The Reprised Surprise Ch. 02

And they were off down the hall, domestic landmarks flashing past as she half-dragged him deeper into her aluminum warren. Victor found himself in a dim bedroom, his knees crashing into the edge of a large, unmade bed.

"Behind the door," June said and shoved him sideways into a triangular space between the bedroom door and a dresser, his feet flurrying through a litter of dirty clothing. As June pushed the door open against the dresser's face, deeper shadows found him, pooling over his eyes. "I can't shut it or he'll ask why."

"Who --" but she was gone, jogging down the hallway, her heavy footsteps punctuating the metallic hiss of her zipper's upward journey.

Victor stood in his patch of darkness, cock pressed ludicrously against his jeans, shaft throbbing with every thud of his heart. From the fog of frenzy, he had been ejected into a cold space, free-falling through the unfamiliar. He stood there alone behind the door, dust motes tickling his nose, nothing but lust and confusion to keep him company.

Muffled voices and the thud of the front door told him that June's visitor had been allowed inside the trailer with them. With him. Lighter footsteps coming down the hall pressed his back further away from the door, the top edge of the dresser biting into his back. Whether from fear or adrenaline, his cock grew even harder in his jeans. As the steps drew near the door, he tottered on the edge of orgasm.

Another door, close to him, slammed open, hard enough for him to feel its vibration in the wall against his side. June's voice: "Are you trying to knock a hole in the wall?"

A shrill voice yelling back: "I didn't mean to." Then, soft and resentful: "Not that hard." Victor heard dresser doors yanked open, the muffled sound of clothing shuffled about.

"What did you say?"

June's son, that much Victor felt safe in assuming, stopped his rummaging, paused for a second's reflection. "I said I was sorry."

"Sure you did." June's voice drew nearer, and beneath it, the rustle of paper. "This says that you can't go back without a vaccination. Why didn't you tell me about this?"

"I did."

"No, you did not." June's fingers peeked around the edge of the door Victor was trapped behind and pulled it nearly shut, reducing the acuteness of his imprisoning triangle, pouring more shadow into the room. The pink crescents of her fingers slipped from the door and he was alone again. "And why are you changing your clothes?" Her footsteps moved away from him, towards the son's bedroom. He heard the burr of carpet beneath a closing door.

Their voices, muffled now through two doors, grew indecipherable. He felt like he was listening to one of the Spanish-language stations that lurked near the top of the FM dial, where his awareness of conversation was reduced to voice tones and syllable rapidity. If his Spanish-language musings were any indication, June and her son were either discussing the World Cup or arguing.

His bet was on arguing.

The bedroom was dim, with heavy curtains on the windows and a light he didn't dare turn on. Round shapes floated in the murk, the murk itself alive with tiny fireflies that pulsed in time to the metronome of his heart. As the debate in the far room buzzed on, the fireflies grew sluggish and the shapes sharpened beat-by-beat into furniture. In cadence with that slowing metronome, his cock ticked through the adagio measures -- dipping, sagging, falling.

Over the top of the dresser, he saw a large mattress, sans headboard. At its foot, huddled a computer desk and a folding chair, bed and desk so close that June would have to shuffle between them sideways.

Though the room reeked of stale cigarette smoke and powdery deodorant, it lacked the stifling heat of the front room, and he felt his mind clearing, beat by beat. He was safe, for the moment. But what would happen next? Did she intend for him to wait for her? Or, was the closed-door parley with her son meant to signal his escape?

Escape?

To have come so far, both in miles and in emotion, only to land in a situation that merited escape -- he sagged against the dresser, shaking his head. Damned fool. He touched his fingers to his lips, the lips that had pressed against her. His tongue played over his teeth, a flaccid imitation of June's frenzied organ. The organ that now, only minutes later, flailed at her son with relentless maternal ferocity. Victor was unwilling witness to her trapped domesticity, a fly ambered in the banality of her life.

Escape.

If he could know that the door to the boy's room would stay closed, he could try to sneak out, navigate the hallway's half-remembered obstacles. But he had felt every footstep over the past ten minutes, the boy's light taps, June's heavy thuds. His own footsteps would play the loose flooring like a xylophone.

