Aftermath Pt. 05

The Hate Fuck

*****

The orderly who entered his room looked strangely familiar. She was small, slender, itself unusual for an orderly. She had tied her blond hair tied back in a bun, but there was something familiar about her face. She had a cautious demeanor about her, perhaps uncertain of herself.

Until her gaze connected with his.

And then it was lightning.

This was... her name was on the tip of his tongue. The woman he had almost been remembering. From college?

"Aaron. You finally did it after all."

"I did?"

"Oh, nevermind about that. That's going to be the least of your problems. They may never catch up to you for that, but I've got plenty on you now."

"You do?"

This wasn't what he was expecting.

"Sure. I was already close to figuring it all out, but you kept tricking me into dead ends with your half truths and that sneaky thing you do when you fake a lie. But when you disappeared, when you weren't around to interfere anymore? Yeah, I got you."

"I should tell you," he said, "I don't remember anything. Apparently I had a serious concussion. They say it will all come back eventually, but so far, I don't have much."

"Oh, isn't that convenient. Of course I don't believe a word of it, and it doesn't matter anyway."

Her anger was so bright. Anger, and her sense of victory, her righteous victory over her... enemy/lover, he couldn't make out any details. The emotion was too strong, too focused. Nothing for him to catch on to.

"Well, it sounds like I'm not sure I want to remember, if I was so awful."

She laughed contemptuously. "You won't get me this time, Aaron. I have evidence. I have it all laid out. And no, not here. I know who you are. All of you. I ran an ad in the paper, with your photo, and believe me, I got more than I bargained for. Aaron. And Byron. And Dillon. And Liam. And Marlon. And Orion. And Quentin."

The names sparked in him. Yes, he had used those names. Different girls. They started to flash back to him. Byron was for... black hair, Latina. Dillon was the tall, leggy musician. Liam, he liked using Liam, there had been several, most vivid a girl from Africa. Marlon, a professor! Orion, an astronomy student. So cheesy. Quentin, a nerd girl who liked to dress up as various characters. Yes, he had done that.

"Ah," he said. "Ah. When you say those names, it brings it back. I was a hell of a player, huh?"

"Oh more than that, Aaron," she barreled on, taking no note of his confession. "You were a cheater. You manipulated your professors, and where you couldn't do that you manipulated other students. You are a total fraud. You probably don't know a single thing about your own major."

"Because amnesia."

"Because you are a lying, cheating fraud. And everyone. Every single person is going to know it."

Her victory complete, she finally took a breath to see him.

He strategically left the blanket low enough to show the edges of his scars, fading now, but still impressive.

"You are going to be thrown out of school. Some of the things you did can qualify as rape did you know that? If I find the right lawyer, this will be major news. You won't be able to go to any school. You are going to be shown for the scum you are."

There was the edge, he saw it.

"Ok," he said, and closed his eyes.

"That's it? That's all you have to say?"

He didn't speak. Instead, he listened. He felt. He felt the way she was performing. She had rehearsed all of this, dozens of times. She wasn't just speaking to him, she was speaking to... her microphone. She was wearing a tiny mic. Illegal: she knew it, and so he knew it. It wasn't for evidence, it was so she could play it back if he managed to change her mind.

"How about saying you're sorry. If you are reborn as a new person, how about saying you're sorry."

He didn't see any way forward there.

"Cause you're not, are you. In fact, you are worse than all of that. Because now you killed your father, didn't you. Just like you always said you would. Only it was your family too. Sure, that was in the papers. Poor Aaron. No, I can't prove that, and I don't need to. That's on your conscience."

Ah, she didn't actually totally disapprove. She didn't like his father either.

Ah! She had good reason to not like his father.

That was another hook, a tiny one.

"Ok, I'm sorry. If you send me your evidence - a copy of your evidence - it might help me remember. When I woke up, I didn't even know my own name. My real name. And I don't know much more than that. I don't remember my father even now. You tell me I hated him, ok, maybe. That kind of rings a bell. I think I had some good reasons to hate him, although I don't remember them."

