And her hair smells like something citrus. Grapefruit? But with vanilla, maybe. Something sweet, like she is, I can tell already. Just how Mikey was trying to explain her through the duct tape. Strawberry blonde. A gap in her smile, but the cute kind.
“A virgin. Dude I am honored.”
I say “What?”
“You’re jumping into the deep end right off, huh, hero?”
“Mikey said you’d be gentle.”
“Hah, yeah Mikey loves to lie.”
Her rubber gloved fingers tear apart a plastic packet and set the needle on a mint colored pad. Tubes. Gauze. Iodine. Her porcelain arms are tangles of thorns with bright petals peaking out. Koy fish and rising sunbeams. He said this was just like her, Mikey did. Her ink. Fragile, but dangerous. This got him another smack for the bad poetry. Spitting up some bits of teeth, he said he’d miss that about her.
“Giddy-up, cowboy.” She says.
Man, that cutsie gapped smile – it’ll reel you in, he was right. I shimmy everything down. Pants. Boxers. I give my pipe a jiggle to beef it up a touch before I lie back. She pinches the scruff of my shaft, I can’t read if she’s impressed threading the tube down my piss hole. All her dick handling, this might be a problem down the line.
“K, breathe in and it’s on three.”
“We should get a drink. Time you off?”
“I’m…Mikey and I are together you know, right? One… two…”
The needle’s an icepick popping through the underside of my mushroom cap. She holds a second. I’m supposed to yelp or buck, I guess. She’s trying to thread the jewelry into the tube, but my invite’s thrown her fingers off. Warm fluid lets loose down my pipe, gathers and drips from my sack. The crinkly paper under my ass is going wet, making a little mess. I could tell her what really gets the messy red out, the bits that crust up, is that mechanic’s goop with the pumice. When I was done with Mikey, that’s what I used. All after he gave up his skim stash, the money he didn’t think anyone would miss. Dumb, getting yourself under my pliers for only that much. The house he talked about buying for her with his stash, it’d have to be a fixer-upper. Some place you’d have to take down to the studs and smack back together. Breathing in that citrus hair, I can tell she deserves more than that.
“What if he’s okay with it?” I ask, “Then, yes?”
“Okay with it?”
She’s futzing, now. Things sliding out of place, not going into place. Her tools slick with my blood. Man, I’ve been there before, but I don’t say it. She needs to just stop a sec and mop up. I want to tell her that trying to do your business with slippery equipment? Forget it.
I close my fingers around her wrist and her muscles lock solid. Hazel islands float in all the white growing in her eyes.
I say, “Mikey doesn’t own you.”
“No he doesn’t own me, but…”
“So, what’s a drink?”
“I have to.. there’s a lot blood here.”
“Just say ‘ok’.”
“Ok.”
The bulb of silver curves down my spout and through the new hole underneath my pipe and her shaky fingers twist on the ball. A ‘Prince Albert’ it’s called.
Her name’s Emma. Her signature all curlicued up on the back of a photo in Mikey’s wallet. A for real photo. She takes them herself. She’s an artist. Told Mikey All digital must die. One of the last things Mikey was able to say. Holding that little picture between my fingers all mucky red, I said we could be a thing. Her and me. To the warehouse, ringing with Mikey’s howls just a few minutes ago, now funeral quiet, I said Maybe Emma was mine.
“Close up at twelve?” I ask.
To the floor she says “Yeah.”
I tell Emma, good. I’ll be waiting.
~ fin ~
Neil Krolicki is a Bram Stoker Award nominated writer, illustrator and expert lover who writes darkly humorous fiction from a secret bunker somewhere in Colorado. He appears in Chuck Palahniuk’s transgressive anthology, Burnt Tongues, ThugLit Issue 14 and Nailed Magazine. His noir comic ‘120 Doses’ is available now on Comixology. Please find him on the Facebooks and Twitters and whatnot.
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