. You told the hibachi that. You told Brandon last spring when he called you so chill like it was the best thing about you, and you weren’t chill, you were quiet, there’s a difference, and you never said. Tyler sophomore year with his ex in every other sentence, same, fine, I don’t mind. Nobody asks twice. Nobody has ever asked you twice.
His intramural team was doing a costume scavenger hunt at nine, so I’d been on a schedule. He got up and dug a Top Gun flight suit out of his backpack, olive green, fake patches, and stepped into it with his dick still half hard and zipped it to his throat. Gerald was face down on the rug where Connor knocked him off the bed. My frog. Face down next to the foil.
Pick him up. You can’t even pick up your frog with him standing there.
“You should come out later,” he said, not meaning it, and bent and kissed my forehead, quick and dry, already turning for the door. “I’ll text you.”
Door. Sneakers squeaking off down the hall, gone.
My phone buzzed before he could’ve hit the lobby.
Connor, 8:16 pm: “that was fun lmk if ur free next wknd”
White words on the black screen, and under them, faint in the glass, my face. Mascara gone soft. Hair stuck to my temple. Looking up at me like it wanted something. I flipped the phone over.
The radiator ticked. The room smelled like latex and his cologne and under that me, barely, like I’d been a guest.
Knees up. I looked down at myself, which I never do. In the lamp I was pink and puffy and shiny with lube, rubbed sore on the outside and untouched everywhere it counted. My lips were swollen a little apart. My clit stood up out of its hood, red and hard, still waiting for him to find it. His hip grazed it maybe twice. By accident. A buzzing sore ache sat right on top of it.
He was in you for four minutes and he never once looked down here.
I pressed my thighs together. The ache went heavy and spread up into my stomach, and when I let my knees fall open again my lips came apart with a small wet tick I felt more than heard.
My hand went down before I thought about it. Flat on my stomach first, resting, rising and falling when I breathed. Then lower, onto the soft hair, and I left it there too, heavy, the heel of my palm just above my clit. My clit pushed up toward it and couldn’t reach. My fingertips found the crease of my thigh and followed it in and skipped right over me to the other side, so close my skin prickled, and my hips came up off the sheet after my own hand.
Okay.
Two fingers flat on top of me. I held them there and didn’t move. Warm. My pulse under my fingertips, quick, and my clit swelling up into them, a hard little beat, then another. I lay still and let it beat. Every throb pushed it fuller against my fingers, and I felt the hood slide back off it by itself, “ah…”, just from holding still.
Then down through my lips, slow. There was more in there than I thought, a warm slippery pool he never even got to, and I drew it up over my clit and my stomach pulled in so hard the duvet slid.
Circles. The small mean ones I do alone, tight on the left side where it’s best. The first one dug my heels into the sheet. Again. A wet click under my fingertips every pass. My nipples pulled up hard in the cold, both, aching.
Now. Now they get hard. For you.
My clit got fatter with every circle, slicker, sore in the good way, and on the fifth one my hips jerked off the bed and a hot tight pull started behind it, too fast, and I lifted my hand off. Right off. I held it an inch over myself in the air.
My clit kept going without me. I could see it in the lamp, sticking out of its hood, wet and red, jumping with my heartbeat. Lower down my hole squeezed shut and opened, shut and opened, on the cold, and every time it opened a little more slid out and ran down onto the sheet.
I brought my fingers up into the light. Glossy to the second knuckle, a little cloudy where it was thickest. When I spread them it webbed between them, clear and thick, and held. I’d never looked. Four years of boys and I’d never once looked at what came out of me. I put my fingers under my nose and breathed in. Sweet and sharp and a little sour, warm, me, with the latex under it, and the smell went straight to my cunt. I felt my hole clench and push out a fresh slick, right there, from smelling myself. I touched my tongue to my fingertip. Salt. Then thicker, sweeter, and I put both fingers in my mouth and sucked them clean, slow, my hips rolling on the sheet while I did it.
That’s you. That’s what you taste like when you actually want something.
Gerald was on the rug, face down, next to the foil. Every time the bed shook the foil caught the lamp and flashed. Torn silver. I looked right at it with my own wet fingers in my mouth, and my face went hot, and I sucked harder.
