The Phobia
#1 of The Woods
"The Phobia", by H. A. Kirsch
Part 1 or 0 of "The Woods"
Copyright 2006
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Friday night, I stopped being afraid.
The night started in the parking lot for "The Woods at Kinross". The Woods was
this former air force base on the way to Sault Ste. Marie. It was nicknamed
Freaktown, until it turned out that most of the hybrids living there were rich.
You know a place is supposed to be fixy when it's 'at somewhere'.
A band I liked, the industrial rock outfit called Scathe, was playing at "The
Woods"es Hangar One. I was a bit leery of the whole situation; despite
containing one of the two dance clubs in the entire Upper Peninsula, The Woods
was a hybrids-first place and I was lacking in hybrid.
"It's not hybrids-only, you know. It's harder to find an apartment or a condo,
but, you know, it would be a bad idea to stay exclusive. Never goes over well
with the hairless monkeys." My friend John's voice chopped out on the cell.
"You there?" I was standing in front of my jeep, sweating in the muggy dusk,
scanning the parking lot. The sweat was worth it. You don't go to an industrial
rock concert unless you can look good, and a reverend coat with red collar, torn
jeans and knee-high New Rocks was good enough for me.
"No, but I'm here." The phone crackled, then cut off with a beep. A black and
red RX-8 stopped six inches from my left shin with the roar of engine braking
and turbo blow-by. The engine wound off, an alert shepherd dog stepping out of
the driver's door. "Always goes off a bit coming around behind the hangars."
I smiled, but only half because I was glad to see John - he had the tickets. The
other half was hiding nerves. "You're nuts. I almost didn't have legs because of
you. These are new boots." In consolation, John threw me a red neck hanger. The
front said "Hangar One - The Woods - VIP admission" above a barcode, and the
back had a ticket slid up inside. "Wait, what's this?"
"This is how we escape the queue. Queues are for fanboys." He hit his accent
hard, putting a bit of London into the q word. John brandished the tag, then
started off for the other end of the lot. Over my shoulder, the lot was filling
up.
I had to rush to keep up with John, tromping after his headstrong stride, our
shadows shifting under the copper lights. The lights weren't on constantly, but
came on as we walked, then died off behind.
Our target was a splotch of steady light on a hillside. The closer we got, the
less it was a splotch and the more it looked like a gigantic drainage pipe with
a bear standing next to it.
"Sorry, this ain't where you want to be. You're here for the show? Over there."
The bear pointed with a huff. His finger led off to a distant line of people
leading to a big metal structure, some heads with pricked-up ears.
"A-hem, Mr. Cranky Bear, I think you might be wise to let us through that door,"
John cleared his throat, brandishing the red badge. I did the same, trying not
to look like I was a me-too. The bear scowled.
"Fine. If I get a big line of people trying to come through here instead....."
The bear did something with a paw, causing a low thrum and a click.
"Thank you," John said with a curt chirp - if dogs can chirp - and dropped a
twenty up in the air, roughly over the bear's nose. The guard snatched it up
with a huff, and we went inside.
I really wanted to know why there was a big corrugated metal tube sticking out
of a hill, or why we were going into its copper-lit depths, or why the
unpleasant hallway lead to a stunning marble floored walkway, or why that led to
a whole fucking three-story mall under ground. John was content to keep up the
rush so I didn't get my answer, his heels clacking on the stone. He spun around
abruptly.
"Pay attention! Now we came in there, and we're going here-" He pointed off
behind me, then to a door that said "employees only" and whirred open when he
waved his pass at it. By the time I got ready to say anything, we were
approaching a security scanner, wanded in, and standing just ten feet from the
left of the stage of an immense dancehall auditorium.
"Wait, wait, how'd you do that?" A couple guards nodded to us, and helped us get
right into the sweet spot, a fenced off no-pits area center floor.
"Well, you see, I'm one of those people who networks really hard, it's part of
my job, and I just so happened to spot something on the desk of a client...
turns out he was the promoter! I told him I had a weekend place up at The Woods
and he said, 'Oh, you know Scathe is playing at Hangar 1 in two weeks.'
Obviously I just had to jump on that one." John had to get down close to my ear,
his syrupy British droll punctuated with the clicks of dog-teeth and grunted
M's.
