This story is not like the other things I've shared so far. This story has no fantasy elements and probably falls in the "dark stalker romance" category of things. It's a gritty story and as such, has a lot of elements that some people may find triggering. BDSM, non-con, con non-con, violence, murder, kidnapping, submission, domination, alcohol, smoking, revenge porn, spanking, captivity, no safe words, suicide, sexsomnia, disability, eating disorders, Iraq war, and abuse are all part of this story. And again, there are no werewolves or faeries in this one - but you will see a lot of common themes across the stories I've shared so far, and this one. Stay sexy and don't get murdered - Ava
ONE - Talia
"Escoge una persona que te mire como si quizás fueras magia." - Frida Kahlo
"Choose a person who looks at you as if you were magic."
Returning home from college was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It required that I admit I had chosen something for myself that I didn't like, and I knew my mother would never let it go. If I had known how she would view me forever afterward, maybe I would have stayed and finished both of my degrees. But if I had, I would never have met the soldier that saved me from my stalker.
I sighed as I pulled up my grades. I was failing everything but English, again. "Maybe double-majoring was a bad idea," I muttered as I considered how I would salvage my semester. The stress had finally become too much for my system and my asthma and fibromyalgia were so flared-up nothing seemed to get them under control anymore.
My friend Savannah sat across from me, sipping her smoothie and petting her tiny dog at the wrought iron table of an outdoor cafe. She hadn't started college yet and had no idea what I was going through, but she told me all the time she was so proud of me. I really needed her, but even her sweetness couldn't soften what Matt was doing to me.
"Just dump him," she muttered. "He keeps calling you 'fat', and he hits you across the face during sex without even asking? Talia," she skewered me with a look of disappointment as I tapped away at my laptop keyboard. I tried to dodge it, but I knew she was right.
The employee making my smoothie finally called my name and I jumped up to escape her gaze. I spent an extra-long amount of time peeling the paper off the straw and tasting my smoothie before I returned to the table in hopes she'd forget the conversation. She hadn't.
"You can do better. You're pretty, smart, funny, talented--"
"Stop, Sav," I waved her compliments away. I knew she meant them, but they couldn't heal the damage Matt was doing to me. Besides, I knew I wasn't pretty. I was too heavy, with wild black hair and a long, Arabic nose that white men didn't seem to like. When it came to hips I was doubly-blessed -- Latina on one side and Middle Eastern on the other meant "childbearing hips" was an understatement. Yet I was pale-skinned and didn't really fit in with any of my people. White men inappropriately asked if I was Latina, usually paired with a comment about my fat ass, but at the carniceria I got the side-eye from everyone. Didn't men all want hot, tanned blondes with bangin' bods and plastic noses? My figure had become the sort that would still look curvy under an abaya, and I was certain by then that I was no one's type.
"I could ask around--"
I snorted. I didn't want to date one of her seventeen-year-old friends. I liked older men, not a lot older, but enough that I kept attracting the wrong ones. She sighed and pointedly avoided looking at me while she finished her smoothie.
"Let's go home, play World of Warcraft," I offered. "Home" was my apartment. She didn't really live there, but she may as well have. Sav spent so much time there my landlord once questioned me about my roommate not being on the lease. I could explain that she was my only friend, as sad as that sounded. I couldn't explain she was the only person I could trust - she knew about my dark dealings and was proud of what I did in secret.
"You play WoW, loser, I'm playing Final Fantasy XI," she teased me. She was such a snob about games, but I didn't really care. One of my majors was game animation and I would play anything once. We packed up and left, driving across Mesa back to my apartment. I turned on my PC to play and my screen filled with message notifications.
Matt, I realized. He begged me to come over for the weekend, but finals were coming up and I was already struggling enough. I couldn't miss more homework or study time, and even playing games with Sav was a bad idea. But I needed that. An e-mail notification popped up and I opened it. It was a long e-mail from Matt, explaining why he thought I was fat and what I should do to fix it. I realized, too late, Sav was standing behind me reading it.
"Dump. His. Ass."
I didn't.
That weekend I caved, and as soon as my last class was over on Thursday afternoon I got in my car with my laptop and my homework and drove all the way down to Tucson to see my shitty boyfriend.
"Let me take you out to dinner, make it up to you for how I acted last time," he offered. I doubted he would behave better, but I said yes. He took me to a Mexican restaurant he swore was his favorite, then ordered something ridiculous. The food was obviously authentic, but he couldn't handle authentic Mexican food. I'd grown up with it, eating the "real deal" many times when I visited my great-grandmother in Ciudad Victoria, and frowned while I listened to him instruct the waiter on how to make him burritos that sounded as bland and disgusting as a burrito could sound.
