Dəˈspikəbl

Andy and Barb are 19. Written as an entry in a 1000 word short story contest.

A work of fiction.

***

On a spring day, fourteen years ago, "Barb" gave "Andy" and herself their new names riding the Greyhound bus that took her from Racine first to Chicago, and then to? She didn't know. Nor did she care so long as it was far from Andorra, Wisconsin. She gently stroked her slightly swollen belly and the unborn life within. Her Andy had given her both their child and the copy of the play she'd just finished reading.

Andorra is known for the world-class quality of its Dəˈspikəbl. It's manufactured downtown at the Pater mill, the one with the big mural of Janus - the Roman god of metaphorical doors and gateways. He is depicted on the mill with two faces as usual. The delicious spread is distributed to discerning consumers throughout the land who spread it thick on their toast before going out into the world. Andy's father ran the Pater Dairy Cooperative, and Barb's its Dəˈspikəbl Breakfast Foods Division.

They had been close friends for years, through thirteen years of school, a dozen years of church youth group and ten years of sport camp together, each other's dates for homecoming and prom. When did Andy's father, the man who shared cake with Barb at his son's eighteenth birthday party, and hers two months later, know? From his reaction nobody saw fit to tell him. When did Barb's mom know? She obviously knew beforehand, but how much?

Something was horribly wrong, Barb thought, but not with them. Maybe it was the "old world Dəˈspikəbl." That popular product was advertised as "a completely guilt-free condiment," with no calories, additives or trans-fats. Might it have additional magical properties, allowing a man who played baseball and soccer with a child to suddenly pretend that child ceased existing one day. While remaining with the woman who lied to him for twenty years.

Maybe, she thought, after a big daube of Dəˈspikəbl on toast, the clergyman felt no constraint from his lifetime of arguing the sanctity of all life, excepting just "this one." Perhaps the policeman's pants still fit after arresting someone for trusting a notarized government document over a rumor.

Apparently only two of the four adults knew the truth until two kids in their first year of community college told their parents of their hopeful plans for the future. Their parent's reaction was totally inexplicable, their arguments flimsy. When it was decreed that everything would have to "be put on hold" because they were both going to distant colleges in the coming year, the two discussed it with one another and immediately started their family.

Barb was nineteen, but she felt like she was nine on that bus, running away from home. Except for Andy, who was in jail, everyone had a reason to kill their child. One tiny baby's birth scared them that much. But they couldn't kill what they couldn't catch. And they couldn't hold Andy without testing her, and they couldn't do that if they couldn't find her - hence the bus ticket bought with cash.

Barb looked down at the book. When a favorite english teacher heard their story, he gave Andy a copy of Max Frisch's Andorra (1961). It had been an inspired choice. In the play, Barblin grew up and fell in love with Andri, whom she had been told had been adopted. In fact, he was her half-brother. When told that she could not marry Andri - not because of the truth, but because of a falsehood that he was a Jew - the town was torn apart.

She wondered whether they would have made the same decisions had they both known the truth earlier. Growing up in a small town, they had both heard rumors, but their parents had always vehemently denied it. Time and time again, before finally confirming it out of the blue.

But you can't just order teenagers not to see one another, or try to send them to colleges thousands of miles apart. Barb's pregnancy was not an accident. After Barb's dad threatened to have Andy's birth certificate amended so they couldn't get married they drove to City Hall together.

"So we are legally married when?" Barb asked.

"When I embossed the licence," the clerk said, "your Certificate will come in the mail."

They drove to the Stumble-On-Inn, a little mom and pop place out on the highway. Enjoying their first meal as husband and wife, they fed one another dinner in between kisses. Then they hugged and walked arm and arm to the desk and showed the disinterested clerk their new license renting the King-Bed-Suite.

Andy carried her into their room and he kissed her neck and behind her earlobes. She stripped her shirt off in a second and he kissed her shoulders and her rib cage, making her pussy start to get warm. She pulled off her jeans and he got undressed even faster. He kissed her belly, her butt and her pubic hair, taking a long appreciative whiff of her most beautiful place.

He kissed her nether lips with his lips and darted his tongue into her, to taste her nectar. Kissing her again, he adjusted himself over her. Another tongue kiss and he moved inside of her. She adjusted to welcome him inside of her as he rubbed his glans around her folds getting them more excited. Well lubricated, he slid in easily pushing aside the thin barrier he found.

His thrusts were slow, deep and powerful. Intentionally making contact with all of her many submerged tight, warm, blood-filled and tingly structures. Increasing the speed and the intensity of his trusts, lifting, pulling up as he withdrew. As he plunged deeper, he rubbed and stimulated that spot where her bladder held her spongy body tight to his.

She came shooting off fireworks inside of her amygdala. He was getting close, and came hard as he pressed into her. Her spasming ring muscles clenching him sent his brain into overload. He exploded sending his essence inside of her as he watched his own private fireworks show.