The show was less than five minutes away, judging from the droning electronic
sounds slowly drowning out the pre-show DJ set of darkwave trance. "You really
don't seem the type.. you look like you listen to jazz fusion on your 10,000
dollar stereo," I yelled over to John, as we muscled forward. Unlike me, he was
clad simply: tight black muscle tee, red Scathe ankh pendant, studded belt,
black leather pants, and motorcycle boots. Pretty generic, compared to some of
the Borg-like fan getups.
The show started without much warning, cutting off John's chance to answer. A
sound person came out to do a guitar check, and halfway through a pretty
pathetic rendition of Pantera's "Cemetary Gates" harmonic-squeal signature riff,
the lights died and Mr. Guitar Tech ripped off his gas station attendant uniform
to expose his true identity as Scathe's lead singer, Bringer.
Picture a crowd as likely to be slam dancing as they are standing and nodding
their black no. 1-shrouded heads. Imagine concert sound heavy enough to vibrate
the hair on your legs beneath leather and denim, clean enough that you can pick
out the difference between kick drum no. 1 and kick drum no. 2. Picture every
goth stereotype, and replace 'teenager' with stunning fantasy sci-fi mood
obliteration. That was the Scathe concert. Completely worth the drive.
The encore ended and the crowd switched into club mode. I made my way over to
the bar, got a whiskey sour, then occupied a slot by the wall. After a few
minutes of people-watching, I started feeling ill. Sweaty and heart-pounding,
full of doom. I figured it was my stomach, since I tended to complain at thai
restaurants that they didn't make the food hot enough. After fifteen minutes
with no impending bowel depth charge from lunchtime's Pad Nor Mai, I started
hunting down John in a desperate push through the crowd. I found him in the
thick of the dance floor and dragged him back out.
"Now this better be good... I was in quite a groove," he said, breathing right
into my ear. It gave me a rush of cold water down my spine. "I'm kinda freaking
out, maybe I'm getting hot or something, I don't know."
"Are you going to leave?" John pushed his way out of the crowd, black-nailed
fingers holding my collar.
"You have an apartment here, right? Can I go hang out?"
"Mmm-hmm. Do you have your phone on you?"
I fished in a pocket and pulled it out, fingers ice cold despite the club heat
and my own sweaty disposition. John fiddled with his own phone, a little cartoon
explosion on mine announcing the arrival of a little map.
"Just follow that," he said. "I mean, go out the way you came in here, right
back to the mall, then go over to the information kiosk.. the directions are
from there."
"Thanks. I gotta get out of here." I quickly started out of the club, flashing
my pass again to get out the way we came in. Behind me, John bowed ridiculously,
then slid himself back into the midst of the crowd.
I knew what it was that had started bugging me, but I didn't want to think about
it. All I wanted was to get somewhere quiet, private, and completely empty of
people. Preferably hybrids.
Getting to John's apartment didn't help. By the time I found myself facing the
right door, I felt like I'd been walking for miles. I'd taken the right turn by
accident, coming down the hall the wrong way. Every time I passed a hybrid, I
felt a twinge of more sweat come down my back. Every time I passed one who was
canine, I swore they were staring at me.
And now the door, there was no lock! Just a little black plate, under which was
the name Johnathan Martyk, and a slot on the door to grip. I tried pulling on
the slot and nothing happened. What a pile of crap, stuck in some weird place
that's under fucking ground, trying to get into someone else's apartment-
The panic and dread swirled down into a vortex and I leaned forward, defeated.
When I thumped my head into the wall next to the door, the pass dangled down by
the plate. It glowed green and the door clicked. A tug on the handle and I was
out of the hallway and into the pleasant air-conditioned confines of an
apartment.
A very expensive apartment, minimalist and opulent. Expensive black and cream
furniture, carefully placed paintings - some of them very stark and disturbing,
not at all typical wall fare - and a stainless steel kitchen that probably cost
more than my entire apartment building back in Petosky.
I bee-lined for the couch, threw off my coat, and sat down. The vortex of
impending death and destruction became the last swirl of water going down the
bathtub drain, and I crashed pleasantly.
Staring up at the ceiling in a room lit only by moonlight, I felt the first
moment of relief. A body-wracking sigh, muscle tension going away, the explosion
of panic trailing out like the sustain on a piano after someone took the bench
and pounded it onto the keys.
I then leaned forward to wipe the sweat off my skin, rub my forehead. I kept
seeing the inside of the club, throngs of people, all mashed up together, moving
to the pound of EBM and darkwave. That didn't bother me. I wasn't agoraphobic
per se, but being in a stuffy crowded place could definitely worsen it. What I
kept seeing were eyes, ears, black-tipped snouts. I wasn't hybriphobic either.
