Intrusion

Author Note: This is a work of fiction, in part due to my cowardice. Any semblances to real people, places, events, or film media are spiritual but not material. As always, I invite honest feedback of any kind. Even anonymous input helps me improve my craft. Thank you!

Content Warning: bad food hygiene.

Intrusion

"Ah, c'mon in." Baustin's voice was gravelly but warm. "Watch your step 'round that wagon wheel, okay, yup."

The compound yard was a mess of weeds and detritus. Beer bottles, wrappers from butter sticks, and trad farm paraphernalia lay littered about. I wasn't gonna complain about work, but they needed a gardener or maybe a cleaning crew before they needed my ass.

"Nice to meet you in person," I said, gingerly picking my way toward my client.

I extended a hand to shake; Baustin pulled me into a broad embrace. He smelled of charcoal and cigar smoke, a combination I didn't expect to find myself enjoying. As soon as the thought struck, he was releasing me. I adjusted the strap of my gear bag and scanned the yard.

"Where're we setting up?"

"Oh, over here," he said, almost disappearing into some foliage.

The property was immense. There were several buildings, and the pit proper was in a clearing on the other side of the main domicile. There was a lot of

stuff

. They had a bunch of grills: a couple humble portable charcoal numbers in addition to some fancier propane and pellet models. They had tables all over the place covered in dirty-looking containers of spice rubs and dish towels that needed a thorough laundering. There were cutting boards, knives, and machetes propped up against tree trunks and stumps. The space looked like a mad artist's studio, but outdoors, and barbecue.

"Nice setup," I said, because Baustin was looking at me with an expectant glint in his eyes.

"Makes real good food," he said, with an earnest smile.

"I bet."

Baustin began fidgeting with some tongs and I kicked myself for my lack of ease. I wasn't sure what I'd expected when I'd taken the gig--the relief at having work had shorted some of my usual anxieties and planning. I didn't have a lot of options. I'd moved back to my aunt's basement in rural Longriver after... stuff. I was just trying to get back on my feet with my contract videography business, but the charisma of an experienced entrepreneur was not mine. And I didn't know the first thing about barbecues. How was I supposed to make small talk?

"Well, Trandor's fetchin' the ingredients from the kitchen, so I'm just gonna fire up this guy."

Baustin busied himself with one of the charcoal grills.

"Okay, so do you have a script, or...?" I asked. He shrugged. "What do you want me to do?"

"You know, film," he said. His voice tipped toward mirth, as if the answer was self-evident.

Okay, he didn't know what the hell he was doing either. Alright then. I filmed.

Baustin's movements were rough and graceless. At first I thought it was a bit. This must be it: the schtick. There had to be a schtick, right, when a fifty-year-old pitmaster wants to spin up a YouTube channel? He dropped coals, he dropped tongs, he knocked over a table.

The bumbling was cute, at first; then I realized he was

nervous

. He became more careful. His big hands making sure things were stable and secure, he spun up a rambling narrative of his actions. He was getting the grill up to

this

temperature (he tapped a thermometer on the grate; I tried zooming in to see the reading but he was already covering the grill). He was going to make the best damn dogs. Not Stewardland dogs or Wind dogs, mind you. Classic dogs. Oh, fuck, the relish (he ran off, leaving me to film nothing at all).

I found myself shaking my head as he and his friend Trandor fumbled through their hot dog tutorial. I would have been astonished at the quantity of butter they melted to prep the dogs were it not for the graveyard of wrappers I'd traversed entering the yard. Occasionally Baustin would mug the camera, or give it an oblique thumbs up as he complimented his own hot dog technique.

I just smiled back at him.

This project was going to be a disaster. No amount of editing was going to salvage this.

When the grilling was done but before I'd stopped filming, he crossed behind the camera to offer me a dog. Butter-slathered, wrinkly, propped up on a garlic-butter-toasted bun, inundated in yellow mustard and diced onions, it looked inedible. A true food crime. I polished it off with a forced grin.

"That's good stuff huh," he said, standing right in front of the camera and beaming.

"It's not subtle," I tried.

"Heh heh heh, lady, we are

not

about subtlety here." He stepped back and crouched down stick his nose in the camera lens, 90s boy band style. "You got that? BBQ done right, right here at BBQ Done Right."

Was that his intended catchphrase? We hadn't discussed

any

of this.

