“Supper” was Burger King. We sat at the table and ate, and then I drove us to the hospital. Up in Mama’s room, she was watching television with a few tubes coming out of her, plugged into monitors and an IV. She looked like a Hutt, plain and simple. Her weight had turned her face into that, smeared her eyes wide but narrow, and her head floated on a beard of fatness. It was sad and bizarre. I made jokes with her. She was excited to get back to the house. She told me that she missed her table and television. I actually liked the old gal. Food had replaced all of life for her, but what else she was holding onto wasn’t much better. I tried to imagine the work her heart had to do to keep her alive. The woman in the bed next to her looked dead already. She was emaciated and skull-like, passed out cold with her eyes half open. Mama started getting tired, so we left.

Ricky looked at me in the rearview, “Mama sure liked you, dude.” Angie smiled back at him, “That’s why he’s my boyfriend.”

“Hell, yes.” he said. I stared at the road. I stared to feel bad for being there, but part of me felt oddly at ease around them. I was a misfit like they were, but where I didn’t fit sat alright with me. Life was a freak show no matter where you had it. That didn’t give me license to stay, but the truth was that I was too burned out to drive out of town.

Ricky went to bed. I let the dogs out for while then they went into the room. Angie smoked a pack in between two jugs of red, and we sat in the room by the front door. She stared at me, “There’s somethin’ I have to tell you.”

“Then tell me.”

“I don’t want you to judge me, honey. But if we’re going to be together, I think you should know.” She walked out to the porch and lit a smoke, then stood in the doorway.

“Alright. I used to be a stripper.”

“No, really?”

“I really did.”

“Get outta here.”

“But that’s just the first part,” she inhaled a long drag and shot the cloud out into the air like a funnel, “I also did a porno once.”

“Huh.”

“Well, it was a gag porn, not like a gag har-har, but you know. This guy has a site, and he paid me to go down on him, or really to put it in my mouth, pinch my nose shut and make me gag. My screen name was Savannah Star Rose. I used my kitty’s name.”

I stared at the painting. She looked at me, “Does that bother you?”

“It’s none of my business, babe.”

“I don’t have any diseases or anything, and I didn’t fuck the guy. I’m not a whore. My ex hooked me up with him, he thought it would be a fast way to make some money. We were flat broke.”

“He never thought to get a job?”

“Oh, hell no. His mommy supports him. She’s the one who got him hooked on smokin’ coke. Sometimes I wondered if the two of them weren’t fuckin’.”

“Got it.”

“But I got away from all of that now.”

She tossed her smoke and stumbled toward me, leaned down and put her hands on either side of my waist, “Want a lap dance?”

“Sure.”

I loathed strip clubs, could count on one hand how many times I’d been in one, and it only took three fingers. But she was obliterated there, and I was in the Rome of that place. She corralled the pugs into her room with her and closed the door. I stared up at the painting again. The horses didn’t look happy to me, they looked trapped. They were running around the property line to blow off steam so they could deal with where they were. She returned holding a CD, wearing a short dress and heels. She loaded the disc and hit play. Rebel Yell started, and she moved her hips to the song, staring down at me through a mess of wavy dark hair, her nose sitting there the way it was, her eyelids heavy with drink. She gyrated off-beat to the song, and lifted her dress up and off. She lost her balance and stumbled back into the stereo, and a few things fell from the shelf. She kept going, made her way over to me, turned and spread her ass in my face. The thong was blue, and the tampon was still in. She slapped her ass and pressed her hands to her knees and shook it for me. Ricky walked out and grabbed a coke from the fridge. He was in his boxers, half awake, and he glanced at the room casually, popped the can open, nodded to me, then went back to his room. She kept going, and the CD started to skip. She walked over and beat on the player, and kept beating on it, and then she beat it even harder until it started to break apart. The stereo was her life, the state, a man on the couch that didn’t care if she lived or died, but a man she thought she needed. I looked above it all to the painting. They were definitely trapped. I watched a few cars lurk down the street and waited for her to finish. The noise stopped and she stood facing me. The stereo was destroyed. I expected her to break down crying, but she didn’t. She stared at me, her face flushed and reckoned with hatred. Without breaking eye contact, she pulled the tampon from herself and dropped it to the floor. The rawness of it ran hot in my blood. She walked over, pulled me to the floor, ripped off my pants. She rode me hard and mean. I pressed up into her and let her go at it. Her face was angry, and she shuffled back and forth onto me and dug into my chest, then hauled off and punched me in the face. It was a hard hit, a right cross to my jaw. My skull echoed and she went harder. I stared at the tampon. It laid there looking sorry and pissed. She reached over and threw it across the room. It rolled under the sink. She slid off and got on all fours. I put it in and moved in and out of her. She looked back, “I want you to fucking punch me.”

“I don’t know.”

“No, fuck all that, I want you to punch me.”

“Where?”

“The back of my head. As hard as you can. Fuckin’ do it.”

I punched her. It was weird.

“No, go harder.”

I clocked her good this time, a solid hit. My knuckles hurt. She moaned and ran soaked. She bucked me off, then sat spread eagle on the couch and pulled me on my knees, guided me in and leaned back, “Now fuck me and slap me in the face.”