No, I was cynophobic. I was afraid of dogs. The fear was more specific for
hybrids. I really didn't like any kind of four dog, regardless of breed. The
dislike had turned from real phobia to just a general avoidance as I grew older.
For hybrids, it was usually just the larger ones, things like dobermans,
rottweilers, german shepherds. Terriers? No problem. I wasn't afraid of wolves
or foxes or coyotes either. Go figure.
According to my parents, I'd been attacked as a toddler, but I don't remember
it. I didn't really mind the fear of four dogs, since they weren't particularly
common where I lived and it was easy to rationalize. But being afraid of fellow
people?
It didn't even happen all the time. John often made me nervous, but I wasn't
convinced it was because he was a Belgian Malinois shepherd dog. I felt like he
would make me nervous if he was a cat, or even a canary. I'd become friends with
him partly to try and stem the fear, and it worked. Except when it didn't.
For the first time in a while, I realized how weird it was that one of my better
friends was one of the things I was afraid of. Time slid by as I tried to screw
my brain on around it. I hadn't even told him, I just played that I was a
nervous twit.
My reverie ended with the electronic snap of the door opening, revealing a
backlit shadow of a figure, snout to the side, capped off with ears. I bolted
upright with fight-or-flight, only to see the figure front-lighted as it flicked
on the pleasant ambient lights. John.
"Well, you look horrible. I hope you didn't get a phone call that your dog
died..." John let the door slide shut, then wandered aloof over to the couch.
"I don't have a dog," I said through my bangs.
"Whatever it is, you might be reduced to a puddle. You could quite possibly be
melting. Are you the wicked witch of the west?"
John either made me nervous or confused me. At the moment, he was choosing the
latter. "Uh.." I ended up chuckling, which I couldn't complain about.
"Here, come get some ice water. You didn't take anything, did you?" John ended
up in the kitchen, rifling for a glass.
"Nope, well, I had a headache earlier so I took something for it. Maybe that's
why I'm sweating. I don't do club drugs." I scratched my neck, following John
into the kitchen. Then I got self-conscious about scratching my neck, and
stopped, but I still wanted to do it, so I started to get hot and sweaty again.
John filled up the glass with ice, then watered it, sliding it down the counter.
"There's my bartender flair for the night. Pull it out every once and a while..
so, care to tell me what's got you all knotted up?"
I shrugged. "Ehh, well, it's a bit embarassing."
"Agoraphobic? That's not embarassing."
"No, that's not it." I swigged down some of the water, then the rest of it. "I'm
afraid of dogs."
John perked up his dark ears and slowly crossed his arms. "That's a lot of
irony. I don't mean to be vain, but I think I could qualify as your 'best
friend'." He bunny-eared the last two words, with a smirk that showed off his
teeth. "Is it any dog?"
I gulped down the last of the water, then set the glass by the sink. "Well,
yeah." No, not really, John. Just your kind of dog. "I see."
Having second thoughts about the empty glass, I filled it up a little more and
gulped it down. "Maybe I was just kind of winded or something.. I feel a bit
better."
"So how do you go through life being afraid of dogs? We've known each other
since school. Didn't you even work for a dog?"
I gritted my teeth together. John was not a 'mean' person, but he could be coy,
mocking, and predatorily conversational. Didn't I work for a dog, indeed.
"Notice the past tense? I don't know, it's just one of those things. Since I was
a kid."
John quirked an eyebrow. "So what's the scary part? How they look?"
I shook my head.
"Hmm. Maybe, it's how they move..." John had been half-pacing, and slowed it
down. It wasn't idle meandering now, but the stalk of a wild animal looking for
something to eat. "How they look at you?" He stared, and I had to look away. I
kept looking back, to see if he was staring, but I remembered something my mom
told me - never stare at a dog. Maybe I'd stared at one and learned my lesson
that way, I don't remember.
