The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

Upstairs at the Warehouse

Previously: "The Deal with Dorothy" 

It's a terrifying vista that James Brewer is offering you.

But you know what's even more terrifying? Turning it down and having him think you a pussy.

Besides, you tell yourself as you steel yourself for the plunge, I don't have to do anything with Dorothy. Even if we "go upstairs," we can just ... talk. She's probably not going to be in the mood anyway.

But maybe she will be, part of you secretly hopes.

"Yeah, I'm gonna need you to cover the whole cost," you tell him. "I already blew through what I brought!" you protest when he gives you a look. "I wasn't planning on, um—"

"Well, alright," he says as he pulls out his wallet. "But you're paying me back."

"I'm good for it," you tell him with a thick swallow.

He gives you another look, then presses some bills into your hand.

* * * * *

You watch the time on your phone like it's a pot of boiling water, and when exactly fifteen minutes are up, you slowly start searching the place for Dorothy. If you're lucky—or unlucky, depending on your point of view—you won't find her.

Unluckily—or luckily, depending on your point of view—you find her pretty quickly, in the building's atrium, where, surrounded by a small cluster of girls, she is leaning against the wall with her arms folded, lifting a face that looks very brave toward the ceiling. It is obvious that she has been crying.

For a moment you hang back, and almost you turn away. But she catches sight of you before you can go. And though she doesn't beckon to you, she does hold your eye.

So you squirm through the crowd toward her.

"Hey," you say, and you wish you could murmur it instead of having to half-shout it over the thunder of the music from the other room. "I heard you got, um, stood up. I'm sorry."

She shrugs, and looks away.

"Can I get you anything?" you ask. "Something to drink, or—"

"You can fuck off," one the nearby girls says. A ragged sneer distorts her face.

Okay, that's a good excuse for backing off, you tell yourself. You raise your hands in a placating gesture, and return to the saloon. You look around for James, but you can't find him. You start to give some thought to going home.

It would be an easy decision, except it is now more than an hour past your curfew. And you never had responded to that reminder your mom sent.

* * * * *

You're sitting on the edge of a booth with your back to a bunch of teens you don't know, studying your phone and wondering how to explain your lateness to your mom, when a pair of bare legs moves into your field of vision. They stand before you, and you look up with a start to find Dorothy looking down at you. "Hey," she says.

"Hey," you stammer back.

"Thanks for coming to look for me, talk to me."

"Sure. I'm sorry, again."

"Don't worry about it, I've decided I'm not going to be. Sorry, I mean." She is holding your gaze with a very steady one of her own. "What're you doing now?"

"I dunno. Um—" You catch yourself before you can say that you're thinking of going home.

"Well, if you're not with anyone, come hang out with me?"

"Uh— Sure." You stagger to your feet.

She turns and moves off, then pauses to grab your elbow and pull you along. "I wanna go off alone," she says. "I don't wanna talk to anyone else, I'm sick of talking to people."

"Well ... okay. My truck, um—"

But she is pulling you along, determinedly weaving through the crowd and pushing people aside. You have to grin apologetically to a couple of scowling meat-slabs as you bump past them.

You come to a stop at a table next to a staircase whose top pierces the ceiling. A beefy, ugly Hispanic kid in a wife beater and a gray knit cap slumps behind the table, scowling about the room. He glares up at you. When you say nothing, he growls, "The fuck you want, cocksucker?"

Dorothy is still holding your wrist. She squeezes it once. You glance at her, look back at the troll, look at the stairs, and gulp.

"We— We want—" You swallow and point to the stairs.

His scowl deepens, but with a snarl he reaches under the desk and hauls out a plastic sack, which he drops on the table in front of you. Then he holds up a single, rigid forefinger.

You fish James's cash from your pocket, and with trembling fingers count out a hundred in bills, which he snatches from you. Then, from a cigar box by his hand, he pulls out a square of neon-green paper, holding it out between his index and middle fingers. He raises an eyebrow.

It's a condom, you realize with great embarrassment. You nod.

"Ten," he says, and you give him a ten-dollar bill.

