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  It was up to her to take charge, she knew that now. So she pulled her bra off, tossed it over her shoulder. His bulge looked painful, pressing up against his jeans. She understood the saying about having a gun in your pocket now. Brent’s gun, if the shape was any indication, was a bazooka.

  “Vanessa,” he said as he ogled her chest, licked his lips. “Are you…are you sure about this?”

  “This doesn’t count, remember?”

  “Right. Can I…touch them?”

  She almost rolled her eyes, but forced herself to smile instead as she nodded.

  She let him play with them for a good ten minutes. Bouncing them, squeezing them so the fat bulged between his fingers. Pinching her nipples. She reached out, grabbed the back of his head, and pulled him in. Used her left nipple like a crowbar to pry his lips open. And he sucked. He sucked hard enough to cause pain, but she didn’t stop him. The pain was strangely nice. She wanted more. Wanted him to bite, but held that back. Didn’t want to come on too strong. Not at first. Not while they still had rules.

  “Now you,” she said.

  “Me what?” His eyes were half-lidded as if her breasts had been extracting whiskey.

  “Your shirt.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  He started to pull it off, but she stopped him. Wanted to do it herself. She had seen Brent with his shirt off only once. Playing basketball with some of the other boys in the church yard. A hot day. She still remembered the way the sunlight kissed his glistening torso, made the sweat look like spilled orange juice across his chest and belly.

  She pulled his shirt off, let her fingers glide across his skin. When she sucked on his nipple, he giggled and flinched away from her.

  “What? You don’t like it?”

  “It tickles too much. What about…what about here instead?”

  He turned his head and brushed the side of his neck with his knuckles.

  When they had decided to do this, to meet up and experiment with each other, the hardest part was finding a place to go. Either of their houses were a definite impossibility. Just the idea of their parents walking in and catching them made the whole thing seem not worth it. Couldn’t go to a public place either in fear of being seen, and neither of them had a car. Brent had brought up the woods, said they could find a nice clearing somewhere, but for whatever reason, that felt too dirty to Vanessa. When she thought of people fornicating in the woods, she thought of prostitutes and rapists, not good Christians like the two of them.

  The church was the only answer. The youth center. There were people there every day, but Vanessa knew that Tuesday would be the best time. She scouted it out the week before, searching for the perfect room. Though the maintenance closet was cramped, she figured there was enough room inside. No windows. Only one door. And plenty of supplies if they needed to clean up afterward.

  She didn’t think about how dark it would be in there, though. Once inside, Brent turned on his cell phone and they used the light from the display screen to see each other. Set it on the floor between their feet so the light was pointed up at them. It made Vanessa think of the Devil watching them, his demonic eyes illuminating their sins. For some reason, the thought made her all the more excited. The screen was too dim to light the entire closet, but bright enough that they could see all of each other. They could almost forget they were in the maintenance closet, but once Vanessa pulled Brent to the ground, they were reminded as supplies were knocked around. A metal bucket dropped to its side, made a sound loud enough that she was sure someone heard it. They paused momentarily, waiting, but nobody came.

  She kissed him on the side of the neck like he wanted. Flicked her tongue across his ear. He gasped, his hands gripping her. One on her thigh, dangerously close to breaking the rule, and the other on her breast.

  As much fun as all this was, Vanessa wanted more. Couldn’t keep her eyes off his bulge. And when he went back to sucking on her nipples, she reached out and touched it. Gave it a squeeze like you would a clown nose to make it honk.

  He flinched away, slapped her hand. “What are you doing?”

  “You didn’t like it?”

  “Of course I… What about the rule?” He had his back pressed against some brooms and mops, his chest heaving, sweat beads forming on his forehead.

  “Your jeans were in the way. I didn’t really touch you, did I? I just touched your jeans.”

  He frowned, stared at the floor as he thought about it. “Still doesn’t seem like we should be doing that. You can still…you know, feel me. In your hand.”

