Catharsis

Everything's fine.

Famous last words that rang of déjà vu.

The worst rollercoaster of my life, no rails or safety checks--not even a hand to hold. Eventually the friction became too much and everything burst into flame while tumbling downwards faster than a speeding bullet. I shouldn't have been the only one with a fighting chance to breathe in the acrid smell of molten metal and sweat a few moments longer as the fire dome disintegrated--exoskeleton shed, leaving only the raw middle of the escape pod. Even under the layers of the spacesuit and flannel, I could feel every thick black hair on my body from my legs to my back prick up in the fear of those that find they are mortal.

The throttle dug into my palm. The parachutes deployed. And against all odds, a splash echoed against the leaded walls, lapping against the buoyant pod with the promise of life. But water?

The g-force left me dizzy, legs like jelly. With a grunt, I unlatched the hatch door and stepped into the light.

Green flooded my vision. All around were trees reaching outwards and upwards from a deep forest. Some were twisted together like they were fighting for dominance to tower above the rest. A light fog hovered over the rippling lake that I'd crash-landed in.

I counted two suns in the sky as I unsuited down to my flannel and work jeans. If the air or the water was going to kill me, might as well get it over with.

Wind teased through the curls of my beard like a set of sensual fingers as I clambered over the opening, and the cold shock of water--real water--saturated my clothes as my arms cut through the murky lake and brought me to shore.

I undid my belt buckle and stripped off my drenched clothes and ran my hands over the roughness of my face, over the two faded scars under my pecs, over the slight pudge of my stomach; trying to pinch myself awake. Every muscle and sinew under my skin felt as solid as it had back on the freighter before the impact.

Earth-like but alien--what the leaders taking refuge on Mars wouldn't do for a new colony. But that shit was above my pay grade.

More importantly, "I, Ravi Gupta, have survived."

Disbelief whistled through my teeth as I announced it. I let the weight of the words settle in my stomach before they rose up and transformed into ecstasy, weaving between the angles of my flesh. Everything became vibrant: the martian mud, smoother than silk, oozing between my toes, the chill scraping at dark, hardened nipples, and life throbbing in my dick. Warmth pulsed as I ran my finger over the shaft.

I recalled when my cock once hid in the shy embrace of my sex before expanding into the proud stalk of now, sprouted forth like the flower of my manhood. Small but mine. I couldn't remember the last time it filled with such yearning stiffness. Not for a decade at least. Not since Apollo and his whiskey breath on the dusty plains of Earth.

Pine-perfumed air filled my lungs as blood rushed between my loins. Sitting on the bank, filled with the urge I'd lacked for so long, I stroked until I came. My cock jumped in my hand. A bang, then relief, then the weight of orgasm. The weight of everything.

Everything's fine. Last words for some. I still couldn't accept all the crew were gone like that, disappeared into the vacuum of space in a puff of smoke. Cas had three kids back on Mars. Shang had just gotten married. The radar blipped for a split second. If only I had paid more attention, then I wouldn't have nine more people's lives on my hands.

I punched the ground until my knuckles stung, cock limp while every avoidable death played through my mind like a sick movie until my mind went numb.

The first night, I slept on the shore, hoping the elements would take me.

The second day, I foraged for food to eat. The berries were bittersweet. I made a rudimentary shelter from twigs and leaves.

The third day, loneliness hit. I wished for drink to swallow the burn of hopelessness and guilt down my throat. I swam back to the escape pod to salvage the radio. No signal but it worked. Other than foliage, there appeared to be no other life on this planet.

I took to gazing at my belt buckle. A Texas longhorn decorated the tarnished silver. Same one as Apollo's. My mind drifted to the first time I saw that silver glint in the harsh sun long ago on an Earth that had shriveled into an inhospitable desert. I'd stayed behind so my parents could afford the ticket out of that hellhole.

I had slammed the brakes, rubber tires screeching to a halt on the highway. His thumb was raised, chiseled face shaded by the brim of his cowboy hat. Only the fringes on his leather jacket danced in the hot southern wind. Not a cloud in the endless blue sky. Not a cloud for months. Not a cloud for years.

Square-toed cowboy boots kicked up dust as he hoisted himself into the passenger side of the water tanker.

"Got room for one more?"

His voice was low and husky with an undercurrent of honey. My heart skipped a beat. Apprehension flickered behind my eyes as I scanned him for a holster, but mostly my gaze kept getting drawn to his sandy hair and stubble over tanned, taught skin. He caught me looking.

"Don't worry, I keep all my guns here." He grabbed his crotch over his belt buckle and smirked, "Don't pull anything funny on me, and I won't pull anything funny on you."

His name was Apollo. Said he was the last cowboy on Earth. I didn't doubt it. Most survivors had evacuated. He wrangled my heart and next thing I knew, we were making out in an abandoned truck stop. The whiskey loosened me up. Our lips fought for dominance as his hardness pressed against my leg.

The heady scent of his balls filled my mouth and went straight to my cock. My whole body flooded with need. Strong, muscular fingers dug into the back of my scalp as I licked my way up his shaft and teased the head of his cock with my tongue. Took him as far as I could. Sucked until I gagged. Sucked until spit and precum dribbled over my beard. Before I could milk him dry, he tugged me to my feet. It was raw. Passionate.

Ripped my shirt open like a coyote tearing apart its meal and traced my nipples and my scars with tenderness like he was mapping my body top to bottom. His copper-dusted skin glowed over the deep brown of my torso.

