Long hours had made the job nameless. Part timer Darla knew not to think too hard on the familiar face next in line. There was something strange about her, and it certainly wasn't her insistence on never ordering a combo meal. It wasn't the only time, after all, when someone came in for cookies and drinks rather than takeaway sandwiches - even if most of those occasions involved the homeless.
The recurring stranger hid behind her streaks of purple paint and dripping rainwater. A thick emerald scarf and wee sniffle reminded Darla to offer her a hot drink with her selection, as she was supposed to. Jesus Christ, who the fuck cares about life in this place? Her thoughts were not appropriate to the business of order and payment, but then, there was a lot of free space, even for caffeinated minds lost in the cosmos far after midnight.
'No, it's just tea that we cannot do-' her use of the professional We reminded her that coworkers lurked in the back, ready to clean toilets or smoke cigarettes when the weather relents '-the coffee machine works just fine.'
Good, she's fine with the coffee. A real person after all. She resisted going off script in trying to compensate for not having told her about the State of the Drinks one or two hours ago and forced a gruntled smile instead. A habit that came with the domain like coffee stains and stray slices of pickle. As the fugitive took her tray to the Table Six Window Sill, she realised that she had nothing to offer her anyway.
The view was no entertainment to Aria. 'It always rains here,' she muttered to herself, realising how meaningless it was to say things out loud and at the same time making sure that no one overheard her. Just for a moment, she scrutinised the pop music: always on, and always more silent than quietude. Likely Janet Jackson or somebody trying to sound like her while trying to cover a song that she once covered. But then, that was why it wasn't a real restaurant: the sort of restaurant where actual people roamed. People who wanted to be somewhere, rather than succumbing to a quick fix: nowhere else to be; nowhere to stay.
The promise of future coffee reminded her that she was no different. She would never have ordered the drink were it not freezing cold outside. Inside was little better, of course, for how else could the fantastic Subway franchise afford their establishments? It simply would not do to have comfortable customers lazing their way back and forth across the cosy carpeting and pretty flower pattern tablecloths. Next they would serve tacos and bubble gum ice cream, and Aria indeed loved bubble gum ice cream.
She dared her teeth on the Cranberry Mocha Surprise Cookiegeddon and felt reminded of her first local encounter. The helpful young man who asked her if she was lost, puzzled by the bewildered request for some school grounds in the middle of Park Street. Empty streets filled with people and just like it always did up North when it really mattered: Rain smashed the pavement and besieged any trespassers who had not remembered that the code of nature was in effect.
Though at that point she knew not where to start, her romp among the city's depressing sobriety and equally estranging inebriation helped her piece together fragments of the Before: recollections of a past life that were both her's and another's. The common threads of these worlds were all she felt she could trust as her own. So it was that she chanced upon a bookstore soon after. Just like in all legends of otherworldly travellers there were the loveable educators. Books were the only ones for Aria Blaze that would do, and she gorged herself something fierce, sure that some sort of malignant test would soon follow, for that was the creed by which she lived.
Outside two drunks leaned on each other as they crawled forward, desperate to save effort. One cluster of oats tasted of yoghurt and it nearly made her choke. She looked to her side. No one would notice if she did. The punkish girl with the black skirt with the spikes and earrings would've been an excellent Dazzling if she weren't absolutely unsuitable for whatever inscrutable reason divined it to be so. She herself would not be out of place, if only she were 'with it' on whatever front that mattered. She could get the pants. She could get the make-up: Rash, rude, rad, and whatever other R-word that spoke of not being quite so ridiculous, yet nonetheless carrying attitude that meant as least as much in the grand scheme of things. But for all that, she would never get the lifestyle.
She had started to realise why. Looking into the blackness, the red lights of the cars parked opposite merged with a reflection of the Subway's famous logo to form some sort of holy beacon. Reading books of heaven and hell in particular rationalised the world around her: She had started to assume their perspective as well as she could fathom it. How could one not believe in hell, when crack addicts independently flocked to the most lonely rooms of all? Never alone, and never together. That must surely be the human definition of hell. And then, heaven would be the place where they do it all over again, but, this time they are permitted to like it.
All the Monomyths of the world - and the works of Stephen King that somehow escaped this practical trend - were nevertheless discarded as trash in the end; bared like sugarless caffeine bludgeoning crudely in order to excuse sleepless emergence of dawn. But she had to admit that hot tea was far cheaper than a hotel, and she had not much money left in the city after all. No, she preferred the philosophies that posited a different sort of second chance. Gone were the visions of repentant villains saving babies from giants with no purpose other than to reflect the lack of innocence once mimicked by their slayers. Gone were also the damsels perpetually in distress until the magical age when married life whisked them away to a world of unicorns and rainbows. (Yes, unicorns and rainbows.) But reincarnation! she had gleamed, is much more honestly stupid. In many philosophies, the physics - if that they could be called - behind the ordeal were wholly unrelated to good- or bad behaviour. Dice were rolled to determine the result of green bean, bovine, or Nobel Prize winner, reformed assassin or pious monk turned accidental rapist at the age of eighty by some freakish Parkinson's mishap. It did not matter.
