Loading...“It’s the edge of our perception, where what we are familiar with almost, but never quite, crosses over into the unknown. Like in a dream. Can anyone give me any examples of limnality?”
If hands went up, Melissa didn’t see them. She was herself staring out the clichéd example of limnality: a window. Bored bored bored. Mr. Williams was a decent professor, when he wasn’t lecturing on feminist undertones in 16th-century literature or counseling the other students on their “negative language,” but once you removed those two subjects, the sad truth is that there wasn’t a whole lot of class left. “Damn, does he have issues,” Melissa thought.
“So your assignment for next class is to think about a person you know. Think of what you know of their personality, even what embodies their personality, and think of a personality they would never display to the world. Find a way to combine the two. The final product, which you will bring to class Wednesday or receive a 0 for, will be in a new style: free-writing. I understand,” he said loudly over the groans of protest, “that this is going to be challenging for a great many of you. Free-writing involves abandoning your concept of ‘good’ writing and simply feeling the words flow out. I look forward to reading the results.” Then he continued with the lecture.
Melissa hadn’t been one of the groaners but only because she was mentally compiling a list of Ways To Get Mr. Williams Back For This. By the time he’d finished talking, she’d gone from “castration” to “tell Miss Fitch (the resident literary feminazi, with whom her English teacher regularly conferred) that he’d joked about the development of the female mouth as a speech instrument as being the first example of evolution gone backwards.” Which would lead to the same goal as the first idea, anyway.
It wasn’t that Melissa didn’t like to write. On the contrary, her apartment bedroom was piled high with journals, mostly bound in black cloth and covered with pentagrams and other Wiccan symbols, each page an ode to the day’s misery. No, what angered Melissa was that she had to play along with these lame-ass assignments as if she were just another student. She knew she was a better writer, a better student, and probably a better person than the rest of the losers in that class. “Like they’d ever write anything meaningful. More like, ‘My daddy is such a big tough guy, but what nobody ever sees is that he’s really sweet and loving.’ Whatever. And I bet that ass-kisser Amanda is even going to write hers over Mr. Williams…” Melissa stopped mid-thought. Over Mr. Williams?
“…Think of what you know of their personality, even what embodies their personality, and think of a personality they would never display to the world…”
Oh, this was perfect. This was better than perfect. Much like herself.
As Mr. Williams continued babbling about who-cares-what, Melissa quickly pulled out her pad of paper. Chewing on the pen cap, she began writing down everything she thought. “Embodiment of Mr. Williams=nice guy. Disgustingly nice. He’s like the epitome of a nice guy. What kind of job does the epitome of a nice guy have? A teacher—ha, yeah right—maybe a firefighter, a preacher, a psychologist—yes, but for a school. A counselor. Sure. What is he not? He is not a man—no, he’s a man, but he’s such a fucking pussy he might as well come in a box that says ‘balls not included.’ He’s not a tough guy. He’s not a bully. He’s not—” She paused, then finished what she had been thinking. “He’s not a rapist. Wow, that’s evil. But hey, he’s asking for it. Who am I but to deliver?”
Yet as she sat at home that night, gleefully planning what she was going to say to totally rip his assignment to shreds, she didn’t think twice about the “free-writing” clause. “He’ll accept whatever shit anyone puts in front of him and call it filet mignon, and I’m his best student. He knows it. He’ll have to give me a terrific grade on this.” She turned to the paper with a vengeance, artfully creating what she knew was, even by her standards, a Damned Fine Piece o Work. She just had to read it over once more.
“Counsel”
Melissa Simmons
“I need help.” The words came out deceptively calm, belying the slow but rapidly growing swell of panic inside her. She pushed on the door again, then, unable to hold back any longer, threw her entire body against it. It opened with a crash. Beyond her, behind her, directly in front of her face—darkness. Her breath seemed suddenly harsher, louder, ragged. “Mr….Mr. Williams?” Silence between each rough breath.
*flash* “It’s silly…”
“No, go on. It isn’t silly. Tell me.”
“Well, I’ve never really stopped being afraid of the dark.”
“Why do you laugh when you say that?”
“I guess…I just try to downplay it, so that nobody ever…you know, uses it against me or something.”
“Hey, it’s just you and me…and would I ever use your fears against you?” *flash*
She couldn’t even make herself take a single step. Paralyzed by the oppressive blackness surrounding her, all she was able to do was whimper. Just a step. Maybe she could find her way out. Maybe it was just a power surge and Mr. Williams was fixing it downstairs. All she had to do was find him. He’d know what to do. He’d make it all better.
*flash* “How long have you thought this?”
“Well that’s the thing. I’ve never really thought about it. It’s just been…kind of assumed.”
“That you can’t act on your own?”
“…Yeah. Is that bad?”
