silverfishh

You drip sweat onto the desk you are trying to clean. The windows are thrown open and the blinds finally drawn up in the tight box of the admin office and the crossbreeze is attempting something over your skin. Light fingers dragging over and by where yours are fumbling and in haste to be done, to leave for the cooler air on the bottom levels. 

They bivouac on the decks closest to the calm flat of the water. Even the wind does not blow here but down there is a place to escape and lay on a bedsheet tied to two railings as if it is anything at all like a hammock. Normal things of the normal world do not exist here but they make do, and like all things you yearn for the water most of all.  

You brush lumps of shredded paper from the desk that mix with your sweat and turn to paste and in your dragging you hit the intercom that rocks on its weighted base before settling. The light on it is green and good and you think of Wallaby covered in neon Jeep coolant from the week before and you smile privately. 

He said they were playing Madonna in the hangar and someone tripped into the chassis and a hose came loose in his face. He wanted to kill you once but now you are one of the few that can see him in his embarrassment without him attempting to break your jaw; you had laughed and he hadn’t and then you cooed at him and gave him the last of your flat beer and that was it.

He lets you borrow his tapes and books and shows you the watch his sister got him and you owe him a great deal for each cigarette you have stolen. For every time he has listened to you bemoan being made chauffeur and maid and mother to the men above you all. 

The intercom is connected to every loudspeaker on every deck and maybe it is the heat and maybe it is the existence of the forbidden and maybe it is the thought of a summer near-poverty on an oil rig that has you considering it. 

You work the walkman from your shorts and sit in Commander Miller’s chair and push forward with your feet on the busted wheels and think of what will happen once you do what you are planning to do. Yet there is little that they haven’t already done to you and it doesn’t matter.

When you depress the button on the PA system it pukes static and spears the air with a sharp hiss and your stomach lurches into your throat. Your mouth goes dry.

You let it go. The door to the tape deck springs open and you flip the tape around to the unwound side and pop it back over the pegs and hold your thumb over the play button. Then you lick your lips and pray to god and lean toward the intercom as it spits again.

“I dedicate this next number to a,” you swallow and adjust your grip as you hear yourself out there, “a very pretty girl in R&D.” You hear distant whistling. “And to everyone else out there busting their balls in this kick-ass heat.” More whistling and your lips twitch. Your fingers slide off the button from the sweat and the nerves and you jump and press it again. “Admin appreciates you.”

You set the perforated face of the walkman against the microphone and hit play. There is nothing for a few seconds, only the hifi crackling of the wheels spinning, then there is Rod Stuart in the office and outside and everywhere and there is the sound of tens of voices hollering.

It swells your head and the grin on your face is wild and stupid.

There is a roll of masking tape in one of the drawers you contort yourself for, and you use it to wrap the base of the intercom to hold the button down and then you lay it carefully on its side by the walkman. It is easy to forget the consequences when the chorus hits and for another few minutes more the world is light and normal and you do the thing you used to do when Abba was the only thing worth playing on the radio.

There are people on the decks you look at through the window and some do what you do or tap their fingers on the barrels of their guns and that is what it all was for. 

The door slides open as you walk through it and there is the original Dog making his way up the steps. Your stomach trips and drops to the bivouacking level but it is hot and he is slow in all the layers you help put him in every morning no matter the weather.

“Coyote,” he barks. “Turn it off. Now!” His face is twisted and red from the sun on this ocean and he is handsome for the moment until your namesake takes you. 

A sort of laugh comes out as you take a step and another and then the ground is rattling under your boots. He is yelling something and the metal is hell on your shins and you are no runner but you run now and the sky is a pretty veil above it all. You climb high and take the stairs two at a time and you see Wallaby waving from two decks over.

He cups his hands around his mouth. The sun collects in the face of his watch and winks at you on the way to blind the world. “You’re fucking crazy!”

It is hard to hear him over the music but you beam at him and wave and blow a kiss but then there is Miller and you start back at a run. 

“Coyote!” He tosses the cane to the side and it clangs harshly on a reservoir cap and this is alarming. He follows your path normally at a quick walk but not without pain and you feel guilt for this but not for long. “Stop running.”

You come on a dead end and the adrenaline propels you over the railing with an ease seldom belonging to you. You dangle from that bar of orange and worry buds of callus on the knobs of your palms before dropping onto the deck below. Pain lances up your legs and you shake and trip but then you are up and going. Faces blur past but some are smiling and you do the same. They wolf-whistle and clap and then you stop dead. The Revolver is at the end of the walkway. There is confusion on his face but then he looks up and sees Miller and hears him and the sun dawns on him and the easy amusement crawls onto his face.

“What do we have here?” He circumscribes around you lazily and you heave your rattle. “Little game of chase? Aren’t you a bit old for that?”