Your frog is right there. His wrapper is right there. Don’t you dare stop.
I put them back. Down past my clit this time, through the slick, to my hole, and I stopped with one fingertip on it. Just the tip. Resting. It fluttered under my finger, a soft greedy little pull trying to suck me in, and I didn’t let it. I pressed. Barely. My rim gave around the very tip and I held it there, half a fingernail inside, my whole pussy squeezing and not able to get it, “mmh… please…”, and nobody to say it to but my own hand. Out. Back to the tip. Out. Every time I pulled away cream came out around my finger, thick and white, and slid down to the sheet.
Four minutes and he never found it. It’s right here. It’s not hidden, it’s not a puzzle, it’s right fucking here.
I pushed two fingers in where he’d been. They went in with a soft wet suck. I was wetter now than the whole time he was in me, slick to the knuckle and hot, my walls closing down on my fingers, finally, finally. I curled them and found the rough spot on the front wall and my back came off the mattress. I rolled my cheek onto the pillow and he was on the pillowcase, that blue gift set smell, and I rubbed harder to get him out of my head, and that made me wetter, and I hated him and breathed him in and my walls squeezed my fingers so hard my wrist ached.
I could do this better myself.
I could do him better myself. I’d take my time. I’d ask.
That caught. Hot and stupid in my throat.
I’d ask. I’d at least ask me what I. What I even want. Nobody ever even.
My nose burned and my hips kept going, faster, the bed creaking the way it creaked under him except it was mine now.
I don’t mind. You said I don’t mind with your clit swollen and your legs still open. You mind. You mind so much you’re dripping.
My fingers went slower, “slower… there… there…”, and it was there. Slow circles, my thumb on my clit and my two fingers curled inside, rocking, the heel of my hand grinding down, and I was so wet it ran down between my cheeks onto the sheet, the sound of it loud and quick in the quiet room, my hips rolling up into my own hand, my walls fluttering and pulling at my fingers, my stomach drawing up, my thighs starting to shake, my heels sliding on the sheet, my nipples so tight they hurt, and it came up in me low and deep behind my clit, a real catch, and I was going to, I was actually going to, for the first time all night somebody was going to make me come and it was me, “mmh… ahh… ah, ah…”
My wrist was burning. I wanted something that didn’t get tired, something that would take me the last inch. Top drawer of the nightstand under the lip balms and hair ties, the purple bullet I got on sale freshman year and never told anybody about. I rolled half onto my side with my hand still going between my legs and got the drawer open with the other, dug past the hair ties, got it. Thumb on the button. It buzzed in my fist, loud, so loud in the room, and I brought it down toward me shaking, an inch off my clit, I could feel the hum of it in the air on my wet skin, “mmmhh…. please…”
Knock knock knock.
“LIL. Open up. It’s an emergency. It’s a Halloween emergency.”
Beth. I jammed my thumb on the button and the buzz died and the bullet sat warm and quiet in my fist. My clit beat at the air, once, twice, three times, right on the lip of it, and didn’t tip. I clamped my other hand over myself and held still. Wet ran out between my fingers.
“Lil? Was that your phone? I can hear you in there.”
“I’m changing!” It came out high.
“Okay, change faster, because I just passed Maverick in the stairwell and he did finger guns at me.” Her voice came under the door with the hall light. “Babe. How long?”
Don’t say it.
“Like. Four minutes,” I said.
“Respectfully,” Beth said through the door, “I’m going to key his car.”
“He doesn’t have a car.”
“I’ll buy him one and key it. Okay. Listen.” The movie trailer voice. “Merrow Farm. It’s new, it’s called The Glass Hollow, it’s a mirror maze and then this huge field maze in actual fog, and my whole For You page is losing it. Five stars. This maze completed me.” A pause while she scrolled. “Five stars. Worth every cent of forty dollars. Go in the fog. Follow your instinct.”
I lay on my back with my knees up and my palm pressed flat over my pussy. Not rubbing. Pressing. My clit beat up into my palm with every word she said, and my hole kept squeezing down on the empty, and every time it squeezed more slick came out between my fingers, warm, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep my breathing quiet enough to talk.