“I usually don’t say things are ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ Just that they may be harmful to you in the future.” *flash*
Every breath scraped against her throat, hoarsely forcing its way out, so that the very act of breathing was torturous. She couldn’t bear that unnatural silence, that terrible darkness. The terror mounted, bred, multiplied. “…Mr. Williams?” Her words, barely a whisper, were instantly swallowed into night, just as the arm that suddenly wrapped itself around her chest and neck engulfed her, dragging her backwards, down, down into darkness.
*flash* “No! And I hate it!”
“Then why don’t you ever say so?”
“Say what? ‘Hey, I may not be an adult, but I’m not a fucking child so could you stop treating me like one? Yeah, that’ll go over real well. I just…I feel helpless. Like I’m being held down, unable to rise, unable even to move. Ya know?”
“Mmm hmmmm. Gotta admit, it’s kind of a sexy thought.”
“What?”
“Nothing. So, back to your parents…” *flash*
The body on top of hers was large, heavy, constricting, and very, very demanding. She inhaled sharply as his mouth closed on her neck hard. Struggling to fight back, she found her arms trapped under both her weight and his, useless. He laughed at her futile attempts and she cringed further into the floor, then gasped as a knee shoved her legs apart without hesitation. “Is this really it?” a dim part of her mind wondered.
*flash* “Can we move on, please?”
“Hey, if this is too close to home…”
“It’s not! I’m not like that!”
“Do me a favor, please. Okay? I just want you to honestly think back to last night. All those guys at that bar, staring at you. You didn’t know their personalities, their dating histories, their interests–you didn’t even know their names. Right?”
“…Right.”
“And you thought about getting one of them to take you back to his place.”
“Well…”
“Didn’t you?”
“…Yeah, I did.”
“And what did you really expect from that? Some random guy from a bar? You think he’s going to take you home, confide his most intimate life history to you, and then make sweet tender love to you?”
“…”
“No. What did you want from those guys, Melissa?”
“…I wanted to get fucked.”
“And how did you want to get fucked?”
“What?!”
“I ASKED you, HOW did you want to get fucked?!”
“I….I wanted it just like that. Just fucking. No love, no tenderness…not really any thought of me. I wanted to…to be used. To be used as a toy. However they wanted. Ho–”
“I hate to cut you off, Melissa, but we’re out of time for today and I do have other students that need to talk to me. Tell you what, why don’t you come over to my place tonight and we can finish this thought–you’re really making some big steps and I’d like to help you through them. See you at 7?” *flash*
The silence was now broken into shards of pleading, soft mewling noises of desperation that went unheeded. Another sound–a zipper. She squirmed, unable to find leverage, unable to think, to act, to do anything but respond to the need that was now driving its way between her thighs, forcing deeper inside. A low cry escaped her lips and met an answering laugh from his; both turned to moans in a moment. There were no words except her pleas for mercy and no responses except for more, harder, deeper thrusts. At the end, he turned his lips to hers in a savage bite, shuddered, and lay still only long enough to catch his breath. She remained in the same position, arms still twisted behind her back, long after he’d walked away and the lights came back on.
God, it was dark, darker than she’d thought while writing it. For a minute she actually considered deleting it and starting over. “Is it really even good? This isn’t Anne Rice; she can get away with writing stuff like this. But me? Am I out of my league? Where the hell did these thoughts come from, anyway?” For a moment she was a little afraid of herself. “But it’s just a story. Not real. That’s okay, isn’t it? And of course it’s good. I’m a good writer. Therefore what I write is good.”
Yeah, it was better than good. It would blow his mainstream, nice guy mentality. She didn’t really question why exactly she had this sudden feverish need to break through his persona—even why she was so sure it was a persona. But oh, she needed it. Her energy high and thrumming through her body, she attached the file to an email, sent it to Mr. Williams, and then relaxed. Or tried to.
“Shit…I’m far too wired now,” she realized. Restless, she looked around her room. The walls, universally painted black, offered no suggestions. Same with the piles of horror novels scattered here and there. Or the candles lightly illuminating each corner. “Although…”
Melissa considered her little black camisole and shorts for a moment and opted for removing just the top. Carefully cradling a large patchouli-scented candle in her hands, she lay on her bed, kicking the sheets down with her bare feet. One hand wrapped firmly around the thick candle, she let her other hand drift over her body. Her nipples were already swollen and hard, protruding from the small hills of her breasts. She bit her lip in anticipation as the candle tipped to one side—then gasped and arched her back in pain as the first drops of wax hit her skin. A wave of heat spread down her spine, curling her toes and making her pussy ache. More drops; she cried out, thrust her hips up against the air, wished desperately for something to fill her. Her free hand pinched the other nipple, twisting it until it burned almost as much as its twin. It wasn’t enough. She needed more.