“No, but you might be,” you retort and both of you go still. Then you laugh and you aren’t sure why. There is a certain neurotic quality to it and it is the nerves of what you’ve done and it is him. 

His head tilts. Then he smiles low and it is beautiful as it is ugly. He draws a hand around. “You’re putting on quite the show, I’ll give you that, but this is a bad look for admin.”

You feign carelessness and it comes easier than it should. Your feet get antsy as his shoulders round and he creeps closer. “I’ll take my punishment.”

His teeth are perfect as he suddenly laughs and it is the first genuine thing you have heard from him. “You sure will.”

He is quick but you are wiry and just an ugly not-dog from somewhere that is not here, and as you skirt by and bang your hip on another railing, people cheer. Some say your name; creature that has never known love this way, now drunk on it as you weave through the hands dragging over you to spill out onto the bottom deck. 

There are spurs behind you and Miller’s yelling and you make a sound of your own in an odd mixture of glee and terror. You make the mistake of looking behind and Ocelot is shoving men out of his way with Miller bringing up the rear and there is hardly any distance. Hounds hunting you down and it is laughably absurd. 

There is a certain momentum as you move forward and it makes it that much worse when you hit a wall. Your head knocks on the metal floor and the world rings pretty as a boxy hand yanks you to your feet. 

The Boss holds you by your upper arm and pulls your head back by the hair in the band at the base of your skull and the music cuts abruptly. You hiss and cower. 

Ocelot slows gracefully once he hits the ground level and Miller is not far behind holding onto the rail for life. He is without coat and vest and beret and it is unnerving to see him in a state of undress outside of his private quarters. 

The Boss tightens the grip on your hair and your eyes burn and your fingers dig at the metal ones locked in their vice but nothing happens. 

“What’s going on.”

Miller shoulder-checks Ocelot on the way past and grabs your collar. His knuckles dig into the tubes of your throat and it hurts to swallow. 

“She took it upon herself to play radio host with the PA system.” Miller shakes you until your jaw clacks and the anger in his face splays your nerves open wide. You are afraid of what it will take to put him back together later. Yourself.

There is a red ring left imprinted on his forehead and his hair is disheveled and curled in the humidity. You watch the sunglasses slide down his nose with the sweat and briefly you catch the milk eyes in their rheum. “Which,” he continues, “is not as unforgivable as running from a superior who orders you not to.” His hand moves to your jaw and he squeezes it until your teeth creak. “Fucking brat.”

Ocelot’s brows jump and he coughs to clear his throat. He claps his hands and turns heel to the growing crowd. He yells and they make like roaches in the light. When he comes back around to put a hand on Miller’s shoulder, the pressure along your jaw releases and you roll it on the hinges. 

“Maybe refrain from referring to staff as a pejorative in the future.” Ocelot murmurs in that western way but Eastwood never had the top four buttons of his shirt undone or swore in Russian and that is all him.

His head knocks to the side and his hair moves with the movement and he looks at you in the gray-blue frost. “Least in public. Cause I can’t say I disagree with you.”

Boss rends your head back further and your spine hooks to stay balanced and you cry out. His head is upside down or maybe it is yours but the horn is evil and his eye is too much, so you look at his mouth as he speaks - the break through it that has been threaded over, a puffy pink bit of chewy scar. 

“You know how we deal with insubordination,” he asks you. Then he squeezes when you have no answer and your scalp burns and panic catches on the flint stuffed in your throat. 

“Brig! The b-brig. I’ll go to the brig.” You swallow hard as your face breaks. “Please, Boss, I’ll go–”

“The brig isn’t enough.” Miller drags his sleeve over his mouth. “This requires active discipline.”

Ocelot smoothes over your lapel but maintains a bored quality to his movements. Light catches in the translucent stubble along his jaw when he speaks. “We still have 101,” he shrugs, “give me an hour, she’ll be right as rain, Boss.”

Your knees almost give as your back bends uselessly and your eyes go like the moon. “No. No.” You blink rapidly to bring the Boss into focus but there is no pity or kindness for you in his face. “Please,” you lick over your lip, “I’ll-I’ll do double duty. I’ll shovel the pens on the conservation platform for a month. Two months. Anything, sir.”

He looks at you long before releasing your hair and you whimper and lean forward and remove the tie to run shaking hands through it. He thumbs over the bruise forming on your jaw and presses at it and you flinch. “Anything.”

✗    ✗    ✗

The office is stifling but the nerves and licking sweat leave you cold and damp. The light is burning orange outside and the heat packs in and goes nowhere. Hair is plastered to the sides of your face and neck but you stand at attention with your hands zip-tied behind your back and wait. Flight risk.

Miller finally drifts in at a mean limp and he hits the back of your knees with the cane and you are brought to a horrible kneel.

