The Book of Masks (Vol. 5)

The Dumps

Previously: "Upstairs at the Warehouse" 

You squat on your knees and heels over Dorothy after you pull out. You don't want to look at her, but you find you can't look away from her face.

You are bare and cold and naked, from your crown to your toes, but she is still more than halfway dressed in her disordered clothes: her t-shirt wrenched halfway around her torso, the hem of her jeans skirt touching the bottom of her bosoms. Even her rainbow-colored ski cap is still halfway on her head. She stares up at you from under half-closed lids.

"What do you want to do now?" you ask. You want to touch her. At the same time, you don't.

"You can get dressed, I guess," she says in a small, tight voice. "Except, don't!" she then cries, though you haven't moved. "Get back inside me. No, don't! Yes!" A dozen emotions seem to shift behind her eyes.

You watch her, until she lifts and stretches a hand toward you.

So you lean forward again over her, kicking your legs behind. Slowly, though your cock is dying, you slide yourself back inside her. She grunts and swallows and shifts beneath you. Her eyes roll back as she searches the ceiling. She throws one leg over your hips.

Then she puts an arm over the back of your neck and pulls your head down to hers. Her lips search out yours, and you kiss.

You harden again despite the pain, excited by the hot, sloppy mess you are sliding back into. Briefly your tongues find each other, then she breaks away to pull your face down next to yours, and she wraps herself more tightly around you, putting her mouth to your ear as your nose goes into the tangle of her hair.

You lay like this, worming at each other down below while grunting lightly into each other's ears, until you're startled by footsteps, and the hard pounding of a fist against a door. You almost leap off of Dorothy, expecting the door to burst open. But it's the door to thirteen that bangs open, and its from behind the wall next to you that the shouts and screams begin.

You and Dorothy listen, tense, as a girl screams and two guys roar. There are thumps and smacks, and a heavy blow against the wall. Muffled but audible curses shake the air. Gradually these move into the corridor outside, then abruptly fail.

You and Dorothy hold each other a few moments longer. Then you look at each other.

Almost as one, you both reach for her phone. She gets it first.

"We should get out of here," she says as she looks at the time.

"How long we got?"

"Ten minutes. But I don't want— Besides, I have to— You should just get dressed and go." She pushes you off her.

You get up and peel off the slimy remnants of the condom; you look around for a trash can, but she tells you to drop it on the sheets. As you struggle back into your clothes—which feel hot and grimy now—she puts on her sandals, straightens herself out without putting her panties back on, and gathers up the sheets, which she stuffs back in the plastic sack and kicks over to the door. "Leave it," she says when you stoop to pick it up on the way out of the room. Though you don't want to, you take that as confirmation that she has done this before.

Out in the corridor, she points back toward the staircase, but turns the other way, and as you watch she disappears around a corner. When she doesn't come back, you descend the staircase, feeling as though you are leaving one world, but entering a different one than the one you originally came from.

* * * * *

You loiter near the staircase, and you catch Dorothy's eye when she comes down, but she gives you only a brief, tense glance and hurries away. You follow her halfway across the saloon, then break off. It's obvious that she wants nothing more to do with you.

After ten dazed minutes, during which you try to assure yourself that it all really happened, you leave for home. At the end of your street you change back into your old clothes and stuff the clothes you bought for the Warehouse into a plastic grocery sack which you stuff under the bench of your truck. (An uncanny echo of Dorothy's action with the sheets.) There is a low light on in the living room window, and your mom wakes up on the sofa when you step inside.

Of course you have to give her a story, and the story you give is of getting a ride with someone out to someone else's house, and of not being able to get away, and of leaving your cell phone in your truck. She sighs over that and tells you to get to bed. The next morning your dad informs you that you're grounded for a week, but he doesn't yell at you. After church, when you're sitting on your bed with your legs stretched out in front of you, remembering the night before, it seems an insignificant price to have paid.

I have to do that again, you tell yourself as the blood of remembrance rushes through you. And soon!

You had a text from Dean, asking if you wanted to get together. But you want to continue to steep in the memories of last night, so you ignore it. Instead, you play out last night over and over in your head, gorging on the memory of one moment or wincing over another, and nursing an erection that you take into the bathroom when you can't stand it any longer. The memories afterward are no less sharp, but they are more abstract, and almost you have the feeling that they belong to someone else, that it was another who rammed himself up inside the girl, and wallowed in her slop, and that you are only psychically partaking of the memory.

The awkward part will be seeing her at school tomorrow, for you share a class—first period, in fact—even if you sit on opposite sides of the classroom. Should you talk to her? What if she talks to you? What if Mr. Walberg puts you together on a class project?

It's the latter fantasy that, serendipitously, recalls to you that you do have a project for his class, and that it is due tomorrow: You still have to find something to give him for the time capsule. And that reminds you that you did go looking for something, and that you found it at Arnolm's: that weird book. You search it out in the mess of your desk and glance over it again.

It cost two hundred dollars, and it looks it: bound in old, supple red leather with a gold pentagram stamped on its spine; parchment-like pages; and an ornate Latin that you are almost certain was written onto the page and not printed. It is only spoiled by the fact that all but the first few pages are glued together.

You don't want to have to think of something else for class, so you put it in your backpack for tomorrow, and go back to thinking of last night, and of Dorothy.

* * * * *

You see her sooner than you expected. You are crossing the student parking lot the next morning, loping toward the main building, when you see her leaning up against the wall of the gym, with James Brewer standing next to her. Her expression is hard and her gaze distant. With a ducked head he is looking directly at her.

Her face goes white and very blank when she sees you approaching, and she looks away. Brewer's glance is hooded when he looks over at you.

"Hey," you say when join them.

"Hey man," Brewer says. Dorothy says nothing.

"Start of the week," you observe. "Sucky day."

Brewer smiles faintly, nods, then takes out his phone and walks off. Dorothy glares at his back. Your own heart sinks, but you plunge ahead.

"Look, I know this is awkward," you say, "but do you want to talk? Should we talk?"

"No," she says, looking past you. "There's nothing to talk about."

"Well— It's up to you. Okay? I don't care, either way—"

You can't help quailing under the hot, angry look she gives you.

"What I mean is," you stammer, "it's up to you. I— I don't want to, um, put any pressure, or, um, assume anything. I—"

I have no idea what to say.

Maybe she has no ideas either, for she only glares coldly into the distance.

You're about to back off and leave when your phone buzzes. You check the screen. The text is from Brewer, and you're too shocked—and irritated—by his question to wonder again that he has your number: Did you bring my money?

You look around with a grimace, then turn back to Dorothy.

But you've still no ideas for what to say.

So you say, "I guess I'll see you in first."

You expect her to say something like, I guess so, or to say nothing. Instead she pushes herself away from the wall and starts walking into the parking lot.

"Where are you going?" you ask.

"Home," she says without turning around.

"What about class? Did you turn in your thing for the time capsule?"

"No. I forgot it and I don't have anything!"

You blink dumbly at her retreating back. Could that be true?

You brought in something. Would it help to soothe her feelings if you gave that book to her, telling her that she can give that to Walberg?

And as you're staring after her, your phone buzzes again. Again, it's from Brewer, but it only says ?

You make a sour face. If you don't give the book to Dorothy, you could give it to Brewer, tell him it's an old antique. And what would you give to Mr. Walberg, then?

Inspiration strikes when you remember that bag of old clothes under the bench of your truck. That's what you'll give him, regardless. And if he asks what they are and why you are contributing them?

They're clothes of historical importance, you'll tell him. They're the clothes I lost my virginity in.

That's all for now

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