  She sighed, used her forearm to cover her breasts. Brent’s eyebrows went up and he exhaled like he missed them already.

  “What are we doing?”

  “What do you mean? We’re…loving each other. Aren’t we?”

  “We never said anything about love.”

  “I just figured since you invited me to do…this, that’s what you meant. That you loved me. You don’t?”

  “Do you love me?”

  His eyes went straight to her breasts. “Yeah. I think so.”

  “Think so?”

  “I made a promise I wouldn’t have sex until I was married. Same as you. But here we are, right? That has to mean something, don’t you think?”

  She let her arm drop and smiled at the look of relief on his face. “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  They kissed again. When he shifted his body to face her, he winced, grunted, and grabbed his bulge. Rubbed it a little. Watching him touch himself like that made Vanessa’s heart beat faster.

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t know. Hurts. Bad.” He straightened his jeans, gasped again. His eyes widened. “You don’t think…you know. Like it’s punishment or something, do you?”

  “Punishment?”

  “God. Punishing me for what we’re doing.”

  “It hurts that bad?”

  He gave her a look that answered her question.

  “Take it out.”

  “What? God’s mad enough, don’t you think?”

  “It’s not God, Brent. We didn’t do anything.”

  “You touched it. And I’ve been, you know…sucking on you.”

  “It’s not God. Maybe your jeans are too tight. Just take it out so it has some room.”

  He thought about it for a second, then stood up. Vanessa thought he was going to leave, but he unzipped his jeans instead, let them drop to his ankles. He kicked his shoes off, his jeans, then hesitated with his underwear before finally yanking them down, too.

  His erection, red and long, exploded out from the fabric and wobbled like God’s finger, telling them they were doing a bad thing. But the longer she stared at it, the more she was sure there was nothing bad about what they were doing.

  “It doesn’t look hurt to me,” she said.

  “It’s not that, it’s…balls. It’s my balls that hurt. Like they’re twisted or something.”

  She scooted closer. Close enough that she could smell the soap he used to wash himself that morning. Close enough that she could see the small slit at the tip of his erection, glistening like he’d applied lip gloss to the edges. He tried to back away from her, but there was nowhere to go. A bottle of hand soap and a pile of clean rags fell from a shelf and landed right beside her. One of the rags fell across his erection, hung there and made it look like it had floppy bunny ears.

  “How do they look? Are they knotted up or something?” His head was turned away, eyes closed, and he spoke through clenched teeth.

  “Looks good.” She licked her lips.

  “You sure?”

  “Positive. Maybe they’re full of tension, you know? Maybe I can help.”

  “How can you—”

  She grabbed both sides of the hanging towel, wrapped it around one more time, then gently pulled it toward her. As the towel slid down his length, he inhaled sharply, stood up on his tiptoes.

  “Vanessa…you-you can’t…”

  “I’m not touching y
ou. Can’t feel anything in my hand except for a towel. Not against the rule, is it?”

  She held the towel like a pair of nunchucks. Pulling it tight so the fabric had a strong grip on him. Then slid it slowly back down until she reached the bush of brown pubic hair, pulled it back toward her, back down again.

  He wasn’t resisting anymore. Wasn’t protesting. Just watched her, his breathing growing more rapid as she went faster and faster.

  The flesh started to get redder, even more so than it already was. She realized the rough surface of the towel was probably sanding away layers of skin as she went, so she lifted the hand soap bottle from the floor, gave it a strong squeeze and splashed the pink liquid over the entire erection, making sure she hit every spot. He hissed when she did this, stood up taller again, but when she got back to moving that towel, he lowered himself, bit his lower lip.

  “Do you like it?”

  He nodded.

  “Do you love me?”

  “Something’s h-happening.”

  “What?”

  “It’s…something’s coming…”

  She knew what he meant. Had seen it on the internet. She didn’t want to leave any evidence of what they had done that day, so she quickly searched the closet, found a small stack of Dixie cups.

  “V-Vanessa…?”

  She rose up on her knees, held the cup at the tip. “Go ahead.”