The Revolver is leaned against the wall with his arms crossed and the Boss is an unknown specter somewhere behind. It is uneasy with them in public but there is no defining what it is now. 

There is Miller’s deep frown but everything you care to know is hidden behind the glasses. There is nothing friendly here. You know it is too bright with the windows but he makes no show of it, just sits on the desk with his sleeve scrunched to the bend in his arm with the other knotted below the end.

Nothing is said for a time. 

Miller scuffs his foot and looks down to look up. “It’s your call, Boss,” he eventually says.

“She’s under your command.”

He nods and rubs at his eyes under the glasses and they dip in the movement. “And yours.”

It goes quiet. Someone on patrol walks under the window whistling Madonna and you think of Wallaby and you tilt your head at the floor and fight the smile. 

“Is this funny to you?” Miller braces his hand on his knee as he looks long at you. You are shot through with a spasm of fear but then you see the intercom still on its side with the wad of tape torn through and the walkman gaping at you with an empty mouth. The absurdity comes swooping again and hits you with a shovel. 

You laugh; a clear chime in this heavy room. “I’m sorry, sir, I,” you hesitate and laugh again despite your attempt to choke it down, “I find it a little funny, yes.”

Ocelot rolls from his lean on his side to his back and sets his hands on his hips and leers at you with a smile that ought to be disarming in its pretty humor. Yet every inch of him is evil and he should be uglier for it. 

Miller scoots forward and kneels at your level with the cane tucked against his side. His brow is pinched so severely you fear it will stick that way. 

“Commandeering administration’s property for illicit use,” he starts scathingly, “and evading and purposefully ignoring your commanding officers is… funny?”

You gnaw at the inside of your cheek but then the namesake grins wide and terrible. “I’m sorry, illicit?” You roll your shoulders and settle on sending yourself to hell completely. He will never trust you with anything again and maybe it is a good thing. Maybe they will throw you from the rig into the ocean and maybe it is a good thing. “I could’ve played Flesh for Fantasy. Erotic City. Or Master and Servant. Now that would be illicit, but fitting, don’t you think?” 

The Boss comes around your side and picks up your brow and spreads the skin around your eye. You tuck in on yourself and move but he holds you there with his other hand to look before releasing your eye and patting the flat plane of your face. “Making sure you didn’t scramble your brain with the fall.”

“Why,” you snark and it must be the heat. It must be the abysmal way they run a company and the sad MRE you get once a day. “Would you’ve unscrambled it for me? Do we have the money for that?”

Miller’s brow lifts up over the rim of his glasses and the room goes a little strange and tense.

You look at Miller and continue before anyone else can. “What about you, Commander” you drawl with your heart in your mouth, “how could I ever make it up to you for abusing your poor intercom?”

Ocelot chuffs and wipes his thumb over his mouth as he looks at his feet. Humor drips freely from his face. 

“What,” you snap. “Anything to add?”

His stare runs flat but his jaw twitches on the toothpick in his mouth and that evil is curled in his face. When he pushes off from the wall, the Boss is there to push him back.

“An hour is too generous,” he purrs over his shoulder, “give me fifteen minutes, I’ll put her back together right.”

“Enough.”

Your mouth clicks open and Miller hooks his thumb in your cheek meanly and drags you half up. You wince and hiss and try to bite but his face is impassive.

“Quiet as a dormouse,” he starts. “Now you run your mouth. Keep talking.” His voice is poisonously smooth. You hate his beauty, hate how he hates you. “See where it gets you. Three weeks in the brig by my count, now.”

You grossly slobber around his thumb and it tastes like salt and metal. “Have to be quiet,” you manage around him, anger packing tightly in your teeth, “I’m the fucking maid, remember?”

“Four,” Miller says. “Keep going.”

Your hands twist in the ties and it stings as you unsteadily get to your feet. Drool starts down your chin but there is your anger and him and nothing else. “Polish your shoes,” you rear your head back but he pinches the thin skin of your cheek and pulls you back, “help you button your buttons. Do your laundry. Mother you.”

His tone is lead. “Five.”

The bones in your hands creak with the fists you make. You try your best to swallow but despite the dry mouth, you can’t stop drooling. You dig your nails into your palms and want only to throw the whole world on him and watch him suffocate as you do. All of them. The life you never asked for; the life given; the life you can’t have.

“And no one,” you inadvertently suck around his thumb tucked against your molars to get rid of the spit and his mouth twitches, “no one will touch me because they think I’m in your bed.” Any of theirs; there is no shortage of shit rumor. 

Miller goes blank. The Revolver barks a laugh and the Boss pushes him back on the wall with his hand and it dies.

Vague disgust passes over Miller’s face and it is wounding but there is no taking any of it back. He withdraws his thumb and it is red and littered in tattoos of your teeth.

