Toxic Love

by Kristopher Triana

  There has to be a way to give her what she wants.

  Maybe I could work out some kind of deal with Ryker, pay him to let Sage and me have forty minutes alone at crime scenes before he sent people in to clean it up. Even my beer-addled mind knew this was a really stupid idea. Even if Ryker would put aside human decency, I’d have to give him enough money to make it worthwhile for him to risk a contract—or even being locked up. I didn’t have that kind of money, and after my final check I wouldn’t have any money coming in at all.

  Maybe I could get another crime scene cleanup job. That was certainly possible, but it would involve relocation. My former employer covered most of Connecticut, and parts of New York and Massachusetts. There were no other cleanup companies in the area. Would Sage be willing to move with me? Could I afford another move right now? All this went through my mind before I even thought about the effect my leaving would have on Carmen and Fay, and when I realized that oversight it made me sick with myself.

  My beer was empty. I leaned over the edge of the tub and put the bottle on the floor near the others. The empty whisky glass sat beside them, a caramel ring still wet on the bottom. I raised it to my lips and sucked down the drops. The glass felt good in my hand—firm, cool. Gazing into it, the curve at the bottom distorted the image of my fingers, and I thought about Sage’s ex-boyfriend, Ken the cutter. I sat up, turning the glass in my hand, and cracked it down on the outer wall of the tub. Shards of glass scattered across the tile. Careful not to knick my fingers, I deftly picked up a piece the size and shape of a Dorito but poked myself anyway.

  “Ah, shit.”

  I put the punctured finger in my mouth and sucked the blood. A spec of glass ground against my teeth and I spit it into the air. I held up the shard in my hand, swaying with inebriation. My eyes struggled to focus, and I decided it wasn’t the best time to see if I could handle what I was considering.

  ***

  “Why do you keep calling me?”

  She’d finally picked up. Three goddamned days of unanswered texts and voice messages, not to mention all the times I’d called and hung up when she sent me right to voicemail. I’d finally gotten through to her, finally worn her down.

  “Hey, Sage. It’s me, Mike.”

  “Yeah, no fucking shit it’s you, Mike. You’ve been calling me non-stop. What the Christ is your problem?”

  “No problem, I just need to talk for a minute.”

  “Yeah, well, like I said the other night, what the hell is there to talk about?”

  I ran my hand over my grayed head. “Look, it’s important.”

  “It damned well better be.”

  “I’ve been trying to get a hold of you since—”

  “I know you have, Mike, now tell me what the fuck you’re bothering me for.”

  My mouth was too dry to swallow the lump in my throat. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be a bother. It’s just that, well, I just can’t stand the way things ended. We were having such a good time.”

  Her sigh crackled on the line, her tone becoming sympathetic. “It was a great time. I wish it hadn’t ended too. But it did. There’s nothing we can do about that.”

  I paused, hoping it would add an element of suspense on her end. “What if there was?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What if there was something we could do about it? I mean, just because we hit a snag in our relationship—”

  “Excuse me? Our what?”

  Gulp.

  “Err, our friendship, I mean our friendship. Or whatever you want to call it. Just because we hit a snag doesn’t mean we have to drop everything and give it all up. I’m a lot of rotten things, but I’m no quitter.”

  More cinematic silence hung on the line—a faint, static hum. My lip stung as it grazed the receiver. I had chewed it raw.

  “Alright,” she said. “What do you propose we do?”

  My back straightened in victory, a smile big as a watermelon rind contorting my face. I’d sparked her interest. I could hear the intrigue in her voice. She wasn’t just humoring me; there was a real spark of curiosity there. It was buried deep, disguised, but there nonetheless. This was the morsel of hope that would keep this hungry man from starving. I had an urge to make this moment of possibility linger, to stretch it into an infinite figure eight where I could forever dream that things wouldn’t fall apart again. Possibility was often more comforting than actual achievement. But Sage wouldn’t wait long. I had to say something, and it damned well better be good because, if it wasn’t, my phone number was bound to get on her blocked list. The fact that she hadn’t blocked it yet, despite my pestering, gave me a nugget of confidence. It meant she didn’t want this to end either; she was just handling the disappointment in a different way than I was, playing it tough to mask the hurt inside, that terrible yearning for something special that had recently been torn away. At least that’s what I hoped it meant. Sage had wounds of her own. I was ready to lick them for her.