  It came out in spurts. Like peppermint toothpaste. White and thick.

  Brent grunted with every squirt, knocking over more supplies as he scrambled to find something to hold onto. His frantic motion almost made Vanessa miss with her cup, but she managed to catch it. His last spurt hit the edge of the cup, and though most of it still slid in, a few droplets splashed into her face. One on her bottom lip, and the way she saw the girls do on the internet during her research, she stuck her tongue out and licked it up.

  Brent smiled, wiped the sweat from his face. She loved that she could make him smile that way. She stared into the cup that was more than halfway filled. Looked him in the eye and smiled.

  Then she tilted her head back and drank it. Every drop. Just like the internet told her to do.

  The taste, and the consistency, made her gag once, but she swallowed it all down, wiped her mouth, and immediately started pulling her panties off.

  “What are you doing?” he said, still staring at the empty cup in her hand with unblinking eyes.

  She thought she might need to rub some of the hand soap into herself, but after checking with her middle finger, it wouldn’t be necessary. She reached behind her head, grabbed the mop handle, and handed it to him.

  “I love you,” she said. “Now it’s my turn.”

  The Androgyne

  Brendan Vidito

  Haden and Daphne entered the motel room and dropped their luggage on the floor.

  The place was pregnant with a septic-smelling darkness. Curtains were drawn over the window, and the carpet resembled a fungus the color of bad meat. There were two double beds and a long dresser decorated with thick, yellowed candles. Haden recognized it for what it was: a sacrificial altar.

  Daphne inhaled a trembling breath. She moved toward the nearest bed. Haden assisted their shared movement by commanding his legs into motion. They sat down together, as one.

  Their flesh was fused at the hip.

  Haden’s pale flank blended with Daphne’s olive-hued skin, meeting in the middle to form a tone unique to their pairing. Their clothes had been specially tailored to accommodate this conjunction of bodies.

  They had not always been this way. The unification began shortly after their one-year anniversary. By that time, Haden and Daphne were together almost every waking hour. Friendships fell to the wayside as they focused on honing their relationship.

  Driving home from the movies on a Saturday night, the couple was overtaken by a lustful desire for the other’s flesh. They found a secluded roundabout fringed by a forest so thickly leaved it seemed a wall of pure darkness. They clambered to the back seat, dirtying the upholstery with their shoes, and sprawled in a tangle of limbs. Daphne hiked up her skirt and tore a hole in the crotch of her pantyhose. Haden dropped his pants so they hung around his knees. He pulled the crotch of her underwear aside and entered her. The smell of her cunt was like an opiate, clearing Haden’s head and filling him with an animal hunger.

  They fucked passionately as moonlight trickled through the window, painting their bodies with delicate strokes of white and silver. It made the sweat and cum glittering on their skin look like droplets of a deadly, mercurial poison. As they thrust and grappled, they appeared to become a single organism writhing in death spasm.

  When it was over, and they lay together bathed in a hot stew of sex, Daphne let out a shriek of pain and surprise. She looked down between them, where their hips rested side by side. A pale cartilaginous hook had emerged from Haden’s skin and was now attempting to pierce her own. The muscles on Haden’s hip quivered and swelled, pushing the hook deeper into Daphne. She struggled briefly, taken by a whim of panic, and then Haden placed his hand on her cheek. She calmed down almost instantly. “It’s okay, babe,” he said. “This is what we want.”

  She nodded, smiled. The hook sank deeper with a wet fleshy sound. “I love you,” she said. He said it back. Their lips pressed together as the hook settled into place with a spastic twitch that reminded them both of an insect. Over the next few months, their flesh adhered around the hook, melding together as one.

  Back in the motel room, Haden said, “The sooner we do this, the easier it’ll be on the both of us.”