After I cut the cameras, he approached me sheepishly. "Sorry, Deedoss, I shoulda checked. Is 'lady' alright? I mean--"

"'Lady' is perfect," I laughed.

I tried to get some direction on the editing while I was there in person, but he insisted that once the grilling was done it was time to relax with the food, Jack Daniels, and a cigar. He and Trandor and another couple buds who filed out of one of the huts kicked back on salvaged wood chaises longues. They invited me to join them, but it was clear that this was no longer business, so I demurred began breaking down my setup.

"Shame you can't stay," Baustin said. "Holler when it's ready."

"Of course," I said, assuming "holler" meant "send a professional and prompt e-mail."

I slid out of the compound and found my car, and only when I was behind the wheel did I realize I'd been holding my breath. I forced a deep exhale, took a couple raspy inhales. I let out some nervous laughter. Hey, I was

safe

. My aunt hadn't wanted me going in there in the first place. Big property, bunch of rough dudes. Baustin had been nice--though sometimes it was the nice ones... But it was fine. I hadn't needed any of the safety equipment I'd brought, just in case.

Now to see if I could deliver something that'd get me my paycheck and a testimony to put on my Wix.

#

I was back in the pit with Baustin as he prepared his "famous" stuffed ribs, which was just two racks of ribs tied around an incredibly chaotic mess of stuffing. My worries had been unnecessary. He had loved the video I'd slapped together, said "ship it," even

tipped me on my Ko-fi.

And he'd wanted my services again, so here I was, battling the intrusive thoughts.

He was dicing an onion.

He was dicing an onion in the

worst

fucking way.

He was even discussing his technique, like it was so smart. Chefs gonna do this different, he said (no shit). He had the thing in a

death grip

. The onion wasn't even touching the cutting board--his thumb was under it. I winced, expecting blood at any second. But the blood didn't come. His hand moved with a subtle grace he'd lacked during our first shoot, a grace I hadn't expected of such a meaty mitt, slowly squeezing the onion toward the knife as he chopped.

I...

Listen, I was twenty-five. I was marooned in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere, Longriver. I couldn't just hit up a club and find a hookup. I had my toys, but they didn't excite me, and. Yeah. I was pent up. And the onion rotated just so as it pulsed toward the blade. I lost track of what Baustin was saying.

Then he snapped his fingers at me.

"Sorry, hon, could you grab that pepper?" he pointed to a single red bell pepper on the ground near my foot.

Trandor was not around to assist. I did not want to be on camera, so I picked it up and tossed it underhand to Baustin. Of

course

he didn't wash it before cutting into it. He didn't so much as wipe it with a paper towel or cloth. His pit hygiene could be best described as "abysmal," which was appropriate, in a sense. The abyss is a pit, right?

But nothing prepared me for what came next. Baustin sliced the top of the pepper off with a comically oversized machete, then put down his weapon and reached into the hapless fruit. The pepper bulged and stretched as his whole hand entered it. He ripped its innards out. It was a massacre, an evisceration. And he didn't get all the seeds or bits of membrane, either. It was a

mess

in there as he put the pepper back down on its side and began chopping off circular bands. Something caught in my throat as I beheld the savagery--all performed to a mild mannered narrative about putting the veggies

you

like in the stuffing.

"This is some

good

stuffing," he added.

Oh. The thing that caught was my breath. My heart slowed. I'd felt something when that bell pepper lost its guts, and somehow that something wasn't unadulterated horror.

"Y'allright, Deedoss?" Baustin asked, pausing his mistreatment of the pepper.

My name, in that late-summer-driveway-gravel of a voice, hit me hard. I swallowed. I guess I was making a face. I tried hard to stop making it.

"I'm good," I said.

"Good, 'cause I want you to get closer for this. I wanna show them how I incorporate the onions and peppers into the rest of this good, good stuffing."

I wished more than anything Baustin would never say the word stuffing again, but that seemed unlikely. I picked up my tripod and approached the prep table and grill. He started talking about how you get the right level of moisture in the stuffing--fuck--and then he went for the oil. I guess it was greasy or something, no surprise there, but he butterfingers'd it real good, and a generous sloshing intended for the stuffing went over the table and hit my thigh.

"Least it's not hot oil," he chuckled, and went right back to prepping his stuffing.