Panting for air, she lifted her hips just enough to shove her shorts to her ankles. “Like a slut,” she thought, “not even removing them. Just down out of the way.” Her thoughts fanned the flame inside her; her eyes focused on the flame in front of her. She could barely breathe as she slowly moved her hand so that the candle was positioned right over her newly-shaven cunt. “Oh Goddess, oh Goddess,” she whispered over and over, her entire being focused on the pool of wax not quite pouring over the edge of the candle. One more tilt. Her other hand sought her thigh and clenched in preparation. Tilt.
A molten stream of agony flowed from her navel to her clit, and Melissa howled. Her other hand squeezed her thigh as hard as it could and still she couldn’t feel it by comparison. Every nerve was on fire. Again the wax splashed against bare skin. Again. Small puddles of wax hardened, melted again with each new flood. Slowly the pain turned into heat, the heat into throbbing, the throbbing into a dull ache that was quite familiar to her. Her breathing slowed down to just slightly above normal and she groaned in a sensation that wasn’t exactly pain anymore. This was wonderful.
Soon Melissa realized that the greatest amount of pain was coming not from her wax-drenched pussy, but from her thigh, still pinioned in her claw-like grip. Surprised, she let go and gasped as new waves of pain radiated from the abused flesh. She liked it. Now she just needed to finish the job. Gently setting the candle to the side of the bed, she began using her fingers again. Her clit was completely buried and so instead, she shoved two fingers deep into her soaking cunt, driving them in hard and fast, trying to match the tingling burn on her clit with her own inner fire. “Soo…good…” she moaned between clenched teeth, and fucked herself faster. It was building so quickly, fueled by the lingering dull pain, by her excitement, until she thought she would burn up into a cinder. She held her breath, unwilling to let anything take her attention away from this unbearable pleasure. “Gonna come…oh Goddess yes, want to, wanna come, wanna come!” Her last words exploded as she did, an orgasm that engulfed her in pleasure as powerful as the previous pain. She threw her head back and screamed until it slowly died down, leaving her with residual pulses that made her shiver. And a lot of clean-up to do.
As she showered thoroughly, Melissa couldn’t help but wonder why she’d just done that. Why she didn’t just use a nice pretty pink discreet vibrator to get herself off like anyone else. Why she needed it to be painful, twisted, dirty. “Is there something wrong with me? Jesus, I left bruises on my thigh from grabbing it so hard, and that’s what I got off on! I mean, that’s a scene right out of Stephen King or something. Maybe I’m reading the wrong books; they give me weird ideas…but it was still me doing it.” She felt guilty. A quick survey of her room, wardrobe, and “fuck-‘em” attitude created one distinct impression of her character, but she felt neither badass nor uncaring of what people thought of her now. “So what’s real? What the hell am I?” It was a never-ending argument. The best way to end it, as always, was a nice orgasm and a good night’s sleep. The rest of the day was completely forgotten as sleep overtook her.
The next morning, she opened her email before class, anticipating nothing more than the routine deletion of junk and maybe a virus for variety. To her surprise, Mr. Williams had already replied to her homework paper the night before. “Guess he has even less of a life than I thought,” Melissa mused, and opened it. And stared.
Assignment for Monday: free-writing
Grade: B-
Melissa,
However great the paper was, you missed the point. I wanted you to create the story with what came off the top of your head. Free-writing doesn’t always mean that the final product makes sense. There will be time later in the semester for structured papers such as what I have in front of me. In order for you to fully grasp this assignment, I would like you to turn in another free-writing exercise, before midnight tomorrow, on the following prompt:
“There are a group of three guys that hang out at a club downtown. The place’s name is “The Saint”. One of them recently was crowned Archangel of the club, the highest honor of a club-goer. This man’s name is…”
I want to leave this prompt open to see where your mind truly leads the story. Also, we need to set up a time to talk, in person, about the material in this last paper. I’m not sure that it is appropriate for a young lady like yourself. There are certain expectations to the subject matter of a Freshman Composition paper. Please give me a call at my office before Wednesday.
Mr. Williams
A B-. That was all her mind could register for several stunned minutes. Numbness turned into denial, turned into anger. “Fuck him,” she said out loud, too furious to keep her thoughts silent. “Who the HELL is he to tell me that was a B- paper?! He’s a fucking Freshman Comp teacher, he doesn’t have a fucking clue what good writing is!” Her face was so red and hot that she expected to hear her tears sizzling on her face. Which led to the realization that she was crying. “And why the fuck do I care what he thinks? It’s a stupid assignment. He’s a stupid teacher and it’s a stupid class and I don’t care and what the hell does he mean, ‘inappropriate subject matter’? This is college, not elementary school!”
She paused to wipe furiously at her nose. “I don’t care, anyway.”
Another unsuccessful swipe. “Why’d I get a B-?”
