Category: Stories & Captions

[CONTENT NOTE: I’m thinking this one’s going to three, possibly four parts.]

Another day, another street, another step I didn’t know I’d taken.

Sara was on the phone, and had been for the full ten minutes we’d been walking. She hadn’t bothered to tell me who was calling, but I’d inferred from her half of the conversation that it was her father.

“No, you’re wrong,” she said to him, as she often did. It was a reflex, her own special brand of linguistic filler; she told people they were wrong the way other folks said “um” and “like”. But no one was ever quite so wrong as her dad. “No— look, this isn’t a debate, okay? You don’t get a vote. You can’t buy my— my obedience.”

That was at best a partial truth. He’d bought obedience before and he would again, but at an ever-increasing price that invariably turned her minor compromises into major windfalls. She enjoyed playing the part of an independent, indomitable force of nature, but her greatest skill was forging victory from scraps of concession.

“We’ll talk about it later. Later,” she said, apparently cutting him off; I could hear him shouting as she disconnected. Then, as if she were confirming dinner arrangements, “He wants me to dump you.”

“What? Why?” I frantically searched my memory for any offense I might have given. Her father wasn’t particularly likable, but I’d always gone out of my way to cater to his whims while otherwise staying off his radar. Successfully, I’d assumed.

“Because he thinks his name and his money entitle him to run my life. Same as usual,” she replied.

“No, I mean—” I began, before realizing that what I’d meant wasn’t nearly so interesting as what she had. “Usual? This is— he’s asked for this before?”

“Duh.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Don’t take it personally; he doesn’t care enough to actually hate you. He just doesn’t like me depending on anyone but him.”

“Really? He thinks you depend on me?” It’s sad, I know, but I liked that someone was jealous of me.

“That’s what I tell him,” she said.

The implications of her response were messy and infuriating, so my mind seized on the first distraction in sight. I was so busy eavesdropping and being casually insulted that I hadn’t noticed we had wandered into unfamiliar territory. Looking around, I’d expected to see shops and food stands, and instead found myself marching into a busy construction zone.

“Where are we— this isn’t the way to the store.” I said, stopping mid-stride.

“Yes, it is,” she said, not stopping at all.

“We’re going in the opposite direction.”

“This is my direction, how I want to go. If you wanna take another route, have at it.” She made a pair of noises, one low in her throat and the other high in her sinuses, designed to convey both her contempt for the norms of toxic masculinity and my inability to conform to them. “All the shit I’m expected to bear as a woman, the hoops I have to jump through, and you want me to be your navigator, too? What exactly are you bringing to this relationship? Anything at all?”

“I love you.” I answered almost instantly. It was the most important fact in my world, and one I relied upon as both sword and shield in times of emotional crisis.

I might as well have been unarmed and naked.

“Am I supposed to be satisfied with that?” She stepped boldly over a sleeping homeless man and continued her thought. “It’s nice that you enjoy my company and vagina, but that isn’t enough for me.”

“I can’t believe— how can you say that to me?” I was stunned, although I had no right to be. “Do you not— wait, are you breaking up with me?”

“I should. Look at you,” she said, pointedly doing everything but. “I still love you —I suppose— but that shit just doesn’t mean as much to me anymore. There are bigger things.

“I mean, fine. We had our romantic puppy-love stuff, and okay, it was great. You were great.” She still didn’t look, but at least she paused. I took solace in that; I think she might have actually meant it. “But things change, man. People change. And if you can’t keep up with the changes, well, you should expect to be left behind.”

“But—!“ I began, before obliterating my objection. There was a part of me, a part that lived in the murky, cobwebbed rafters of my consciousness, that was voicing its outrage at everything she was saying. I didn’t so much ignore it as put it on hold; later, I’d reasoned, when cooler heads prevailed, I could spend some time commiserating with the cheap seats.

(“Later”, as it turns out, is a fairytale-cum-wasteland of regrets and half-measures, an invention of our intention. It took an embarrassing number of “laters” for me to catch on.)

She began to say something doubtlessly soul-withering, but was interrupted by a man’s booming voice, falling upon us from above. “Holy shit! Baby, I am in fucking love with your ass!”

Sara and I turned, searching for the source.

“What? What did you say?” she demanded, despite knowing exactly what he’d said.