"John, you're nuts." I tried to chuckle, but it didn't help, and it didn't stop
his advance. A slow, determined click of a boot heel on the tile, the faint
noises of his clothes, slow breathing, teeth getting bared. "Hey. Are you on
something? You're the clubber, not me, and uh." He was backing me up against the
sink! "Maybe, it's that you can't tell what a dog's going to do, maybe they're
unpredictable, nice and pettable blokes, then suddenly-"
He snapped his teeth and I flung my arms out, flinging the glass on the counter
over onto its side, rolling to hit the shiny toaster with a bang. Water streamed
over the counter. "Shit! What the-"
"Oh, the look on your face was priceless. Maybe, you're just scared of people
who do this," John grinned, and bent over, quickly starting to lick up. John was
a surprisingly proper person, maybe even a stick up the ass type, no doubt
something to do with his clipped British high society accent when he didn't let
his London take over. When he let out his wild side, the two mixed in pure
horror movie.
I leaned on the counter, body vibrating with panic. Not the anxiety kind, but
the sudden flash. I picked up the glass and dumped it in the sink, saving an ice
cube to chew on. "Hey, that's for fours, you look pretty silly...."
"Maybe hybrids like playing up their animal sides." He leaned on the Maybe with
the snorting growl most hybrids used for an M. I was slowly creeping past my
irrational terror into amusement. "I recall you saying you find them a little..
unsettling. Maybe you just need to know a bit more. You never really ask
questions."
I snapped the cube in half, getting one of John's dog-ears to perk up. "Well,
okay. I-"
"Now, chewing on ice cubes, that's evidence of sexual frustration."
"Sexual frustration? I mean I broke up with my girlfriend almost half a year
ago... kind of. Well, kind of broke up, but we're split now. Yeah, I guess I'm
frustrated." The blush of realized embarrassment in my ears came just before he
spoke.
"That's not what I mean." John turned his stare on me again, a little smirk on
his dark snout. Smiling dogs have teeth. My flush froze cold. "Are you sure
you're actually afraid of dogs?"
"What? It's, it's a phobia, it's not fear. Fear is the unknown, phobias are uhm,
you know. They're irrational. I can't help it."
That swirling vortex of impending doom started to pick up. Bluntly, John fucked
guys while I fucked girls. "You think I want to fuck dogs?" I had to laugh,
because it was funny. Funny like when someone gets shot.
"When you're scared of something long enough," John said, slowly stalking me
down again, individual body parts moving very human, whole self moving like a
trained guard dog, until he was nearly breathing on my face. "Maybe you start to
turn it around, you know?"
A lot of things went through my head very fast. The fact that I was single, that
I'd been single for over half a year, that my girlfriend had left me for random
shit, left me to be a buddhist, that I'd always wondered, that maybe I was
attracted to the thing I was afraid, and that the attraction would certainly
explain Sean. I closed my eyes and tuned out the real threat, seeing if the one
inside was just as bad. Sean had been my boss at my previous job. I'd left
because of him. He was a big german shepherd from Louisiana who walked around in
a white collared shirt loosely buttoned, black slacks and cowboy boots. Laid
back but always up for a confrontation. I was always ready to snap right back,
and I did, until I finally lost it at a meeting and he forced me to come out
with what had my panties in a bunch. Imagine telling your coworkers that you
were afraid of dogs and that's why you were always flipping out in your boss's
face. I didn't last long after that. I quit on my own to save face.
"Well, I didn't expect so much thought on the matter," John said, and slid back
from dog-about-to-snap into casual-hip-cocked smarmy British fop. "There's no
place like home, Dorothy."
"What?" My face burned up. "Jesus, John-"
"Is that how you keep from getting an erection? Thinking of god? I always
thought I was slightly biblical you know, the name.." He swept up the glass from
the sink, opened the dishwasher, and plunked it inside. Once again, he had
completely turned the conversation, eradicating whatever had been going on in my
head. He turned on a heel and headed out of the kitchen. "I think this
discussion needs to go somewhere more appropriate."
I stood and looked between the sink, the fridge, the cupboards, the living room,
the hallway John had disappeared into. I didn't know whether I wanted to say
something by following, or say something by trying to leave.
I followed, blood starting to pound in my ears like I was 15 again. John was
standing inside his bedroom, barely visible except as a devil-horned shadow. He
paused for me, then stepped up and shut the door. Aside from moonlight, it was
black.
"Wait-"
"There are other reasons to close the door than to trap you in my bedroom." John
flicked on some lights, the room slowly glowing in red, then orange, then slight
yellow, then green, blue, purple, and back again. The pattern then slowed down
to an almost imperceptible pulse. "Light from the hall kills the mood."
His room was like the rest of the apartment - expensive, careful, and angular
masculine. "It's nice. Colorful. " As I spoke, John inverted his black shirt off
over his head. "It kind of, uh, it colors you, like you're that salt and pepper,
stone and charcoal, but this makes you...change."