Fuck class, now. She couldn’t possibly concentrate with this hanging over her head. She paced. She wrote in her current journal—five separate entries over the course of two skipped classes, each entry dedicated to various crippling spells she would never cast on her teacher but spent many delirious minutes fantasizing about. Finally, Melissa realized nothing was going to make her feel better but directing this anger at the source. So she searched in her notebook for the syllabus.
“Trevor Williams…heh, his first name is Trevor. Oh there, home and office phone numbers.” Rapidly she called and only when his mild voice said “Hello?” on the other hand did she realize that she had no idea what to say.
“Um, hi, Mr. Williams. This is Melissa, from your Freshman Comp class?” “Great, that’s freaking original,” she thought to herself. “But on the other hand, it didn’t reveal your desire to remove him from the face of the earth, which is stealthy, which is cool. Like a ninja. God, even my internal voice babbles.”
“Oh, yes, Melissa. Hello, how are you?” He was so insufferably calm. Wasn’t he aware that he was just one step—and quite a bit more Wiccan ability than Melissa had—to being magically rendered impotent—and possibly a slug; the wording in the book was a little ambiguous—for the rest of his life?
“Oh, fine.” Lie lie lie. “Look, um, you said to call you about the assignment—”
“Right. Well, did you have any questions about the email?”
“Hell yes I have questions, you dumb fuck!” she thought angrily. Aloud, she said, “Well, actually, yes I do. The…the main thing that caught my attention, obviously, was the grade.”
He laughed! The fucker actually laughed at her! Come to think of it, he sounded much more confident on the phone than he ever did in class. “I thought that was explained pretty clearly in the first paragraph. The assignment was for free-writing and what you turned in was obviously not. Really, the only reason I gave you a passing grade at all, as well as the chance for the rewrite, is because I know what you’re capable of producing.”
She could have breathed fire, except that his explanation really did make sense. As she deep down had known it did when she read the email the first time. “Dammit, why does it have to make sense? I want my A!” she thought petulantly. To him, she asked, “Well, what about the ‘inappropriate’ thing? Because really, I don’t see how—”
“Yes, I understand that you’re in college and there are no limits to what you can and can’t write, but quite frankly I was and still am a little concerned for you.”
“Concerned for me?” She so was not expecting that.
“Yes, but that is something I think I should discuss with you in person. I don’t have class today, do you?”
Yes. “No, none.”
“Great…I think it would be best if we met outside of school grounds; I wouldn’t want any officials interfering. I have your address in my files; could I come by your apartment at 2:00 today?”
She was astounded by how efficiently he had totally taken all control of her rant-intended-call. This from the professor who sounded like someone chiding a naughty poodle when his students were caught plagiarizing papers. “Oh, sure, no problem.”
“Terrific. I’ll see you in a few hours, then.” And he was gone, leaving a shocked and still frustrated Melissa on the other end of the phone.
“What did I just agree to?” she asked herself. “I don’t want to see him on days that I do have his class; why the hell would I want to see him when I don’t have to? And what does he have to be concerned about me for? I’m more adjusted than most of the therapists’-wet-dreams in that class. And what should I wear?” Her inner voice was an idiot, Melissa decided, and then spent the next couple of hours holding up a pair of baggy black jeans and a dark plaid mock-schoolgirl skirt she’d bought from Hot Topic, comparing which one made her ass look rounder.
“Maybe he’s a vampire,” she thought. “If he’s a vampire, then it’s perfectly understandable that I’m going along with him. I must be in thrall. Yeah, that’s it!” She thought a minute. “I really need to read a different genre of literature.”
Almost exactly at 2, the doorbell rang. Despite expecting it for the past half hour, she jumped and her breathing accelerated even more. Wiping her hands on her skirt—maybe she should have worn the jeans after all—she opened the door and put on her best semblance of a smile. “Mr. Williams! Hi!”
Giving her an amused smile to let her know that he saw through her façade, he came in, uninvited. “Not a vampire,” a distant, crazy part of Melissa’s brain noted. He looked around, letting his gaze pause at a book of spells that had never worked, her Dark Muffin lunchbox, all the small details that she had neglected to shove under some furniture. “Good afternoon, Melissa. I…like your apartment.” He was of course lying, but since it was the expected thing to say upon entering someone’s place, she didn’t call him on it.
“Ummm, have a seat?” Melissa turned to find him one and saw that the only chair not covered in writings was the computer chair, and that he had already moved towards it and sat. “Oh, yeah, and ummm…” He was already looking at the monitor, opening files, efficiently locating the paper that she had sent to him and scanning it quickly. “…go ahead and read that,” she mumbled to the air around her.
He finished quickly yet his eyes lingered on the screen. “It’s so much like her writing…”
“Huh? Whose writing?” Melissa heard something she couldn’t identify in his voice, an ache of some sort.