  “Come to my place tonight. I have a surprise for you.”

  “No, Mike, just tell me—”

  “Uh-uh. I said it’s a surprise.”

  I was pushing my luck but saw no other way to go about this. Simply telling her would fall flat. It wouldn’t make the necessary impact. Sage was a very visual person, a sexual disposition more common to men. Something words might make small would be much larger before her very eyes. If I could get her to see, smell, and taste what I had to offer, she would be drawn in by it despite how poorly it compared to the bloody extravagance we’d been enjoying. What I had wasn’t much, but it was something. She would see that, and she would want it, especially after three whole days of going cold turkey. Besides, it would prove my dedication. It would assure her of just how far I was willing to go to satisfy her needs, which would soon turn out to be further than either of us could have imagined.

  “My place,” I said. “One hour?”

  She was silent. It took all I had to keep my mouth shut and wait.

  “One hour,” she finally said. “And the surprise better be more than just your dick wrapped in a pretty blue ribbon.”

  I laughed at her joke but it didn’t matter. She’d already hung up.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I waited at the window, trying to psyche myself up while I watched for her arrival. My apartment faced the parking lot. Even if she parked outside of view, I’d be able to see her walking toward the building. I couldn’t just sit in my chair and wait for her. I had to time everything just right. It had to be fresh when she walked in the door.

  Her BMW pulled into the lot just as dusk was settling in. It had been another gray, wintry day so it was hard to even tell the difference. The headlights snapped off and I gazed at her longingly through the crack in the blinds. She wore a long coat and knee-high leather boots, her fuck me boots. Her hair was down around her shoulders, some of it pinned to her neck by a scarf, and she walked with her face toward the concrete, hands tucked deep into her pockets. It was incredibly cold for this time of year and the halls of the complex created vicious wind tunnels that liked to blow the flesh right off your cheeks.

  I went to the center of the living room and faced the front door. When I heard footfalls on the steps, I took a deep breath, sent the razor into the center of my chest, and sliced my way down to my navel. I’d sterilized with alcohol and the razor was a brand-new shaving blade, sharp and thin. It stung like a bitch but I told myself it would be worth it. Despite the pain, my chemically enhanced cock was a ripe banana, the head jutting up past the brim of my underwear.

  There was a knock at the door. Blood was pouring.

  “Come in.”

  The door came open, a blast of cold wind making my scrotum tighten. When Sage saw me, a wondrous glow blossomed in her pupils. Her smile was wide and open, her face like that of a little girl jumping on a trampoline for the first time. I could almost see the child she’d been before she’d developed into the buxom piece of man-candy she was today. Her happiness was everythi
ng. She stood there admiring me, admiring what I’d done. Blood dribbled down to my crotch, soaking the bulge in my briefs, the only article of clothing I had on.

  I resisted the urge to ask her what she thought. It would come off as insecure, emasculating. A real turn off. I waited for her to make the first move. It wasn’t a long wait. Sage lunged at me, flinging her scarf across the room, ripping her coat open, the chrome buttons popping like firecrackers. Her sweater was off in seconds, chest pressed against mine, my blood soaking through the white lace of her bra. I felt her nipples harden into diamonds. My hands tore at her jeans, popping them open, unzipping them, fingers searching for the hot opening of her cunt. She was already wet so I shoved my middle finger inside her, curling and uncurling it the way Rachel had always liked, and Sage bucked against my hand, humping my wrist. She bit my sore lip, drawing a few drops. She began to shudder. Backing off of my hand, Sage bent down, jeans taught at her knees, and swallowed my erection in one hungry gulp, her bottom lip reaching my balls. She rolled her tongue along my shaft like a bed sheet fluttering on a clothesline, and I grabbed her head with both hands and thrust my pelvis as Sage ran her hands up and down my stomach, smearing the blood with her palms and forearms.