"I figured a painter would appreciate it. Now, it's your turn. Wouldn't want to
be overdressed, would you?"
"Did I agree to something?" My voice was very small. "I don't think I agreed to
anything. I don't even know why you think."
"Adrian.." John leaned forward and started undoing the buttons of my shirt, the
dusk red light slowly fading into blood orange, then sunrise. "As your arch
nemesis, I have many powers, such as detecting the smell of human sexual
arousal. Quite frankly, you stink right now."
My brain tried to assemble everything together. Hardly my nemesis, dogs and
stink, all the nonsense John usually said serving to distract me from the fact
that those black-nailed gray fingers were sliding in to lift my shirt off.
During a panic attack, the world drained out around me - but for those few
seconds, I felt like I was the one spinning slowly down. "I think I'm, I
think..."
"Mmm, maybe you should lie down. Here, I'll do it first, so you only have to
follow." John tossed himself into bed, boots and all, on his side, then his
back, then his other side, then rolled to adjust the pillows, then propped
himself up arms behind his head. He patted the sheets next to his hips.
I didn't know what to do, so I stood and stared for what seemed like an hour.
John looked like an animal. Most hybrids I'd seen had little or no body fat,
which sounds better than it was - seeing short guardhair covering a human body
full of insertions and sinew is more than unnerving. At the same time, he looked
good. Really good. He looked like a three course dinner after a week-long fast.
"You know, Adrian, you tell me things all the time. You've asked about what it's
like, you've told me some of the things you did with Sandy. Let her do to you-"
"Fine." I sat down, stripping off the boots, then pants, leaving only boxers.
"Who am I kidding?" I wanted to say I'd never thought anything about John, but
it was only half true. I tried not to, I tried to think around him like you
ignore the elephant in the living room. Maybe I even had all those issues with
the big male shepherd, Sean, maybe maybe maybe maybe....
I leaned back and let everything collapse around me, the second wave of crashing
relief. Experience enough boiling fear and when you come down, you'll do
anything. I felt along the sheets, watching the ceiling slowly change colors.
"Is this satin?"
"Something like that. Isn't it nice?"
I answered the question by groping along the smooth, dark surface. It was a
grayed purple, or a purpled gray, an unusual color. Not very male.
John took my hand and lifted it up, planting it on his chest. I slumped down
against the sheet, feeling his heartbeat, the warmth of my own hand, the
radiance from his body under the fur. I'd only had my hands on another guy once
before, and it had nothing to do with sex. It'd been at camp, during an
excercise where you had to walk in the footprints of others. I'd been holding
the shoulders of one of my camp friends, and it was a startling sensation. Very
different than a girl. This was ten times that.
"I can tell you like this, and not just from your scent," John whispered, the
sound like a paper growl. His fingers slid over my bare stomach, manicured nails
gliding, then dragging, then gliding over the skin. It made me want to flinch
and curl up into a ball, or sneeze. Then he grabbed me through the shorts. "I
can tell you really like this. Have you been with a man before?"
"I don't think so," was what came out, so unsure that I couldn't even make a
straight answer.
"Glad I can help you take care of all your never's all at once." John lunged for
my crotch and I panicked so hard I saw spots. I stared as he got my cock in
between his teeth, growled, and then started to lick balls to tip. I guess part
of me was terrified, while the other part was so aroused I not only didn't go
half-mast, but started to drool down onto the waistband of my boxers. His tongue
felt good. Velvet, warm, and not at all like the rough slap of an
overenthusiastic... dog.
John slowly crawled over to straddle me, tongue leaving my swollen meat to lick
up the trough of my abs, over the side of my ribs, up my chest, up the side of
my neck, up the line of my jaw, teeth finally grazing and tugging my ear. "Taste
yourself," he growled, fingers slowly tugging my shaft, as he nudged my head
straight up and started to lick into my mouth. He'd have licked my lips if I
hadn't been staring gape-jawed ahead. I could taste breath spray, vodka, and
salt. My ears burned as I realized the new taste was my own pre-spunk. "And kiss
back, unless you think I have a thing for a corpse."
I didn't know what to do! I didn't know how to kiss someone whose tongue was as
long as my hand, who had teeth that could bite down to the bone of my thigh. I
probed back at his tongue, slightly at first, more and more urgent as his
fingers left my dick and replaced them with the grind of his still-clad crotch.