“Well, then,” he states. He says nothing else for a time then sets his hand on his belt and the thing in your chest sputters and stalls. “Maybe we ought to give credence to the rumor. Will that get you to shut up?” He nods. “Back on your knees, soldier.” Then he rolls a shoulder. “Or fulfill your punishment as you suggested, alongside brig time.”

It is some cruel joke and you feel like crying as your hands start to shake, but when you look at the Boss he is nothing but a statue and Ocelot is half-lidded and working the meat of his jaw on that stupid splinter. 

There is something warm churning in your stomach and maybe it is the heat or maybe it is the room or maybe it is that you have wanted him for months and if this is how you will get him, you will do it. Even if it is sick and nothing like you wanted. Wrong beyond anything.

It is unsteady how you get back to your knees, and hardly worth it when he looks at you like you’ve grown another head. But then it suddenly is when he sets his fingers in your hair and brings you close to the fly of his trousers. You are sweating and shaking and disbelieving as he pets you and the coil of heat tightens while your stomach roils. 

“Lock the door,” he says quietly and it is the Boss who goes and does as bidden before coming around to sit on the edge of the desk at Miller’s back. 

You freeze and he tucks the cigar in the corner of his mouth and takes his time lighting it. Then he is putting hair behind your ear and it is gentle and desperately you wish you could get to a payphone to call your mother but she is gone and you are dead and these men own you.

“Bashful, now? Where’s the piss and vinegar, Coyote-girl?” Ocelot stays by the wall but watches with an intensity that frightens you. 

“They’re staying,” you don’t ask.

Miller sighs and tilts your face back with his fingers on your chin. For a moment his own face is soft and maybe alarmed and you foster some hope as he thumbs at the round of your cheek before it all falls away. “Punishments require witnesses.” He chucks under your jaw. “What, nervous? We have no secrets.”

You nod as this is terrifying and strange and after a long moment of nothing he just presses your face into the hardness in his pants and you jerk in shock before melting. He rocks his hips once on you and your heartbeat drops to your groin.

“There you go,” he murmurs and sets about undoing his belt. It jingles and it is a small struggle and you look at the Revolver from the corner of your eye and he grins low and winks. 

Zipper teeth and a sigh. You look up at him and he hooks his thumb in his briefs and what comes out brushes your mouth, hot velvet and sticky where it weeps. 

“Open.”

This is not normal. But that life is gone and the Boss watches as you take Miller into your mouth. The Commander groans tightly and leans back on the desk with his hand and you close your eyes to it and listen to the slush of blood in your ears. 

The tang of salt is sharp and the ache inside gets so bad you choke down a whine. They all smell like sweat and men and heady power as you mind your teeth and lick over the heat of him and under his sheath. He brings his hand around to pull the skin up but his face is conflicted and he sets it on the back of your head instead to pump himself into your mouth more gently than is warranted. 

“Christ, your mouth is hot,” he grunts and leaks on your tongue and your insides trill like a wind chime. 

“How long’s it been, Miller?” Ocelot kicks off from the wall and you feel a gloved finger trail over the shallow of your temple, down to the bulk of your jaw. It was meant as a joke but his voice is too gruff and your eyes flit to the bulge in his fatigues and it is odd how it doesn’t disgust you entirely. 

“Ocelot.” Boss brings him to a heel and the Commander holds a hand in concession. 

“Get the fuck away from me,” Miller hisses through his teeth. He jerks his hips too hard and you gag and his moan is clipped. 

You swallow rapidly around him to keep from choking on the flush of spit in your mouth or vomiting and he bears his teeth and holds you to him. Your eyes flare in panic and you cry around him and the Boss thumbs at your stretched top lip.

“Relax,” he says, so you do. 

Miller flexes in your mouth and drips some more down your throat and you drink him down. “Fuck, Coyote. Take it.”

You groan and the Revolver laughs in his chest somewhere. When you look up at Miller he is slack-jawed and dripping in sweat and golden and what you wanted another way but this is what you get. You pull back and suck on him in tandem as he uses you. He rescinds completely and smears spit around your mouth and on your cheek and you see the playboy alive even still. 

He grins and it is charming and handsome and mean. “Acting out when all you needed was this.” He taps the head against your cracking lips. “Just had to ask, baby, I’d give it to you.”

You jump when you feel a boot drag under the seam of your shorts that once were fatigues. It retreats and you hear the clang of a spur. 

“Baby?” Ocelot leans in from behind and puts his mouth by your ear and his breath is hot and you shake apart. “Go to him when you want to feel like a hole.”

Miller starts at him and you duck down and the Boss intervenes. 

“Let’s remember this is a punishment.” He looks at you and there is no knowing what he thinks and you shrink. “I don’t think you’ve learned anything yet.” He takes a pull of the cigar and breathes at you and it smells nothing like nicotine. Then he reclines back on the desk and ashes the cigar at Miller though it does nothing. “Finish, then we can continue.”