  I felt an early orgasm coming on so I stepped away from her, my boner coming free from her throat with a wet pop, leaving a strand of drool lingering between her lips and the head of my dick, mixing with the pre-cum. I tried to think about baseball as Sage sat down on the coffee table and removed her boots, jeans, and moistened panties. Then she lied back on the table and guided me on top of her in missionary position, causing my fresh wound to dribble over her nakedness. I entered her, taking it slow at first, but Sage wasn’t interested in such consideration. She cupped my buttocks and pushed me into her, bucking again, trying to pull me as deep into her as possible, as if she could vacuum up the rest of my body. She rocked me in and out with fury, giving me a rabid dog fuck. Her face rubbed into my chest, slathering her in the salty merlot of my abrasion, and when her tongue entered the cut she groaned with delight. I pulled out as I climaxed and Sage jerked me off, shooting herself with my spunk from vulva to forehead.

  ***

  My junior high school girlfriend wouldn’t go all the way, so we sixty-nined a lot. We learned oral sex through trial and error, both of us being totally inexperienced at age fifteen. We told each other what felt good, saying, “lower”, “faster,” and “right there” as the other performed experimentally. The first time I came in her mouth, she gagged on it and it spilled out of her nose in white snot. The first time I sucked on her clitoris—not even knowing where or what it even was—she screamed so loud I jolted up from the bed, afraid I’d hurt her.

  Over the years I got better at cunnilingus and had found that every woman had her own preferences. Clitoris aside, no two G-spots were the same. Blowjobs always seemed like they would be easier to master, though more uncomfortable to do. There are certain techniques that will work on every guy, straight or gay—rolling the tongue on the bottom of the shaft; stroking with one hand while sucking on the head; taking the whole thing into the throat. With women, every vagina is a new Rubik’s cube that has already been scrambled. In my experience, what worked like gangbusters with one woman did little for the next. Some wanted you to flick at the clitoris while others wanted your tongue to twirl inside them as far as it would go. Some wanted you to finger them while you were at it while others just wanted gentle laps at their labia.

  Sage wanted me to wear her pussy like a surgeon’s mask.

  She wrapped her legs around my head, driving my mouth and nose into her glistening sex and my chin between her buttocks so my stubble could scratch the beige asterisk of her rectum. We were on the floor of my kitchen to keep the blood from staining the carpet the way it had the day I’d first cut myself for her. After a week and a half of opening my skin before we fornicated, I was more cautious when it came to potential messes. I’d bought rubber sheets, the kind parents used when their little brats couldn’t stop pissing the bed. I kept wet wipes, bandages and washcloths in every room, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol on my nightstand next to the cotton balls and Neosporin. Long, straight scabs covered my chest, thighs and arms. There was a tiny, round bandage on my right earlobe.

  I had taken to cutting myself with surprising ease, particularly for someone who had never been into self-mutilation. I had never even gotten tattoos or piercings. Altering my flesh was alien to me, but I found it wasn’t as unpleasant as I had expected. And I was happy to do it because it gave me my Sage back.

  She pushed harder into my face, straining my neck. Painful heat coiled around my vertebrae. Using my hair as handles, she fucked my mouth, quaking like a beached fish and drenching my face in warm vaginal fluid. As she came, she ran her palms over the bleeding slices I’d let her make across my shoulder blades. It was the first time she’d cut me instead of me cutting myself, and while she’d cut me with the same care it hurt more because I had not been the one controlling the blade.