A group of laughing construction workers had gathered on the exposed second floor of the unfinished building we were passing. One large, profoundly unattractive fellow, adorned in a bright yellow hat and a greasy, unearned self-confidence, removed said hat and waved at us cheerfully.

“I told you that I fucking love your ass!” he replied. The sweaty Greek chorus around him hooted and high-fived. “But to tell the truth, what I really meant is that I’d love fucking your ass!”

“Pig! You don’t get to talk to me like that!” She advanced on the fence that separated the site from the street, gripping it tightly and staring through the mesh at the man. “Fuck you!”

“Fuckin’ you’s the idea, sweetie!” he said, laughing. To emphasize his point, he made a show of grabbing his crotch and gyrating his hips; he was clearly a sophisticated fan of the classics. “And I’ll talk to you any way I like! It’s a free goddamned country!”

“This is harassment, you’re scum, and your fucking ‘freedom’ is my oppression!” She spat in his direction.

His pelvis froze mid-rotation, and the laughter trailed off. Without releasing his hold on what was definitely more denim than cock, he leaned forward and squinted studiously in our direction until his face bloomed with shocked delight.

“Oh. My. God!” He turned to his friends, with an excitement that was only slightly feigned. “We got us a warrior out here! Let’s get ready to justiiiiiice!”

I tugged at Sara’s shoulder, urging her to move on. Always a creature of habit, she ignored me.

“Fucking right, I want justice!” In her fury, she began pushing and pulling at the loosely-moored fence, making it rattle and sway. “Shitlords like you think you can say anything you want —do anything you want— to anyone, and we’re just supposed to take it!”

“Hey, you can keep on walkin’, bitch!” He gestured toward the pavement behind us. “I just paid you a compliment! Only person making you stand here and listen is you! Ask your fag boyfriend, he’ll tell you!”

While clearly intended to put me in my place, that comment didn’t bother me much. I was fine. After all, there’s nothing inherently insulting about the assumption that I’m gay… even though I’m not. Plus, “fag boyfriend” is just something you hear a lot when you date Sara. People often had the wrong idea about us. I was fine with it, though.

Perfectly fine.

And in fairness, he wasn’t entirely wrong; we’d have been halfway up the block and gone if she hadn’t turned to confront him. I tried once more to lead her away, and failing that, at least capture her attention for a moment. She shrugged me off with a force that made it clear further interference would not be tolerated.

“‘Love your ass’ isn’t a compliment, dipshit!” she insisted. “‘I want to fuck you’ isn’t a compliment, either!”

“It is the way I do it, little girl!” At that, hilarity again ensued, as the conclave of catcallers on the second floor signaled its delight at such a dazzling display of clever repartee.

“Stupid, misogynist, homophobic piece of shit!” She looked down, searching, and grabbed a chunk of broken concrete that lay at her feet. She clearly intended to throw it at his head, but halfway through the motion I heard her suppress a grunt; realizing she’d misjudged its weight, and would have a hard time even getting it over the fence, she settled for slamming it to the sidewalk in frustration, screaming “Fucking coward!”

“Coward? You want me to come down there, bitch?” She’d finally found a keyword that disrupted his smug little call-and-response routine. I noticed she was trembling, and for a moment thought she might be afraid. But then she glanced at me, and her eyes told a very different story.

“You’re the bitch, sweetheart!” she shouted, turning back to her foe. “Harassing a stranger from way up there, surrounded by all your little buddies? You’re pathetic!”

The douchebag quorum waited in hushed expectation as Sara’s interlocutor appeared to weigh his response, and then began a low, discordant chant of support as he marched wordlessly toward the nearest ladder. He climbed on, steadied himself a few rungs down, and then slid the rest of the way in a manner that would have been impressive if he hadn’t stumbled slightly when landing. He then picked his way over mounds of earth and construction debris to reach a gap in the fence.

As he approached, it became clear that his size, which I had previously estimated as “large”, was clearly more on the order of “huge”. I hated myself for it, but as he stomped toward us, I briefly considered exercising the better part of valor; I couldn’t fight a mountain, but I felt I had a fair chance of outrunning one.

In the end, I simply stood there and allowed the mountain to come to me.