I ordered my chile rellenos and tried to ignore his frown.
"I don't like to eat that," he complained as soon as the waiter left. I shrugged.
"Why does it matter if you don't like to eat it?"
"Because, you should only eat half of what they bring you, and I hate to waste food."
I tried not to let what he said bother me, and when my meal came, I made a point of eating every last bite while he glared at me. I was so relieved when the experience was over. I could tell the waiter hated him, and me by association. Then Matt left $2 on the table for a tip.
I waited until he was on his way out, then tossed a $10 bill on top of it. I'd worked in food service before and I knew it was late at night and the waiter wanted us to leave so he could go home. Working late just to get $2 was offensive. But Matt saw me and came back to the table, then tried to snatch up the money I'd thrown down and put it in his own wallet.
"What are you doing?" I hissed at him.
"He doesn't need that," he argued, apparently not seeing that he was stealing from me
and
the waiter.
"Put it back or I'll make a scene," I snarled at him under my breath. He finally, angrily, threw the money back on the table and stormed out to his car. I wondered when he would get over it, or if he would punish me for upstaging him with my tip.
By Saturday morning I was done. What was I doing letting him mistreat me when I spent my spare time ruining men like him? I threw my belongings into my bag and bolted to my car while he watched from the window above the driveway. I was halfway home when I had to pull over and call someone. My grandmother wasn't exactly a safe person for me, but she was the only person in my family I could express real emotion around.
"I want to come home," I told her as soon as she answered the phone.
"What happened, honey?"
I couldn't answer.
"Was it a man?"
I cried louder, but still couldn't answer.
Leo
"In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity." - Sun Tzu, The Art of War
When the realtor hands me the keys I almost can't believe I'm here. It's been a rough year and I'm still adjusting to being a civilian, but I think it's finally getting better. Maybe I'm just kidding myself. I still do stupid shit, like when I got drunk, wrecked my bike, and broke my wrist, but now I'm a homeowner. I've always wanted to have my own place and now I do. It's nothing too special, but I have a couple extra bedrooms I can rent out to cover the mortgage if all else fails.
In a few weeks I'll be leaving behind my low-paying job and entering trucking school, too, and everything ahead of me looks like freedom. I have casual arrangements with a few different women, one of whom teaches me everything I need to know to keep the others happy with me. It's a delicate balance of responsibility and chaos, but it keeps life exciting.
I wouldn't say that something is missing. I never expected more out of life. I'm surprised I'm even still alive, to be honest. But it doesn't escape my notice that all of the people around me, including some of the women I fuck around with, have a lot more. I'm not sure I'm that kind of man, that I could settle down and be content with one woman, or that one woman could handle me.
It's almost as though I live two lives. On one hand my friends are married, some of them fine with me fucking their wives, oddly enough, then there's the other side. I find a roommate, a wild-land firefighter in the summer and undertaker the rest of the time. We come and go as we please, living in our own little bubbles of chaos, occasionally commiserating over something. We've both seen a lot and not everyone can tolerate the way he lives. He either smells like smoke or too much cologne, and he's either gone for the day or gone for a month. None of it bothers me. I was in the Special Forces too long, maybe, and as long as he pays his rent and eventually comes back it barely even blips on my radar. I don't get attached to other people. I'm definitely not going to start by getting attached to Grant.
I feel fine in my life, but some of the women in it see darkness from the outside. If it's there, I don't feel it, but maybe you can't when you live with it all the time. I have friends that I miss, the same as any other soldier, friends I'll never see again. I've done and seen things that have changed me forever. Perhaps I'm in denial, but I don't live under a dark cloud the way people would think. I just feel like a tool without a purpose. I was made for something that I don't do anymore. What do you even do about that?
While Grant's bedroom is a mess of funeral suits and firefighting equipment, mine is sparse. I'm still wearing what the Army gave me most days, and it all fits in a single dresser. On top I've laid out all my guns, knives, and hung a couple of swords on the wall above it. Sometimes I just sit and look at all of it. Why did I learn to use all of this just to walk away?
And that's my little bubble of chaos - my normal life with married friends parading around the boundaries, inside it a whirling dervish of unresolved violent fantasies, casual sex, and insatiable appetites. I drown it all with alcohol and hope for the best.
I don't think it's working.
TWO - Talia
"If you get on the wrong train, get off at the nearest station; the longer it takes you to get off, the more expensive the return trip will be." - Japanese Proverb