Aria tried the coffee. It was just about tepid enough to both stomach and prevent her from finishing her entertainment beverage within half a minute's time. The golden middle road. They used different coffee beans up north, she knew, but she had forgotten how or why. She willed herself into further seclusion, and tried to write poetry. But the clocks no doubt still were at an all-time crawl, and there was only one occasion in her memories of the Before that was close to creative, and it came to her as a faded, contorted memory. Planted in the previous world, its rapacious volition made her shake nervously and thawed her underwear from the cruel rain that had haunted her. Unbeknownst to her, Darla thought it quite odd that she would drape her scarf conveniently over her lap as she sipped her coffee.
The thoughts soon grew unbearable, and she craved both the fantasy that hadn't excited her yet as well as the pursuit of just about anything that was new. After all, she could not afford to leave and return again on this very night - the pizza place was already closed, unless a takeaway Margherita could be enjoyed in a glacial parking lot - so if she ever had the sordid chance to pleasure herself somehow, this was the one. Sure enough, upon counting the surplus of napkins donated alongside her order, the scheme quickly developed: Step one: Finish the coffee and thereby create an alibi to use the toilet. Two: Enter the disgusting sewer cell and be automatically ready to masturbate simply by virtue of having a modicum of privacy. Step three was the necessary getaway. Trails and evidence would be obscured and no one would suspect her a perpetrator of some vulgar crime.
The last sips of coffee were exciting ones where she allowed herself to toy with the idea of postponing her engagement, dubious of the amount of time that could conceivably be allotted her. And perhaps she would be too nervous to really enjoy it in any regard. But there was a tremendous upside that the unmistakable prospect of faecal matter afforded her: In that odour lay the perfect cover story: The Surprise Cookiegeddon could make anybody seize up and poop their very pants. So, really, fifteen minutes - how long would she need? Maybe ten! - was hardly implausible. She could barely contain herself.
Plans were set in motion. Stairs were descended. Trash was generously pushed into the bin on the way. Brilliant opportunities revealed themselves in the tiny corners of mops and forgotten desks: She had not before noticed the Invalids' Toilet. Even the door itself was bigger. A palace awaited her. She could pitch a tent in this shrine and deck it out with carpeting. And, as if it was indeed "meant to be", there was hardly a whiff or stain of urine to be found.
Locking the door, she closed her eyes, waiting for her private fantasy to materialise. The light was bright, but she was both tired and persistent, so her implacable devices were loud, urgent, and reachable. She knew it would not be long...
It was dark... but not so dark that I could not see his face. It seemed that the main hallways always stayed illuminated. Locker rooms were not a cliché to my mind yet; they were a place of the unexpected and risqué. So I could see his face, but it may as well have been masked; for it was a feature of shadow - It doesn't matter, I can feel the future touch between my legs. Warm and unexpectedly moist...
'You've been checking me out, huh?' I smiled, daring him to advance despite his fears. 'I bet you can't stop thinking about this butt that you haven't even seen yet.' His gasp was one of guilt. I knew he had only glimpsed the back of my pants, but, they were after all a tight fit. I sat on the bench and let the silence of the world around him consume his reluctance. Whoever he was, I was the one he had the most eye for. It was only a matter of time.
He approached as curious mouse to indifferent cat. No doubt he wondered is she really? and found himself unable to even answer the question, for what truly would happen in that locker room? What sort of revelations would befall that would dare him to vile fantasies for the rest of his years? I made sure my half-lidded eyes played the perfect part. He was as much under my spell as ever, yet now, he was a vessel for things altogether out of my design.
Thoughtless epiphanies, we were but sole stragglers after hours in a wet room, dark and cold. He was my bitch, and he knew it. As if lost in a dance he was reeled in dangerously close to a kiss, but my stare pushed him back. For all the space, I had no room for love or other contemporary delusions. The only desire that I magnetised now was the need to know some part of me, if but for just a moment. I loosened my belt so that I could almost squeeze both hands in. He saw but did not understand, such was his obedience. Admission he was; bared, truly; dripping with the anticipation of my foreign touch. There was no doubt he could do it himself if he even so much as saw a youthful breast or unspoilt pussy, but already I shocked him with my proximity: I grabbed hold of him and pulled him against the inside of the waistband, making him squint with sensitive pain and wonder. He gasped, winced, repeated and panted some semblance of my name.
'I bet you're gonna cum within seconds; just my hand jerking you off in my pants. Pervert.' I laughed a sardony that almost leapt out the other side as irony positive. I felt him stain my underwear with warmth and scented some ill-conceived victory within reach. I slid just the least way further out of my pants, dragging my panties down alongside. The consideration of doing something wrong wasn't just too much for me, but he too had suffered it that very instant, desperately rubbing himself against my hand; against my fabric - a pace that brought out his heartbeat; uncontrollable and fierce as a lion cub. Still he could not speak. An impulse...