Somehow I got my hands on him, as I began to grow short-winded from crushing him
against my own chest. The experience was turning into a blur, or rather a series
of disconnected events. One minute we were kissing hard, John growling and
licking into my mouth, the next his crotch was in my face, the leather flecked
with the slime from my own cock. I licked it off, feeling around the backs of
his thighs, holding onto the hard slabs of his rump, until John huffed. "Oh,
just take it out already."
I fumbled around, his black-nailed fingers doing the job for me. Oh god, it was
an animal cock! I was so startled by how it looked, veiny and purplish, swollen
and missing the typical fat head, an obscene bulge at the base. It was so wrong
to have that inches from my face that I just had to shove my head forward and
start to lick the salty skin as it started spitting onto my tongue, sucking hard
and loud. It was gone almost before it started.
"Answer the question."
I looked up at the dog's face, the light turning to a deep purple, lighting the
fur around most of his head, leaving his snout as a charcoal shadow. "What?"
"I said, have you ever been fucked? With anything, I mean I assume... well I
don't know what I assume, Sandy could have been into pegging for all I know."
"I did it once or twice, I guess I liked it." My eyes went to saucers when the
reason for his question sunk in.
"Want to do it again? I don't think you have to worry about any bugs, you know.
I'll help you relax.." John's fingers were stroking my face, my neck, my chest,
my stomach, pulling my boxers down to my ankles, tossing them over onto the
floor as a red-lit streak through the air.
John moved my legs around, spread them apart and urged me to pull my knees up. I
panicked for a moment, thinking he was going to just go right at it. Instead,
something warm and wet started to stroke my asshole. It didn't feel like
anything I assumed would be stroking there, sometimes pressing in enough to give
me a guttural sensation that I can't put into words except as, 'fuck me'....
sometimes trying to push through the muscle, other times just stroking around
the rim. Then I heard the sound, the soft slap of tongue. "No way, no way. No
way you're licking my ass."
"You like it, don't you? I can feel you... it's this kind of eager twitch," John
said, ears between my legs turning into his whole face, a dog looking up from
the food bowl. "I'll be gentle."
I'd seen dogs fuck... fours, not hybrids. I couldn't imagine it being gentle. "I
guess I can try," I whispered. John started to root for something at the
nightstand, finding a pump container of lube and applying it to his palm, then
that monstrous cock.
"Breathe nice and slow." John kneeled between my legs, one of his hands slowly
stroking and pumping the skin back and forth over my cock. The distraction
worked, because I barely noticed the pressure against my ring until he popped
in. It wasn't at all like when Sandy had used one of her toys on me - for
starters, there wasn't that initial hugeness, just a good portion of the shaft
straight through the hole. I coughed and grabbed John by the wrist, his body
freezing.
"No no, you can... it doesn't really hurt. You can do more." It hurt alright,
but as soon as he started moving, the pain receded, replaced with that
gut-opening feeling with no words.
At first, I felt purely connected, moving with him slowly, that thick length
practically sliding out, then driving in so deep that he literally couldn't go
farther, bumping against my holes. John didn't thrust like a porn star, like a
showoff. He had my legs held back and was hunched over, nearly drooling on my
face. It was an astonishing experience, nothing like the first time that I'd
gotten a handjob, a blowjob, or given a girl a good fucking. It wasn't even like
the time with Sandy and her toy; that was clinical and unsettling. This was
intense and hot and so primal, feral, animal.
Then the experienced turned inside out, my brain dissociating. I could hear
everything, the wet-meat sound of his cock filling and emptying me, John's heavy
breathing and growls, the click of his teeth together, the slap of his tongue, a
creak in the bed frame somewhere, the rustle of body parts against the sheets.
The feeling of his cock plowing into me kept getting more and more intense until
I realized I was clenching up and couldn't help it. "You're going to come,
aren't you? Give me your hand." John breathed, right down into my ear. He took
mine off his shoulder and led it down between my legs, where it met the wet heat
of his cock, where it flared into a knob at the base. "Pull. Just do it, while I
fuck you, while you get off."
I worried about whether I'd pull that huge thing into me, but it wouldn't even
start to spread me apart. John's lips curled back like he was going to snap and
take off part of my face, the shock of seeing such a bestial thing sending me
over the edge, my seed spraying out all over my face, the pillows behind me, the
headboard. The sound that came out of John's mouth was horrible and perfect, a
dog yowl and a heavy human grunt at once, and I could barely tell something was
happening inside, a warmth appearing and disappearing. After a good half minute
or so, John groaned and slumped down on top of me, licking my face clean, his
shaft sliding out as easy as it went in.
