Last Ride

At length the wheel began to move again on its downward cycle. After she had stood up and moved to sit next to Bryan, Ruby looked at Bryan, smiling. "Feeling better now?"

"There's no blood?"

"Blood? I'm not on my period..."

"No, but like... I thought if it was the first...", Bryan trailed off.

"Oh!" Ruby blinked, and then cackled briefly in an uncontrolled fit of hilarity before calming herself.

"No, no. It wasn't my first time. Um, I'm sorry. Did you actually believe that?", echoed her musical and tortuous tones into Bryan's ear.

"It's just... I'm not... well, I haven't..." came the stammering reply.

"It's okay. Really. It was fun."

Ruby beamed into the darkness, leaning back on the seat and flinging her arms out in relaxation and joy. Bryan looked at her uncomfortably and said nothing.

Just as the dawn began to break, Ruby led Bryan by the hand back to his car. On the way back to her house, Ruby switched on the radio and tuned it to a station Bryan had never heard before. A woman's voice blared powerfully from the speakers, each note slicing into Bryan's stomach like another tiny dagger. He hunched over the wheel and looked fixedly in front of him. Ruby, either unaware or unconcerned, smiled and swayed cheerfully from side to side.

As they finally reached Ruby's house once again, the sunrise cast a curious purple-red glow over its whitewashed walls. Without a word, as he pulled up in the driveway, she opened the door, stepped outside, waved, and closed it behind her. He wasted no time in completing the journey back, parking his car, and going straight to bed without so much as undressing.

Bryan's sleep that night was disturbed, despite his fatigue from the previous day. Images of Ruby haunted him and seemed to hide behind his eyelids, waiting for him to try to sleep. Her natural scent and perfume wafted into his nose, filling him with a mixture of pleasure and creeping unease. When he finally fell asleep, nightmarish images of grotesque creatures caressing his nude body haunted him, sending him close to wakefulness and shaking him with revulsion.

As he opened his eyes later that afternoon, it was with a sharp chill of panic. It was as if a knife had stabbed him in the stomach while he slept and was twisting over and over to cause havoc and destruction. When he tried to cry, tears would not come, and when he tried to scream, a lump jammed in his throat and he could barely swallow or make the tiniest squeak. He lay frozen to the spot and shuddered in pain and confusion, unable to turn over a single thought in his mind, let alone to understand what had happened. Time seemed to stand still but for the beams of sunlight sneaking in through the imperfectly closed curtain. Eventually, he found the strength to drag himself from his bed. He walked slowly out through the house, through the front door and to the kerb, and stood there, staring.

Cars flew past in both directions, oblivious to his pain, driving at speed. He knew a hit could kill but could feel his foot beginning to step onto the road, very slowly. His expression betrayed a terrible sense of loss mixed with lust and confusion from which he could not break free, under which the hopes and dreams of a lifetime of naivety were crushed like a lone flower under a landslide. The world seemed to fade in and out, pale and wan against the backdrop of his pain. Some part of him had struggled within himself like a fly in amber, then eventually slowed, withered and died, leaving only a lifeless shell, its silent reverberations of suffering and excruciating demise lost to the indifference of the shrugging shoulders of the world. When he finally stepped back from the kerb, and slowly walked back to the house, the pain slowly subsided, and a ghostly echo emerged from it to take his place.

Ruby's profile was still on display on the screen in his bedroom. He stared at the screen without typing anything for what seemed like an eternity. No words seemed adequate, but as he remembered his lust, he realised that none were necessary to describe what had happened. His pain was his own, he would bear it alone, somehow be stronger, and learn to want what little there was left to want. Still, as uncomfortable as he felt, he could not prevent himself from wanting more.

Sighing deeply, he clicked on the 'chat' button and began typing into the chat window. His initiation was complete; his broken shell would provide her with as much uncomplicated fun as she could ask for.