Communion

One to get you started...a peek.

And she has all these stories in her head, but she can’t hear them.

She sits in her closet, a secret mausoleum, skirt in a heap outside the door, panties pushed down to her ankles. The somber drywall is cold against her back, the darkness is penitently sacred but she welcomes it as she rubs herself, bows her head, and prays silently. Her eyes are closed; she breathes heavily still, cautious fingers pushing her closer and closer.

She doesn’t tease, won’t take her time. She rocks so slightly, listens for him to come home, listens to the regulated shuffle of her body working furiously, feels the tension as she wants it more, and she wonders when she learned to think that it was wrong, knows that she has had these thoughts forever. How she would touch herself in bed at night, beneath the covers, blinds slammed shut like her eyes.

She had developed breasts so early, seven, eight maybe it was. How she would drop her lacy nightgown down her shoulders, run plump, child-hands rhythmically over the triangular mounds. How she would imagine the boys entering her room, young boys, young bodies, with thoughts like a man. She didn’t know about sex yet, just about breasts. And she would make up these stories inside her head. Elaborate tales of romance, desire, of a fundamental need for her.

Stroking herself in her closet now, she doesn’t remember these stories. She just remembers those hot August nights, living in the dry California hills. No action for miles in either direction, alone at thirteen with her best friend. Her best friend the thief, the alcoholic at fifteen; her best friend that loved her and came to her at night, who stole his father’s car and drove her away. She drank heavily those nights, for nights after that, shots of tequila with store brand juice chasers; sticky, sweet and deep red stains, ran the length of the dashboard as she had poured them back.

That night, the air gummy and dry, she met a new boy with a young body and a man’s thoughts, like those from her stories. Maybe thirteen, or fifteen, his name lost in her drink; awkward and laborious, but she had agreed. She wasn’t romanced but let him fuck her that night on the August cement, her skirt in a heap, panties pushed down to her ankles. She bled in the road, but he didn’t notice, the washed away sin with her sticky red stain.

And he had watched the whole thing from the steps of the house, her best friend, who loved her, as he finished the beer and the unborn romance. She put on her clothes, shrugged into the night and walked to where he sat; she winced as she knelt in front of him, bowed her head.

“He took it,” he said, as he put down the beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Yes,” she answered.

“I wouldn’t have hurt you,” he said, jammed a cigarette between his lips.

But that was all that was said. He drove her home slowly, silently; the same way he took the beating from his father that night. She cried, funeral tears, for what he had lost, the stories weren’t true after all. And she stopped listening, stopped petting her breasts. That night in her bed, she nursed the pain between her legs, the deep needling ache. And she found it that night, while stroking herself, found the heat like that night, alive like that night.

She doesn’t remember those stories as she glides her fingers in and out, as she caresses and grinds, as she pleads for the hot, sticky communion. She just screams in her head, for what she had lost, what she had taken from him, what was left in the road on that August cement.