Roadside

a short story

by Astor W. Heinemann

Penny and George fought often. It usually didn’t bother him much, and because it was more important to him to have peace and quiet over the satisfaction of an argument won, most of the time he just bit the bullet and admit wrongdoing, just so it would end.

Tonight, such was not the case. Penny took it new level not previously experienced by George. No woman in his past love affairs had ever insulted his manhood in such way. He blocked out what the argument was about and could only hear the piercing words Penny screamed at him. She said she had never been satisfied with their sex life. It was not that they didn’t make love often, which they did, three or four times a week. George felt that for a couple that’s been living together for over five years and were practically married, it was pretty good.

She called him humiliating names and said she rarely came, that all her moans and heavy panting had been faked for quite some time, now. Penny told him of how she would wait for him to go to sleep or was out of the house so she could pleasure herself while fantasizing about past lovers. “They were all better than you! You can’t even get me hot anymore, you disgust me!” She yelled at him.

George was no contender for this kind of fight. He was out of his league. All he could do was hang his head down in shame.

As he walked out of the apartment to the piercing tune of her insults, with a march reminiscent of a concentration camp jew walking naked into a gas chamber, they said their fuck-yous and he slammed the door behind him.

Her muffled screams still audible through the thin non-insulated sheet rock walls, amplified, it seemed, by the long hallway, reverberating violently against his eardrums. They made the wait for the elevator feel like months. Like an ancient civilization criminal tied to a post, he could not escape the painful and denigrating lashes that were these words.

Ding. The most beautiful sound he’s ever heard. “This must be what convicted felons feel like when they’re released.” He thought to himself. Doors couldn’t close quick enough after he pressed the button that had a star next to the number on it located in the control panel on the left side of the claustrophobic box. It didn’t light up, it was broken. One was never sure if the first push worked. So he did as he always did, as everybody else did, he just kept on pushing the button. His hands were shaking, and it made the machine-gun rapid fire button-pressing easier.

The streets were brighter that night. It had been raining during the day and large puddles of rainwater reflected the street lights back up doubling their luminescence. He couldn’t get it out of his head, all the things she said. She was probably still yelling at an imaginary George back at the apartment. He worried if all these things were true or just constructs designed to mortally injure an enemy in battle. Not that it made much of a difference, she said it and it hurt…bad.

Several miles and countless blocks hadn’t softened the pain. He crossed paths with strangers on the street, looked at their faces, the women, hoping for something, a smile or anything that would help calm his sorrows. None even noticed his presence.

Thoughts of revenge, payback, retaliation now wedged out the feelings of shame and disgust. But he could never physically hurt Penny. He wasn’t that kind of man, and there was nothing he could do to hurt her emotionally. Women are much more patient and smart, more powerful, than men in relationship wars.

That place with the flickering neon signs, liquor brand banners decorating the darkly tinted windows also serving the purpose of blocking the view of passer-byers so they could not sneak a peek inside, people had to pay for that. That’s where he went. A gigantic dark samoan-looking man took his $20 bill and stamped the back of his left hand while he panned his eyes through the several stages that were home that night to young women, some spinning upside down on the metal poles, others lay on their backs with their legs up in the air slowly arching apart, toes pointing up at the red, green and blue gel filtered bulbs, yet others on their hands and knees, all working hard to earn a bit more moolah than they would waitressing, or as cashiers at department stores, or as nurses, or as boring housewives.

He sat at the leftmost stage where a tall, fit, short haired brunette graced the sounds of a most appropriate tune for the occasion. I don’t want anybody else, when I think about you I touch myself. Scotch and soda was ordered, a quick glance over at the only other man sitting at there just a few chairs away before he even paid much attention to the show.

The girl was a perfect Venus goddess. He rolled his eyeballs all over her body and finally locked into her light brown eyes. He stayed there, in that zone, for all four songs. She gave him much more attention than any of the other men sitting there. By the second tune the audience at this stage had tripled. They all saw that she was the best of all the girls. She oozed of carnal pleasure, had them all in a trance with her smooth, slow moves, but as all of them focused their full attention on her naturally almost hairless pussy, pear shaped ass or small tits with large flawless pink nipples, slipping in bills to get her attention, George was dead locked on her eyes. It was like he somehow managed to extend his hand in through them and touch her soul.

As she gyrated on her knees, arms crossed down on the stage floor, head rested sideways on them. Her eyes turned towards George and she smiled at him. Lights shone off her body that was so smooth one could think she was wearing a skin tight satin bodysuit. She winked at him. Her left eye. His heart skipped a beat. He murmured “hello” while tickling the space between them with the fingertips of his left hand, his scotch and soda held on the other. They glanced into each other’s eyes and didn’t disconnect for quite a while until they were interrupted by the DJ announcing a break for the girls. “Quite the timing, chief!” George yelled at the DJ.

Some old mississippi delta blues softly played through the PA. Lyrics reminding the patrons that woman been mean to them, she done ‘em wrong. He called the waitress over and after requesting a refill, asked if she knew the name of the girl at this stage. “Yeah, that’s Misty” she replied. “Of course it is! Couldn’t have been anything else!” he said, and before he finished the sentence a graceful whisper caressed his left ear. “Hello”, her lips briefly touched his ear’s skin. He closed his eyes and embraced the feeling. The hair on the back of his neck stood up. He could have stayed like that for hours, the electricity rushing through his body, all the current directly flowing towards his cock. But it only lasted a fraction of a second.