  He went to stand up, but Daphne wasn’t moving. He looked at her and his mind abruptly ceased to recognize reality as a moving sequence of events. Instead, Daphne’s movements slowed down, constituting a series of still-lives. Loose strands of her auburn hair were plastered to a freckled brow. Her lips were parted slightly, showing the white of her teeth—arranged to near-perfection by a two-year stint in braces. Her eyes looked toward the altar, the delicate wisp of her lashes framing eyes that were iridescent and flecked with various shades of blue like a living ocean. Once Haden took in every conceivable detail, the still life shuttered and reeled back into motion. Why did it have to come to this? he thought. Why couldn’t we just love each other?

  “Are you ready, Daphne?”

  She wouldn’t look at him. “The stuff is in the red duffle.”

  They stood up together and walked toward the door where they left their bags. After two years of being attached, their shared movement was natural, effortless. They bent down. Haden lifted the red duffle off the floor, and they returned to sit on the bed. Artifacts from their relationship were piled haphazardly inside: the teddy bears they made to resemble one another, photo albums, concert and movie tickets, love letters, handcuffs, jewelry, and sex toys.

  They approached the altar and placed each item reverently on the unfinished wooden surface. When the duffle was empty, Daphne hesitated and wrung her fingers together as if trying to mend an invisible object. Then she heaved a lung-emptying sigh and pulled the promise ring off her right ring finger.

  Haden watched silently as she placed it among the other artifacts. It met the wood with a dull, inconsequential tap.

  Haden opened the duffle’s side pocket, pulled out a matchbook and box cutter.

  “What is that for?” Daphne said, pointing at the box cutter. Her surprise was audible.

  “The Curator said we might need it.”

  He struck a match and lit each of the five candles.

  “Anything else the Curator said that you want to share?” Daphne said with venom.

  He had spoken to each of them individually before giving them the key to their room.

  “That’s all. What did he say to you?”

  Daphne hesitated. “That this place is haunted, but not in the way we were conditioned to understand.”

  Haden shook his head, bewildered. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

  They sat back
down on the bed, simultaneously aware of the next step in the ritual. They had to repeat the act of union that connected their bodies in the first place.

  Haden moved his hand to the small of Daphne’s back. He used the other to reach over her as he leaned in for a kiss. She was reluctant at first, her lips stiff and unresponsive, but the longer Haden persisted in his affections, the more willing she became. Her lips opened to him, the pink of her tongue darting wet and slick into his mouth. Haden wrapped her in his arms and together they sank down into the mattress.

  His lips moved to her chin, brushing the dip beneath her jaw, to her neck where he gently sucked the prickling skin.

  He felt the rumble of her vocal cords against his mouth. Daphne said. “How much longer do we have to do this?”

  Haden looked her in the eye, saw the pain there, and said, “I don’t know.”

  He knew his answer wasn’t satisfactory. The implication of Daphne’s words struck him like a blow. By all rights, this was torture. They had come to this hole in the wall to breakup, to sever themselves from one another. This ritual seemed like somebody’s idea of a sick joke. Laying out their shit like a sideshow, summoning their final dregs of passion in a cruel act of ceremony.

  Haden’s grip was tight around Daphne’s throat as he pressed his mouth against hers, smothering her, his tongue thrusting deeply. Her lips trembled against his. A tear escaped the corner of her eye and glided down her cheekbone.

  That kiss held all the pain and finality of a kiss goodbye.

  Haden pulled the sundress over Daphne’s head, squeezed her breasts and closed his mouth around each nipple until they were engorged and erect. Daphne grappled frantically with the hem of Haden’s t-shirt until he got impatient, wrenched it off and tossed it on the floor. When they lay naked, their bodies sheened in the day’s sweat, Haden felt Daphne’s warmth envelop him. He sighed like a man lowering into a warm bath.

  They tasted each other, the salt of sweat on skin, the faint tang of semen, and the warm bitterness of vaginal lubrication. Their fluid mingled in a singular concoction and they drank deeply, a final act of communion. The last feast arranged on a table of clammy flesh, goblets rimmed with enamel or labial tissue, and bread sampled with probing tongues.