He’d forgotten she was there; he started and half-turned towards her with a small smile. “It’s nothing, it’s not important…”
“Hey, anything to keep from talking about that paper!” Melissa thought. Out loud, she said, “No, tell me. Please.”
Mr. Williams was silent for a minute and Melissa almost thought he hadn’t heard her. Then softly he said, “You might have heard that I am…was married.”
Melissa hadn’t heard or if she had, she hadn’t cared enough to remember, but she nodded encouragingly. He continued, “Charlotte…she was everything to me. I wanted to be everything for her. I worshipped her.” He laughed wryly. “In my mind, she really was a goddess. I had to be gentle with her, to care for her. Because that’s what I thought she wanted. I won’t say there weren’t warning signs, bruises and scratches that appeared in strange places on her body. But her writing was what really should have clued me in. She loved to write and she did it well, but all her stories had this dark tone; she was obsessed with women in abusive relationships, violent, dangerous men. I thought that she wrote that way out of pity for the people involved. She was so sweet, so innocent. I even asked her about it, about where that sort of writing came from, and she said ‘nowhere.’ And I believed her.”
Melissa suddenly realized that she was actually listening to his sap story. “He really was suckered into that one; nobody is that sweet, and I bet he’s about to tell me just that.”
Still speaking in a low, introspective tone, Mr. Williams continued, “So the more Charlotte wrote, the more I tried to cradle her, to keep her from ever seeing the terrible people that she wrote about. To keep her safe, and to keep her happy. I supported everything she did. She wrote about women being subservient to men, I became a…I guess the popular term today is ‘feminazi.’ She wrote about rough, loveless sex—and it was at least as explicit as what you wrote,” he added, letting her know that he was on some level still aware of her presence in the room, “and in response I made love to her as gently and lovingly as I could. I tried to be everything a woman would want in a man. And…”
“And what?” she whispered, and now it was only partly to keep him from reviewing her story. She really wanted to know what happened to turn this man into the poor pussy-whipped pansy that he was.
He laughed. It was a mirthless sound. “And one day I found her on my bed getting the shit fucked out of her by some man I’d never met before. And screaming with every orgasm. She was getting fucked like a whore and the bitch was loving every second of it.” He paused as if surprised by his own words, but continued in an even harsher tone. “He was calling her names and grabbing at her and I could tell he was hurting her, and she just kept begging for more. Begging. My wife. Charlotte had never so much as asked me to make love to her, and she begged this stranger to fuck her tight little asshole.” He was breathing hard now and Melissa could see the muscles in his arms and chest tensing and bulging.
Then, without warning, he smiled coldly and looked back to the monitor. “But my ex-wife is not the point of this visit, is she? So about this paper…” Melissa felt her stomach plummet at the dreaded subject change. Mr. Williams took his time rereading her story, shaking his head at some points, and finally turned to her expectantly. “So?”
“So…” Melissa looked from one side of the room to the other, played with the edge of her skirt, scuffed her toes into the carpet. “So.”
“So where does it come from?”
Of all the questions she was expecting…well, that wasn’t one of them, though in retrospect it probably should have been. “Come from? You assigned it. It’s just a story. Like your…like she said, it doesn’t come from anywhere.”
Mr. Williams shook his head, keeping his eyes on her. “You’re a smarter girl than that, Melissa. Writing doesn’t come from nowhere. So I ask you again, where does it come from?”
She rolled her eyes. She didn’t have to play this game. “It comes from the ether!” She made pseudo-magical wiggles with her fingers.
“Where does it come from, Melissa?” His voice was harder than she’d ever heard it before, even against students who used “negative language.”
Melissa had had enough of this. She felt more than a little creeped out by his tone of voice and the way he was looking at her, but she really did not want to admit that any of those dark thoughts had any source in her. They couldn’t. Just thoughts. Safe when they’re just thoughts. “Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at—”
“Yes you do. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You’re afraid to admit it, but you know. Abuse, objectification, rape…these are very serious subjects, Melissa, and that you wrote about them in an everyday Freshman Comp class says that you have a certain familiarity with them. Am I wrong?”
His fingers seized her leg in a cruel grip, pulling it towards him and forcing her skirt to ride up her thigh before she had a chance to do more than gasp. Twisting her awkwardly, he exposed the bruises on the inside of her thigh where her own fingers had clutched and marked her in her frenzy the night before. By this time, she had recovered enough to grab her skirt and try to tug it back down, but the damage was done.
“I told you, that sort of writing doesn’t come from nowhere, Melissa. Who did this to you?” Mr. Williams’ voice sounded strange for some reason. “Did your boyfriend do this to you?”
Melissa forced a laugh, trying to feel relieved that he was just concerned about her but for some reason that she couldn’t explain, she felt even more afraid with each second of his eyes staring at the tell-tale marks on her leg. “Actually, there’s a funny story there. I ummm…did them to myself.” She pointedly yanked at her skirt but he refused to let go. The uneasy fear grew.
