Between a Rock and a Hard Place

That door. That damn door. Had Lenore been writing this story, her protagonist would have acted out by now instead of pacing this door so many times. It’s storytelling 101.

It was all the more tempting that there were again no smokers in sight.

Lenore twiddled the two keys in her pocket.

After all, someone wanted her to go in there. Someone with a poor vision of her but still…

Carpe Diem, as they said at her creative writing workshop.

She did it fast. Padlock. Lock.

The door opened.

Neon lights turned on. Buzzed.

She took a step into a bare, plain corridor. Dark gray. Twenty feet long.

At the end of it, on the left wall, there was a door.

She moved forward. Just so she could see what its sign said.

UPPER FLOORS

Collected step by collected step, she walked down the corridor.

The door behind her became an exit. Lenore and all the hormones of her survival instinct understood it quickly.

It was no truism. The closer she got from the end, the farer the exit felt, the one she could escape from, back into the open air, the sunlight, the murmur of the city driving back home, while behind the Upper Floors door was a noise of clogged airshafts and old machines. A sound of things left out.

Someone outside was looking at Lenore, smoking, too scared or unconcerned to get near the doorway or ask what was going on in there.

Soon they were two.

Lenore ignored them and studied the door that was not on any map. The handle.

Took it. Pressed it. She pulled.

She would get in trouble if anything bad happened but is that really why her heart was beating this way?

The thick panel of plywood swung slowly on its hinges, skimmed the tip of her nose, and she saw beyond immediately: raw concrete. Not an inch of gap. Just a wall, dotted with ends of rusty steel bars. The rust had marked the other side of the door from being in contact with it since…a long time.

Since the architect made an error.

“What are you doing here?”

The two watchers had run away, replaced by a woman of no curiosity, someone who was most likely her superior. Lenore closed the door and scampered out of the corridor, under the stern stare.

“You don’t have anything to do in there.”

“It was open.” Much like a kid caught red-handed, she closed the service door and the padlock and went to her car without anymore apology or looks back.

Home, she relieved some of the tension caused by the event by copy-pasting the content of her USB key on her laptop, then, way later in the evening, relieved the rest with gay porn, then lesbian porn, and a succession of orgasms that wrecked her to sleep.

*****

Wednesday (six days)

They jumped her the moment she sat down. Lenore didn’t get time for a coffee. Everybody asked her for something. Co-workers, managers, interns, people she had never seen before, by phone, in person, from across the floor, they all piled up and made her experience the full weight of her job.

From nine to eight, she was swamped.

And so once back home, the idea of writing was an unfunny joke. She was drained and the lazy part of herself she had to deal with for most of her life thought it deserved a rest. Or, had it been honest, was fine with one more evening wasted.

365 evenings in a year.

30,000 in a life.

What difference would it make, uh?

None. Except a few hours of self-loathing as she persevered to do nothing, pull the chain of hyperlinks until sleep time.

The internet was always the same yet there was always more to see.

TIL Disney has a secret society called Club 33. In every of their parks there’s a door, very discreet, marked ’33’, which only members can enter. There, they can play pool, drink alcohol, or…have black masses… or… money laundering…

Then of course it was time for some porn. And suddenly the laziness was nowhere to be found.

She lay on her stomach with a leg bent to the side for better access to her pussy. Her clitoris was not touching the mattress. No friction. Lenore wanted to chase the so-called vaginal orgasm. She had done some thinking: a dildo could fuck her hole as hard and long as she wanted, without ejaculating and going soft and turn around to sleep. She could fuck her pussy till something happened; she could use that advantage over real penises.

After twenty minutes, her arm and vagina were burning but she was whimpering with pleasure nonetheless. The man on her screen was taking nine inches up his ass like it was nothing, his half-hard cock dribbling precum as it dangled around.

She saw the half-hard cock twitch and start to ejaculate without being touched and knowing she was looking at a prostate orgasm–the hottest thing ever–Lenore forgot about her plans and mashed her clit to make herself cum.

Her voice and wet noises filled the bedroom. The walls of her vagina clenched tight around the restless dildo, stealing pleasure from her clit, a lot more than usual. It was a very good orgasm and Lenore felt good for the first time today. For five minutes.

The autoplay launched a new video which she shut down immediately. She wanted silence.

After the five minutes, Lenore noticed her fingers were purple.

She turned a lamp on and looked down at her dildo and herself. Her vagina was red and swollen but it was also purple. The purple of the sextoy.

“What the fuck?”

*****

Thursday (five days)

Same story. The company, it seemed, would not give her any break, she was used, shouted at, bossed around and rushed, and even before that, by 9:07am, she surrendered. Work had a way to make it clear that middle class days would always be all exactly the same.

That’s what makes artists so important, the undying warmth inside her guts thought.

That’s why booze and drugs will always exist, her cynical outgrowth added.

Oh my God, I’m not depressed, I’m just depressing, those two parts realized with one voice.

Some downtime surprised her around 11am which Jill and Becky invaded nicely.

They couldn’t believe that, “You never had a smoke in the bathroom?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Come on, it’s fun!”

“But I don’t smoke.”

They dragged her to the handicapped stall with much giggles and mischievery.

It was big enough for three and more, and had a small window that opened enough to blow smoke through.

Nothing beat feeling like middle school again, but while Jill was standing on the toilet lid, her hand hanging outside the window, Becky started to make things feel like college.

“One day I fingered her so hard,” she was telling Lenore, “she dropped her cig and it almost set off the fire alarm.”

“Oh yeah?”

“I bet you never sneaked in to make out either.”

“With who?”

“I don’t know. Dylan. Of Web Development. He looks so lonely sometimes.”

“Shut up, you’re gross,” Jill commented.

“Smoking makes me horny, can’t help it.”

“You burn down a pack a day!”

“I know, right?”

16 waking hours in a day.

20 cigarettes in a pack.

Jill flicked her stub away and stepped down the toilet. She slid a hand down Becky’s pants without any etiquette.

Verdict: “Hey, she’s not lying.”

I should sneak in and masturbate someday, Lenore thought as she watched them.

“Come have a feel.”

Becky had said that. Not Jill. Becky with the hand in her pants. Unapologizing. She was unfastening the upper buttons. Staring at Lenore with fuck me eyes. Or fuck you eyes.

Jill’s hand pulled away, Lenore’s hand went down in its place.

She touched the first vagina she ever made cum.

“I’m sure you’ve made a lot of women cum, you just don’t know about it,” Jill said, reading her mind.

“You think so?”

“Me for example. I think about you sometimes when I touch myself.”

“Oh, ok. Well…thanks, I guess.”

“You’re really pretty,” Becky cut in, her voice wavering, “and you’re more interesting than most people here.”

Lenore pushed her middle finger in her.

Jill threw a, “Kate’s in love with you, you know?”

Lenore removed her hand.

Jill took it and sucked on her wet finger.

Becky came closer, they all three embraced.

Lenore watched them kiss.

Paradoxically, this was the point of no return. She hesitated before she leaned in.

Their lips, then their tongues met. The sloppy threeway kiss made them hum softly.

Lenore thought it didn’t feel as good as eating pussy and she was taken aback by her own vulgarity.

But it was the truth and it became palpable when Jill stepped away. “I’ll be right back.” She left the bathroom, leaving the stall door shut but unbolted, leaving Lenore kissing and fondling only Becky. It grew awkward and obvious that she didn’t want all this ceremony.

Lenore wanted to cum. That’s it.

“We talk about you when we fuck,” Becky panted out as she kissed her in the neck.

“What do you say?”

“We want to ravage you. We wanna drive you crazy.”

Their four hands peeled both their pants down their thighs. At no point did Lenore remember she was showing her pussy to an almost-stranger.

She felt soft female fingers on her clit for the time of her life. She made a conscious effort to keep quiet. She had never understood the thrill of being caught and despite everything else being spellbinding, she would stay true to her incomprehension.

Becky pulled her hood. “Your clit is so swollen I could suck on it like a cock.”

Lenore gasped. Her clitoris did feel enormous. Becky was grinning. She was not.

“Do you know the word,” the grin asked, “for when three girls eat out each other at the same time?”

She didn’t.

“We’re so doing that on Saturday.”

The door behind them creaked.

Lenore turned her head and she froze. There was Jill. And Melissa of Management.

“Would you look at that,” the 40-something corporate woman said with a smile.

Lenore pulled back and struggled with her panties.

Jill and Becky lined up on either side of her, to face Melissa.

“Fresh blood for the sewing circle,” she said.