“What the fuck is wrong with her, kid?” he asked, invading my space and towering over me. “Does she wanna see you get your ass kicked or something? Is that it?” He shot Sara a smirk while one meaty hand yanked me by my shirt. “You want me to kick his ass for you, baby? That make you wet, watching this pussy get pushed around?”

“Nothing you do could ever make me wet, you fat fuck,” she growled.

I found that alarmingly non-responsive to several significant components of the question, but again… love. And again… later.

“Look, we need to just get out of here,” I said to two people who really didn’t care what I thought. “This is stupid. Sara, let’s just—“

Without a thought or a look, he shoved me, hard, and I fell flat on my back, cracking my skull against the curb. It would have been horribly embarrassing had Sara an even slightly charitable opinion of my manhood, but she didn’t, so I was free to concentrate on my newfound concussion and the fireworks show going off behind my eyelids.

When my brain at last resumed minimal sensory function, I found that I was on my side, one hand instinctively probing a sizable cut on the back of my head, and the other struggling to push me upright. As I attempted to focus my vision, the dick with the yellow hat was readying himself for the main event; he had taken a couple steps away from me and was menacing Sara directly.

They were both yelling, but it was difficult sorting out what the words meant; even now, I’m unsure if that was because of the pounding in my head or the growing incoherence of their anger. He said something about teaching her a lesson, and she threatened to call the cops. I would have suggested an ambulance instead, but I hadn’t yet recovered my ability to speak.

Through a kaleidoscope of pain, I saw her retrieve her phone from her purse, only to have him slap it from her hands. It bounced twice —the screen shattering on the second impact— before coming to rest a couple yards away.

“Fucking asshole!” she screamed. Her purse strap slid off her shoulder and into her hand, leaving the rather heavy bag dangling near her knees. Wielding her D&G as if it were a weapon out of D&D, she took a couple tentative swings at him, presumably trying to make him back away.

“Oh, this is going to be good.” He made a show of dropping his hat, then unclipped his tool belt and let it fall at his feet. “Gonna enjoy this,” he promised.

On her next swing, he caught the purse strap in mid-air, and wrenched it from her grasp. He tossed it aside, where it landed next to her broken phone.

And then his hands were on her.

Now, I can’t tell you exactly what I was thinking as I made it to my feet, other than perhaps “OUCH!” or “UP!” Nor do I have any idea what inspired me to reach for his discarded tool-belt and the hammer that dangled from one of its soft leather loops. I hazily recall the other men, upstairs and beyond the fence, shouting first at me to stop, and then at their co-worker to beware. In both cases, they went unheeded.

All I clearly remember were the sounds he made when the hammer hit his knee: there was a crunching, a tearing, and a howl. He crumpled instantly, clutching his very own orthopedic nightmare.

As I stood over him, swaying unsteadily, I watched Sara’s gaze move from me to him and back again. Her face was a riddle of confusion and frustration.

“I didn’t—! I could’ve—! Fuck!” she said, mostly to herself. Her eyes met mine as he sobbed and wailed on the ground between us, and she seemed to reach a decision. “We need to— just go! Go!”

Despite feeling that we could have used some of that spirit a few minutes —and a couple major injuries— ago, I offered no complaint. Nor could I, since my throbbing brain was still trying to sort out how my tongue worked.

She snatched up her purse and phone, took my hand, and pulled me out of my daze and away from the scene of what was clearly some sort of crime. As we ran —or more accurately, as she ran and I careened along behind her with the vertiginous, lurching momentum of a drunk toddler— I could still hear him crying in the distance.

An unfamiliar part of me took the opportunity to think, I guess someone learned a lesson. But before I could pursue it any further, I saw Sara duck into an alley between a ratty diner and a convenience store whose biggest nod to “convenience” was a toilet key chained to a cinder block. She pulled me behind a dumpster, and I gratefully slumped against the cool brick of the diner’s wall.

“I— I need a doctor,” I croaked. “Need the hospital.”

“No hospital, no ambulance,” she snapped as she peeked around the dumpster’s edge at the empty street beyond it. “We’ll go to a walk-in clinic later. Or maybe I’ll stitch you up myself. Just be quiet.”

We waited in mandated silence as five agonizing minutes slowly passed. Only then did she relax and at long last grace me with her full attention.