“Right, you just what? Fell on a doorknob and bruised yourself? Who did it? Was it that man I’ve seen you with?”
She didn’t even know how to reply to a comment like that. “What’s he talking about? What man?” she thought, but all her mouth could do was drop in bewilderment.
He, however, took it as confession to guilt. “I knew it! You couldn’t lie to me forever.”
Now Melissa found her voice. “What the fuck are you talking a—”
Mr. Williams slapped her. Hard. Uneasy fear skyrocketed to terror in an instant. Clutching at her reddened cheek, she stared through tear-filled eyes as he stood up, looming above her. “You thought you could fuck with me. You thought I wouldn’t catch on. That I was too blind to see what was going on right under my nose. Did you like laughing at me behind my back? Huh? DID YOU?”
“How could he know I laugh at him? What the hell is going on?” Melissa’s mind raced frantically, trying to find a way out of this developing nightmare. She didn’t have any time to think, however, for he was already on her. His hand shot down to where her neck met her jaw and lifted her painfully to his eye level. His very cold, possibly insane eye level. He began to squeeze and she corrected herself: “probably insane eye level.”
“Does your boyfriend do this to you?” Out of nowhere, his free hand reached under her skirt, paused at her panties, and shoved two rough fingers around the edges into her cunt. She couldn’t get enough air to squeal in pain and violation. Her vision began to blur. Nothing registered in her mind but panic; she never knew, in all her musings about death, how much she really didn’t want to go there yet. “Do you like it when he does? Do you beg him for more?” Without warning, he released his hold on her neck and she staggered to the floor, inhaling painful gulps of air. Slowly—God, why wouldn’t her limbs move more quickly?—Melissa crawled over to the couch, hoping to lift herself up, to run, to escape. He stopped her as her hands closed on the cushions, clawing at the skirt still clinging to her hips.
Her skirt was up, her panties were still on but pushed to the side, and he was grunting, forcing his way into her. Into her cunt. She tried to scream protests and he shoved her head into the couch and thrust the remaining inches of his cock deep inside her. A convulsion wracked her body at the sudden sensation of being filled, and it took her a full minute of rough pounding before she realized that she wasn’t fighting. That she was, in fact, moving back. Moaning. Writhing. Squeezing the cushion to her own mouth to keep from screaming in joy. And then she realized that all of the darkness in her stories really did come from somewhere—they came from Melissa herself, who really did want to get fucked hard and rough and painfully. Used like nothing more than a fucktoy. Just like this. Not just a fantasy, not just thoughts. “This…is what I’ve always wanted,” she thought, and then thought was gone.
Unaware of her revelation, of anything but her body beneath his, he was still thrusting hard. His breath was hot on her neck as he bent over her, his cock swollen and rigid within her. “Does your boyfriend make you moan like that? Moan like a little slut?” She whimpered into the cushion in reply and it seemed to spur him on. “Does he CLAW at you?” He raked his fingers down her back hard; she arched it more to evade the sudden agony and found her ass pressed even firmer against his groin. He was fucking her so hard she expected a fresh set of bruises on her ass tomorrow. “Does he BITE you?” He sank his teeth into the nape of her neck, holding her there like a bitch to be mounted. “Vampire,” that crazy part of her brain thought before she shut it down. All her brain shut down. Oh God…the pain, the pleasure, the fucking, yes, the fucking…Melissa began to quake from head to toe as the sensation built beyond anything she had ever been able to do to herself. Releasing his teeth on her neck, Mr. Williams leaned his head next to hers, whispering harshly into her ear, “Does he make you COME?” As soon as the word left his mouth, Melissa shrieked and stiffened against him, clenching down and coming in immense surges of ecstasy.
As she slowly relaxed, she realized that he was not yet done with her. In fact, he barely seemed to be winded, despite pounding into her furiously. Her orgasm only seemed to make him want it harder, rougher. His hands were knives, scraping at her back, her thighs, the tender flesh of her throat. Dimly Melissa wondered what it would take to get him off. Then she found out.
Mr. Williams pulled out suddenly; she breathed a sigh of relief that was just as rapidly inhaled again as he repositioned his cock at her ass. “C’mon…beg for it.” Melissa was silent, appalled, terrified. She’d never been fucked in the ass before; no way was she going to ask for it! “Do it! I heard you do it before, you can fucking do it for me.”
“Oh my God, he thinks I’m—” was all she was able to think before he began pushing his cock into her ass. The couch barely contained this scream.
“Do it, bitch! Beg me to fuck your slutty little asshole. If you ask pretty enough, maybe I’ll do it nice and hard like you like it.” He pushed a little deeper, relishing the sensation of the muscle stretching to encompass his cock.