I'd expected an apology. I'd expected an overblown apology, to be honest. When people spill stuff on you they apologize. They make a big deal of it. They offer you a change of pants, even if only to get you out of the pants you're

in--

What the fuck did I want?

We finished the shoot, me with cold canola oil soaking through to my boxers, Baustin unbothered by this level of mess. Of course. He'd put a

ground

pepper in his stuffing. The final product was an ungodly mess of burnt and underdone spareribs sandwiching a "stuffing" that wasn't

stuffed

in

anything

.

I still ate some, because I didn't know how to refuse the big kindly man with the recipes from hell, and I still told him it was good, because fuck, he was a return client. And this second gig might turn into a third, and then a fourth, and shit, could I even watch him prep that many onions? That many peppers? I wondered how he cleaned a jalapeño. I didn't want to know. I needed to know.

Once again, Baustin invited me to relax when we were done. I couldn't imagine

relaxing

with my oil stain, with what felt like another stain a little higher up. I bit my lip, and I think he noticed. He squinted at me, but said nothing as I packed up my gear.

"You can get cleaned up if you want," he said. "Sorry we're a messy operation. Boys be, you know."

I knew he wasn't a

boy

. He wasn't even a particularly well-preserved man. That's what made this so confusing. He was an

old

fifty: big and small in the wrong places, weathered, wrinkled. His beard was a macho mess, and his ill-fitting t-shirt, oh, fuck, I was

doing it

.

It

always

started with denial. My aunt knew it, which is why she'd warned me against the gig in the first place. And I knew it too. It never

stopped

at denial.

"Where's your bathroom?" I asked.

He volunteered to show me. I followed him into the main building of the compound, through a living room dotted with turn-of-the-century furniture, all ragged and dusty. I noticed a love seat it would be

so easy

to push him down onto. He was bigger than me, but I'd clocked how he moved. I knew where his center of gravity was, which leg he favored, the frailness in his knife hand. Fuck, Dee, don't

assault

the poor guy.

Once safely locked into the bathroom, I stripped my pants and underwear in a frenzy. Fuck. I thought about him squeezing the onion. I thought about him mutilating the pepper. I thought about the his hug, the charcoal and cigar smoke. I didn't

like

any of these things. But I turned the tap on, stuck my jeans under the running water, sat back on the edge of the bathtub, and spread my legs.

It's stupid. It's beyond stupid.

I didn't wash my hands.

I'd wiped them after eating, sure. But they still bore traces of the pit. I started with two fingers in my mouth. They tasted good, smokey, earthy. I ran my tongue around them, and then I spread them and licked between them. I closed my eyes as I transported myself mentally back into Baustin's embrace, the first time I met him. My fingers were slimmer, but my mind worked overtime, and I got there: I was sucking his fingers. I was slobbering on the digits that had yanked out that poor bell pepper's entrails. I opened wider, brushed his knuckles with my teeth. Fuck, I wanted him deeper. I choked back a tear as I tried, but he was as deep as he would go unless I could unhinge my jaw and accept his entire hand.

I moaned as I pulled off his--my--fingers, and there was a concerned knock at the door.

"Everything good, hon?"

Hon. Lady.

Fuck

. He could hear me over the water.

"Yeah," I croaked. "This stain's real bad."

"Let me know if you need anything. We got some heavy duty cleaners in the shed."

I needed anything. I needed anything

so bad

. I didn't even care anymore. If he wanted to eavesdrop, be my fucking guest. I'd closed the door. I'd locked it. The rest was his business.

My fingers, sticky with my slobber, trailed down from my lips to my chin, my jaw, ran down the side of my neck, then straight over my previously un-mussed blouse. I didn't care. I'd say it got splashed when I was washing my pants. My breasts ached for more than the passing touch, but I told them to suck it as my hand sped up, racing toward my pussy. I berated myself as I thought of that bell pepper again, of Baustin's thick sausage fingers violating it. The berating didn't mitigate anything. If anything, my juices flowed freer.

Typically, I need to start with gentle touch. A soft exploration down from my pubes, a test of my own readiness. Not this time. My saliva and my pussy juices blended seamlessly as I thrust my fingers between my folds. The shock from my clit as I passed it wasn't electric--it was the flaring spark from a smoldering coal, disturbed by Baustin's tongs. I couldn't not. I screamed.

"Dee?" Baustin's voice came from the other side. "Fuck, the rats get in again?"