No, there would be no sneaking.

Alternatively, he imagined dashing through the trailer, blitzing through furniture and clutter like opposing linebackers. He saw himself leaping into the rental car and fumbling with its unfamiliar ignition, trying not to look at the trailer, at the surrounding park, at all the eyes turned to watch the damned fool and his boorish flight. What a grand story he would be that night, gossipy gristle chewed over a dozen dinner tables.

No, not that. God, not that.

Like it or not, he was hostage to June's timetable, tucked away and waiting. The turn of a doorknob had plunged him from frenzy to farce and left him to soak there, like a filthy pan in her dishwater. When she had time, she'd pluck him from the tepid water and put him away.

When she had the time.

A sad resentment, equal parts self-pity and self-loathing, began to glow inside of him. Although he was at her mercy, he was the one who had placed himself there. The booking of the lay-over and renting of the sedan were twin insanities to him now, foolish detours directing him inevitably to this pathetic situation. He had been lost to lust, lost to the conceit that their online dalliance somehow freed him from the dull folly of the world. And he'd been shown the fool.

Wherever he went, whomever he met, whatever he did -- it would all end in some dim room like this, buried in shadow.

He gazed at the room with new eyes, gloom-adapted. If this were all there was to be, then he would enjoy it, eke out his pleasure within its walls, while the real June prattled on, her insectile voice a mockery of velvet-throated fantasy.

As an adolescent, summer visits to a succession of aunts had painted him with a voyeuristic streak. Each time his mother and aunt-of-the-moment would indulge in the inevitable shopping trip, he would be left behind, alone in his aunt's home. There, he would busy himself with an indulgence all his own. While his aunt dallied over starched dresses and gleaming shoes, his tongue savored soiled panties fresh from her hamper, his glans burrowed into the cups of her brassiere. As his pubescent lust sharpened and reason clouded, he would dare more, slipping his naked body between the sheets of her bed, powdering himself with the sloughed residue of her body.

If he couldn't fuck June, he would fuck the next best thing.

Sliding his feet slowly forward, shuffling like a paralytic through a tangle of t-shirts and sweat pants, Victor ventured out from his assigned space between dresser and door. With silent, shallow steps, he drew up beside the bed. He imagined her lying there, slumbering flesh lending sheen and fragrance to sheet and pillow. Now, as he stood there, the violation of her trust, the penetration of her privacy, raised his fallen member, and he slipped himself from his jeans.

In the dank air of June's bedroom, the beads of pre-cum on his cock were beads of ice.

He fanned his hand over the surface of the bed, the rumpled, unmade ridges and valleys a maddening cartography beneath his moist palm. He felt the almost irresistible desire to strip off his clothing and roll in those sheets, wallow once more in youthful perversion.

June's was a queen-sized bed, and he had to lean over it to explore its breadth. Carefully, placing one hand on the bed to support himself, stroking the other slowly along his shaft, he lowered his face close to the mattress, trying to glean an essence of flesh. Other than a faint echo of fabric softener, he was disappointed. Relentless, he shuffled along the length of the bed, toward the void of the missing headboard.

He touched a pillow that had been crumpled into a ball, battered through the night by an insomniac's fists. He let his fingers play over its surface, seeing June's face against the pillow, her skin rustling along the fabric, leaving an invisible swath of perspiration and mascara. He leaned closer, the tip of his tongue slipping from his mouth, fist pumping steadily along his length.

As he shifted his free hand to balance himself, it touched another pillow, its smooth surface marred by a deep, restful dent near its center. He stopped, the tip of his tongue molecules away from knitted fabric. Straightening, tongue retreating, hand releasing, he retraced the agonizingly slow journey back to the dresser. With the buzzing of mother and son droning in his ears, he eased open the top drawer and slowly slipped his hand inside, fishing out an article of clothing, unfolding it slowly on the slab of the dresser-top, a postmortem of cloth and elastic.

His hand slipped inside the garment, fingers following an interior stitch forward, along its center length. With a twist of his wrist, his index finger, still oily with pre-cum, emerged from the flap, a pale digital mockery of June's husband's cock.

Strangers, indeed.

