by J. Thorn
The water warmed his skin, and Frank felt the stress washing down the drain with the grime. The head of his penis bobbed back and forth, and he laughed again.
Gladys would get a kick out of this, he thought.
Before Frank could follow that up with another thought, an image appeared in his head. The scene did not register with him when it happened, but standing in the hot shower with a raging hard-on, the face of that reporter suddenly seemed like the most erotic thing he had ever seen.
He closed his eyes, and the camera in his mind zoomed to her face. She was young enough to be his daughter, which meant nothing when it came to beauty. Her blonde hair fell in waves around skin as smooth as Italian marble. She had crystal-blue eyes and a thin nose set between high cheekbones. Frank could see the dark yet tasteful eyeliner and the maroon lip gloss accentuating beautiful teeth. The mental image panned down, and Frank saw her slender hands unbuttoning her blouse from the top. A gentle wind blew through her hair.
Kelly. Kelly Swift.
The name snapped into his head.
Kelly’s hands moved down until the last button was undone and then pulled the blouse up from where it had been tucked into her skirt. Frank saw the white lace of her bra supporting firm and supple breasts.
He gasped as her hands rested on her curvy hips. She swayed back and forth, pushing the skirt to the ground and exposing a matching pair of white-lace panties. Kelly put a finger in her mouth and winked at him.
You’re not going to let that perfectly good erection go to waste, are you?
“No, ma'am,” Frank responded, feeling like an idiot as soon as he said it.
Kelly nodded and reached behind her back to unclasp her bra. Frank saw that her nipples were stiff, and she pushed her breasts together, massaging them. The bra fell to the ground. She then used her fingers to slide her panties down until they sat at her feet. She took two small steps out of them, now standing completely naked in front of Frank.
You sure you can handle a fuck like this?
Frank put a hand to his crotch, where his erection was as hard as it had been in decades. He nodded to the vision inside his head while the hot water filled the entire bathroom with an impenetrable steam.
Then let’s fuck.
Frank heard the door to the bathroom open, and shame burned his face worse than any four-alarm blaze.
“Who’s there!” he cried out. Frank waited, wondering if it really was time to hand it all over to Doug, to step aside while he still had his sanity. “Is that you, Gladys?”
He waited, his breathing heavy and his erection so sensitive that it began to ache.
The curtain slid to the side, and she was standing right there in front of him. Frank’s eyes moved from her face and down her naked body to the floor.
“Fuck me, Frank.”
Kelly stepped into the shower with him, letting the water douse her hair. She kept her mouth slightly open, spitting water back out that rolled off her breasts.
“What the fuck is going on?”
“Shut up, Frank. Let me see that cock of yours.”
Kelly squatted in front of him and placed Frank’s dick in her mouth. She grabbed his shaft with both hands. Frank sighed and reached back to grab the towel bar to keep from falling. Kelly moaned, sliding him in and out of her mouth, her face turning while sucking on his head.
Frank felt as though he was about to come and pulled back from her. “Not yet,” he whispered, afraid his opportunity would fall way short of his expectations.
“I want to feel you inside me.”
He shook his head as Kelly crawled around his ankles so that she was facing the shower knobs. She put a hand on each side of the tub and pushed her ass up in the air while looking over her right shoulder at him.
“Slide it in, Frank. All the way in.”
Frank knelt down, ignoring the pain in his knees. Kelly rocked backward, easing down on him. He felt the warm sensation and pressure on his cock and immediately began thrusting. Frank grabbed her hips and drove into her as hard as he could. Kelly flung her wet hair around with each thrust, moaning and using her fingers to massage the place of their union. The water poured over them as Frank closed his eyes.
“Oh, Frank. Don’t stop.”
He kept pushing, feeling the orgasm working its way closer. Frank knew he would not last much longer and stopped trying to hold out. He gave in to the experience, feeling like he was about to explode.
Kelly spun and took him into her mouth as he came. Frank cried out, his vision blurry as Kelly worked him dry.
“Holy shit,” Frank moaned.
When he opened his eyes, he was sitting alone in the tub, with cold water rinsing his shame down the drain.
***
Frank dressed and had to wipe the condensation from the mirror to see his own haggard face. He found no white-lace bra and no matching panties. There was nobody else in the house, and Gladys’ car was not in the driveway.
He walked to the kitchen and picked up the bottle of aspirin. Frank thought that maybe Gladys had used the pill bottle for one of her medications and he had taken a prescription by accident. He made a mental note to ask her about it. If she hadn’t, Frank thought he might have to make a trip to the head shrink, too.
His penis ached in a good way. The orgasm had cleared his head. He could not help but close his eyes, trying desperately to convince the vision of Kelly Swift to return. When he couldn’t, Frank sat down at the computer and searched her name. He was immediately greeted by dozens of pictures of the young, blonde reporter. Almost all of the shots were similar: her caught in the middle of a sensuous laugh with men stupefied by her beauty. Although he had only seen her for a moment at the fire, the pictures brought it all back. He scrolled down past the most common search results until the Kelly Swift images were those of a less desirable and less popular Kelly Swift. Frank paused, knowing that if he let his mind go down this path, it would only end in pain. Nevertheless, he continued.
