Page 183 of Dirty Discipline, Vol. 1

More silence follows. Mom isn’t stupid, but she’s also not one to pry. “Will you come out later? We can watch a rerun of America’s Funniest Home Vids together. It’s coming on soon.”

It’s my turn to be silent. I have no idea what to answer. She gives me an olive branch, even though we’re not at war, her and I. She doesn’t even know of the raging fight inside me.

“Summer?”

I don’t waaant to. “Okay. I’ll be out in a bit. I’m… gonna read a little.”

I feel her sigh through the door. She thinks I’m such an incurable introvert. She’s right. Except, she hates it, I love it. I’m afraid we’re leaving again, now that I’m finally out of school. I don’t want to, for so many reasons. If we keep on moving, I’ll never find a job I like. And now… the biker, the wood chopper, the man with the hands of steel, firm against my soft, innocent skin.

Mmmph.

My appetite is gone.

Plate pushed aside, I go to join my mom in front of some mind-numbing TV show that feels like it dumbs me down, and all the while my mind is somewhere else.

When I’m finally alone in bed, I put my hands between my legs, cup my mound, put a finger to my clit, then I remember what he said. No touching myself. I pull back my hand, assaulted by a slew of emotions I can’t even begin to sort. What will happen tomorrow?

Chapter Three

Stephan

That night I open a bottle of whisky—a twenty-year-old Laphroaig. It cost a fortune. It’s one of my few indulgences. The others are a life free of demands, open plains, and avoiding people. I have money stowed away, and some shit I inherited—stuff I’ll never have much use for with the kind of life I’ve lived the past ten-fifteen years.

Usually, I drink cheaper shit. I was saving this if I ever had a reason to celebrate.

With my palm still tingling from the meeting between my callused hand and her ass, I thought I did. I’ve been giddy all afternoon, but the sun sank and darkness set in along with a chill penetrating all the way to my bones. The temporary light within has been replaced by the usual gutting feeling of being a despicable orc, something that destroys everything it touches.

So, the opened, exclusive bottle moves from celebration to comfort to the usual need for numbing my regrets, for a few moments outside myself and my fucked-up mind.

What am I doing? I’m gonna ruin this girl, too. I clench my fists, trying to abolish her remnants. Her fright, reasonable as it was when I caught her intruding, her absolute terror when she, for a moment thought I would take her by force… rape her, then… her eyes alight with the same needs I have. The same, but the opposite.

I’ve been an ass my whole life. A wayward kid, loved by no one. A troubled teen, already too ruined, toeing the line of the abyss. And then I threw myself into it. I’ve treated every woman as an object of my desires, made them bend to my will. I’ve fought every man who even looked at me funny.

I’m a devil with no remorse, and I’ll ruin her.

She truly doesn’t deserve it. Even I feel it—a tiny sliver of conscience surfacing in the last few gulps of the smoky amber liquid.

I lurch to my feet and throw the bottle against the wall. The glass is too thick to break, the quality too great. It pisses me off. I stagger across the room, the walls tilting enough I must support myself against them as I fetch the bottle and slam it against the brick surface of the fireplace. It clunks loudly at the impact but remains whole.

“Fuck it!” I roar and toss it as far as I can.

In the hallway, I fall as I fight to pull on my boots. Scrambling up, collecting arms and legs, I slam open the door and make my way to my bike. I’m out. I’m off. She won’t come here tomorrow, and I shouldn’t have told her to. In the unlikely event she does, I’ll be long gone. I put the keys to the lock, then look at my empty palms only to realize I don't have them.

The way back to the house feels like double the distance, but I finally get the bike started with a roar that will echo through the vast forest for a long time even though I can’t hear it. The headlight plays erratically at the road, the trees beside the road, then back at the road. It’s dizzying. The crossroad doesn’t make sense, and I’ve no idea where the fuck I am. I choose anyway. The road gets bumpier and narrower and suddenly I’m thrown off the bike. It lands a few feet away from me. I gasp, trying to catch my breath that was knocked out of me, then crawl to it and turn it off before I’m overcome with bone deep lethargy. I have no reason to get up. Fuck it all. Fuck it all to hell.

My last conscious thought is an image of her, regret cutting through me.

I wake, but I might as well be dead. I’m so cold my teeth chatter uncontrollably, and my hangover is epic. Despite my wish to disappear off the face of the earth, my desire to see her again, feel her, her heart beating, her gasps when I touch her, feel her beneath me as I make her mine—is much stronger.

So, I make my way back home. I clean up—the cabin and myself—and then I wait. It’s close to noon.

She will come. And if she doesn’t…

I’m not someone to reject, and she’ll learn it.

Summer

I’ve barely slept, and by noon I’ve already been out for six hours. I got up long before Mom, avoiding all questions. She has the uncanny habit of seeing right through me. I guess we have lived together, just the two of us, way too long.

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