"Damn right you did."

"But all these girls?"

"Women."

"All these women? I don't know what I was trying to do. Or to prove. That's not what I want now."

"So... you admit it!"

He saw: he never had before. He had stonewalled. Denied. Influenced her, over and over. Made her doubt herself. Doubt her very sanity. Yeah, that was some awful shit. No question.

"Did I deny it before? How could I get away with that? It sounds really complicated."

He remembered: it had been really complicated. What a debacle.

"You are what they call a 'master manipulator,' Aaron. A narcissist. A sociopath. You don't care about anyone but yourself. You scheme and connive and you get what you want, even when it doesn't even make you happy. No matter the hearts broken, lives shattered. I am doing the world a service. I am doing you a service, Aaron. You need help. More than just stitches. Trust me."

His acceptance had defused her somewhat. Enough so that he could start to feel into the hooks. More were appearing now. She hated him, absolutely. She detested him. And she hated herself for having fallen for him. And she still felt the attraction. The sex had been really, really good. She was afraid she would never feel that again.

He laid a harmonizing pattern along that.

"Okay. I hear you. They are rebuilding a lot of my body. My mind is pretty much a blank slate. I don't know how it works. Not sure I can just tell my doctor, Hey, I'm a sociopath, can you fix that while you are at it? But it's going to be months before I am out on the street, and I know there is going to be a ton of psychotherapy. So, hopefully if the brain injury didn't know that bullshit out of me, some therapy will."

She hated him so much! The thread he was pulling, the desire for him to finally be telling the truth, was there, but she hated that it was there, and she clamped it down.

"More games from you. I knew it. Well, I snuck in here just to see you. See what you did to yourself, and to tell you. When you do come out of here, it's going to be one unfriendly world that you have built for yourself. You will reap the rewards you have sown, that's for sure."

She was convincing herself, talking to herself now. The opening was getting wider, and he felt a really interesting edge.

He pulled the blanket off himself entirely. He only had boxers on, so the scars were on full display, and the belly scar was still impressively ugly.

"Jesus," she said, momentarily stunned.

"You want to hurt me, I guess," Aaron said. "Come on. You can make me bleed. Rip something open. Punch me where it hurts. What would it take to feel a little better. I don't care, they'll just patch me up again. Unless you kill me, I guess, and that's not such a terrible prospect either."

"No," she said, shaking her head. Her eyes were wide.

"This is what I am now." But he was able to lace fascination into it. The shock had opened her up, like he thought it might. "I think my days of trying to be some kind of don juan are over, don't you?"

"I don't..." she stumbled.

The hatred was still flaring in her, but there was the desire too. It was still there. The part of her that couldn't just walk away still wanted him.

He reached and took her wrist. Her nostrils flared; her eyes widened.

He placed her hand on the scar across his belly.

"They told me my guts were all over the car. It's a miracle I can eat."

But more importantly, she felt the life in his body. The contact stirred something terrible in her, that churning vat of hatred and fiery lust.

Aaron could feel the pattern, where it was uneven, where it was ragged, the edges that needed to pulled, the weight that needed to be nudged. He put it all into his voice, he reached into her with this other way of seeing her, and moved it.

"I don't know how it all went wrong." He really, really wanted to use her name, there, it would have been the perfect landing, but for the life of him, he couldn't remember that. It was right there, where he couldn't reach it.

It didn't matter. She was his again.

"You disgusting piece of shit," she said. The venom was real, but she was already shrugging out of the hospital gear.

Yep, the little blond was going to hate fuck him. And he... he was going to get that mic off the back of her pants. Among other things.

She pulled the blanket off him completely and yanked his boxers down to his knees.

She felt along that low scar. "Damn, something just missed solving all our problems, didn't it."

He hadn't thought about it that way.