The next search string he typed had the word “model” at the end. Again, another plethora of images of Kelly Swift, some of these more formal. There were what appeared to be pictures of her at a red-carpet affair, complete with an expensive dress and her hair up in a three-hundred-dollar style. He scrolled down, his eyes burning from the previous night’s fire and his lack of sleep. Like the first search, the images eventually transitioned to pictures of other women with the fairly common name of Kelly Swift.
Frank pushed the chair back from the desk. He knew the next step would be a mistake, but he was not sure it was in his control any longer. The base, animal instinct in him had to go there, while his intellect and his love for his wife told him it was the biggest mistake he would ever make. Frank stood up and ran his hands through his thinning hair. He looked out of the window and saw the last of the late-morning school buses drive by. Frank walked into the kitchen and decided to brew his own pot of coffee. He pushed Gladys’ fancy French press aside and filled his old percolator with a few scoops of Rise and Shine Budget Bean from the round tin. Frank tapped his fingers on the counter, glancing at the computer desk in the corner of the dining room. He could see her angelic face on the thumbnail image and let his impulses take over.
He sat back down and placed the cursor in the search bar. Frank backspaced “model” and added “naked” after “Kelly Swift.” He hit enter and leaned back in his chair as more thumbnail images populated the page. He saw various sets of breasts in grainy pictures taken from cheap phones in even cheaper motels. Frank scrolled through images of naked women with Kelly’s head Photoshopped on top. He scrolled down further until a single image caught his eye. The thumbnail was in portrait orientation and encapsulated her from head to foot. She appeared younger in the picture, and Frank could not be completely certain it was her, but her body proportion was right from what he could remember.
From what, exactly? he thought. I know her naked body from a daydream? A masturbation fantasy?
He ignored his own que
stion and clicked on the thumbnail to bring the image to its full size. Frank knew it was her. The picture was at least a few years old and had been taken in a bedroom.
Probably a boyfriend at the time.
Frank studied the image, but it pixelated when he attempted to zoom in further. The light was low, and she had her arms crossed in front of her chest, but she was clearly naked and about to do something sexual.
The percolator made an odd noise, and Frank knew his coffee was done. He wiped a bead of sweat from his upper lip and walked back to the kitchen to fill a mug. To his surprise, he had yet another erection. Frank laughed and shook his head.
My late thirties, maybe forties was the last time I went two rounds.
He poured the thin, watery coffee into his mug and walked back to the desk. He placed his mug down beside the mouse, leaning back in the chair and staring at the distorted image of a young, naked Kelly Swift on his screen.
“Fuck. This is fucking insane.”
Frank said it out loud, hoping to convince himself this was reality and not some dream, or that he wasn’t wired up in an intensive care ward, clinging to life.
He took a sip of the coffee, which tasted like nothing. Frank exhaled and placed his fingers back on the keyboard.
“Oh, Frank. There ain’t no undoing it once you see it. You know that, right?”
He waited, hoping that verbalizing his fears would help. It did not. He’d heard the guys at the station talking about porn, and most of them thought it was like gambling—everyone thought they had it under control, yet nobody did. His new erection made Frank forget about the moral implications of what he was about to do.
If I find it, I’m not responsible. I mean, I didn’t put it there. I’m only looking at it.
Frank’s fingers moved the mouse back up to the search bar as his last thought rationalized what he was about to do. He backspaced “naked” and added “sex scene” after “Kelly Swift.” Frank hit the enter key, and once he had done so, he wished he could undo it all.
***
Officer Peter Jones nearly spilled his coffee trying to push through the crowded hallways at University General’s East Wing. He pushed his elbow outward in order to protect the five-dollar investment in Arabica bean, which had been ground and doused with hot water, now sitting obediently in his cup. He crumpled up the receipt, no longer using a credit card to fuel the habit. His wife would have his balls if she found out. He had been working out daily and had sworn off the doughnuts. Well, almost. The pains in his chest were as much motivation as his nagging wife. Jones had only ten more years, and he intended to draw on his pension when the time came, not limp through the park feeding pigeons with a pacemaker rattling inside his chest.
“Morning, Officer.”
Officer Jones tipped his hat at the pretty, young intern and moved past the ER and toward the ICU. Although he relished first shift and not having to deal with the majority of the drug pushers and gang fights, it did mean he had to clean up the messes from the night before. Even in a sleepy community like Pine Valley, those messes could be ugly.
Peter approached the nurse’s station and removed his hat. He set the coffee down on the counter and removed a flip notebook from his back pocket, along with a pen. Jones had shaved his head ever since the first sign of male-pattern baldness showed. His widow’s peak was a bit more patient, but he would have none of it. He kept his face clean shaven as well, showing off the stony jaw and dimpled chin that had made him the heartthrob at Pine Valley High School from 1985 to 1989. The girls found his dark eyes intoxicating, especially from beneath a helmet while throwing the winning touchdown in the 1988 state-championship game. Peter thought he was keeping his body tight as well, until the chest pains gave him a scare. His father had died of a heart attack at fifty-three, and Peter was determined that the same would not happen to him.