“What is wrong with you?” she asked, kneeling next to me.

“My head hurts.”

“Yeah, I figured,” she said with a wry smile, leaning over me to examine my wound. When her face came back into view, she was frowning. Which, if nothing else, was comfortingly familiar. “Why did you do that?”

“He was— was gonna hurt—“ I explained.

“So?” she said scoldingly. “I knew what I was doing. I wanted him to try something. I was going to kick him in the nuts and call 911.”

“But the phone…”

“Yeah, that sucked,” she agreed. “But I took my chance. My chance. It was worth it to me to try, even if he had slapped me around a little.”

“I wanted to protect you,” I offered.

“That’s sweet,” she assured me, as she reached to smooth back my hair. A hint of the smile returned; mostly, I suspected, for my benefit. “But sweet is stupid. When are you going to figure that out?”

I could only stare at her as she held my face in her hands. Then she sighed, leaned back, gathered her skirt around her waist, and straddled me. “I didn’t need you to do that,” she insisted. “But I need you now.”

She began to grind against me, as I sat there amidst the garbage, bleeding and mystified.

“Sara, I— I can’t. My head hurts so bad, I don’t think I could—“ I protested, gesturing vaguely toward my entirely disinterested cock. She shushed me.

“You don’t need it. Use something else,” she said. My eyes followed hers, down my arm to the hammer that I had somehow forgotten I was still holding.

I can’t say that what happened next felt right; not exactly. Or at all, really. But it felt… natural, which is a funny word to think about while you’re fucking your girlfriend with a rubber-coated shaft of forged steel that you stole from an assault victim.

Her face was a vacant, disconnected display, even as her body responded enthusiastically to my work with the hammer. But I could tell that no matter how wet she was —for me, I thought, with no small sense of triumph— the rubber wasn’t taking it easy on her. She grunted with every thrust, as the flesh of her cunt adhered to its invader. I knew she would be raw later, so I slowed the fucking.

She groaned in frustration, coming down slightly from her altered state of consciousness. She pulled herself off the tool, collapsed against my chest, and whispered in my ear.

“Not less,” she said, almost pleading. “More. So much more.”

I considered what that meant, and what it meant that I was considering. Under normal circumstances, without a head wound or the drama of an unexpected felony, I feel certain that I would have gently eased her off me, and convinced her to help me find a doctor.

Instead, I turned the hammer around and gave her the claw.

copyright © 2017 bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls

[CONTENT NOTE: Consider the source.]

My girlfriend had a plan.

It was the news that did it, that made her snap. She’d always been angry, defensive, and bitter, but never quite passionate. Clearly, she’d been lacking motivation.

“I can’t stand knowing that these scumbags, these men,” she said, the last word spat like venom, “are out there, just walking around, waiting for a chance to attack someone! Like sleeper agents or some shit, y’know? They don’t even know the others exist, but they’re programmed to watch for a sign, and when they see it…”

As she trailed off, she clenched her jaw and glared at the air in front of her face. It was her fourth time through this particular rant, and even she was losing interest in it. It would take her a few minutes of quiet consideration to wind herself up into a new fury, complete with original material.

She had been referring, of course, to a recent bit of headline news that had shocked and captivated the nation, and our small Midwestern city in particular. A group of some fourteen men were recorded “running a train” on a drunken co-ed who had been left chained to a fence in one of our many poorly-lit industrial districts, apparently as part of a sorority prank. But those facts alone weren’t what garnered everyone’s enduring attention.

The meat of the story was in the composition of the gang that had done the banging. After running facial recognition against the video and seeking help from the community, the local police had eventually identified and arrested all of the perpetrators, only to discover an oddly chilling fact.

They were strangers.

Despite extensive investigative effort, the authorities could find no evidence that any of the rapists had social, business, or family ties to one another. None of them knew the others’ names, and despite spending hours together using a young woman like an intoxicated toilet, most couldn’t pick their co-defendants out of a lineup.

Strangers. All of them.

And Sara was not pleased about it. Not in the slightest.

“What the fuck is wrong with you people?” she growled. “Are you even people at all? How do you fucking do it?”

“Phermones, maybe?” I offered.