“Forty dollars?” I said.
“Four zero.”
“That’s like seven chais.”
“Then it better complete me seven times. I’m coming in. Four seconds. Four.”
On your sheet. You have to sleep on that.
I yanked my hand out and wiped it on the sheet anyway, and dragged the duvet to my chin, and the bullet slid out of my wet fingers and rolled off the edge of the bed. It hit the rug. It came to a stop against the foil.
“Three,” she said, and opened the door.
Beth from two floors down, five ten in socks, strawberry blonde curls crammed in a claw clip with straw sticking out of it, denim overalls, a stitched smile drawn ear to ear in eyeliner and fake freckles dotted over her real ones. She smelled like caramel corn.
She looked around. My phone face down. Gerald face down. The foil on the rug. And right up against it, purple, the bullet.
Her drawn smile stayed put. Her real mouth went flat, then twitched. She bent down and picked up Gerald and brushed the rug off his face and set him on my pillow, face up, next to my head. Then she put the toe of her boot on the foil and the bullet together and slid them both under my bed, slow, all the way back.
“We’re not going to talk about any of that,” she said.
My face burned. All the way down my neck, into my chest, and the burn kept going down and landed between my legs, and under the duvet my thighs squeezed on my own wet and my clit gave a hard throb that I felt in my teeth.
Purple, right up against his wrapper. She knows exactly where you were and how far you got.
“Focus on yourself for one night,” she said. Under the eyeliner her eyes went soft and serious, the real Beth, the one who sat with me in urgent care freshman year when I sprained my wrist on the ice. “Respectfully, he didn’t. You in?”
“I don’t mind.”
“That’s your yes face. That’s a yes.” She dug in her overalls and jammed something on my head, a tiny black witch hat on a headband, crooked. “You’re a witch, I’m a scarecrow, we’re a theme. Cream sweater, brown skirt, tights, it’s freezing. I’m getting the car.”
The door banged. Her boots thumped off toward the stairs.
I got up on shaky legs, cold right between them where I was still wet. I picked Gerald up off the pillow and moved him to the other side, away from the cologne. Then I got down on my knees on the rug and looked under the bed. Dust. Lost socks. The foil. And the bullet, lying in the dust right next to it, purple, waiting.
I reached in. My fingertips touched it, smooth and still a little warm from my hand, and the ache came back low and heavy and mean, right where my hand had been.
I left it there.
Sweater, skirt, tights. The seam pulled up tight right into me, right on my clit, still swollen and slick, and my knees went soft and I grabbed the desk. A hot throb went through me so close to the edge I held my breath and waited. It didn’t tip. It stayed right there, with the bullet in the dust behind me. Then the mirror over the desk, and I fixed it. All of it. Mascara wiped with my thumb. Hair off my temple. And the face. The fine face, the I had fun face, the one I’d do for Beth in the car, and I held it there in the glass till it looked true, and then I grabbed my keys and went down to the honking.
Beth drove with her knees at red lights so she could eat caramel corn out of the bag with both hands, and I flipped the visor mirror down twice on the way and did the face. Fine. Had fun. Twice it looked true enough.
You can still feel it. Every time she brakes.
I could. The seam of my tights pressed up into me whenever the Corolla dipped, right on my clit, still swollen from my own hand, and every pothole was a small hard push right where my fingers had been. I sat on my hands. Under me the slick had gone cool and tacky on my thighs, and fresh warm kept sliding over it.
A hand painted sign, THE GLASS HOLLOW, MIRRORS & MAZE, a gravel lot, and past two pale barns a creek bottom filled to the brim with real fog, white and flat, smelling like wet leaves.
The ticket booth was a shed with one string of orange bulbs and a woman inside in a barn coat, a gray braid down to her elbow. A card on the window said DOT.
“Two,” Beth said. “Forty each, I know, don’t look at me like that.” I tapped my card. Dot slid a waiver under the glass, one page, little gray print. I initialed the bottom without reading it. LD. Beth read hers out loud.
“Participant consents to be changed.” She laughed. “Okay. Change me. Make me rich.”
------------------------------------
Author's Note:
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