“Morning. I’m here to file a report on the two John Does that came in from the house fire last night. I believe there were two fatalities and two survivors.”
The stodgy nurse behind the counter looked over her reading glasses at Jones and shook her head back and forth. “Gonna be tough to search the system under the name John Doe.”
Jones sighed and smiled. He didn’t mind that she was playing tough with him, but he did not feel like spending the beautiful, late-summer morning sniffing disinfectant in the intensive care unit. Jones wanted to be back out cruising on his motorcycle. The department would winterize it soon, even though Pine Valley was far enough south to ride all year long. He knew it was more of a budget issue than anything else.
“Then how about you cross-reference it with burn victims admitted last night? I’m sure that filter should knock down the possibilities a bit. How’s your sister?”
Jones had burst through the head nurse’s rough exterior, and the question brought a slight smile to her face.
“Still waiting for you to get divorced, hon.”
It didn’t happen often, but Jones could feel the flush in his face.
“5467 and 5468. Note says that they might need a guard?”
Jones shook his head, trying to remember what dispatch had said. He didn’t think there was anything in the report that would dictate a police guard, although the two had been pulled from a house explosion in an abandoned neighborhood. That usually meant drugs, prostitution, or both.
“I’ll need to verify that. Just here to complete the report this morning, and I can call it into dispatch to see if they want to send someone out. Maybe an unmarried officer, you know, for your sister.”
It was Nurse Helen’s turn to blush. She shooed him away with one hand and pointed toward the rooms. “The 5460s are to the right.”
Jones smiled and grabbed his cap and coffee. He took a final, bitter swig of the liquid, which had gone cold since he had it poured at the café. Jones tossed it into a garbage bin and walked down the hallway. His shiny, patent-leather boots clicked off the polished floor tile, reverberating off the walls. Jones had spent his share of time in hospitals and was surprised at how quiet the ICU was this morning. Either the rooms were mostly empty or folks were busy dying.
He stopped at room 5467. He turned and saw that 5468 was directly across the hall. He made a note to let dispatch know that only one officer would be needed if the John Does did in fact need a guard. A doctor in a white lab coat approached from around the corner and greeted Peter with a smile.
“Good morning, Officer.”
“Doctor.”
“The patient is still unresponsive. I’m afraid he will not be able to speak with you just yet.”
Peter grimaced and nodded while his pen fluttered across the notepad. “Can I go in anyways?”
The doctor hesitated and then shrugged. “Normally I would not let visitors in there, but they are both unconscious. If you want to go in and make observations for a few minutes, I guess that would be fine. If the alarm sounds or the monitors flare up, we will need you to exit the room immediately.”
“Of course,” replied Peter. “Thanks, Doctor.”
The man smiled and continued down the hallway toward the nurse’s station.
“Two men,” Jones said to himself. “Looking more like drugs than prostitution.” He put his hand on the latch and pushed the door open.
Officer Jones felt the warm sunshine on his face, which was unexpected. The windows faced east, and the blinds were up. The bed sat near the rear corner of the room with a myriad of monitors and cables where the headboard should have been. Tubes ran from clear bags and into the mass of flesh lying in the bed, wrapped like an Egyptian pharaoh in white-cotton bandages. Jones saw the man’s fingertips, charred and blackened, the only skin he could see. There were no personal belongings on the dresser, and no civilians had been in the room, judging by the placement of the two chairs in the opposite corner. It did not take long for the odors to remind Jones that he was in a room where people clung to life and where many lost that fight. The hospital’s cleaning crew had tried to mask the smell
of burnt flesh and human waste, but their efforts were not entirely successful. He felt the cold coffee in his stomach now slithering inside like a snake.
Jones set his cap down on the dresser, holding the notepad in one hand and the pen in the other. He looked at the man’s chart and huffed at the scribbles placed by the doctors on their rounds. He didn’t need a clipboard to tell him that the man on the bed had been severely burned and did not stand much of a chance at surviving. He inched closer, listening to the machine pumping air in and out of the man’s damaged lungs. Jones stopped, feeling his mouth go dry and his palms begin to sweat.
“What the fuck?” he asked himself, stepping away and taking a breath while looking out the window.
He had seen many horrific things in his years on the force, yet this particular one was really slithering beneath his skin. Officer Jones shook his head and attempted to regain his composure. He took a step back toward the man on the bed and stared at the bundled bandages lying there. Peter waited, observing with all of his senses in the way that became second nature for officers of the law. He held his pen, not feeling compelled to write anything down.
He felt the temperature drop in the room. Peter shoved the notepad and pen in his pocket and put both hands on the safety railing of the bed. His head began to buzz, and his chest tightened as if he had just chased down a perp on foot. Peter’s tongue dried up, and a bitter, coppery taste flooded his mouth. Breaths became shorter, and his vision began to close in at the edges. Peter felt his knees weaken and wondered if his clogged arteries had simply given up. It was the last thought he had before hitting the floor.
***
Frank didn’t have to scroll. The uppermost, left image was so visceral that it almost knocked him off his chair. He leaned back, shut the browser, and opened it back up again. He searched the phrase, fully expecting a different result, but not receiving one.