He was hard. He didn't know when or how that had happened. He had been so focused on getting into her head, he hadn't even known the rest of him was ready to get into her body.

She spat on her hands and lubed the head of his cock.

"You're such garbage," she said, as she climbed onto the bed and began to rub the fur of her pussy over him. It was a little rough. It stirred some memories. She had always liked being on top, and he had not. He liked to be in charge.

She put one slender hand on his throat, and squeezed.

He had liked to do that with her. He had thought it turned her on. He felt the complicated interference pattern in her now. The reversal. It had turned her on then, and this reversal turned her on now. She squeezed very hard. Too hard. He could feel a darkness rising through him. Blood to the brain.

He pulled her hand off.

"Don't kill me," he said. "It will make things too complicated for you."

She laughed, and slid herself down on him.

For a thin, small woman, she took him easily. She was very wet.

She rode him, and not gently.

She was crying.

"You could have been such a good man," she said, fucking him with grief, and with anger, and with hatred.

"You have such gifts, and you waste everything. You throw it all away. On what?"

On you, he thought. He didn't say that though. He let her ride.

He could feel her pleasure, the satisfaction of being filled. He felt the way she undulated on him, swirling him inside her. All of that like a dissonant bass note to her rage, and the dissonance was perfect.

He kept his gaze on her, their eyes lasering into each other as she moved.

"I always wanted to believe it was your father."

Whom she also hated. Maybe he hated, too. It seemed like it, although he couldn't find any feeling in himself.

"But I think... you're just... broken. There's... something... wrong... with you."

She spoke in grunts and gasps.

Her hips slammed down on him. They made wet sounds together, as she cursed him.

He didn't think he was going to cum. He wasn't sure if she would, but he felt it was necessary. She needed the release. She was not going to let him off easy, but if she could cum, if her body betrayed her rage, she would be confused. It would buy him time. He sought for that thread, but she kept talking, working that rage higher, distracting herself.

"You can't... help yourself... can you? You just need... to prove it... over and over..."

Nothing.

"You're weak... Aaron... You want people... to love you..."

Nothing.

"You don't know... what love... is."

There! Something, love.

"I loved you."

She said it. It was true. It was true as anything else.

"I loved... what I thought... you were... who..."

Their bodies slapped. Her hand returned to his throat. He could track it now, boost it, all the way up.

"Oh Jesus... I wasn't..."

It erupted from her, and through. It caught them both off guard. Her sudden white-hot climax hit him too, and he loosed himself inside her, which gave her a second jolt.

She softened down, looking at him.

He feigned confusion. "I don't know what's happening," he said. He loved the artfulness of it. It sowed that seed of doubt in her. He felt it land. Felt it plant. Felt it instantly spread roots.

"Ho. Ly. Fuck. What's this?"

The redhead, Jenny, stood at the edge of the hospital room. Her blue eyes were blazing wide, her hair wild as if it had been electrified by what she saw.

The blond looked up.

"Oh, sorry. Just visiting my boyfriend." She quickly corrected. "Ex-boyfriend."

Jenny looked stunned, like they had both punched her hard, in the gut.

"Hah," said the blond. "I know that expression."

The seed was gone. Burnt to a crisp and gone in dust.

"Amnesia my ass. You already started working your bullshit, didn't you Aaron."

She threw on her clothes. Pulled a card out of her back pocket. "Here honey, call me if you want to learn more about loverboy."

Smoking with her revenge-thirst rekindled, she swept out of the room.

Jenny saw Aaron looking for words. She held up her hand. "Don't," she said.

She left.

"Well, fuck," Aaron said to himself, pulling the sheets up over his wet and sticky belly.

"At least I got that bloody mic," he added to himself, but grimacing as he realized she wouldn't need the confirmation now. The story he was laying on her pretty much depended on the plausibility of real change. Lost opportunity.

He remembered how good his ex had felt on him just now.

"If only I could remember her damned name!"

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