“Oh fuck off, Darren!” She didn’t even look my way, accustomed as she was to my disappointing contributions. “Men aren’t butterflies, they’re human beings.”

“You just suggested we’re not peop–”

“I said they’re human beings. That doesn’t make them people.” She pulled her phone from her purse, glanced at it, and returned it from whence it came. “Fucking rape culture. And people act like it isn’t real! What else do you call it when men can do something like that, in public, and trust that anyone who passes will just– just join in?”

“It’s definitely a tragedy,” I offered. “Just a terrible thing.”

“Oh, is it? Is it just terrible?” She came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the sidewalk, arms stiff at her sides, hands balled into fists. “That’s all it is to you, isn’t it? Just another terrible thing? The world is full of terrible things, right? No big deal!”

“I don’t– I didn’t say that!”

“You should want to do something, Darren! How do you not get it? It’s– the whole thing is, like, pervasive! Don’t you see? It wasn’t just those guys!” She began jabbing my chest with one thin finger, using it like punctuation as she spoke. “You should want to change things. You should want to help.”

“Help how? With what?”

“Doesn’t it– not just this one instance, but all of it– doesn’t it drive you insane?” The finger became the flat of her hand, and the pokes became shoves. “I mean, I can– every time I close my eyes, it’s like I can see it. I can feel it. And maybe that’s what it is; maybe it’s just not ‘real enough’ for you.”

She stared up into my eyes for a moment, either in challenge or appraisal; I couldn’t be sure. Then she turned, lowered her head, and marched wordlessly toward home.

That’s when it started.

—-

I awakened in my bed at one in the morning to the absolute certainty I was being watched. My tired, drooping eyes struggled for focus, only to find hers staring back; like before on the street, as if she were taking my measure.

Sensing movement, I glanced down. She was nude, with one hand between her legs, working away.

“Have you ever choked someone? A woman?” she asked me, pausing for a ragged breath.

“What? What the fuck, Sara?!” I drew away from her slightly, felt a twinge of guilt, and forced myself to ease back in. We were in love, and that’s what you do when you’re in love. You ease back in.

Her fingers became more aggressive, and she spread her thighs lewdly. While she was by no means a prude, making a display of herself was something new. While I watched her urgent motions in the moonlight, she began to blink rapidly, as tears welled and spilled down her cheeks.

“They choked her. So much!” She began to sob, but never lost the rhythm with her clit. “Five sets. Of bruises. On her neck! She must have felt. Like she was dying. Over and over!”

I reached to touch her shoulder, but she shrugged me away. The rejection felt a bit pointed, but I was patient to a fault. “Sara, honey, you’ve got to calm down. This– this isn’t–!”

She cut me off.

“Stop trying to make it okay!” she wailed. The spell abruptly broken, she withdrew her hand from her hole, snatched the blankets up to her chin, and rolled away.

“Honey, it’s– I don’t know what’s wrong,” I said to the back of her head. “But whatever it is, if we can just sleep on it, I know we can work it out in the morning.”

“If you want to work it out,” she answered coldly, her voice muffled by her pillow. “Do it now.”

“What do you need?”

“To not– to not feel this way!” Her body shook as she wept through her frustration. “You don’t– you can’t see it. You’re a fucking man. You don’t get this– this gnawing, constant fear, and this creeping fucking certainty inside you!”

“We’re home, the door is locked– you’re safe!” I insisted.

“There. Right there,” she said flatly, rolling on to her back and gazing up at me. “Always fixing. Trying to put out the fire. Calm me down. Make me forget.

“How am I supposed to forget that they’re everywhere? How dare you ask me to? There’s no ‘safe’, Darren! Not when you’re born a target!”

“Do– do you want me to leave?” I asked.

To my surprise, she grasped my hand tightly.

“I want you to let me feel what I need to feel.” She looked up at the ceiling and drew a deep breath. “Make me feel it.”

“How?” I asked.

“Fuck me.” It wasn’t an order or a request, and I wasn’t even sure she said it to me. It sounded a little like a prayer.

Given the hour and the circumstances, I don’t know precisely why I moved on top of her; she would no doubt say that I simply did what men do. But in the moment, I was certain that I loved her. So I pulled down my shorts and eased in.

(To be continued.)

copyright © 2017 bedtimestoriesforbrokengirls