“Continue?” Your voice is rough. You are not sure what you agreed to. 

The boot returns to kick your ass lightly and you scoot forward. Miller scowls and takes himself in his hand and slides back into your mouth and his face smoothes over perfectly. His hips rock forward and back and it is the ocean but cruel and you gag and drip spit down your chin and onto the floor and he groans and uses you some more. 

“Fuck, I’m gonna come,” he grits out and twitches and forces himself down as far as he can. Panic flares and your jaw twinges. It pulses and it is hot as he pours down your throat. “Fuck, take it, take it.” His head tilts toward the ceiling and you swallow it quick and choke and heave at the taste as he slides out and it hits the front of your tongue. 

There is barely a moment to breathe before Ocelot is twisting you to the side and pressing his boot along your spine in the middle of your back until you’re flush with the floor. The other kicks at your legs and you roughly butterfly open. Then it comes snug against the place wet and wanting despite everything and you heave. 

He puts more of his weight on your back as he leans and your lungs expel everything they ever had. “I’ll make you behave, won’t I? Want to be a real Diamond Dog?” The room is hot and thick and you are at an even tremble as you nod dumbly. The boot nudges your core and heat yawns up your spine. “Go on, then. Pretend you’re a dog, baby.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” Miller tells him but no one intervenes and you are left prone on the floor with your mortification. 

Yet your hips shift and the flat of his boot runs nice against something good and your eyes filter shut. “Commander,” you try, but the embarrassment is evil. This is evil and so is he. 

Your hips come down again and grind on him and it is good and easy pleasure. You whine. 

“Good girl,” he lauds like a showman and you wish you could see anything or anyone but you are as good as blind where he has you. “Keep going, show us you can listen.”

It is easy like it is hard and the pressure builds fast and neatly. It is shameful and you start to cry.

He hums. “Look at that, Miller. She’s fogging up my boot. A real bitch in heat.”

There is scraping and shoe scuffling and the Boss does not yell but it is close. “Enough. Ocelot, get her on the desk.”

You heave the world back in when he removes his foot from your back. He hauls you by your upper arm and it hurts and then he is dropping you face down on the desk. Your jaw clips and skids on the lacquered wood and you hiss and hurt. Bent at the waist, your knees knock together weakly with your toes just touching the ground. The tremble is violent but you were close and your shorts stick to you and you launch out of orbit when hard fingers pull long between your legs. 

Dense thighs brace against the backs of your own and the scorching air of the room is almost cold as your shorts and underwear come to pool around your ankles. That is all the warning you get before two large square fingers are shoved in a place no one has touched in a long time. 

You scream and go lightheaded. A hand sets on your back where the boot was. 

“You can take it,” the Boss tells you, so you bear it with eyes bleared. The flesh hand feels over the round of your ass but it is the only kind thing he does. The arm is a piston as he brutalizes the inside of you that screams in its own right - there is an awful clicking sound and it only grows.

“Boss–” Miller starts.

“She needs to learn,” he tells him flatly. “You were both too busy posturing to set her right. She disobeyed orders.”

He jams against something tender and you jump further up the desk. He grabs at your fatigues between the shoulder blades and slams you back and you break and cry and he doesn’t stop. There is insanity here in the world like no other and you can imagine this happening nowhere else but here. 

There is a sudden flush of wet that you feel and he rumbles and releases the death grip on your fatigues to pet you. “There you go. Take what you’re given.”

You hear the crack of a belt buckle but it is nothing and nothing and the ribbon inside undoes itself and he hammers on something good and you start to die violently. Then he stops. You will vibrate forever. There is a headache curling hotly around your eyes.

“W-what?” You suck back snot. 

“Only when I say,” he tells you. Then something molten tucks itself against you and you panic. 

“Wait–”

It is a spear and all the wind leaves you. Fingers fumble to find the good around the front of you and it is rude and cruel and he says “Do it,” and you break into a thousand pieces. The world is a static mesh until it fades to white and you see the ocean somewhere and hear it in the slush of your heart. 

Someone snaps their fingers by your ear and you hardly hear it. You blink and the ties are undone and you are in Miller’s chair, the Boss kneeling before you with Miller braced against the desk. Ocelot stands by the door. 

The Boss taps your face and you feel it after the fact. 

“I think this was too much,” Miller says and there is the alarm in his face again before he tucks it away into nothing.

Ocelot scoffs but says nothing. 

“You okay?” The Boss opens your eyes again and looks around before letting them go. There is a long quiet you swim in before he speaks. “What will you not do again?”

Your mouth is slow and dumb. “Use the intercom without permission, or run from a superior.”

Miller’s feet scuff on the floor as he comes forward and you know it means the leg has been on for too long but the thought vanishes as he touches your cheek. You flinch before falling into it. 