As you turn toward the stairs, he says, "Fourteen. You got forty-five minutes, then your ass is mine. Hey!" he yells as you take another step for the stairs. "You don't gotta take 'em," he says as he picks up that plastic bag and holds it out to you. "But you're paying for 'em anyway."

You take the bag with another gulp. On the way up the dim wooden staircase, you peep inside. It is stuffed with a couple of sheets.

* * * * *

There are numbers on the door, starting with eleven, and from behind two of the doors you hear the muffled, guttural cries of girls. You feel faint on your feet, and you have to let Dorothy lead the way. The door to fourteen is open, and the room behind it is black.

Your neighbor's moan is rising to a choked scream as you shut the door behind you. Dorothy's hand scratches along the wall, and a feeble incandescent bulb in the ceiling snaps on. The room is small, and you would guess from the metal brackets on the wall that it was once an office. On the far wall, under the ceiling, a row of windows looks out onto the city. But they are black, except where the light from the bulb bounces off them in smeared reflections.

In the middle of the floor is a stained and filthy mattress. All the life has been beaten out of it, and you almost retch at the thought of touching it. There's a stink in the air, like rotten, salted fish.

Dorothy takes the sack from you, and unpacks two flat sheets, which she brusquely flaps out and lays over the mattress.

"Lights on or lights off?" she asks.

"Um—" You freeze under her glance. "Up to you."

She studies you closely, thoughtfully for a moment.

Then she takes out her phone. "I'm setting an alarm," she says.

Then she drops her phone onto the mattress and kicks off her sandals. She drops ass first onto the mattress, her bare legs spread out, and looks up at you with wounded, ardent eyes.

* * * * *

For the next thirty minutes you writhe with fear, excitement, lust, and wonder. You are astonished at how aroused—at how rock-hard horny—you become, and horrified at how quickly you lose control of yourself. You had always imagined that your first time would be slow, shy, exploratory, and gentle (though of course with an explosive climax). In some of your after-dark fantasies you had, naturally, imagined yourself as a rock-god in bed, drilling out your bedmate (whose face was sometimes one girl and sometimes another) and blasting your seed into her raw and bleeding flesh. But in sober moments, when you optimistically tried to guess what your first time would actually be like, you were sure it would be a little timid but a lot exciting. It would be like those Christmases where you were almost too scared to open your presents, because you were terrified that what you really wanted would not be there.

But Dorothy has no interest in fucking around. She wants to get straight to the fucking.

So she didn't even bother with her top, but turned her short jeans skirt up over her waist, wriggled her panties down and off, and spread herself out. There was a look on her face like she was daring you as she put one hand over her pussy and rubbed it with a couple of fingers.

With a gulp you kicked off your shoes, pushed your track pants and underwear off, then tore your jacket and t-shirt off for good measure, leaving you naked as you dropped down over her. Your cock was already unfurling.

"Condom," she said, and you had to fumble through your discarded clothes to find it. You tore it open with one hand and your teeth as you braced yourself over her. This is happening, you found yourself thinking, Oh God this is happening and it's happening now! Your hand and hers fumbled as together you managed to clumsily roll it up and onto you. Then she grasped your shaft and guided it to her, like a gamer with a joystick.

You stared deep into each other's eyes, unwinking, as you slowly sank into her, and you willed your face into a rigid mask as she wrapped her legs around your hips and locked her feet together. She began to puff, and then groan, as she heaved herself up and deeper onto you, but her eyes never shut, and she seemed to be drinking you in with her eyes as deeply as she was pulling you into her. But there was a deadness there too, and you remembered Brewer's warning: She won't even be thinking of you when she's doing it.

The memory caused you to flush. Fuck this Eric Murphy douche, you find yourself thinking. If that's who she's thinking of. I can do it better than him, and I'll show her I can do it better than him. I'll show her it was always me she wanted, not—!

* * * * *

Dorothy screams when you cum inside her, but her teeth are clenched shut when she does, and she has the gaze of a wildcat. She holds you tightly, squeezing, and then she cums.

The condom is a torn ruin when you pull yourself from her.

Next: "The Dumps" 

*
"Table of Contents (Vol. 5)" 
"The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)"