Pants back on, Lenore remained mortified. The woman leered at them like meat.

She shook her head. “What am I gonna do with you?”

Lenore never liked her. Yet she had never noticed how hot this woman was, and it counted rapidly in accepting this porn situation. The word hatefuck existed for a reason.

No doubt about that, the threesome had leveled up. Lenore could now have not four but six hands on her body. If she simply played the part.

Which got a harsh start:

“Get naked. Just you,” Melissa told her.

So harsh Lenore felt her stomach flutter more wetness down her pussy.

Becky and Jill mewled with excitement, turned toward her to watch her undress.

She already knew she was gonna do it. It’s how far she would go doing it that held her back for a few seconds.

She took her blouse off, her bra, gave them to Jill who threw them away carelessly.

Then the shoes, the socks. Lenore put her bare feet back on the sticky tiled floor. That’s how far she went. After that, pants and underwear went off easy.

She rose back, completely naked, as told, surrounded by three clothed women.

Her nipples were hard for them.

“Good girl,” Melissa murmured. Then lowered to her knees and crawled up to Lenore’s wet pussy.

She looked at it, looked up at her and said, “I’ll still be your superior after this. You slack off once, you deviate one degree, I swear I’ll fuck you up so hard you’ll come beg me to be my dungeon slave to pay your rent.”

As Lenore wondered what she could respond to that without just laughing in this old hag’s face, she felt lips engulf her swollen clit.

She moaned.

“Say ‘Yes, Melissa,'” Jill whispered in her ear.

Lenore almost protested but her head was jammed by pleasure.

So eventually:

“Yes, Melissa.”

Melissa pulled back, eyes smiling with the lust of dominants. “You two, pants down. Leave them on your ankles, I want you to look ridiculous.”

They didn’t say, Yes, Melissa. But Lenore got too sidetracked to notice, fighting against her clitoris which wanted to cum on the spot.

A few drops trickled down her contracting peehole.

“Our new pet is a squirter.”

“Nice!”

“Lena, finger them.”

The two girls passed an arm around Lenore, held her tight and purred with anticipation. With just a glimpse at them both, she understood the nature of the fingering she had been ordered to give, as in this position, her hands could only reach for their butts.

She wetted her fingers–her right hand still smelled of Becky–and slid her middle fingers down their cracks, brushed over the wrinkling of their assholes. The mouth on her clit eliminated any hesitation; she pushed against their holes, knuckles popped through the tight rings, one after the other… The pads of her fingers gorged in the sensations, heat, fleshy softness, like they were suddenly erogenous.

Lenore looked at her partners, for any little hint of validation.

“I fucking love anal so much,” Becky exhaled and closed her eyes.

“It’s easier with two fingers,” Jill begged.

So Lenore added her forefingers and stretched them exquisitely. The girls hugged tighter, smothered her with kisses and gasps, their hips rolling against her palms.

She never had suspected how erotic it could feel, the feel of their anuses, crushing her fingers, yielding to them with such a visceral return pressure.

“Fuck them hard. I wanna hear it,” Melissa said, lips slick.

Lenore obeyed, over and over, caught between her sensitive clit and her overly sensitive fingers. Her biceps and her wrists ached from the effort, she loved it.

Her mind’s eye pulled out, like a movie camera, to see the whole scene from afar, these four women tangled in this complicated formation, each moaning in different ways. Then the words themselves were enough: lesbian orgy; first foursome; insane fuck in the middle of the afternoon, at work, don’t give a fuck. Only then Lenore could have her orgasm.

She even told them.

“I-I’m gonna cum.”

Her pussy started to contract and she saw herself, naked, traverse this most enfeebling ecstasy, moan as quietly as she was able to, sway on her legs as little as she could, protected all around by three all-conquering lusts that had only eagerly wanted it. Wanted her.

She didn’t see Melissa rise to her feet but she felt her grab her by the chin, saw her plant her crazy eyes in hers, felt her shove two fingers in her spasming cunt and squeeze her G-spot aggressively, pump her hole almost painfully bluntly until Lenore let out a sharp cry and a stream of squirt splashed down her toes, putting an explosive end to her climax.

There was a small puddle under her soles when the three women released her.

Some clarity came back quick and Lenore protected her nudity with her arms, careful not to touch her skin with her fingers.

The three others had a last look at her, three last grins and they left the bathroom.

Out of breath, raving, alone, Lenore locked the stall door and leaned on it, her head cradled in the inside of her elbows, panting things like, “Oh my God-Oh my God,” happy ones, incredulous of what had just happened, more than willing to be actually proud of it.

And proudly she turned around. She walked up to the center of this crummy toilet and stood there eyes closed to let everything go and feel the air and the light on her skin, to feel that she was completely bare somewhere other than her apartment, that she just had a foursome out of nowhere.

It made her want to cum again and right now and she did.

She washed her hands in the sink and she did.

*****

Lenore failed to see a lot of things.

Kate was not really good at being in love. None of her advances hit their target during their evening together. Lenore was too absent that night. Or perhaps too close.

So she resigned.

She slept on the couch.

In the morning, Lenore failed to see she was missing the two keys of P29.

*****

Friday (four days)

Friday was a tunnel of loneliness. Lenore didn’t get bossed around and overworked to death. In fact, no one talked to her. She got all the time to write.

So there’s a coven of witches at Deep Green.

They fire everyone until everybody has been replaced by their evil ilk.

Witches is tired. Let’s find something else. Another creature. Something not evil. Something annoying. Mosquitoes. No, bigger. Flies.

They’re flies. With a human appearance. No, it’s stupid. They’re human witches but they’re flies too. Find something.

They chose Deep Green for its architecture. You can draw a pentacle over the hallways on the blueprint of the building. At its center: the gates of hell they try to summon. How original.

Deciding lives over the strike of a pen was the best thing ever once she was into it.

It alleviated being alone.

Writing on work hours did too.

“Hey, wanna hang out tonight?”

It was Becky. The smell of astray should have been a giveaway and Lenore shouldn’t have been startled.

“Hi, Becky. Tonight? Not tomorrow?”

“Yeah, why not? Kate will be there, I called her.”

The Friday factor made it a no cause Lenore was lazy, but the presence of Kate made it a yes. The presence of Kate and the lack of an eventual threesome made it a no but the presence of Kate made it a yes.

“Ok, alright,” Lenore said.

“Seeya then.” And Becky and her scent disappeared.

*****

The pangs of a bad feeling hit Lenore as she stepped into the flashing lights of the club.

She saw Becky and Jill already drunk and they would not stop dancing for anyone. She struggled her way in and then struggled to stay in; the crowd surrounded, smothered the newcomer with pokes and voices while all she wanted was to know where Kate was.

“What?” the two girls screamed.

“Is Kate here?”

“Who?”

“Kate!”

The instantly forgotten shrug they gave could mean they didn’t know in several different ways but meant for certain they didn’t care.

Lenore looked around, shouldered herself out. The only corner where she found the room to use her phone was reserved for alcohol buying, so she was almost pushed away as soon as she got herself an overpriced slammer and no response to her calls, away from the bar and back into the moving and available bodies.

It’s the only drink she had. A fairly attractive man offered her one in a more or less confident manner which only drew her back to her co-workers where she would be less frontally bothered. They in turn did everything to drag her out of sobriety. And it was enough for Lenore to get angry at Kate for having bailed on her. Left her with these two psychos. Or with her horny self.

She had meticulously shaved from the neck down. She was excited for the unpredictable mess that was taking shape.

But it was just wrong.

Before they left for their place, she looked around one last time. The lights blinded her, the music pierced her ears and once outside, she had lost track of who she was really angry at.

It was clear the two girls were messing with her although it looked like they were physically unable to focus enough to do so.

She had to call a cab because she was the only one who could stand straight up or make a proper sentence.

The trip was chaos compressed on a back seat.

“Kate who?”

“Stop it.”

“I know a Kate in Financials!”

“Yeaaa there was a Cate Something at the team building seminar.”

“You sure you don’t mean Nate from IT?”

“No. Kate, who was fired.”

“Deep Greeeeen, we’ll fire your biiiiitch!” they sang to the tune of the company’s TV commercial.

Lenore didn’t want to make a scene, even though these two definitely did. She didn’t want to validate a world where Kate Toynbee didn’t exist. Kate of Papa John’s.