I fucked her and slapped her across the face.

“Yeah. Harder, motherfucker.”

I slapped her harder, in the same spot. It didn’t do anything for me, but her legs were shaking. Something occurred to me while it was going on, how her nose got busted. I looked down at her, “You didn’t.”

“We did, baby. Me, him, and his momma. Come on, slap me, motherfucker.”

I slapped her again. It was loud and crisp. I fucked and slapped her. I looked down at the sex and saw period blood. There wasn’t a lot of it, but I was colored. I looked back to her, thought the hell with it, and slapped her again. Her eyes rolled back, she stiffened, bucked me off again, and it came shooting out of her. She rolled me on my back and finished me off in her ass, then collapsed on my chest. Ricky’s door opened back there:

“Sis, I gotta let the dogs outta my room, they keep scratchin’ at the door.”

She called into my chest, “Aright, honey. Sorry.”

The pugs came running in. They went right to the fluid on the carpet and started lapping it up. She shooed them off and they went into Mama’s room. She sighed and caressed my shoulder, “I’m a squirter. Sorry, my love.”

“Him and his mother?”

“It was just once, baby, when I was getting’ my things out of there. They were being really sweet to me, and we smoked some coke. We were all pretty high. It was like a closure thing. You’re the first person I’ve told the truth to. Please don’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t.”

She reached down and squeezed my stomach, then ran her hand down my hip, “I feel really safe with you, daddy.”

Her pussy was wet with warm blood. She moved her hips in circles around the base of my cock, slow circles. She ran her tongue around my neck. The word evil flashed across my mind, and I started to grow again. She moved with the same speed, and I could feel the stubble of her pussy against the top of me. She circled and licked slowly, and it went in again. It was fast for me. I turned her over on her back, went and pulled out, then shot across her stomach. She smiled at me and squeezed my ass, “That’s my daddy.”

I felt repulsed at once. I didn’t know where it came from, and then it occurred to me there that I wasn’t exploiting anyone, it was the inverse. It also came to light in my mind that I was a sex addict, but most men were. The label was just a way of being politically correct these days, taking the spine out of human need. A man had the same chemical reaction as an animal predator when it fucked, killed, or ate meat. It was something that no lesbian or liberal could dull down, as much as they tried. The only difference was that man could discern between the right and wrong time to do it, because nature had given man diplomatic conscience: the method of consideration. It was the only instance in time when nature gave humans grace and robbed the animals of theirs.

"what the HELL?"

he shrunk away, defeated, deflated, embarrassed.

she leapt up from the couch, turning away as her heart pounded furiously

apoplectic, she stood there, her eyes finally meeting his

"I'm sorry," he mumbled, "I thought... you... I don't know."

she just stood there, trying to calm her pulse

"I'm sorry, Shellie." he whispered again, looking away

she left without a word, the door closing quietly behind her

he sat back on the couch and she sat down in the front seat of her car

their lips were still warm

her fury faded and she realized

she wasn't really angry

at all

Bellowing from her deepest stomach pit, she allowed her cry to drain her breath each time she howled out into the daylight, and into the neighborhoods afternoon April air...

She kicked her feet as hard as she could into the concrete driveway as she ran out into the yard, and dramatically threw herself against the fence. She felt the chain link dig into her cheek and it felt good as she lay there, strewn, and sobbing.

As she cried a hatred burned in her throat, and her eyes bulged under her tears, pushing only more anger into the pressure against her brain...

She wanted to hurt somebody. She wanted to gauge with her nails and tear flesh. She wanted to use large objects to bash heads and teeth in, she wanted to inflict bodily harm.

The injustice that had been done to her had wrecked her, and she was left starving and out of time..

Her entire days labor had consisted of securing that herself and the other two would be taken care of.

She had walked, 8 months pregnant, for what seemed like hours.. She had prepared food for the others and as she had gone to clean herself up, the others ate their delicious BLT sandwiches. She had a doctors appointment to prepare for childbirth and did not want to be late, so she had left her BLT sandwich sitting on the counter while she showered..

When she came out of the bathroom, ready to leave, ready to eat, she saw that all of the three plates had been washed and set out to dry...

She looked for her sandwich, and was sure that it had been wrapped up for her to take in the car. But, she never found her sandwich, no... All that was to be found of her delicious and coveted BLT sandwich was the dishwasher, and he had a big satisfied smile on his face. She watched helplessly. It was like a robbery in process as one last bite of her BLT sandwich was tossed nonchalantly and carelessly into his mouth...

Her BLT sandwich, the one that she had craved all morning, like only a woman in her last month of pregnancy can crave a BLT sandwich, had been eaten! Her BLT sandwich that she had walked to the store with swollen feet for, had been eaten.

It did not matter that his excuse made perfect sense.. It did not matter that he had done the dishes..

Her BLT sandwich, was gone.

And then she realized she was ten minutes late for her pre-natal doctors appointment; because she had been crying on the chain link fence in the front yard, like a mad woman , kicking and screaming, for twenty minutes, for all the neighbors to see....