He turned around and saw it was her. Oh, how much had he wished it was so! George invited her to sit down and shook her left hand as he said “hello, Misty”. She serenely pulled him closer and gave him a kiss, the kind where moist lips nuzzle your left cheek. He gestured for her to sit down next to him, to his left, still unable to decouple from her eyes. She didn’t even noticed he already knew her name.

They both knew it. It was not the kind of rendezvous designed to foster any sort of lasting relationship. It was about scratching an itch. One that neither of them really had before they saw each other. For Misty, it was unheard of that a customer would focus on her eyes instead of her body, and that turned her on. For George, never before had a woman like Misty been interested in him. He ordered a martini for her, still Tesla coil sparks shooting back and forth between their eyes, only visible to them.

“You were making love to me from the inside out with those eyes of yours” She said. “Was it as good for you as it was for me?” George said from in between his teeth imitating Bogart in one of his old Noir movies. They both laughed. As their conversation turned hotter they both grew increasingly excited. George was hard. Misty was wet, worried that it might show through the back of her white miniskirt when it was time to go. “Listen, what do you say? Let’s scram out for a ride?” she said as she leaned her head forward, like she was giving him the winning horse for next day’s race. George placed a few bills on the table, used one of the empty glasses as paperweight, took her by the left hand gently pulling her up. They giggled as they walked out that door, big dark samoan-looking guy shaking his head in disagreement as they soared past him before he resumed organizing the bills in like-denomination stacks.

When they got to Misty’s car she slammed him against it, face first. She petted his chest from behind, fingernails almost tearing through his skin, pushing her breasts against his back. Slowly sliding her left hand down into his pants. He turned over and held her head with both hands, stared into her eyes for a few seconds before passionately kissing her. She pulled back, “Let’s go somewhere before I explode!” she said, squeezing his behind. “There’s a motel not far about ten miles off of route twenty seven”, George remembered and they were on their way. She gave him the keys and asked him to drive.

From the moment they got into the car they could hardly keep their hands off of each other. Misty drove one of those old muscle coupes from the seventies that had a single row seat in the front and she took full advantage of it all, as she slipped closer to him and unbuttoned her blouse, rubbing her bare breasts on his cheeks. He touched her bare back and moved his hand down into the skirt, fondled with her. She moaned and wailed in pleasure, kissing George’s neck, she as wet and soft as ripe papaya. She throbbed back and forth breathing heavily and pushing her body harder against his hand, grabbed his head and pulled it to her chest and those large, hardened pink nipples.

Suddenly, he felt her pull back and yell something. He couldn’t understand exactly what it was, he was hard of hearing from his left ear and his right one was obstructed by sweaty Misty flesh. A bright light called his attention to what was in front of them. Two of them, no, four, more! Some reddish yellow dots joined the topmost outer lights. George had become so lost in the moment, all the excitement, that as his body cringed with pleasure he pushed harder on the gas pedal and drifted into the incoming lane to their left. They were going over eighty miles per hour heading straight towards an eighteen wheeler. George savagely turned the steering wheel to try and get them out of harm’s way. The car turned left and right out of control and he put all of his might into trying to regain control of over three thousand pounds of American engineering, made even worse by the high speed. Tires skidding on the pavement and leaving behind an outré pattern of dark squiggly lines. Misty shrieked in panic as the car twirled around, George’s heart pounding even faster and harder than just a few seconds before when he was about to explode in sexual pleasure.

It felt like ages before George could wrestle the old car back in control. When it finally did stop, He just hanged his head down, breathing heavily, his mouth open to allow more air flow in with a hint of spit dripping from his lower lip. His arms suspended from the steering wheel, hands clenched in such a tight grip they were turning pale from the blood circulation being cut.

“Are you alright?”, he turned around…nothing. He whipped his head to look back, but the car was stopped across the road, looking back he could only see the darkness of barley fields. He looked to his right, in the direction they were driving, more darkness. Then he looked to his left and although it was just as dark, the rear lights from the truck speeding away revealed a small lump of something right smack in the middle of the road. He rushed out of the car yelling for her. “Misty, are you alright? Misty!”.

Kneeling down, he continued to call for her, asking if she was Ok, but there was no response. Shiny thick dark liquid was flowing from the back of her head spreading on the pavement. He rushed back to the car and drove it closer so the headlights would reveal what was happening. Nothing could have prepared George for what he was about to see. She lay there, the back of her head split open, parts of her brains were visible inside, some scattered next to her head. Face bloody, abraded by the pavement, it was turned a full one hundred and eighty degrees so it was on the same plane as her back. Couldn’t even tell it was Misty, there was so much blood. Her left leg was broken, it was completely under her, covered by her torso. George gasped and stepped back, horrified.

Panicked and without knowing what to do he acted without thinking. He pushed her body out to the ditch on the left side of the road. He turned on the engine, revved it a few times before finally committing. “I’m out of here!” he muttered to himself. Away. From it all. Tires screeched and smoked, the smell of burning rubber filling the air all around, George drove west through barley fields on both sides of the road. He could see the sky turn bright reddish orange from his rear view mirror, the color, he thought was probably the same color tone as the soft skin inside Misty’s labia, which he never got to taste. He thought to himself “I’ll turn left at the next intersection”.

Ende.