#

When June came back into the bedroom, ten minutes later, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, underwear and cock hidden from view. Already whispering, she shut the door quickly, flicked on the overhead light.

"I think we're ok. He didn't notice anything. The damn school nurse --"

Her words trailed to silence when saw the way that he stared at her, the enigmatic smile on his face.

"What did you tell your son?"

June studied his face, shook her head, not comprehending, but knowing that something had shifted in the room, thrown the familiar dimensions of her bedroom off-kilter.

"You couldn't shut the door, remember, because he'd ask questions." The smile on Victor's face widened, flashed white. "Asked of you, I'd assumed."

"I told him I had to change my clothes." The yellow light from the overhead globe gave her skin a sallow tint, like half-melted candle-wax. "I need to take him to the doctor's. For shots."

"Since I didn't notice a car, I'm guessing your husband is going to pick the two of you up?" he asked. "A nice family outing."

She touched the door knob with her hand, poisoned eyes narrowing.

He stood and she flinched. Flesh that he'd held in his hands shrank from him. The air between them crackled, like he was standing too close to a lightning-stricken tree.

"When I said we were strangers, I didn't know the half of it."

"What was I supposed to say," she said. "I half expected you were married. And we were just chatting, in the beginning."

"In the beginning," he said, tapping his finger thoughtfully against his lips. He smelled the brine of his cock. "But June, we didn't stay at the beginning.

"Which makes me wonder, why? So many times that you could have told me. And you must have known that I wouldn't have cared. Not so long as those IMs kept coming, those photos kept showing up in my inbox.

"So I ask myself, why?"

June cocked her head.

"Under most circumstances, you'd think I'd be mad, wouldn't you?" He smiled again, playing out the moment, relishing the confusion on her face. "But I think I understand, June. I really do. We're really more alike that you might think. All the real fun," he tapped his forehead, "happening in here."

She kept staring, fingers knuckled white around the door knob.

"How it must have excited you, to lay there at night beside him and think of what you'd just finished doing. With another man. Just a few inches past his feet. Such a wonderful, wicked little adultery. With no one the wiser but you. A private sin tucked away in your heart. All your own."

He snapped his fingers, the brittle sound making her hand jitter on the knob.

"And that's when it hit me -- why you never told me. It wasn't the act between us that got you off. After all, what was I to you? Colored pixels and anti-aliased text." The words tumbled out of his mouth, a recursive chat session self-cybering him to frenzy. "What I was to you, what I had to offer, was one more vow to break, one more bit of sin to stuff into your heart. Every imagined meeting I messaged, every future I sketched out in those meandering emails of mine, tickled that dark spot inside of you, the part of you that knew none of it would ever, could ever, happen."

June's eyes turning inward, cross-checking his words against her interior reality.

"I see you sitting there," he nodded towards the folding chair perched halfway between monitor and mattress, "getting your double fill of it. The man behind your back and the man behind the screen, both of us lapping up our little dream of June, the fantasy you spoon-fed us."

Did he imagine that a smile hinted those over-full lips?

"Quite a scheme, my dear. But, with one slight problem."

He flourished his hand at the bed and stepped aside, a carnival magician introducing the lady-sawn-in-half, restored.

On the insomniac's pillow -- the one that smelled of hair spray and cosmetics -- lay her husband's underwear, neatly folded. Across the pillow and across the underwear, joining them together, lay the thick, yellowing stream of his ejaculate.

"What happens when we all come together?"

June's breath hissed in and her hands shot out towards the filth on her pillow. With easy grace, he plucked her hands away, held them firmly in his own. The gesture swiveled them together, belly to belly, so that he was looking into her wide eyes.

"Please, I don't understand," she whispered. "Just let me go."

Like drunken dancers aboard a listing ship, he swayed them away from the bed, guided her until her thick backside thumped against the hallway door.

He leaned against her, the door creaking beneath their combined weight, so close that her short, shallow breaths panted into his face.

"Oh, I think you understand more than you let on." He shifted his balance, pulled his right leg back and up. "And I'm not about to let you go.

"Not when the real fun is about to begin."

Carefully, as though 40 yards out and going for the extra point, he kicked his leg forward and into the flimsy wooden door.