“That’s my girl,” he tells you and it is stupid how you bleed for it. “That’s my girl.”

[EPILOGUE]

You are wet tissue against him. You have never been allowed access to him like this but he brought you to his quarters and put you on his air mattress and brushed your hair until you felt normal again. Now you are glued to his chest, head tucked under his jaw and the shakes leave you slowly. You would suffer a million things for this alone.

“Who’s the pretty girl in R&D,” he asks after a time. 

“What?”

You feel his head shift down. “You dedicated the song to a ‘pretty girl in R&D’.”

“Oh,” you smile into his neck, “it was Wallaby.” You stretch and feel the horrendousness of your muscles going taut to relax. “They’re all working hard out there. Thought they could use a pick-me-up.”

It goes quiet for a while and he sighs and you worry. “Do you hate me now?”

“No,” he says and you can breathe. “But don’t ever put me in that position again.”

You nod quickly. “Okay.”

It is a little after midnight and there is a headache starting to swell behind your eyes as you stare at the screen that slowly dims. The red icon of an app that makes your mouth sour. Yet there is no detox you can stomach for it. No blackened spoons but you are the modern crack addict; immune to nothing at all. 

You thumb your code and trail the notification deeper in. 

Request sent Sep 25 12:51 AM

foxhund1234 your dog is very old < img src=“https://i.postimg/cc/JkgL2PX/img0428.heic”/ > Ignore | View Request

There are photos of your family dog staring at you on the screen from the post forward. Innocuous but something feels strange yet there will be no ignoring it now. 

You hesitate but respond anyway.

boletarianproletariat she’s 12

It is clearer now as the sleep goes and you sit up further on your hand in the silence. A car goes by and red tracks across your pitched ceiling. The screen in your palm goes dark to go bright and you twitch at the hooks setting in. 

foxhund1234 post fwd foxhund1234 you are very depressed ?

It is the post from after the Reston Center. Stitches and a case worker and your mom sleeping in your bed with you until the fear left. A communal terror.

The text post looks at you like you look at it and it grows odd dread. It burgeons under the eyes of a stranger and the thought of their thoughts and it is embarrassing and raw. 

boletarianproletariat why

You thumb at the seam in your pillow and wait. There is idle typing. 

foxhund1234 happy people dont write things like this. it is sad

It lands funny and bad. There was a want for sympathy for your mistake and your anger at the time but now it is uncomfortable and an ugly thing. 

You lock your phone and count the red streaks dragging their fingers across the wall. You sit in the dark and watch the blue flash of the monitor’s status light. You think of Goodnight Moon but there are no kittens or mittens or the old woman hushing you back to sleep. There is the quiet. The lonesome. 

The phone pulses. 

foxhund1234 im sorry if that hurt you, i did not mean to

Another post pushes the messages up and it is newer and not a reminder.

foxhund1234 i also like this game

It is uncomfortable to have your post history be picked through but that is the nature of it. It is a place to bloodlet in companionable solitude but you never deleted the things you should have. 

foxhund1234 you are a woman?

You recoil and suck your teeth. If nothing else, it is a man and you hover over the block button. A man. You hate yourself for it. You should have deleted everything a long time ago but you still have your teeth and they come out. 

boletarianproletariat are you capable of being normal or do you intend to ask for feet pictures. 

There is typing for a time but then it stops and you have a fear that nothing will come. You put it away. You lay on the sheets and count the rotations of the ceiling fan until the numbers erode into thread. Street spirit by the red flashes above your head; fade out.

♘   ♘   ♘

Usually the phone is nothing but not today and you leave it face up. The sole notification that comes puts the hooks in that much deeper. 

foxhund1234 im not a normal man but I do not like foot pictures.

The corners of your mouth pull.

boletarianproletariat good to know

The wood of your desk is hollow as you tap your fingers on it. You are part of the world but you view it through glass. Tempered screen and see-through skin that tears at everything and nothing and it is all thick with scar. You are the lopsided girl through that looking glass and they see it and whatever he is smelling from you is strong enough to seep through it. 

foxhund1234 do you have discrd ? I dislike this app’s UI foxhund1234 *discord boletarianproletariat why do you want my discord foxhund1234 youre interessant

You clench your teeth. 

boletarianproletariat because im a woman? or bc we have the same taste in games ?

Let it not be the other thing. The patheticism he can smell through the screen like a bloodtrail. 

foxhund1234 these thigns are not mutually exclusive yes ?

Immune to nothing. Roadkill and funeral processions and politicians with flags ripping by their darkened windows; you are the worst of the rubbernecked. Gawker of all, girl behind the screen. 

It comes to you that you never looked at his profile but there is nothing to see. No posts or comments over seven years.

You lay right down on the road and wait for your own car. 

You say nothing, but only for now. 