She knew she had photos of her in her phone and looked for one for way too long. “Do you have nudes?” Jill blared, snatching it up from her hands, swiping around, before her attention skipped to Becky rolling down her window to holler at some guys. At first Jill thought she was leaning outside to hurl and held her hair so hard Becky shrieked in pain in the middle of the words ‘big black cock’. The phone fell somewhere in the darkness of the car along with the lollipop Becky was sucking on, an unworn stiletto, wrapped tampons and they leaned down and looked and fought and laughed and brayed and the cab driver had to tell them to calm down and Lenore wasn’t drunk enough for that shit.

They danced on the curb, all the way up to their apartment, poked and pushed Lenore and smothered her with their hands just like earlier.

She was the first naked.

She was the only one naked.

They had laid her out on a bed and overwhelmed her from head to toe. They had retrieved all their finesse and concentration. While Lenore was losing her mind. It felt so good she could have blacked out. They caressed her absolutely everywhere, with oil and their sweetest craft. Lenore became nothing but skin. So much and so long she didn’t realize she had a tongue in her mouth and a finger in her pussy.

They turned so brash she writhed with lust, opened her eyes. They called her their slut. Their clothes were stuck to their skin, all she could caress was the metal or plastic parts of their pants, their bras, the plastic in their hair, the watch on their wrists.

She had reached the moment where they would both eat her out at the same time.

A sensation normal women would never experience.

And she tried not to think about Kate when it happened.

She saw their heads disappear.

And here it was. Their mouths took her whole.

It felt as good as she had imagined but not as enjoyable. Because…

They lifted her leg up and went deeper. Pleasure bounced anywhere she chose to, their two tongues were imperative about that. And it was just her pussy and ass. On top of that, their four hands were still at it, hitting all the right spots, nipples, soles, tailbone, all the time so ubiquitously.

Then why did they pretend they had invited Kate?

A finger settled on her anus. Lenore whimpered and shriveled away. Only a few inches.

A knuckle went in. Then another.

“No,” she finally let out.

A hand grabbed her hip and pulled and she then had a whole finger up her ass. It felt like nothing at all. The lips around her clit felt like sugary fire.

The finger slid in and out and it burned. She wailed a second No, twisted herself free and rolled off the bed, away from finger and tongues, back to her feet, facing the two girls.

There was a pause. Insanely silent for three sluts who were fucking like sluts.

Or maybe it was only Lenore. The other two were smiling. Not like when you’re having sex.

Becky was grinning.

Jill was grinning.

They were staring.

Not staring back. Staring.

They stared at her the whole time. They didn’t need to look to know what was up.

Jill had shit on her finger.

Jill kept her grin the whole time when Jill lifted that soiled finger up to her mouth and sucked it clean.

At that point, Lenore had already started to pick up her clothes from the floor but it was out of shame and disgust. She backed away out of terror only when the mouth let go of the finger and inside she didn’t see the fleshy red of a human being and didn’t hear the slick of human saliva and the languorous moan of a human throat. She glimpsed the blueish glint of an insect, mandibles wriggling, gurgling behind a lipsticked toothless smile.

She ran for her life and her sanity, putting her clothes on in the stairs, crying at the horror now behind her. She ran for many blocks into the night.

It was the night September had chosen to announce winter. It was cold. It would get in her clothes, like they were wet. She barely felt it, fear was colder.

Cabs didn’t stop for her until she had washed the tears and the dread off her face. She would have to wait for her apartment to cry again.

Which she did. A lot. Especially when she found out she had soiled her underwear.

She was already in the shower, so neither tears nor shit made any difference.

She didn’t stay long because she wanted–she needed to hear Kate.

Squatting on the bath mat, with a towel as her only protection, she looked for her name in her contacts.

Didn’t find it.

These maniacs deleted it.

Her hair dripped water onto the phone screen.

She ran to her laptop in the bedroom and looked for her number. It was in a text file somewhere.

Kate Toynbee.

She did exist.

Her photo folder. Her Instagram. She had to be in there.

The movement of the cursor was interrupted by a memory: the selfie from lunchbreak.

Lenore opened the picture, this time it took only a few taps.

She wailed in shock.

It was herself, Lena, in Papa John’s, alone.

She zoomed in, zoomed out. And then she hesitated…but swiped to another picture.

Another.

Another.

Another. Another.

Everybody was missing. Photoshopped out.

She opened Instagram. She opened her folders. She opened a dozen jpegs fullscreen on her laptop and on all of them she was alone. Blurry crowds and anonymous bystanders didn’t count. She was alone. And when even she was not in the picture, it was just a background, a landscape, empty chairs, selfies taken by no one.

Lenore was alone in her apartment going insane, waking the neighbors with her cries.

It took her a long time to “accept” the situation and fight the raspy panic off her chest and only when she could she took her phone and called her parents.

Who didn’t answer.

Tristyn.

No, Kate.

No response. No voicemail.

Tristyn.

“Pick up! PICK UUUUUUP! Please!”

Josh Durrell maybe.

No.

Lenore broke her voice. She called a dozen other contacts, friends and relatives, all a screaming absence on her laptop. None of them answered. Each failure furthered down the madness.

Brian.

All her pictures of him were on an external drive.

She wouldn’t look at them. No.

His name was still in her contacts and it made her cry more than ever.

The next one was Brian’s mom.

It would be her last try.

She hesitated.

She tapped Call and tried to handle her crazy voice during the series of tunes.

It connected straight to voicemail.

Hearing the woman’s voice was better than nothing. And it was better than confronting the woman herself.

But of course Brian’s mom called back not a minute later.

*Lena?*

“Hi, Mrs. Reed, I–”

*What time is it? What do you want?*

“I… I just…”

*Yes?*

“I thought… I found some more stuff from Brian and I thought–”

*I told you you can keep it. Is that why you’re calling me?*

“I’m sorr–”

*It’s three o’clock in the morning, WHY ARE YOU CALLING?*

Lenore opened her mouth and no sound came out. The woman sighed, audibly sat up in her bed.

*Look. Lena. We did everything right, ok?* She paused, thought out her words. *We told each other over and over how we knew what we were going through. I think I made it clear that I would never hold you responsible for what he did. But please, can you accept now that I don’t know you?* Her voice didn’t falter. Actually it sounded even stronger as she said, *We met at his funeral for Pete’s sake! He never even told me your last name.*

“I’m sorry I–”

*Lena, I don’t know what you’re going through anymore. No, actually I think I know. And it’s not good. And you have to move on. It… It was horrible what he did to us, it was unfair, and it wasn’t your fault. So please, just try to get better. Try not to make the same mistake he made. I want to see you as the person who soothed his pain a little before he took his life. But I don’t want to hear from you again. Can you do that? Can you understand what it means to do that?*

Lena disabled her microphone so Mrs. Reed wouldn’t hear her sobbing.

*I know you put yourself on mute, Lena, but listen to me. I can’t help you anymore. I don’t know you. And you can’t help me either. So please move on. There’s nothing wrong with moving on. I’m his mother and I’m asking you. Move on. Get help. You can even hate him for what he did. Just do something. Life is long. Life is very long. People who tell you otherwise they have something to sell. Now I’m gonna hang up, ok? You can keep what you found or you can throw it away, I don’t know. But I want you to stop calling. Please.*

They exchanged a few more words, awkward and useless but necessary to the end of any conversation, and then the strongest woman Lenore had ever met hung up. And Lenore was back to her life. The picture on her laptop screen didn’t show loneliness anymore. Just herself and Josh Durrell and his wife Monica posing in front of the Hollywood sign.

She was not alone. She had at least twenty phone calls incoming soon. One of them Kate, back inside the selfie.

She had the box.

It was on the bed. Waiting.

There was a post-it note on top, left unfolded so she would read it whether she liked it or not.

NOW WE KNOW EVERYBODY YOU KNOW. THANKS.

Fright seized her so tight she could not scream it out through her damaged vocal cords.

She crawled into a corner of the bedroom, stuck her back to it. There was no one behind her, there could be no one.

But there was a coven of witches at Deep Green. And she had let them in.

And the box, the one thing that had helped her know what to do these last few days had become her one problem.

Burn it.

She could burn it.

She thought.

But a box endlessly full of papers would also burn endlessly. And make hell on earth, literally.

I HAD A FRIEND WHO REALIZED YOU CAN’T BURN ANYTHING WHEN YOU LIVE IN A CITY. HE HAD NO FIREPLACE, NOTHING. FIRE DETECTORS EVERYWHERE. SO HE WENT TO SKIDROW AND FOUND A BRAZIER AND HE GOT SHANKED.

Untape it completely could be worse.

Empty it then?

NO STORY. CONTINUAL RED HERRINGS.