"I want to suck you."

That sweet desert honey. Made me groan and buck as his stubble ran through my pubic hair and searched out my cock until my eyes rolled to the back of my head with his expert suction.

We shared each other's musk and alcohol and cum. When the world's about to end, you don't care about risk. I wanted to taste him on my lips forever.

The solar panels on my tanker took us far. Ended in the rolling hills of Iowa. The glacial-carved landscape now resembled the Sahara. We hit the jackpot with a barn filled with canned food for years. It should have been my happy ending. Our happy ending.

I shook my head. Alas, things never went as planned. When he left, so did the electricity that made life worth it--enough voltage to forget the wildfires consuming more every month.

The day the Earth ended, he looked me in the eye with a wrinkle in his brow and said, "Everything's gonna be fine."

It wasn't fine. Managed to get the last ship out of dodge and watch the world burn. And that devil, he burned with it. I should have done more to convince him to leave with me, but his soul was that of a lone wolf on the plain. He stayed with his territory until the very end.

In a sense, being trapped on an unknown planet as the sole living being felt like karmic punishment. I was never religious, but sometimes I wondered if Shiva just got tired of the endless greed and suffering and danced the universe away, and it was just a matter of time for the rest of us.

The number of double sunsets merged into one long, never-ending day. My hair grew past my shoulders in wavy locks. And I began to see the shadow.

For a moment I thought it was a person. It had the same confident stance of Apollo, feet pointed slightly outward, but I couldn't get close enough to confirm it. I left my encampment on the shore and ventured into the verdant forest. I could have been hallucinating. Some days I sat and stared at my reflection in the lake and nothing more. Others, I sent out an SOS but never got a response. I had started talking to my socks like they were my friends, my therapists, my long-lost lovers.

But the shadow kept appearing and coaxed me deeper into the dark patches of the forest. Dampness clung to everything like a wet blanket and the further I traversed, the more cloying the air. A familiar tang mixed with the forest scents, something of a long gone memory.

Eventually, I caught up to the shadow. It was sitting on the steps of some ruins. I hadn't seen architecture in so long, it took a while to process the crumbled bricks and toppled pillars poking through a mass of vines.

"Apollo?"

The shadow didn't try to run when I approached. The outline looked just like him as my hand pierced through the apparition like a ghost and dissolved back into nothingness.

All of my pent-up emotion tumbled over the edge. I dropped to my knees and cried. Ugly cried.

A hand rested on my shoulder. At least, I thought it was a hand. It had been so long, my body involuntarily jerked away from the touch. But it was just some of the vines. I brushed them off and tried to regain control of my breathing. But the more I calmed down, the more the vines seemed to gather closer and closer. Some brushed over my face; others my arms and back like they wanted to lead me somewhere. And when you're stranded on a planet in the middle of nowhere for long enough, you don't care about sentient plants or even what's real anymore. So, I followed the direction of their gentle caresses. Their leaves were rough yet smooth as they gently pushed me into a clearing.

Next thing I knew, I found myself staring at what I could only describe as the mother plant. And boy, was she a giant. Red hairs with dewdrops that smelled like sugar candy lined a tapered cone of green like a ladder to a fibrous champagne flute-shaped flower.

I took one last look behind me to see the vine leaves fluttering like the audience of an amphitheater. It seemed natural to approach her and climb up to the lip of her entrance, inhale her intoxicating scent and slide all the way down to her center. Muted light filtered through the walls as my feet landed on spongey padding. Juices started to leak from glands lining her inner-walls and coated me with something slick and gooey. I tried to escape, but it was too slippery. I was trapped. The goo stuck to my worn-out undershirt and jeans. A drop landed on my belt buckle and eroded the engraving of the longhorn away.

"Shit."

I won't lie, I spent a lot of days on this planet hoping to die, but death by digestive goo was never in the depressive episode game plan. The metal melted, absorbed into the walls of the plant which had constricted significantly since it swallowed me whole. For some reason, the digestive gel only attacked the metal like the buttons on my jeans. Feeling safe from being a meal at least, I allowed myself to relax in the tight embrace, almost womb-like as more juices coated me. A filament twirled down from the entrance and gripped the top of my head.

The walls began to ripple. Figments of people and places started to flash before my eyes. The crew waving and smiling, that bad rebound dude I hooked up with when I got to Mars, my parents cozy in their apartment, and finally...

"Apollo."

It was a squeeze, but I reached my hand out to touch the wall that had taken on the shape of the man that I needed most. The filament on my head wrapped itself tighter as I felt a familiar hardness against my leg, and I lost myself in the embrace. He didn't talk, but he touched me good enough. I had been a switch, but when I felt his teeth trace the curve of my Adam's apple, I surrendered. The translucent slime seeped into every crevice and lubed up my back hole. With a few low groans he was inside reopening pathways that connected my asshole to my dick.

Each thrust from plant-Apollo drove me further into wild ecstasy. Hands and mouths pawed and bit and licked. The pleasure built until my muscles clenched his raw cock hard and I came. Apollo gripped my hips as he drove further, deeper, fucking me through my orgasm until I felt him pulse and unleash his load deep inside me and collapse in my arms.

The appendage around my head loosened; the shapes on the wall slowly went out of focus. A rumble like a small earthquake spat me back out into the clearing.

I felt refreshed. I wandered back to the shore.

The radio beeped.

"Hey, are you lookin' for a ride out of there?"

For the first time in a long time, I smiled and picked up the receiver.

"Got room for one more?"