  After we cleaned up, we lay on the twin bed; Sage snuggled up against me while gently running her finger over the Band-Aids on my nipples. Below us, a towel absorbed what little seeped through the gauze pads on my back.

  “I’m sorry,” Sage said, taking me by surprise.

  “You don’t have to be sorry. I wanted you to do it.”

  “No, not that. I mean I’m sorry I ever doubted you. I just thought it was over once Ryker caught us. I didn’t know what you were willing to do for me.” She kissed my cheek. “I’m so lucky.”

  This sudden affection from the woman I’d become obsessed with made my heart palpitate. I’d become much more to her than a human vibrator to be used whenever the red stuff was available. She’d actually grown to care for me. It was not just in her words. It was in the way she stroked my scabs, like a mother patting her son to sleep when he wasn’t feeling good. While our sex remained ferocious, there was now a tenderness to our time together, compassion inserted between each skull-pounding, demonic fuck.

  “I’m the lucky one,” I said. “You make me feel like a million bucks, even though any kid with a piggy bank has more cash than I do right now.”

  She rose up on one elbow. “I told you there’s no reason for you to worry about money. You just keep giving me what I need, and I’ll make sure you have everything you need.”

  Sage came from a rich family and had never wanted for anything. Her great grandfather had made many lucrative real estate investments, and his son went on to successfully follow in his footsteps, as did every male descendant from that point on. According to Sage, her family’s net worth was in the area of a half a billion dollars. She and her siblings were well taken care of. The only person she’d said was cut out of the family fortune was her cousin Lester, an ex-con who was a known coke dealer and occasional pimp, who had tried to blackmail his own father using hidden video of him fucking one of Lester’s prostitutes. With the exception of this black sheep, the Jaworzyns had plenty of cash to go around.

  On the end table was a check Sage had made out to my landlord. I was too broke to be proud. If Sage wanted to pay my rent, I could either accept her generous offer or be out on the street. I still had access to Rachel’s and my savings account, but that money had always been for the kids. It went toward braces, summer camps, and computer upgrades. As a bank manager, Rachel had always made more money than me. She was able to pay the mortgage and keep the lights on without my help, but I doubted she was going to offer me any assistance when I was no longer financially capable of contributing to our children’s expenses. I dreaded the discussion I knew was coming when my bi-weekly check to her was past due. Even if I didn’t tell her why I was fired, I loathed the idea of confessing my termination from my second job in less than a year. Sage may have been willing to be my sugar mama, but I needed some sort of income to funnel back to Rachel and the kids, and sending them money I got from my younger mistress was a level of pathetic I didn’t want to descend to. I had to
get work. Christmas was coming. The least I could do was give my girls material goods to try and fill the crater left by the atomic bomb blast of their parents’ separation. I needed to see them. It had been too long. Thanksgiving had come and gone—I’d spent it alone, eating alphabet soup and graham crackers, getting drunk on Narragansett while watching the Redskins slaughter my Giants forty to seventeen—and all I’d gotten was a half hour phone call to split between my two children.

  My oldest, Carmen, had given me curt, one-word answers to every question I asked, a cold shoulder that seemed more frozen every time we spoke.

  “How’s school?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s drama class going? You still enjoy acting?”

  “Yes.”

  “What play are you guys working on?”

  “Hamlet.”

  “Are you playing Ophelia?”

  “No.”

  “His mother then?”

  “Gertrude.”

  ‘That’s the mother, right?”

  An annoyed sigh. “Yeah.”

  There was a valley girl taint to the way she said that, making it sound like “duh”. I wrapped things up with Carmen by telling her I loved her. “Okay,” was all I got in return. My heart sank, an anchor no longer even attached to the ship but left behind in the bottom of a cold, dark sea.

  My youngest, Fay, sounded distant, a ghost of a girl in a well.

  “Hi, Daddy.”

  “Hey, pumpkin. How’s my girl?”

  “I’m okay.” But she didn’t sound like it. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Yeah, you too, baby.”