She reached out a hand. That’s all she had to do. Her reading frenzy which had been euphoria so far turned to panic. Lenore read handfuls, several at the same time. She read to try to understand. She read because it was her only dialog tonight.

I KNOW A STORY THAT IS NOT ABOUT WITCHES. IT WOULD BE COOL IF YOU USED IT.

A talk with the enemy.

STICK TO YA YOU PATHETIC BITCH. AT LEAST YOU COULD MAKE MONEY FROM IT.

One-sided.

THEY MADE A SEQUEL OF YOUR PARENT’S SEX TAPE. IT’S A SNUFF FILM.

And if she didn’t know the origin, she knew the intent.

OLAUS FLAVIUS WAS BURNED AT THE STAKE WITH HIS OWN BOOKS, YOU KNOW?

Because it was slowly slipping.

I HOPE THIS SHIT GETS YOU IN TROUBLE

Slipping toward the only language that gets one’s full attention.

WE’LL BURN YOUR HORSES. WE’LL HANG YOU DOGS.

The only thing one always underestimates.

WITCHES HATE SNITCHES GET STITCHES

Violence.

YOU KNOW WHAT’S WORSE THAN A GUN? A KNIFE.

Lenore punched the box away, physically feeling the difference between a clean bullet in the chest and the coldness and the slowness of a blade cutting the skin of the inside of your elbow, of your belly, meeting the veins, the nerves, the drag when slicing through the fat and the give once it has reached the organs, a papercut times one billion across your eyelids and your eyeball, your guts in your hands as you watch the ceiling fade to red and dark.

A grotesquely large buttplug tumbled down from the box.

It gave Lenore the senseless energy to go for her dildo and try to smash it to pieces.

Its material stained her fingers like marzipan melting down, leaving a purple color. Somehow it gave her all the more energy to grab it tighter and break it in half against the corner of the desk. Lenore was growling in rage, hit after hit.

The softening dildo slipped and Lena howled with pain. She had cut her hand.

Something had sliced through the palm. She looked at the sextoy: a razor blade was peeking from the melted surface.

All this time it had been waiting. For her.

Lenore used her panic to get dressed and leave her apartment.

She would leave everything behind. The box, her story, her job… A new woman she would be.

She bled on her driving wheel, on her phone. Kate never answered.

She drove to her place and Kate Toynbee wasn’t there. It was a new name on the doorbell.

No window lit up as she called and called. No muffled sound of ringtone came through the glass.

And it didn’t scare her. Somehow Lenore knew it wasn’t a supernatural part of her night. She was only disappointed. Kate didn’t live here anymore. Her friend didn’t tell her about it.

*****

And since she couldn’t spend the rest of the night in the street, she crawled back in the corner of her bedroom and waited for the end.

*****

Saturday (three days)

The ringtone could never wake her up in normal times. It was just an annoying input to her sleeping brain which could be dealt with later. This morning, as her phone chimed and vibrated in her lap, she didn’t have to get up, she didn’t have to properly awaken. Lenore raised her head and knew it was Kate without looking at the screen.

Her back hurt, bent into the shape of the corner. Her knees hurt. Her neck hurt. Her mind was numb.

She had cried enough last night that she could sound somewhat okay on the phone.

*I turned off my phone. It says you called me 46 times. What’s wrong?*

“I need to see you.”

*What’s wrong?*

“Please, come. I don’t wanna cry on the phone.”

*Say no more.*

It was 9:14am. Quickly showered and clothed, Lenore put a band-aid on her hand and took on cleaning up the place in a way so full of bitterness it was actually satisfying: she shoved everything into the box. Papers, food, her clothes from last night, the buttplug. The dildo. She raised it to her eyes and took a last look at the razor blade in the daylight.

“God damn all of you,” she murmured.

She pushed the toy down into the chasm.

Everything felt clean again, in appearance at least. Only was missing the smell of coffee and as the pot started to fill up in the kitchen, she got some duct tape to close the box.

What will she tell Kate? If she tried to show her the threats, would they be changed back to some harmless stories, making her look like a fool?

She took one sheet. Just one, a last one, just to be sure.

HELLO MY BABY, HELLO MY HONEY, HELLO MY RAGTIME GAL

She didn’t get the reference but understood what it was gonna be like. So she did shut the box.

After a few shakes, the sound of the garbage inside disappeared among the ruffle of paper and then there was the doorbell. Five seconds later, she was in her friend’s arms.

Kate, who smelled like sweat.

“I was at the gym when I called,” she apologized.

“It’s ok.” It was better than Jill’s perfume and Becky’s alcohol breath.

“Mind if I use your shower?”

“Sure, go ahead. I have to do the dishes. And my bed. And whatever.” Lenore almost threw in, I love you.

Hours later, she woke up on the couch, dishes and bed still undone, Kate clean in her dirty clothes sitting next to her, looking at her with patient concern.

It was 14:36pm. The cups of coffee on the table were long cold but Lenore chugged hers down.

She tried to sigh out all her anguish and then tried one of the many ways to begin:

“Are you alright?”

Kate had not expected this one. “Yes. O-Of course. It’s me who should ask you th–”

“No one um…”

“What?”

Lenore didn’t want to scare her by asking her if she had been followed by… By what exactly?

“What happened to your hand?” Kate asked.

“I…cut myself cooking.”

“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”

Lenore took a deep breath. Time for the half-truths. “Why didn’t you show up last night?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Becky didn’t call you?”

“No. She told you she did?”

“Yes.”

Kate frowned. “I was home. Stop hanging out with this psycho and her friend.”

“I won’t, believe me.”

“Why? They did something to you?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

“What did they do to you? What happened to your hand?”

“I cut myself! And…I think… I think they’re fighting over me.”

Now Kate’s eyebrows went incredulous, one up, one down. “Oh…”

“Yeah, they had a huge fight last night. And apparently they were both hitting on me and it’s turning everything to shit at work. And… I don’t want to go on Monday.”

“And that’s why you’re feeling bad? Cause two hot girls have a ladyboner over you?”

“No, I’m scared they’re gonna go after you.”

Kate faltered slightly. “Why would they do that?”

“Because…”

Time to lie.

“…Because I’m in love with you, Kate.”

“No you’re not!” Kate had put a little mocking inflection in her voice and she had glints in her eyes, but it lasted about four seconds. The corners of her mouth bent downward, her eyes tore up. She fought against cries with all her might and it exploded anyway.

She rushed into Lenore’s arms, into her neck, bawling and crying:

“Don’t tell me that, Lena! Don’t tell me that if you don’t mean it.”

Lenore didn’t expect this reaction. She could have never expected to see the limits of Kate’s resilience. She held her friend very tight. Because in fact she didn’t really know if she did mean it.

The next logical step would have been for them to kiss.

They didn’t. Lenore looked at Kate in the eye, grave, and told her:

“I want you to move in here. You pack all your stuff and you move in and you’re my girlfriend now.”

Kate wiped her puffy eyes. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“They can’t hurt us if we’re together.”

“What?”

“Or do you want me to move to your place?”

“No, I…”

“Do you love me, Kate?”

This was the weirdest moment of Kate’s young life.

She spluttered, “I… I love you so much I’m scared,” and lowered her eyes.

Lenore was thinking as fast as she could. “You’re so scared you let me friendzone you?”

The eyes rose back. “Yeah…” And an embarrassed smile appeared.

This time they kissed. Lenore initiated.

And it was awful. Their lips clumsy and hard as stone, as though they had never kissed before. Never kissed women.

“You stay here tonight,” Lenore affirmed.

“Of course.”

“Do you want me to help you go get some of your stuff?”

“No, we’re staying here, it’s ok, I don’t wanna do that today.”

They realized they were still arm in arm, knee against knee. They stood up and stepped back from each other, nervous, flushed.

“We take all the time necessary,” Lenore said. “I’m in love with you and we’ll sort this out.”

“Lena, it’s not love, it’s the fucking witness protection program!”

“No…”

She raised her voice: “You go talk to them on Monday. Or I’ll do.”

Lenore did too: “Alright, alright, I will. Are you hungry?”

Kate shouted: “I’m starving!”

They ordered sushi. They ate in almost complete silence.

It was a huge mess in Lenore’s head.

She might be dead on Monday, for all she knew.

It was one of the many reasons for her next move.

*****

Lenore reached out and grabbed the hem of Kate’s sweatshirt.

She pulled.

“What are you doing?”

“Your clothes are stinking up the place. Take them off.”

They did. The living-room smelled like a locker room.

“Ok, I’m sorry, wait.” Kate took it off herself, then her pants and handed them to her.