Melissa lifted her head from the couch. “Please, it hurts,” she whimpered.
“But that’s what you like, isn’t it? That’s what gets you off, right, Charlotte? You came once for me, real pretty…you wanna come again?” He was panting in her ear now, ready to shove his throbbing dick all the way up her ass at the second she said what he wanted to hear.
His words registered. Pain DID make her come. Made her come hard. So why the hell wouldn’t she want him to do it again, to make her come so nicely again? The more she thought about it, the more the burning stretching tearing sensation in her ass made her ache for more. Taking a deep breath, Melissa whispered, “Please…”
He knew. “Please what, baby?”
“Please…fuck me in the ass!” Her words were barely out of her mouth before he brutally thrust the remaining inches of his cock into her virgin asshole. He paused for just a second to hiss at the exquisitely tight sensation, and then began to pound her as fast as he was fucking her cunt earlier. The pain was unbelievable for Melissa; red flooded her vision and she could barely breathe. All she could feel was the cock reaming her, using her, fucking her mercilessly. Just like she wanted.
“Yeah, you love it, don’t you, Charlotte? That’s what a whore like you needs, isn’t it? To get fucked raw? That’s what you need, isn’t it? Isn’t it?” His voice rose to a furious shout on the last words.
“Yes, yes, goddammit I need it, please, give me more! Please, fuck my asshole harder! Fill me! Use me, please, just fucking use me!” She was twisting and sobbing in ecstasy, in agony. It was so good. She was so close.
“Say it…Say that I’m the only one that can satisfy you!” His voice dropped slightly in volume, but raised in intensity.
Melissa could barely understand what he was saying, but when it hit—“he still thinks I’m his wife”—it hit hard. This was what he needed to hear. The whole point of raping her. To relive his shitty past, but do it in a way that would give him his happy ending. He needed to hear it. And she actually wanted to give him what he needed. So as his nails scratched at her back so hard they left thin lines of blood to soak into her shirt, she screamed, “Yes, Trevor! You’re the only one that makes me come like this! The only one that I want! Please, baby, fuck me!”
It really was what he needed. His thrusts became shallow, quick; he groaned deep in his throat and threw his head back. She felt the first contraction of his cock inside her and immediately her own desperate arousal pushed her over the edge with him; they both yelled as their pleasure hit hard. It left them both drained and exhausted.
As breath and sanity returned, so did emotions. Melissa was the first to collapse, her knees simply giving way and dropping her to the floor. She felt raw and sore in a dozen places, but that paled compared to the turmoil in her mind. She did it. She had faced her inner demon and emerged the victor—in fact, that was a nice image that she would probably write in her journal later that day. Melissa laughed, a simple, astonished, genuinely happy laugh at this enormous self-growth. She was dark, she was morbid, and she was by Goddess proud of it. And then she turned to her teacher.
Mr. Williams had placed his collapse a little more carefully; he was sitting in the computer chair again, with his head between his hands. Upon hearing her laugh, he looked up at her and she was not quite surprised to see tears running down his face. It actually didn’t spark the disgust that she normally felt when seeing people cry; it actually made her feel tender and sympathetic, new emotions to her repertoire. The first time he tried to speak, no words managed to come out. He cleared his throat and tried again. “I’m so sorry.”
Now she understood. It was a glorious fuck and revelation for her; for him, it had been rape of an innocent student. “How the hell am I supposed to clear that up for him?” she wondered silently. Aloud, she said, “Don’t be.”
Her words, instead of calming him, only made him cry harder. She simply sat and let him sob until he calmed on his own. Not quite able to make eye contact, he said, “I just…I never stopped wanting her to come back to me. To say that I was the one she wanted to be with, the one that made her happy. I kept the same opinions, the same personality, in hopes that she would come back someday.”
Something mischievous sparked Melissa to say, “So you don’t really find feminist undertones in literature fascinating?”
“God, no! I can’t stand that shit!” he blurted, and then paused, shocked. “I totally remade myself for her. Or what I thought she wanted. I never really liked making love to her, either. What—” He stopped, looked over at Melissa, and sighed. “What we just did was by far the best sex I’ve ever had. What I always wanted to do, but thought that she would hate me for.”
Melissa nodded in understanding. “And for the record, you were right. That darkness…it does come from somewhere.”
He smiled—a small smile, but a smile nonetheless. She was glad to see it. “All talk. Prove it to me.”
Her heart swelled for some reason. “You mean you still want me to redo the assignment? Even after…” She gestured vaguely in the direction of the room. “Everything?”
Mr. Williams rolled his eyes. “Melissa, I never figured you for one of those students who assume they can make up for terrible grades by giving special favors to their teacher.” They both laughed at that. Sobering, he said, “No, I can’t condone what I did to you. It was unfair to both of us. But I’m honest enough to admit that I think I needed it…and so did you. And that’s really all I have to say. Except that I expect the real free-writing paper in my mailbox before class tomorrow.” He stood; she walked him to the door, uncertain of what more to do. There had been no kissing in the act; there certainly wouldn’t be any now. They settled for a hug, and then he was gone.
