I woke up to the knocking at my front door. My grogginess turned into anxiety. Whatever power Dylan's dare had over me last night had passed. With that also came excitement that the curse was potentially a thing of my past, or at least a secret again.
I jumped up and grabbed the briefs from the floor and put them on. I put them on! I actually had clothes on my body again!
I bounded to the door and opened it to see Dylan with two cups of coffee.
"You have underwear on!"
"I do!"
"And it looks like my dare worked for you last night..."
"Huh?" I looked down to my body where he was looking. "Oh shit, sorry dude!" I ran away back to my bedroom to clean off the dried cum from my stomach. Idiot.
I put on some jeans and a shirt after and it felt so good to be covered up again. Over coffee we discussed the night. How surprisingly happy I was last night and even now today. How I didn't have any urge to turn my phone on which was the only fear I had.
Dylan apparently had done some research last night and couldn't find anything on Google about this curse. I hadn't told him the exact details like the website for some reason. Maybe shame. Maybe I thought if I told him about it he would accidentally stumble upon it and he'd fall into the same hell.
After we caught up we headed over to the mall in his car. While at the store the clerk asked if we wanted to port over my data and contacts and we both said "No!" a bit too urgently. I explained I had a bad break up and wanted to start fresh. New number. No contacts. Clean slate.
He seemed confused but also disinterested so he just set me up with a new phone and number.
While we were out Dylan and I did some browsing and ended with lunch. I felt so much better.
"Happy to have this all behind you?" he asked while we ate.
"Well, it's not really behind me. But yeah, now I'm not in the fire at least."
"Ah, yeah that's true. Any thoughts on how to fix it?"
I sipped my water, "honestly no. I'm going to try and retrace my steps tonight and then go from there."
"You're going to try and get cursed again, dude?"
"No! But, I'm pretty sure I can't get worse. The curse website was pretty specific on accepting dares."
"Wait, it was a website?"
Ah shit. "Yeah. There was like, an incantation that I must have accidently read that made me this way. I'm not sure why I didn't tell you."
"Why were you even there?"
"It's kind of embarrassing, but it was basically a pop-up during a porn sesh." I took a bite of my burrito bowl.
"Fuck. I'm paranoid to look at porn now."
"I doubt you'll ever stumble across it."
"Why? What sort of porn were you looking at?"
Fuck. I was accidently giving too much away to Dylan.
"Let's not talk about that here or now. Just, I think you'll be fine."
"Okay, B."
The first few days after that were filled with anxiety. I constantly wondered if I would bump into that bitch or she'd somehow get my number. But after the first week, things became more normal. Work was going good, I was hanging out with the guys again (albeit at houses now, no more bars for me), and it was becoming easy to forget about my curse.
Two weekends later, my dishwasher stopped working at my place. It took another week for maintenance to come take a look and they asked I be there even though they had a key. They like their tenants available in case there are questions which I think is pretty bull shit but I took a half day.
When the guy finally got to my place he was an hour behind when he was supposed to show up so I wasn't pleased. The dude was probably late 30's, early 40's. He wore some junk overalls and a blue flannel shirt. He may have been handsome 15 years ago but I could tell his muscle turned to soft flesh and his beer belly was clearly present. I'm not sure why he chose to dorn a thick mustache either. Whatever, his life.
"Brandon Zaverick?"
"Yup, come on in."
"The dishwasher, yeah?"
"Yeah, over this way." I led him to the kitchen and pointed it out. "It sounds like it's running but nothing's getting cleaned. I'm not sure if it's a water problem or something else."
"Okay, I'll take a look. Give me a couple hours."
"Hours?! I'll need to get back to work after lunch."
"Sorry man, best I can do."
"Well if you had shown up on time we wouldn't be in this situation."
"Do you want a fixed dishwasher or not?"
I debated on just throwing him out but I'm sure he was the only maintenance guy they had on staff. If I didn't want him to fix it up that just meant it wouldn't get fixed.
Sigh, "fine, yeah. Just try and make it quick."
He gruffed and got to work inspecting it. I headed back into my room and got my laptop open to check some ESPN while I waited. Probably 45 minutes later I decided to go check on him.
When I got to kitchen I was shocked and pissed instantly. My dishwasher was disassembled almost fully, parts strewn across the kitchen and everything seemed wet.
"What the fuck dude? This place is a mess!"
"I have to take it apart to see what the issue is."
"Really? That seems like a stupid way to do this."
"Are you the repair man or am I?"