Now Lenore had her hand on the hem of her shirt.

They stared at each other.

“You didn’t want to go get your stuff,” Lenore said. “Get used to hang around in the buff.”

“Fine.” Kate peeled off her shirt. Meanwhile Lenore had peeled off her socks.

And now her fingers were hooked under the waistband of her panties.

“Really?”

Can I? Lenore’s eyes replied.

There was a long silence that said, Of course you can, you idiot. But as Lenore faltered, Kate unhooked her bra defiantly and put it on the top of her head like a hat.

Lenore chortled and finally pulled the underwear down, avoiding her skin as much as possible.

They could hear each other’s heart beating loud, and fast.

She gathered all the clothes in a heap and went to put it in the dirty laundry basket.

She went back with a blanket, which she wrapped around them both in a wide flapping motion as she sat next to Kate.

She cradled her in her arms, pressed pecks on her lips. Still shy and unnatural.

She placed her hands on her back, nothing more.

Kate had instinctively taken a fetal position in the embrace. She let herself get cuddled. Even when Lenore got discreetly emotional and wetted her scalp of her tears. She was crying for her troubles, crying at how astounding the body of a woman felt, and crying that this beauty could have power over said troubles.

The gaze, when theirs met, was where the intensity was. Because one of them was naked under this blanket. Because they–these two kids–didn’t know what they were doing anymore.

“So…” Lenore tried at all cost to lighten up her tone. “Tell me everything.”

“About?”

“The lesbian life.”

“Oh, that… Why d’you wanna know?” Kate asked sarcastically.

“To be a better storyteller.”

“Of course… To be fair, it’s not really any different from straight people. The power struggle is a little different but it’s still power struggle.”

Lenore moved a hand to Kate’s feet. She caressed them with no hurry, no strain, just made a mental map of them.

She had never been a foot fetishist but she was trying to understand how exactly she loved Kate Toynbee and thus this body part was becoming as sensual as anything else to her. As interesting. Flaws included. Averageness included.

She said, “I always loved you because you never asked me if I experimented in college.”

“Did you?”

“I… I had a bad experience once…”

“What happened?”

“I just…I wanted to have fun. I wanted to be this new person. And… It got…too real.” It got impossible to share.

“You mean it was like in the movies?”

“What do you mean?”

“Porn made it weird. It’s weird. I mean, it’s so weird when you think about it. Cause a lot of the shit you see in porn comes from the queer community, you see, like fisting and squirting and…well, whatever… But as soon as porn comes and grinds it in, it just makes everything so… so… I dunno.”

Lenore couldn’t find the right word either.

She asked, “So how do you make love?”

“With no fake nails,” Kate grimaced.

Lenore moved on to her hands and touched her bitten fingernails.

Kate went on: “We don’t make love. The dyke life is a permanent dyke orgy.”

“Please…”

“Just kidding. Well it kind of is actually, we just don’t like people knowing about it.”

“You didn’t have sex last Saturday because you’re in love with me?”

Kate was floored by the blunt question.

But she took it: “Yes.”

“No hook-ups at the pizza place?”

“No. No one wants a fucking loser, Lena. Straight or gay.”

“You’re not a loser. Don’t play that with me.”

“I’m sorry. It’s just…banter.”

“You survived two years at Deep Green, it counts on a resume. You’ll find something. Life is long.”

“You think so?”

“You don’t?”

“I… I dunno. That’s a weird concept.”

“When you left the club the other night, it’s because you were jealous of…the two who shall not be named?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you jealous? I wasn’t a lesbian back then.”

Kate shrugged.

“Have you ever been in love before?” Lenore asked.

Another shrug. “I discovered I’ve never been until you.”

Lenore cupped her two hands onto her breasts. Another mental map. She felt them slowly. The gesture was so peculiar she was almost surprised when she felt the nipples react to her touch.

“Did you become this “new person” after your bad experience?” Kate had air-quoted with her voice.

“I hope so.”

Lenore took her own socks off and their bare toes touched.

“I love you, Kathryn.”

Kate looked up at her. “Lenore.” Her voice wavered, like she had said something important. Her tears started to stream down. “Lena. I didn’t have sex since I met you. And I make love like I wanna get married. Since it’s legal now.”

Lenore opened her mouth to speak but Kate wasn’t finished: “And… I… I’m going through some shit right now.”

What exactly, she didn’t tell. It was too big, even for the tight, mighty skin fortress they had built around them.

Lenore walled it shut with her arms and they stayed like this for a while.

*****

When she thought it was the right time, Lenore re-opened the fortress and murmured:

“I think I am this new person.”

“You think so?” Kate sniffled, exhausted.

“I think I’m ready to love again.”

This time Kate kissed her. “Does it mean I can ask you about Brian?”

Kate waited patiently, until Lenore finally nodded.

“Not today though. It’s enough pain for a Saturday.”

Lenore raised and closed up the blanket above their heads.

In the darkness she saw no ghosts. Only her friend in silhouette.

Whom she kissed blindly.

She asked her to hold the blanket and began taking off her clothes.

It went so messy in their cramped, flimsy, improved tent they had to laugh. Even after Lenore was naked and they lay down together in what was supposed to be the most solemn moment of their lives. The couch was too small, they rolled onto the floor, giggling, the blanket spread open and they could now see as well as feel.

Lenore ran her hands everywhere she saw. She wanted to smile. She wanted to cry but even in her state she knew it would have been too fucking weird.

“What are you doing?” Kate asked, out of breath.

“I want something normal for once in my life.”

“But it’s not. We’re friends.”

She was right. And also they realized nothing was ever normal in life. Only took them twenty-three years.

“I want…” Lenore fumbled.

They stopped moving.

“I want…”

“Oh my God, you’re gonna say a little poem, aren’t you?”

They became only eyes. And ears. And voice.

“I wanna…hold you when you’re cold in the winter. I wanna have your smell on my clothes. I want to see you brush your teeth. I wanna see you being jealous cause I eyed a guy’s ass. I wanna see you wink at me cause we eyed the same girl’s ass. I wanna hear the sound of your voice when you come. I wanna adjust my rear-view mirror cause you used my car. I want to call you from across the house just for the pleasure of saying your name. I wanna ask you ‘What do you wanna eat tonight?’ for the 5000th time. I want to be bored with you. I wanna beat your punkass at Mario Kart. I wann–”

“So you really are an author.”

“And I want you to keep the post-irony or whatever the fuck to a minimum and love me.”

She brushed her hand down her side, to her buttocks, to her thighs, inside them, through her pubes and she cupped her vagina.

“You’re skipping steps, Lena.”

“I’m so scared,” she exhaled.

“It’s because we haven’t kissed.”

So they did. And it made things a little normal.

Kate had a normal mouth, not the mouth of an insect. Lenore never doubted it, but when she caressed her tongue with her tongue, it confirmed it in a warm release of happiness. And she knew that somehow she might not be lying for very long, maybe she could fall in love with her friend, maybe she always was, maybe she never lied. All the possibilities were inside her. And life was long. And she would die in two days.

So they made love on the floor.

Because on her bed was the suggestion box.

And because they didn’t have time. They made love.

Clumsy and slow and hesitant and haltingly, it still worked. They made a love that didn’t stop whenever they would cum. A love that wouldn’t count down. Love that didn’t allow the feeble concept of positions and oral sex because it would have taken their skin too far apart from one another. Perhaps because it was their first time. Perhaps because it was the love of two people with terror brooding inside of them. And pain and misery.

*****

Only after this, did they begin to face the reality of a couple. The What now?, the specialization, the long times to cross.

The night was falling around the couch. The light, the air and their voices were as soft as velvet:

“Kate?”

“Yea?…”

“Can you…promise me you won’t make fun of me?”

Kate raised her head from their snug embrace in the blanket. “You serious?”

“Promise.”

“I can’t promise that if you wanna be my girlfriend.”

“Come on.”

“Ok. Sure, I promise.”

“I wanna ask you something weird.”

“No shit.”

“Oh my God, I’m gonna make it weird.”

“What?”

“Could you…” Her voice wasn’t laughing anymore. Kind of the opposite. “Could you touch my…my butthole?”

Kate swallowed back a What? and let out a snicker that said, That’s it? “Come here.”

Their bodies had never left each other but somehow they got even closer. Kate cupped her buttcheeks. “And don’t ever use the word butthole ever again. You’re not 12.”

“I don’t wanna use crude words with you.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“So you want me to touch your anus, not your asshole.”

“Exactly,” Lenore chuckled.

“Just touch it?”

