Page 11 of Strangled
My skin crawls, nausea swirling in the pit of my stomach as they block my view of my stranger.
I lean back, resting my head against a beam, forcing my breathing to slow. Something tickles at the back of my neck, and I turn slightly, raising my hand to the horizontal beam. My friend crawls along the back of my hand, each leg moving with ease over my gnarled flesh.
I twist my hand, allowing the arachnid to travel in any direction it so chooses. Watching it move comfortably, despite the disgusting surface it crawls on, soothes something unsettled inside of me.
I’ve always felt akin to spiders. They make homes in the most decrepit of places, single-mindedly surviving, their only purpose in their short life. But what is even more fascinating is their silk. The structure, the chemistry of each individual web, is immeasurable, and one of the many things I envy about them.
As my friend finds a place near my half-missing ear, I shuffle along, finding a new angle so I can get my eyes back on my stranger.
I’m forced to stay directly behind a machine exuding noise that makes my ears ring. My friend crawling up my neck must hate the noise too because it sinks its teeth into my flesh, causing me to hiss.
I reach around, pinch it between two fingers, and set it back on the wood. “We don’t bite,” I admonish my friend before fixing my eyes back on Lyken. This is the only spot in the house where I can see him with an unobscured view. He’s only a couple of feet away from me—if that.
It’s the closest we have ever been, and my fingers tremble slightly at the realization.
But all of these humans are in the way.
Tapping my fingers against the wood, I watch his side profile, thinking, wishing he could hear me, right here. So close.
He’s heard me before. Lots of times, actually. The most recent being when he was in the bathroom.
My dick flexes in my pants, feeling warmer by the minute as I remember seeing his body, naked and wet from the water. Seeing him now, with all that paint on his face irks me. I want his face bare, sharp cheekbones and thick lips visible as he moans.
My head thumps against the wall as I shove my hand in my pants and wrap my fingers around my length. It jerks in my grip, and I gasp at the weirdly good feeling. I pinch my eyes shut as I wait for the wave of shame.
I’ve only touched myself a couple of times. Every time I have, overwhelming guilt for feeling good swarmed me so completely, it masked the warm, tingling feeling I got after my release shot out of my penis.
But this time, it doesn’t come. All I feel is a hurried rush of… something I can’t recognize as I twist my hand hard and fast over myself, afraid if I don’t rush, I’ll start to feel defective.
At the realization, my eyes flutter open, finding my stranger closer, inches away from the wall, frommy hole.My eyes roll back into my head as the heat scatters along my groin, a good kind of fire licking at my insides. With my hand flying over my dick, I force myself away from the hole and place my finger inside, slowly inching it through the gap.
When heated, damp air brushes my skin, I freeze the movement of both hands. The bass of the music vibrates through the wall and into my finger and down my arm, causing the rest of my body to twitch.
Sucking in a deep breath, I shove my finger the rest of the way through. I think I stop just before my digit brushes along my stranger’s nape. Knowing I’m so close to touching another human should make me shake with anger, with disgust.
I don’t feel any of those things.
“Fuck,” I breathe out when my nail brushes over his short, fuzzy hair. My touch is so light, I barely feel it myself, but it’s there.He’sthere. On my skin. On me.
In me…
I groan loudly, wantonly, when the heat coils around my balls and shoots through my dick. Despite the music blaring, I can hear the disgusting, slick noises my fist makes against my hard flesh as I keep jacking myself, despite having shot my release all the fuck over the place.
I should move my finger. I should stop touching him.He doesn’t even realize I’m right here, touching him.
My head slams against the wall. The sound must have been loud enough for him to hear because suddenly, his touch is gone, and my finger is once again only touching the hot, damp air. I pull it back through my hole and replace it with my eye, straining against the foggy orange hue cast over the room.
There seem to be more people now, bodies pressing tightly together, making the room appear ten times smaller than it really is.
Lyken’s eyes are wide as he scans the wall behind him. What he’s looking for, exactly, I couldn’t be sure because I know he isn’t aware of my existence, so he can’t be looking for me. But when his eyes scan right over mine with no knowledge of it to him, my heart flies into my throat, and I push myself away with fervor, putting as much distance between us as I navigate my way back to my attic.
FIVE
Ihave never seen so many fucking people from town in one place. I swear Sanseph’s entire adult population is here, fucked out of their minds.
I’m not too far off myself as I down another shot of whatever the fuck is even left. It tastes like shit, but it does its job to numb the apprehension sitting at the base of my spine. Goosebumps still prickle my neck, despite the humidity.
Grabbing a joint from between some person’s fingers as they wave it back and forth through the air, I take a few hits, my eyes fluttering closed as I get cross-faded as fuck. The bodies cram closer, hands grabbing from all different directions.