Immediately she ran over to the computer. Her energy was higher than it had ever been before, her imagination like blood coursing through her. No thought, just feeling the words flow. Still, her fingers trembled as she began to type. Would he see the need he had filled? The pride in her inner darkness, where previously there had been fear? Would he see how much of him she still carried inside her?
“Wish”
Melissa Simmons
There are a group of three guys that hang out at a club downtown. The place’s name is “The Saint”. One of them recently was crowned archangel of the club, the highest honor of a club-goer. This man’s name is irrelevant as are all other details of his life and family and loves long lost, because right now all that matters is that he is watching her with a slow heavy smile playing about his lips. That makes her think of lips and how his would feel and what else could be heavy upon hers. Bet he’d be big, she thinks, and orders another beer.
His friends speak of nothing and everything, words sliding down their faces like rain on a tin shed in the middle of a forest where nobody could hear her bent over the broken-down table and nothing visible in the darkness behind her but a slow smile. She wishes to be nearer to that smile especially if she were the reason behind it. the man speaks to a waitress and his friends immediately burst out laughing uproariously as the girl scurries away blushing. She too wishes to be that waitress, to be the object of his derision, to carry that shame around with her as a badge of pride because he caused it. her envy is a den of snakes coiling, twisting inside. She wishes he were inside.
Slowly she slides her finger down the side of her illegally-purchased beer, collecting condensation and running the moisture across her dry lips, wanting him to look at her but refusing to check. Are those really his eyes she feels upon her or is she imagining it? what would happen if he came over? Would he start by introducing himself and ruin everything? carelessly she unbuttons all but one button on her shirt, letting the fan above her head cool the exposed skin, still refusing to look back at him and see if her display is unnoticed. Her face is flushed and light with her own daring and she holds the glass up to her forehead. Putting it down again, he is there.
“you need one more unbuttoned,” he says, and does it for her. Turning away without another word, he returns to his table. She is perfectly silent now, waiting, feeling nothing but the eyes, the curious and the scornful and the disgusted and the lecherous, all searing her skin and branding her as public property, to be leered at and visually fucked as much as they want because she is there and she will take it. while she cannot keep from being aware of the crowd and their reaction to her, she only watches him as he joins his friends. Waiting. Waiting. He speaks in a low tone and they again laugh, too loudly, and give each other high fives. That was what she was waiting for. Red spreads down every inch of naked skin, flushing her young breasts. She wants to flinch and hide and run but instead she holds her head higher and inhales, taking this blow as he intended and wishing for more.
Melissa didn’t dare so much as read over the story again. She vaguely remembered that it was short, shorter than the first. She also remembered that she had picked up from a point in her first story, the casual comment about her character watching some men at a bar and wanting to get fucked by them. That it was dark, and that darkness stemmed from inside her—but it was good, because it was who she was. No more hiding.
Still, she couldn’t reread it to confirm these thoughts—to look it over would be an invitation to correct, change, make it into just the sort of polished work that got her a B-. It wouldn’t be as honest to Mir. Williams. To her. Without another glance, she attached and sent it. Immediately a sense of calm pervaded her; her muscles, so used to tenseness in preparation for an imagined attack, slowly relaxed. She felt better than after an orgasm. Well, maybe not after the orgasms he’d given her. “Damn, those were good,” she thought dimly before crashing on the couch—his couch—and sleeping until the next day.
Morning came quickly. Stretching, Melissa idly wondered why she felt like she had just been attacked by an overly-affectionate pack of pit bulls—and then remembered yesterday in a rapid series of flashes. The talking. The fucking. The writing—“Oh shit, he’s probably replied already!” She leaped out of bed, not even concerned by the fact that she really cared what he thought of this paper. She had already unconsciously accepted that her prior “who cares?” stance was bullshit. She cared. She wrote what was in her soul and so she damned well cared what people thought of it. So with not a small amount of fear, she opened her mailbox and the email awaiting her inside.
Melissa,
Although the subject matter was harsh, I’d like to applaud your efforts on this assignment. The imagery you used was stunning. I felt that you had something to let out if only the correct medium presented itself. I’m glad to see that you have found acceptance within yourself—it shows. I also know what you were intending to prove to me by writing this so soon after our meeting, and I appreciate it. My own self-acceptance is slower in coming, but it will come. I think it is best for now that we do not interact outside of the classroom. Thank you—for everything.
I only have one more thing to say.
A+
I don’t often give such a good grade, but you’ve been a good student.
Mr. Williams
This time, smiling, she didn’t even try to wipe the tears away.