She

Notes/Warnings: Possible TRIGGERS. Implied drug use.
Summary: Written for the prompt(s): Write a fragment of a story from the POV of an unreliable narrator—third-person limited (or attached) narration. 500 words.


Three a.m., and Carson’s awake. Itching. Hopping and bopping. Shaking and sweating.

But he can almost feel the music. It’s been so long, but even if it’d been a lifetime, he’d never lose the memory of that music. Of her.

But he’s kind of lost track of the exact number of days he’s been without either.

Oh, he’s tried everything to leave her for keeps—to forget her—to not miss her with every fiber of his miserable being. To not long constantly for the sweet, dark oblivion of her embrace. . . .

And he knows—he knows, alright?—that that same embrace is so far beyond bad for him. He knows it’s killing him, but what’s life worth without her on his lips, in his arms, in his soul?

There’d been nothing before her . . . nothing. No music in his soul—no soul to speak of. But when she was in his arms, there’d been . . . arias. She’d sent sweet harmony through his veins and dancing rhymes through his brain. She’d made his pupils dilate and his synapses fire like the Fourth of July. . . !

She—or lack of her—has turned him into a poet. A piss-poor one, but a poet, nonetheless.

Carson laughs his quiet, self-deprecating laugh as he stands outside the peeling, used-to-be-white door. This is the only place he knows of where he can get a hold of her, anymore. This decaying old building in this squalid neighborhood, at this moldering door. This is the only place where he can be sure to find her.

(It’s not like it was . . . once upon a year. When she was at every party or get together he went to—supposing they hadn’t already gone together—back before he gave her up for a fresh start at a “normal” life. Back before he’d become . . . respectable and boring. Before he’d begun drowning in the leftover detritus of his former dreams. Before he’d lost all their friends to her dark and sensual charms . . . not that he blamed them, of course. He’d barely been anybody with her. Without her, he’s less than nothing, and even he knows it.)

Gathering up his courage, such as it is, he reaches out to the moldering, once-white door—now his only lifeline—and knocks.

Immediately, from somewhere behind the door, the sound of deep, menacing barking starts up. But almost as immediately, another voice can be heard, also barking: “Ah, quit it, Digby!”

At that harsh imperative, the barking instantly cuts off—becomes a high, distant whine, and Carson squints at the peephole set in the door, and smiles his nervous, hopeful smile.

A second later, the sound of disengaging locks fills Carson with soaring hope that he can only just manage to keep off his face . . . though not really. He’s got an open, easy-to-read face, wide-eyed and boyish. He knows his every thought and feeling is likely scrawled all over him the moment he thinks and feels it.

But it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters, anymore, except getting her back. The unlocking of this door means he’s one step closer to that august goal. It means . . . he hasn’t been forgotten . . . by Lonnie or whomever is answering Lonnie’s door, these days. If he had been, he’d have likely heard the cocking of a semiautomatic pistol and not the disengaging of deadbolts.

As expected, the door swings open and Lonnie Grimes fills the doorway, backlit by the dim light of his apartment, leaning on the left post and grinning.

“Well, well . . . the prodigal has returned,” he murmurs in his low, honey-smooth voice, while running his tattooed right hand up the front of his pristine white wife-beater. Indigo velour sweatpants, a new pair of Jordans, and several lengths of gold chain around his equally tattooed neck complete the look and make Carson fight to not roll his eyes.

Same old Lonnie.

“H-hey, man.” Carson tries on his nervous smile. “How are ya?”

Lonnie does roll his eyes and snorts. “Oh, I’m fandamntastic, Cars. Whaddaya want?”

Flushing, Carson looks down at his own square-bear, worn-in, no-name shoes. “You know what I want, Lonnie,” he mumbles, something like regret, something like shame causing him to keep his gaze dropped. Hadn’t he once told Lonnie that he would never come back to this place? For Lonnie or for her?

A heavy, put-upon sigh sounds and the hand drifts down the wife-beater, to rest just above the drawstring of the velour sweats. Lonnie, at his most theatrically lothario-ish. “Yeah, Cars, I guess I do know what you want. What you need. Only question is . . . how bad do you want it?”

Licking dry lips with a similarly dry tongue, Carson nods. This—all of it—is so familiar. “Bad, Lonnie.”

“See, I knew that about you, kid.” Lonnie chuckles, long and low. “I must be psychic, goddamn.”

“Lonnie—”

“And how much do you need, this time?” With a sudden vertiginous swing from theatric to pragmatic, Lonnie straightens a little, his gaze becoming so intent, Carson can feel it boring a hole in the top of his head while he continues to study his ugly, but serviceable shoes.

“A b-bundle.”

Another snort, and Lonnie leans closer, reaching out to run his index finger over Carson’s hideous clip-on tie. His nails are so neat, they must be manicured. And he smells strongly of some designer cologne, the rich, dark scent of which is making Carson unexpectedly dizzy and disoriented, as is the déjà vu that is Lonnie’s voice and closeness after . . . two years? “A bundle? That, I can provide, my squirrely compadre. The real question becomes . . . can you pay for it?”

Carson lets out the breath he’d been holding and digs in his pocket for the small wad of cash he knows won’t be quite enough. When he holds it out, Lonnie deftly plucks it out of his hand and quickly counts it, whistling as he does.

The whistling soon stops.

“Ah, chum . . . you’re thirty-three short,” Lonnie says with amused disappointment and faux dismay. They’ve definitely done this dance before. Nonetheless, Carson pales, then blushes, swallowing and squaring his shoulders as he finally meets Lonnie’s dark, playful gaze again.

“M-maybe . . . maybe together we can th-think of some other way I can p-pay you the rest?” When Carson licks his lips this time—with pointed calculation—Lonnie licks his own, too, and the money disappears into the right pocket of the lurid sweatpants. Then that manicured hand is making its way to Lonnie’s wife-beater-clad chest again, sliding up and down contemplatively.

Looking Carson over, Lonnie’s smug, but charming, white-white smirk—it’s easy to tell that Lonnie most definitely says NO to the stuff he peddles—slithers onto his tan, handsome face.

“Maybe we can, at that,” he allows, grabbing Carson’s tie and tugging just hard enough to get Carson moving toward him, but not hard enough to pull the clip-on monstrosity off. “Lock the door behind you, Cars, then join me at the sofa.”

His body tingling, Carson does as he’s bidden, humming. He can almost feel the music. Can almost feel the warm rush of her in his veins. Feel the dreamy-sweet lassitude she’ll bring. . . .

When Carson’s locked the door and turns to face Lonnie, it’s to see Lonnie sitting in the center of his white leather sofa, arms spread out along the back of it, sweats pushed down to his ankles, dick already standing at attention from within a nest of dark, curly pubes.

Carson licks his lips again with a tongue that’s remembered how to be moist . . . among other things. He crosses the room and skirts Lonnie’s glass coffee table—on which she rests in all her pure, packaged glory . . . his reward for going without for two long years—going smoothly to his knees between Lonnie’s hairy legs, and—

—soon, Lonnie’s moaning, his hand gripping Carson’s head, fingers tangling in Carson’s hair as he rhythmically lifts his pelvis off the leather couch before sitting again . . . lather, rinse, repeat, till his moans have become grunts of filth and encouragement, and—

—and Carson . . . Carson can almost feel the music.

END