"All--good--" I hacked as I fingered myself. There was no stopping this train. The grill's lid was missing, and the heat was

going

to get out, one way or the other.

I tried my best to be quiet, once I adjusted to the pleasure.

Our best is all we can ever do, right? It wasn't very good, objectively. I cried, whimpered, and shrieked my way through two rolling orgasms on the edge of Baustin's bathtub. My fluids sprayed all over his cracked tile floor. I hunched forward, legs straining. I barely avoided crumpling to the floor. After a moment, I dragged myself to the sink, washed my hands, and turned off the tap.

I wondered how much of that Baustin had listened to. He was messy in the pit, but he seemed like a nice, respectable man outside it. If he'd caught on, he would have walked away, right? Left a lady to her devices?

My senses returned, slightly, as my lust subsided. I wasn't quite struck with shame, but I did think I'd made a pretty unequivocal mistake. This guy was my best current client, and I'd likely darkened our professional relationship with my decidedly

unprofessional

behavior. I decided to do my damnedest at damage control, starting with cleaning up his floor and bathtub. It wouldn't be right to leave pussy juice all over a nice gentleman's bathroom. (To my eternal discredit, "nice gentleman" triggered a hint of an aftershock.)

When I finally emerged from the bathroom--my jeans still sodden, but less oily--Baustin was not in the building. I found him reclining outside with a cigar.

I didn't know exactly what to say, so I just said thanks and grabbed my bag.

He too seemed at a loss for words. He tipped his hat. I tried not to run as I fled the compound.

#

This became a weekly thing. Well, not

all

of this. I didn't jack off in his bathroom every time. But he kept liking my videos, and he kept wanting to do the YouTube thing, and all his compound buds were lazy with technology, so he kept hiring me. I filmed him commit food crime after food crime, from making cigar ash barbecue sauce to grilling the world's foulest calzone: a concoction involving burgers smashed between two delivery cheese pizzas.

I saw him "core" a jalapeño, for lack of a better word, and it affected me as deeply as I'd expected. He caught on eventually, I think, to the things that got to me, because he'd sling these sly glances past the camera whenever he manhandled his veggies. But he never commented on it, and I never commented on it, and it never became an issue.

And I never stayed to relax with him and his buds after. Not while the weather held up, anyway.

#

"Storm's dropping bitches," Trandor drawled.

We'd gotten inside just as the sky broke. It wasn't on the forecast, and I was lucky my gear was safe. We were huddled up in that big living room--me, Baustin, and Trandor.

"Sorry, hon," Baustin said with a wry smile. "Trandor here's never learned much manners."

"No problem," I said, running my fingers through my wet hair. I'd gotten hit by one sheet of rain right at the end. "I can hold my own."

I'd gotten to spend more time with Trandor over the course of our shoots. He was a twig of a man, five years Baustin's junior. He was into hunting, fishing, and bitches. He'd made a pass or two at me, but I wasn't interested. Well, I wasn't

not

interested, in the abstract. That was kind of my problem. But he was distant Mars next to Baustin's full moon.

I'd expected, to some extent, that Baustin would stop shining so bright after that first pair of orgasms in his bathroom. I'd thought, hey, maybe I got that one out of my system.

No dice.

He was a recurring character in my fantasies at home. And I felt guilty, like I was using him. But what was a girl supposed to do when she just needed more than anything to be squeezed through a vice grip like so much diced onion? What was a girl supposed to do with intrusive body-horror-adjacent fantasies about her seeds and membranes being roughly extracted by the calloused hands of a pitmaster? There was no guidebook for this particular desire, so I sat on it, and I sat on my dildos. I sat on them good.

And now we were trapped together. Me, and him, and Trandor.

They were grabbing cold ones from the kitchen while I was trying to do the math on whether or not I'd be happy fucking Baustin in front of Trandor. I'd reached a strong "maybe" by the time Baustin was pressing an opened Bud Light into my hand.

"So darlin'," he said, reclining in an overstuffed armchair, "we only ever talk shop."

Trandor posted up on what looked like a piano-less piano bench.

"Yeah," I said. If I'd gained comfort in my job with experience, that comfort was outweighed by my lust. I was still a girl of minimal words and terminal charisma.

"So what makes Deedoss tick?" he asked before taking a swig.

"Cutting right to the chase, huh."

"We're friends now, yeah? Partners, heh heh."