AUTHOR'S NOTE:
This is my entrant for the
Literotica 2021 Halloween Story Contest
. This is very much on the 'horror' side of erotic horror. It gets a little icky near the end. You have been warned!
Alex Lumley was a little taken aback when the pretty girl with red hair suddenly hopped in his lap and started grinding her hips against him.
He was travelling on the last subway from the airport. It was late and the only other person in the carriage was an old woman in a shawl with a quilt wrapped around her legs.
Alex was travelling alone. Because of work he'd been unable to catch the same flight as the others. The evening flight had been delayed and he'd almost missed the last train. He could have booked a taxi, or an Uber, but money was tight for Alex and he tried to be careful wherever possible. The underground was a tenth of the price of a taxi and their hotel was right next to one of the stops. Alex liked using public transport when visiting foreign cities. It felt more... authentic.
Maybe a little too authentic. While the inside of the carriage was clean and bright, it had clearly been in service for some time with a limited budget for maintenance. The fluorescent tubes flickered overhead and it was both a noisy and bumpy ride. The train groaned rather than whispered through the tunnels.
The girl with red hair entered from the previous carriage just after Alex had taken a seat. She was quite a looker. Her tight black jeans and tight black top hinted at appealing curves beneath. An impish face with mischievous big brown eyes beneath a shock of dyed-red hair spoke of a rebellious nature, further reinforced by a short-cut black leather jacket.
Despite the carriage being unoccupied aside from Alex and the old woman, and with plenty of seats free, the woman chose to hang on the rail right in front of Alex, as close as if the carriage was packed.
A little too close, Alex thought. He had taken a seat near the door, so maybe hers was the next stop. It did give him a chance to glance up and take in the pleasing contours of her body and face. He didn't stare too long. It was late and he didn't want her to worry he was some kind of creeper.
It turned out his fears should have been the other way around. The girl was the creeper-type here.
A few minutes after standing right in front of Alex, she grabbed the bar above her head with both hands, lifted her legs up off the floor and smoothly plopped herself down in Alex's lap with her knees straddling him on the seat.
Alex was so taken aback he didn't know what to do. He leant back with his arms up, trying his best not to touch her.
The girl didn't say anything. Her big brown eyes twinkled and she smiled mischievously. Then she started rocking her hips against him in a way that was aggressively suggestive.
What the? Why was she doing this? Had she mistaken him for someone else? Was she drunk? Was she high? Was this one of those viral social media pranks?
The latter seemed the most likely. And even though Alex, who was currently single, would have normally enjoyed an attractive young woman gyrating in his lap, this was altogether too sudden, unexpected and brazen.
He twisted his body and carefully tipped her to the side and onto the seat next to him. Then he scooted back to the clear plastic divider at the end of the row.
The girl righted herself and sat on the seat as if nothing in the slightest untoward had just happened. She looked right in front of her and acted as if she'd been sitting like that the whole time. In contrast, Alex was sprawled up against the plastic barrier and watching her warily.
Then, with a mysterious smile only to herself, the girl got up and quietly walked to the door to the next carriage, leaving behind a very confused and bemused Alex.
* * * *
"Welcome to Eastern Europe," Brian laughed as Alex recounted the story the next day.
The four of them—Alex, Brian, Gage and Nevill—were sitting in a small bar opposite their cheap hotel. They were tucking into plates piled high with sausages, bacon and other meats, while enjoying the first beer of the day.
"You should have asked her for her number," Gage said.
"I was too shocked," Alex said. "When she jumped in my lap I didn't have a clue what to do."
"It was sexual harassment," Nevill said.
The rest of the table collectively rolled their eyes.
"I mean, think about what she did," Nevill continued. "She jumped in your lap and ground her body against your genitals. That has to be sexual harassment. Just imagine if the positions were reversed. You'd be metoo-ed out of existence."
"Yeah, but..."
"What did you feel—awkward, embarrassed. You said you didn't know how to react."
"Well..."
"There you go—sexual harassment. If it's sexual harassment when we do it to them, then it's sexual harassment when they do it to us," Nevill insisted.
Nevill's belligerence was annoying but understandable given recent events. When they'd originally booked this holiday some nine months ago it was supposed to be his stag weekend. Unfortunately,
The Thing
had happened since then. Nobody quite knew what
The Thing
was. Only that the marriage was off and Nevill's relationship was very very dead for reasons nobody quite understood and were too afraid to ask. Now it was just four lads spending a long weekend in a foreign city with cheap beer prices.
"If a pretty young woman wants to jump in my lap I'm not going to complain," Gage said. "She can sexually harass me all she likes," he added with a ribald laugh.
"That's where it's all wrong," Nevill said. "Just because she's good-looking shouldn't give her a pass. It's still sexual harassment. The man might not be interested. What if he's already got a girlfriend? A wife?"
"I wouldn't like it," Brian admitted. "It would make me feel uncomfortable."
With Nevill no longer getting married, that left Brian as the only one among them currently in a relationship. He'd gotten married last July and his wife already had a child on the way.
"Did it make you feel uncomfortable?" Nevill asked Alex.
"A little, but..."
"There you go. Sexual harassment," Nevill said.
Alex pulled a face. "It's not the same."
Sure, he'd felt mildly uncomfortable, but that was it. If it hadn't been for this conversation, he doubted he would have paid it any more mind.
Well, aside from wondering what might have been if he'd asked her for her number.
Nevill was like a dog with a chew toy. He wasn't going to let it go.
"She made unwanted sexual advances. Now imagine what the consequences would have been had the positions been reversed and it had been you pinching her on the bum. She could press charges. She could have you locked up."
"Yeah, but there's a power differential," Alex said. "I can laugh it off. A woman has to worry about the twat going violent on her."
It really wasn't anything to Alex—just something amusing that had happened to him on the way from the airport. He didn't know why Nevill was making such a big deal of it. Brian and Gage had warned him that Nevill was behaving a little erratically. Maybe
The Thing
had affected Nevill worse than they'd thought.
"What if she'd been ugly? What if she'd been fifty pounds heavier than you?" Nevill kept on.
"Then it would be different," Alex replied.