“Yes. And…” again her voice wasn’t chuckling anymore, “don’t ask me why. Please.”

“I didn’t intend to.” She caressed her buttocks, took her time, and eventually stopped when her fingers rested onto the soft anus.

She fondled it without any intention of kinkiness. It wasn’t sexual. Even if it was. And Lenore’s breathing actually slowed down. The good tension in their muscles calmed down for this moment.

Kate explored every detail of and around the puckered hole. She was caressing it like she would caress the back of Lenore’s hand on a lazy afternoon watching TV, only instead of the most visible part of the human body, against her fingertips was the most intimate, the most vulnerable part of her friend; and within her fingertips was a lot of peace.

Peace doesn’t need questions. She kept on caressing Lenore. Slowly. Imperceptibly.

“Kate, you’ll say I’m skipping steps again but… I love you.”

“And I don’t say I love you on the first date.”

They kissed. A little smoother than a few hours earlier.

It was Kate’s turn to hesitate.

“What?” Lenore asked when she noticed.

“I promise you this is not a question. I just want you to know: I’m ok with anal sex. I’m not disgusted or anything. If you wanna have it, we–”

Kate didn’t finish because Lenore broke eye contact.

They didn’t move for another while, never broke skin contact. They forgot one was touching the other’s anus. They forgot how special it was and instead they made it theirs. Again: the lazy afternoon watching TV.

“What about you?” Lenore asked later. “Anything you like to do that is weird and awkward? You said squirting is a lesbian thing originally?”

“It’s a circus act. Like that ping-pong ball trick they do in Thailand.” Kate kissed her on the forehead and rolled over, bringing a lot of the blanket with her. Also abandoning her buttcrack duty.

Lenore snickered. “Oh so I’m just gonna assume you can’t.”

“Shut up. Hey, wait a minute. You want to write porn, don’t you? I got it now.”

“I can.”

“Write porn?”

“No, um…”

“What then?”

“I can– um…”

“Ah. Can’t even say it… Well, good for you.”

Lenore bigspooned Kate. She reached around her and slid her fingers along her nymphs. Then inside, where it was wet.

“You won’t make me squirt,” Kate said. “I tried. I can’t. But it’s ok, I won’t lose sleep over it.”

“Can I still try?”

“So is that it? you just wanna give me a tutorial?” Kate smiled. And shuddered as a finger was creeping inside her: “You’re still skipping steps–oh my God, don’t go straight for my G-spot!”

“Sorry.”

Kate put her own finger inside herself and guided Lenore’s. “It’s here. It’s all swollen because of you.”

They pressed on it together and Kate tried to suppress a slight gasp.

“It doesn’t even feel that good to be honest,” Lenore said. “But I think… I find it beautiful in a way.” Her breathing sharpened. “You’re beautiful.”

Kate turned back and they reunited.

Lenore put two fingers inside Kate. She gave up on focusing on her G-spot and caressed her everywhere. Kissed her too. Licked her nipples. Licked her tongue. Breathed in her hair. Gripped her toes with her toes.

She explained and demonstrated at the same time, “You have to rub your G-spot like you’re really not afraid to make it happen.”

Kate was moaning more overtly, blowing whispery uh-huhs of confirmation in her neck. Her hips were rolling back and forth.

“Once you feel it gets really squishy you push out your fingers and rub your clit like that.” Lenore made Kate gasp.

“Len you’re gonna make me cum.”

Lenore repeated words and fingers: “You rub there. Like you don’t have a care in the world.”

“Mhmmmmh…”

“And you let it, just like that beautiful voice you have right now.”

Kate pushed out her fingers, Lenore rushed them to her clit and rubbed it in a circle until they were both moaning together. Until they stopped moaning together.

Kate had not squirted, of course, but it hadn’t been the point and they were too busy celebrating her orgasm with a long, deep kiss anyway. One that was easy and comfortable.

Suddenly, Kate felt Lenore’s chest vibrating inside her mouth, groaning softly and she heard a wet noise coming from Lenore’s crotch, drops hitting the blanket and the couch.

Lenore was touching herself with the same two fingers that had made Kate cum and she had made a mess.

They giggled and kissed and giggled.

They were ready to love each other.

*****

They could have spent the rest of the night on a wet couch but didn’t.

Lenore could have spent the night out of her bedroom but they did not.

It’s Kate who moved the suggestion box from the bed so they could get in and eat their second order of sushi on it and watch Star Wars. The good ones. Lenore insisted.

Kate was asleep before the Battle of Yavin.

Lenore could have never imagined seeing Kate Toynbee tired.

*****

Sunday (two days)

On Sunday morning, they woke up together and against each other. They were still naked and their skin was so soft and so warm.

They made love a few more indistinguishable times, resuming from where they had left a sweet eternity ago. They did a 69 that wasn’t a position, it was their true form. Fused. Their mouths only withdrew from it to exhale orgasms. The hot breath on their sexes was still a caress in its own way.

Kate eventually broke the balance to slither back against Lenore and share with her the few drops of squirt she had caught in her mouth.

Their ravenous sharing abated down to a deep French kiss.

Then a kiss, assured and full of both of their feelings for each other.

Then pecks, playful, still not ready to acknowledge how their friendship had turned, despite it being in plain sunlit sight.

They did some laundry. Their clothes and the bedsheets.

Lenore lent some clothes to Kate because somehow they thought staying naked would be unreasonable.

Then they had hours to fill.

Kate pushed her to try and make that long overdue book haul video. She pushed her to write a little. But it didn’t work.

“So your turn then,” she asked. “Tell me about the writer experience.”

“What do you wanna know?”

“Everything. What’s the gift of creativity like?”

“It’s a bitch.”

For once Kate was taken aback by the taste of her own medicine.

“O…kayy…”

“But here’s a secret.” Lenore walked to her room and came back from it holding a Jack Skellington keychain. She put the tiny puppet into Kate’s hand. “It’s called a literary device.”

“I don’t get it.”

“You put it somewhere visible, like a zipper of your backpack, so the audience when they see it, they know you’re mine.”

“I fuckin’ knew it.”

“What?”

“That you were one of these girls in high school.”

It was their last laugh. But it was good.

Soon after, Lenore called almost everyone she knew, to hear their voices. Her parents took the longest.

Kate asked her the reason of all that. Asked her why she looked so scared all the time.

Talking about witches would damage any bond. Even one as hard to grasp as friend turned lover.

And since Kate had never been stupid, she asked about Jill and Becky.

From there the light conversations of Sundays caught on the deadweight of their inability to tell the truth. Lies breeding lies, questions breeding questions. Suspicions raised the voices and caused longer silence.

In between there were lines such as:

“I don’t know if I’m bisexual, I just love you.”

“Not a red flag at all.”

Unanswered questions such as:

“Why didn’t you tell me you moved?”

It went as far as Lenore talking about them both quitting their jobs and moving back together with her parents and start a new life.

The day went grueling. The evening would go dull.

Instead it went explosive. Lenore finally admitted she had sex with the two psychos.

The last thing said was:

“I see…”

Dropped by Kate before she stormed out of the apartment.

Lenore called her all night of course. Cried all night. Screamed at a cardboard box she couldn’t tear apart.

And she wondered if Kate had left a note inside. If it was in there, lost forever.

*****

Monday (one day)

“I want to quit.”

Lenore did not wait for Eliza and her to go in her office, she dropped this in the break area.

The manager smile turned to an expression of dumb surprise in the middle of a gulp of soda. “But…why?”

“Personal matter.”

“But but but. I don’t understand, we were so close.”

“What?”

“From having something, you and I. You know.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“We were trying to be a team, we were trying to make you an artist, what am I gonna tell Prudence Fleischer?”

“I’ll talk to her, if she wants to hear me.”

“Oh no no no, doesn’t work like that, it won’t look good, Lana.”

“Bu–”

“Let me tell you what’s best for you, Lenor, because that’s my fucking job actually, you go write what you said you’d write and you don’t make me look like a fool, because what would I look like?”

“I…”

“I’m asking you? What would I look like? You think you can hope to work ever again if you don’t look good?”

“I’ll find something–”

“No you won’t, it was my point.”

“So…I can’t quit.”

“Unless you wanna get fired.”

Lenore turned around to leave.

“Lana?”

She turned back. “Yes?

“Your story, what is it about?”

The mouth of Eliza grew all teeth. Figuratively.

*****

Lenore opened Word without a care.

She rushed the whole thing. Four thousand words in four hours. She had never done this before. It was gross: walls of Subject-Verb-Object Subject-Verb-Object, stock character arcs, superhero-movie-tier ending… Not once she slowed down to overthink.