...born of everything and nothing, spreading my legs as I straddled myself against my mysterious victim. A moan escaped my lips, but still, some enchantment could make it sound a frightening cry for dominance. I jerked on his cock as I both pushed against his chest and held on to it; the rhythm grinding against my asshole so that it seemed like a viper inside my pants ceaselessly closing for the kill. No teeth: Just the fleeting connection nonetheless exigent beyond all I could bear. 'Yeah, you little bitch,' I scowled, 'just making your mess like I knew you would; not even allowed to dream of a girl like me.' But I did not mean it precisely like that: it just wasn't necessary for him to feel just how gross my ass was. And as he pushed against my coaxing pace and gasped in pathetic pleasure; whining his cry of miracle disbelief; feeling him warm my backside, I felt the dream dream the dreamer; an image from some faraway place where he wasn't some toy of chemistry; between fast, thick, pressing and yearning like the hot breath of perfect night.
His heartbeat was only getting louder, matching my own by some ill magic. Another gasp followed; a guiseless plea, but already I had glided to the other side of the locker room, matching perhaps the strenuous position of holding on to a handicap toilet's braces. As I touched myself then I did not need to look at him to tease, for the beat was more than the sound of music alone, needing neither to see or be seen. I pulled up my sullied pants and pretended it wasn't gross, somehow, buckling my belt as I tried not to breathe too loudly. No one must hear me.
She came to in what felt like rebirth. Again. The banging of her heart was also the banging on the toilet door. She stopped squeezing against her clit, her legs aching from the awkward cliffhanger pose - like dangling above some devil's sickly pit.
'I've gotta fucking piss,' a young woman's voice lamented to her boyfriend as empathic as the knocks, his corresponding laugh stuck between awkward and being overcome with hilarity. Together they became incredulity.
Aria quickly slung her hands under the tap and wished for sterilisation to make her disappear within ten seconds; to just be a voice in a crowd. But conversations in toilet waiting rooms only allowed a certain sort of strangers.
She screamed in a panic part intended and part barely obscured, 'I've just had a fucking heart-attack, okay? And I can't find my fucking inhaler.' She hoisted up her panties and buttoned up her jeans. No one would even think to scrutinise her zipper. In five minutes I'd be forgotten, she assured herself as a gambler promised himself a win on the next game.
'Jesus fuck, whatever!' the girl's reply screamed. Likely she was shaking to hold it up and ready to start a sermon.
'She said she couldn't find her inhaler, all right? Geez.'
The new voice was a more sympathetic girl, but nonetheless wrought with attitude. It would take a punk to side with a punk against a punk. That guy was terribly surrounded. Aria unlocked the door, and just about remembering to flush her shame, found the door buckle under the contest of being opened from two sides, her red face ignored by her initiative of striding past the basement's alley. A vague glimpse of a troll's haircut flashed past, big nose and all. Her speed was such that damp cloth reminded her of orgasm: reluctant confidence discovered gladly; secret and rude as a trespasser on sacred soil.
The other girl was waiting for her at the stairs, and for a brief moment it had occurred to Aria that she may be some undercover cop set loose onto the world on a mission to find misshapen delinquent juveniles in order to lock them into a sex offender's database somewhere in a dingy police office. Her skirt surely met the part to go sniff her hands, but her unassuming smile did not. Expert police officers were not an option past 3AM.
'Sonata?'
The question shocked the questioner. Surely it could not be? But as the echoes of a submachine pistol-like rattle streamed across porcelain sought her attention, and an "Out of order" label marked the woman's toilet spoke of anything but fortune, her surroundings seemed like nothing but the cries of a faraway world. It is her.
And Sonata knew she knew, holding out her hand and offering the explanation only a child could understand: 'I heard your thoughts.'
As Aria followed her up the stairs, her hand held in hers, a miraculous possibility came to her. A car! But if she indeed had arrived by car, it did not matter if it desolated the planet in less than a generation's time. It could remain perfectly stationary for all that she cared. And in that hazy minute of vacating both the midnight cafeteria and her dank afterglow at least a hundred dreams came to her. Sitting on her own back seat, warm and remote as the distant traffic and whispering radio, striped socks raised in the air with an equal amount of questions to be answered. What would she say to the idea of a second life? The 108 sins of Buddha, or national independence? The integrity of shaping one's own world of sight, sound, oceans and air?
But perhaps those answers can wait, she thought as easily as the storm outside blasted through the opened doorway. Quietly Sonata directed her eyes to a crescent moon brightly making itself known despite the forecast. Aria wrapped her scarf and shivered into her jacket as rain pelleted her neck. Two drivers blared their mutual disapproval; one maroon vehicle veered halfway across the sidewalk opposite. Tightly she held Sonata's hand as if she could transmit warmth to her, whatever slimy residue clung to her confided to the harshness of winter.
The storm took to hail so that the clangour became as nothing; the stillness of her thoughts unshakable. Faintly she could still glimpse her companion's bright raincoat and icy hair, guiding her. A muffled laugh escaped Aria's lips. I wonder what she would like to talk about.