♘   ♘   ♘

foxhund1234 Xx_jagdhund_xX foxhund1234 this is mine

♘   ♘   ♘

You sit in your chair and watch something that is nothing and think long about what you are going to do. You grab your phone without looking at it and you wonder where the good sense went if there was any at all. It started with the AOL chatrooms and look where it got you. 

Once you do what you shouldn’t, you are left to wait in a horrible way. Then a minute goes by and it pulses and you swallow around the sudden giddiness stuck in your throat.

Xx_jagdhund_xX accepted your friend request. Xx_jagdhund_xX sent: Wave. Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX hallo Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX iwas hoping your little photo would be you

It all sends a rush through you and you stare at the screen with slight shakes like you have tracks running up your arms.

oranjecoyote well yours istn you

You stare at the XOF logo and wonder so long your screen goes dark and shuts off. It vibrates and you read and nearly drop it. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX kojote wants a photo of me ja ?

It is easy to be still but this is different as you sit without a centimeter of movement. 

There is an odd momentum here that should stop. You should have stopped it long before it got here as you knew better than to bet on another stranger but it is perversely what you want. Something to count the days by and make a calendar mean anything.

You lead him another way.

oranjecoyote what’s your name Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX könig. Yours?

You give him something and look at the TV as he types as if that will convince the empty room of your disinterest. Sad looking-glass girl in her blue room. It is a deep navy as the sun goes down and the light flashes from the screen and you look at the spray paint on the walls of an abandoned hallway. Crude cuneiform of the zeitgeist, strange creatures and penises. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX smart kojote to give me a fake name Xx_jagdhund_xX there are bad men on the internet. 

The laugh in your throat is almost hysterical.

oranjecoyote you’re not included with that? Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing…

Then there is nothing and it is horrible. The video ends and another comes and it is an old 20/20 of a woman found beaten bloody in her home and that is all you get before you lean over and turn it to black. The room is quiet but says much.

♘   ♘   ♘

You are brushing your teeth.

Xx_jagdhund_xX would you still talk with me if I was a bad man ?

It is cold and drafty and you stand in the dark with toothpaste starting down your chin. 

oranjecoyote bad how?

As though you need a barometer to categorize what you can tolerate. As though him asking at all didn’t make your stomach lurch.

Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX what if I say I hurt other bad men

Now in your dark kitchen you stop and see some of your face dimly in the window by the coffee table. The looking-glass girl looks frightened and you smooth out her face.

oranjecoyote are you a cop? Xx_jagdhund_xX nein

A hand goes into your hair. 

oranjecoyote you’re german Xx_jagdhund_xX austrian ja

Something in you settles at that. 

oranjecoyote youre not in thestates then

Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX it is complicated oranjecoyote complicated how?

There is nothing for a time and you suffer it internally as you go to your bed and strip it from its neatness. The silence was better before the waiting but there is little to do about it now. 

It vibrates again. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX im in the military  oranjecoyote which branch? Xx_jagdhund_xX special forces

Your eyes widen. The expectation was a basement dweller or a failure like yourself, not a psychopath with a gun. You were raised hearing about Desert Storm and grew up through the second Gulf War and have seen Rob O’Neil post insane things on Twitter and that has been enough. 

He might be a killer and it sits like lead in your stomach. Odd fear has a way with you but then you remember he is Austrian.

oranjecoyote you’re fucking with me Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing…  Xx_jagdhund_xX I could if kojote wants Xx_jagdhund_xX but no it’s the truth oranjecoyote i don’t believe you

You put the phone away and sit with yourself and your unease. Ten minutes go by and you nearly take out your lamp on the nightstand reaching for your phone. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX has sent an image. 

The thing in your chest lurches again painfully. The lock screen fades dim and you look at the notification as though there is anything else it will tell you without having to look yourself. But you already laid down on the pavement and it would be the coward’s way to move now. 

There is a creature looking at you when you unlock the screen. A military man, though he is in no uniform you have ever seen. No beret or medals or splitter pattern. It is a selfie taken down in his lap and you can see his helmet and the stock of a gun resting on the side of it and the strange hood over his face with the two holes gouged in it. A blur, taken in the back of a van, and seeing the photo is as horrible as you thought it would be. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX not fucking iwth you ja ? Xx_jagdhund_xX unles… ?

You bed down like a stiff animal until your phone lights up again. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX ah did I frighten kojote ? Xx_jagdhund_xX thats ok, a little fear is good

♘   ♘   ♘

It is Saturday and you smell like bleach. The speaker goes quiet as it fades into another song and you hear your phone rattle on the formica counter by the fridge. You move from the oven and walk slow and decrepit as though you have no choice but to look but the room judges and knows better.

Xx_jagdhund_xX I also like depeche mode

You are a little slow in understanding and you pause the music and it becomes clear. Discord has a Spotify integration and it is fine and normal and then you remember the name of your account and your stomach starts to hurt.