Because, in fact, it was a completely different story. No witches. She had decided to knock together some inoffensive blogpost about how pictures of empty familiar spaces are spooky.

She got interrupted once. While typing the word wicked. A young intern–younger than her at least–looking so frail. Unsmiling. Eyes piercing, analyzing, her attention span absolute.

First time Lenore saw her.

“Is that your Halloween story?”

“Yea.”

“What’s it about?”

“Satan’s deed.”

“Fuckin’ metal.”

The interruption was interrupted by Melissa of Management. “Ariadne, Michelle asked you for the report ten minutes ago, you quit your slacking. What are you doing here? Why are you talking to her?”

And while Melissa was keeping a socially acceptable distance between herself and the two women, Ariadne looked left and right, then walked straight to her and punched her in the gut without a word, before going back to her duties on another floor.

The blow had been insanely powerful, the impact felt in the air. Lenore, already unwell in the presence of Melissa, was paralyzed on her chair, fascinated. And this woman, this awful woman, coping with a punch that would make her shit shreds of her own liver tonight, was still smiling. A sneer just for Lenore, that seemed to say, this is where you are.

It lingered until the woman had gone back into other open spaces. Good thing Lenore was almost finished, her fingers shook way too much for typing on her keyboard.

She sent her oeuvre to Legal before going out for lunchbreak. It sucked. She didn’t care.

She drove to Papa John’s and saw Kate was busy reading from the restaurant’s suggestion box and filling out forms.

They waved at each other, through a window, too far apart to even mouth anything, and Lenore ate somewhere else.

At 2pm, a new e-mail was waiting in her inbox.

It contained the pending version of Monthly Green, Halloween Special, with its ten extra pages: The Upper Floors by Lenore Llamarada.

The e-mail said: Awesome story. 2 thumbs up from every hand in legal dept. Don’t forget to save your manuscript on 3 separate devices. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.

She called Kate and left a message on her voicemail, tried to sound as not scared as possible. She didn’t bother adding that she loved her after Bye. They were not friends anymore. They were something less or more than friends.

The opposite of friends appeared behind her: Becky and Jill going, “Yo, Sylvia Plath, congrats, you’ve done it!”

Lenore jumped to her feet, realizing too late it was the body language of a prey. She whispered, “You stay away from me.”

“What’s wrong? Everybody’s saying you’re finished with the new great American classic. The piece of literature that will bring Deep Green together, into one big cultural shift. Employees will quote your dialogs for generations, until they quote you without even knowing what they’re quoting anymore. They’ll make up a word for your style: lenoresque. And they’ll always use it wrong.”

The other one went on: “Can’t wait to read it. I’m sure I’ll enjoy your shit.”

Lenore backed off, rear against her desk. She feared the two girls would get closer.

They didn’t.

Three more came up. Women she had barely talked to before. Then two more. Then four more. Saying the same things. Keeping an unthreatening distance but growing a threatening number.

They were so many, the air was buzzing, was heating up.

“What’s it about?” the first row was asking. Or, “Can we be friends when you’re famous?”

The second, third, fourth row and the others gravitating around seemed to be mouthing the same nonsense, mouths full of spit clapping and smiling over a dark hole.

“Everybody fuck off! Leave her alone.” The whole bunch dispersed. The woman who had shouted this only had time to push away one or two of them. Lenore didn’t even look at her, she ran to the stairs, ran up to Management. Eliza.

She was done. She wanted out. And if they didn’t let her, she would do the necessary to, break things, hit Eliza in the face, whatever fear would inspire her to start.

Only, the manager wasn’t present. Or at least her office was closed and silent.

“She’s not here. Come with me.” Lenore recognized the voice that had “saved” her a minute earlier.

It came from inside the elevator.

The woman was beckoning her in.

Lenore was only a few steps and a serious hesitation away from her.

Did she have a gun or a knife?

“I have answers,” said Freya of Management, a hand holding the elevator doors open.

Lenore took one step forward. Eliza burst out of her office. Her smile was horribly twisting the unaltered rage coming out of the pit of her chest. “Lena, come in!”

Lenore walked.

“Lena, get in here right f–RIGHT NOW!”

The distance closed down faster and more easily between Lenore and the elevator.

She passed the metallic threshold, broke her vow to never set foot in one of these evil machines again, turned around: she was standing next to Freya, facing Eliza outside.

“I’ll tell the discipline committee!” Eliza spat out.

“You do that,” Freya replied confidently. The doors closed. They were alone.

Lenore’s stomach was so tingly she didn’t feel the elevator start downward.

The woman gave her the USB key she forgot at her computer.

She spoke: “There’s a coven of witches at Deep Green Alliance.”

She explained everything. It took so long the elevator probably reached hell.

It wasn’t exposition for Lenore. It was her short story. The original one. The flies, the portal, the lay-offs. Everything she had imagined. Except for a detail.

“There’s only concrete behind that door, I saw it,” Lenore said.

“The entire corridor is an error. The flies feed off errors. And weakness. If someone passes that door…hell, we’re fucked.”

“I have the keys.”

“Are you sure?”

No, she was not.

“So I hope you figured out you’re not one, you are two.”

Lenore figured it out. “They’ll hurt Kate?”

“They hurt everything, you’re all weak.”

“What are you?” Lenore asked.

“It doesn’t matter. You don’t talk about us, you talk about them.”

THERE ARE TWO COVENS OF WITCHES AT DEEP GREEN

“Are you protecting us?”

“You’re in the way.”

“Are you protecting us?”

“Keep the keys safe, publish your fucking story, and face the consequences of your actions.”

Lenore looked at Freya for the first time and met her gaze.

And she saw what she already saw inside Portia, inside Ariadne, something she had mistaken for cruelty. There would never be a smile on that mouth. And her eyes would never falter. Freya was fixing her till the end of times. In these eyes was no cruelty, no sadism, no superiority, not even a divine indifference so dear to fucking Lovecraft. Because her mistake had been to look behind the eyes, missing what was behind the whole head, behind the shoulders. There she would see the territory, the nest, the cubs, an Earth they–whatever they were–didn’t had to vow to protect, burdened enough of their own nature. No sense of right and wrong rested on their shoulders, none was needed when their arms hit, they left it to human beings. These eyes were the eyes of survival. And Lenore was a threat.

The elevator braked so harshly Lenore was hurled to her knees.

The doors opened to Management.

Eliza was there, on a soda break, four hours younger. Freya was nowhere at all.

“Good morning, Lenore, you wanted to see me,” she said like nothing happened.

Lenore stepped out. Eliza stepped back.

It was starting to make sense. Lenore approached her. She tried to reduce the distance between them.

She raised her hand toward her and Eliza moved away, asked nonchalantly, “So um…what’s up?”

“You can’t hurt me, is that it? Your threats are empty.”

Lenore sprung forward swiftly enough that she was able to push her shoulder.

Eliza didn’t lose her condescending smile. “You received threats? That’s serious, Lena, you should tell Twitter.”

Two smiling women came from deep into the hallways and joined the empty conversation. “Hey you’re Lena, the writer girl?” one asked. “Hey did you get my circular about libel?” the other asked.

“I’m not afraid,” Lenore said.

“Of course you are.”

“I’ll go back to work now.”

“Best decision of your life.”

Lenore swung her arm at the three women and they jumped back like a bothered swarm. They could have almost laughed.

*****

Everything was to be re-done.

First her story, which was the easiest because all she did was plugging her USB key in and sending the real story to Legal, a first draft, rough and full of plot holes, entitled The Witches of the Upper Floors by Lenore Llamarada. About flies. Only about flies, she thought.

Then she went to look at Kate through a restaurant window once more.

Back from lunchbreak, a cake on her desk said, HURRAY FOR HEMINGWAY, written in chocolate syrup, which smelled like…whatever–Lenore threw it in the trashcan of the breakroom, plate and spoon included, it’s not what creeped her out.

What did was the e-mail from Legal, the PDF. Because she had broken the rule and now they knew about it.

And there were worse fates than being fired. Like losing someone.

She opened the e-mail. The body was blank.

The rotten butterflies awakened in her belly only when she saw this time Monthly Green featured Sawn-off Shotgun Romance and Zombies by Lana Almareda.

She closed down everything and went home.

She had a story to finish.

*****

She turned off the WiFi and took an old laptop from a drawer.

The battery and the fan had seen better days but it worked. She plugged the USB key in and had one thing to decide. To decide right.