I wasn't really sure what'd happened. Looking back, it was so abrupt and
intense, disconnected and head-swimming, that for a few moments of staring at
the ceiling I thought that I'd been lying harmlessly on my back all along.
"You know..." John said, his voice a low, lazy growl, "You don't have to sleep
here or anything. I won't mind if you just leave. But, you may have a sleeping
dog curled up next to you in a few minutes, if you stay."
"That's okay." A pang of complete terror swelled and then shrunk back, leaving
me slightly breathless and glad I was lying in a comfortable bed. John reached
over and fiddled with a wall switch, the room lights slowly fading out to black,
leaving just moonlight through the window.
I hadn't decided whether or not to sleep, so my body took care of the problem
and put me under for an hour or so. I snapped back from sleep and couldn't
return. John was fast asleep, breathing slow and deep, the heavy huff of a
breathing animal.
Minutes passed, becoming an hour by the alarm clock on the nightstand. I started
to feel the tight chest and creeping doom of a panic attack, and slid out of the
bed as silently as I could.
John was still wearing his pants, the fly open on the black leather, cock
throbbing hard as he slept and faintly twitched in a dream. His boots were still
on, knotted up in the sheets. He must've had a hard day. If I was a woman I
would have been upset that he went out like a light, but it was comforting that
I didn't have to lie there and talk.
I managed to put my clothes on as silently as I got out of bed, and was nearly
out the door when I heard a low voice. "Leaving?"
The panic swelled, sweat starting to drool out my pores. "I... I'm starting to
feel screwed up again, and I can't sleep."
"Mmm. That's okay." John rolled over and stretched, joints popping in series. "I
enjoyed that. I hope you did. Maybe you didn't, if you feel bad."
"No, I'm pretty sure I did. I can't control how I feel. It's no problem."
John's eyes were momentary glints of light, then closed with a long sigh. I
carefully shut the door and made a beeline for the couch, swiping up my coat and
throwing it on, collar undone. I made sure the VIP pass was still on my neck,
and tried to get out of the complex.
Every second I wasn't in my car became a bigger urgent moment, until I was
sprinting through the parking lot, chirping the lock and bounding into the jeep.
The inside was a momentary respite, a piece of true comfort that I clung to as I
wound my way out of The Woods.
It was two in the morning, the highway nearly deserted as I drove home. I stayed
far away from other cars, twitchy about the chance of a drunk driver. I clung to
every instant of road and tree flashing by in the headlights, forcing every
moment of the encounter out of my mind. The trip became another escalating ride
of urgency, until I was stomping up the stairs to my walkup and bursting inside.
The comfort came again, this time without letting up. The night's events
replayed in my head like I had a movie running.
The creeping panic was replaced by the explosion of inspiration, the vision of
John the Shepherd half-naked and unconsciously erect in bed, sheets tousled
around him. A sleeping dog on the rug, a shameless man worn down after a hard
day, both superimposed at once.
I had to capture it, slapping a big pad of paper down and washing it with black
charcoal. When John said I was a painter, he was mostly right. Technically, it
was mixed media, since I would often start with charcoal and pastel, then burn
in true intense color with acrylic or impressionistic watercolor washes. I
wasn't going to paint anything at the moment, just render the scene in my head.
After the big square of black came the eraser, tearing away everything that
should have been light, then anything I could find nearby blending and smudging,
charcoal stick broken and used for the lines.
At art school, one of my teachers said I looked like a madman when I worked,
brow furrowed hard, sweating and grumbling to myself, fingers flitting from
space to space. I worked with what I used because I didn't have to make a simple
connected series of lines, I could just attack everywhere at once and get a
picture.
A few touches of purple and the piece was done. Rough-cut and masculine,
smoothly blended for midtone, the sleeping Belgian shepherd was now a work of
some kind of art. I hated photography, since I wanted to see things the way I
remembered them and not the way they really were. John was now immortalized as a
harmless sleeping dog, not the sexual beast he was as he mounted me.
Looking at the picture, I tried to figure out what I'd been afraid of. There was
nothing in him that was terrifying. It was only in me. Now I could sleep, head
down on my arms on the drafting table, the endorphin rush of completion and lack
of panic knocking me right out.