Xx_jagdhund_xX I thought you were smart kojote

Xx_jagdhund_xX do you know how much can be found even with google ?  could look up your name and find everything

You are very still. 

oranjecoyote please don’t. Xx_jagdhund_xX ahh ok ok. But it is a very cute name Xx_jagdhund_xX I bet you’re just as cute kojote

♘   ♘   ♘

Xx_jagdhund_xX what do you do for work

It is later in the day and there has been enough time for you to tuck the frightened looking-glass girl away. 

oranjecoyote what, can’t look that up with google? Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX kojote has teeth, ich mag es Xx_jagdhund_xX I couldn’t find where you work

You are happy about that. Austria or no, the less a gunman knows the better. It should not feel normal to think that but it does and you rescind and think about what you are doing. You should have blocked him but the hooks are already here and there is nothing else to do. Immune to nothing at all. 

oranjecoyote not for you to know everything. Xx_jagdhund_xX ah I do love a good challenge

You swallow your tongue and choke. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX you are a very interessant woman

♘   ♘   ♘

Xx_jagdhund_xX I want to know what kojote looks like Xx_jagdhund_xX can I see you

♘   ♘   ♘

Xx_jagdhund_xX guten morning kojote, I still want to see you Xx_jagdhund_xX it is only fair, you have seen me

oranjecoyote i didn’t ask to see you. And you had a thing over your face, i saw nothing Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX how else was I supposed to convince you ? and it is for your own good oranjecoyote what? Why Xx_jagdhund_xX as I said im a bad man ja ? dangerous profession

Insane profession.

oranjecoyote what, less i know the better? You haveto kill me if i see your face or smth? Xx_jagdhund_xX smart kojote, you learn quickly. But I would not kill you. I don’t like hurting pretty women

You did not entirely mean it when you said it but the knowledge nauseates you. It is revolting what he admits to so easily. 

oranjecoyote so you’d hurt me if i was ugly? Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing…

He types your name.

Xx_jagdhund_xX no one with that name could be ugly Xx_jagdhund_xX but if youwant to prove me wrong you know how to do it ja ?

Your teeth snap. The placation is biting so you leave it alone. An hour goes and you come back and send him a photo of a rat and turn your phone on airplane mode. 

You last until you are getting ready for bed and he is already there waiting for you.

Xx_jagdhund_xX scheiße you had me excited Xx_jagdhund_xX then I open my phone to this Xx_jagdhund_xX you are one mean woman playing with a man like that

♘   ♘   ♘

Thoughts are threading themselves through when your phone vibrates on your cheek again. You jerk awake. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX bitte kojote I still want to see you Xx_jagdhund_xX it’s been a very long day for me

Another word. You have been writing them down and looking them up and you squirm at this one. 

oranjecoyote there are sites that can help you unwind you know oranjecoyote you don’t need me for that. Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX ah frau I do Xx_jagdhund_xX you are depressed andI could tell from your post that you dont think well of yourself kojote Xx_jagdhund_xX not a nice judge of yourself

You scoff and hiss like an animal. 

oranjecoyote what, you’re some championing judge who can definitively say what’s beautiful and what isn’t? get fucking real Xx_jagdhund_xX ja we all judge beauty kojote. You show your teeth because youare frightened, ok I understand, I like your teeth but you need to relax woman

He is pinching two separate nerves and it is easy to hate him for it and it feels nice to hate something so guiltlessly. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX is typing… Xx_jagdhund_xX I can help you relax

Then the hate leaves you and the disgust stays and it is not all for him. Your eyes water. There is something deeply wrong with you. He is like all the others just more serrated and you are stupid for hating and wanting it. 

oranjecoyote yo udon’t even know me knoig Xx_jagdhund_xX ja und ? why do two people talk if not to learn

There is typing for a long time and you lay down and think you wish you had the old lady saying hush sitting in the chair by your bed for some comfort as there is none you can give yourself. 

The phone goes off again and you roll over to the soft light in the void. 

Xx_jagdhund_xX you can try to push me away but it will not work. I will not go away Xx_jagdhund_xX I cannot count how many times ive been bitten. Not so easily erschroken  Xx_jagdhund_xX gute nacht kojote 

♘   ♘   ♘

There is a lot of thinking that comes with it but you want the attention and in the end there is little you wouldn’t do. 

You get ready for work and agonize over it and over what he will think and over the fact that it will wound you worse now that it has been built up on his end. So you sit with your thumb over the blue arrow until the screen goes dim and the looking-glass girl goes away.

He is a bad man. You know this. Doing this, prolonging this horrible bloodletting of your own is the worst thing you have done. But you send it anyway and put your phone on airplane mode and try to forget you did anything at all. 

♘   ♘   ♘

You are the roadkill now but you still bend and twist to see if he is looking at you.