If they were flies, what could be the opposite side?

More than ever, words would count.

Lenore had never thought about where inspiration came from, she left that to real authors. Those who do interviews.

Without any internet she relied on her knowledge, a big word to say a sum of anecdotes. She knew arachnophobia was prevalent in parts of the world where spiders were actually harmless. People in the rain forest walked around half-naked and barefoot, never checked under their pillow for any eight-legged nightmare that could give you three minutes of agonizing death in one pinprick bite.

Spiders.

Fear.

Pure irrational fear.

A fear that was a fear of something else.

Nobody was really scared of flies. Grossed out, sure. But she remembered plucking the wings of a black fly as a kid and letting it crawl over her hand before crushing it with a glass. She had laughed in disgust.

Would the box say something about spiders? About the real ending she had failed to unearth in her first draft?

It was infinite, the two sides were in.

Would the box be compliant?

No. The suggestions were all small strips of paper.

HOW ABOUT VAMPIRES? EVER READ POLIDORI?

A child drawing of a house, a smiling sun and a woman lying in a doodle of red pencil.

WHAT WILL YOU DO WHEN THE DOOM SOUNDTRACK HITS?

Several straps of $20 and $10 bills. Unmarked. She stopped taking them out around $12,000 and went back to reading.

WHY DO YOU MAKE THIS POSSIBLE? STOP MAKING MONEY AND FIX YOUR GF!!

Nonsense.

YOU KNOW WHAT’S THE SWEDISH WORD FOR ‘THE END’?

And then just a few words here and there, or blank pages.

WANNA CRY?

She finished her second draft without any help, saved it, printed out two copies, one for her, the other she put into the box and let it sink down like in old movies quicksand. Movies where spiders were ten feet tall.

The biggest sheet she found was a suicide note, or something close.

She didn’t know Kate’s handwriting.

It could be anyone. The last throes of despair don’t make a particular face. She learned it from Brian.

Finally, there was an object in the box which she at first thought was another sextoy.

It was a side-handle baton. And she took it with great care, with great interest. Especially since she had found out she was missing the two P29 keys.

Time for a ride.

*****

She couldn’t afford to feel bad.

But she sure didn’t feel badass as she parked near the Papa John’s and waited in her car like a detective, waiting for the moment she would betray someone she loved.

People outside came and went, marked the passage of time toward the stillness of night, going less and less as her determination had to grow higher and higher.

Lenore came out of the car.

She walked in the darkness to Kate’s old beaten Honda. She could feel her presence somewhere inside the restaurant, out of her sight.

She looked at the stuff on the back seat, so obviously hidden under a blanket.

It was for her own good. These words were probably the motto of Hell.

She took the baton out of her bag, looked around. No lampposts, no witnesses.

The toughened glass broke more easily than she expected. In one hit. The sound of it was tragic.

The baton shattered on impact, leaving only the handle in her hand. A sign she was doing right. The item had run its course.

She searched the glove compartment, some bags, some suitcases, and found the keys.

Lenore began running, asked for forgiveness now that the deed was done.

*****

Tuesday (zero day)

Ten minutes later, she realized the gate of Deep Green’s parking lot would not open at this time of night. She would not be able to stake out P29 from inside her car.

And it was too cold to do it outside.

The solution would be to do what her suspicions had been telling her to do for hours. Or her bad feeling. Or her certainty.

So after much looking around for cops and security guards, Lenore sneaked in the premises under the guise of the night. She prayed there was no camera as she’d been told.

But no camera meant more certainty.

She opened the P29 door and stepped inside. More bad feeling.

The neons clicked alight automatically. No more suspicions:

At the end of the corridor was a sleeping bag. A laptop. Empty bottles. Empty pizza boxes. A backpack. With a Jack Skellington keychain on the zipper.

She was right.

It’s awful being always right when you’re a pessimist, as Kate would have commented. Lenore should have completely collapsed at this thought but she remained expressionless. Right now, she loved her more than anything and it was enough.

But it was also too late.

She closed the door and went to sit on the sleeping bag.

How could she have missed it? How could she keep missing things like this?

In the backpack, she found a folder full of suggestion notes. Handwritten madness, the same as hers.

One of them was telling Kate there could be a chance she get her job back at Deep Green.

And also there was a gun. This stupidly large gun burned into Lenore’s memory.

It was hers now. She put it in her purse.

Now all she had to do was to wait. And if Kate shows up, they would vanish together. Away from all this. Even if she had to convince her at gunpoint.

Lenore didn’t even smile at that. Didn’t even blow air through her nose.

The corridor was heated. As long as she would move, the lights would stay on. The sound behind the Upper Floors door was low enough at this hour to be bearable.

She waited for Kate.

Outside, only the sun came. Cars started to come and go.

At 6:30am, her badge let her in. The security guard in the lobby nodded at her no more than casually.

She took the stairs and visited the first floor, then the second, then the third. No one at work yet, everything was quiet and empty and abnormal. The buzzing of the lights. The conditioned air keeping still around her as she walked the hallways aimlessly.

She wasn’t scared–wouldn’t be scared, wouldn’t be surprised.

Some walls glitched as she raised her eyes on them. The textures would apply incorrectly, or be displayed broken down into tiles or blinking errors from other walls. Some were the walls of her apartment. The flower print of her kitchen. Some were from unrelated surfaces, street pavement, a fire engine, contracts she signed, or simply a vivid blue in the corner of her eyes.

There was one floor she didn’t visit. As she entered it she saw the cleaning ladies were there, working. Lenore turned back, because the social commentary was too on the nose for her, and because despite her name she didn’t speak a word of Spanish.

She settled for Accounting.

The water cooler by the dolphin poster was fluttering in and out of being, depending on the angle she looked at it.

No names were being droned out by the impossible wall. Even witches had to sleep sometimes.

They found her at her desk. No hello or anything. Lenore waited 9am to plug in her USB key and send the PDF file that was on it in a mass e-mail.

Deep Green Alliance drank its first coffee in front of a leaked version of Monthly Green, featuring Witches on Every Floor by Lenore Llamarada, a silly but uncensored story about flies and spiders and the people in between.

“What do you think you’re doing? What the fuck you think you’re doing?”

Lenore rotated slowly on her chair and almost fell down. Melissa of Management was towering over her, trying to look menacing in her enraged powerlessness. But it’s not what made Lenore jump back in fear, it was the face: as unstable as the walls, flickering from a caked-up beige of human beings to the rotting grainy green-gray of a bluebottle. Red eyes by the thousand.

Terror blew all over her skin. Adrenaline wanted her to act, before panic would take over. But Lenore stayed put.

“Fuck you, Melissa,” she said.

“Oh now you speak out? Bravo! But you think anyone will read your shit? Who do you think you are? You fucking dollar-store Edward Snowden. You only won the right to get fired. No one fucking cares!”

Another alternating monstrosity showed up, with its own string of insults. The whole floor could be like them. Lenore had no idea how many humans were left.

Despite their impotent hunger to kill Lenore on the spot, they were still always on the edge of laughter.

Lenore was thinking about Kate. She was dreaming Kate. She was breathing Kate. Nothing else was left to prevent her from cowering in fear. But it was enough.

Rumbling amplified around them, sounding part workday, part disturbance.

A man passed them, human-looking, said, “Hey there.” He was gone.

“See?” Melissa said. “No one cares.”

Someone screamed. Desk furniture scraped the floor, as if bodies had been startled.

“What’s wrong with your mouth?” they heard, a female human voice filled with genuine fright.

“I e-mailed the Board too,” Lenore said.

They shrugged. “How fucking naïve can you be?” They clenched their fists. Or the claws of their forelegs.

Her landline rang. It was Eliza.

*My office. Now.*

She got up, drove away the two flies just by doing so. As she passed between them they spat out, “Enjoy unemployment!” but Lenore didn’t look back. She waited to be alone in the stairwell to break down.

She had experienced pure horror before but this particular strain of it had its own crippling bite. One that wouldn’t leave her stronger or sicker but different. Incompatible with even the most depressed paths of everyday life. Paranormal was forever. All the prescribed drugs in the world wouldn’t take her back or numb her out of it.

Trembling from arms hair down to bone marrow, she knocked on Eliza’s door.

There was no response. Only a group of flies down the corridor, observing her, chortling through the muck in their fly mouths, wings contorting under their jackets like a hunch.

Lenore looked through the windows and saw the office was empty.

Her phone rang.

ELIZA

*Lena, it’s me, there was a Kate Toynbee asking for you in the lobby, I let her in, did I do right?*