This story plays with the idea of dubious consent fantasies being enacted without prior negotiation. Obviously such play should be negotiated in real life. Fantasy is fantasy. Enjoy.
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She walks to the mailbox around noon, like she always does. The weather is balmy and the asphalt of the driveway is heated by the sun. It feels warm underneath her flip flops. She wears a yellow dress with very short sleeves, the hem reaching mid-thigh. It always makes her feel cute, like a doll. Her brown hair is in a ponytail.
The house on the other side of the street is being renovated. The Johnsons moved out three months ago and the new owners want a new roof, improved plumbing, a wall torn down between the kitchen and the living room. The realtor who sold the house chatted to her once at the mailbox, making eyes. Apparently the house is too old, needs a lot of work because of it. But that house is just as old as her house, and she doesn't see anything renovated at the place.
There used to be a swarm of contractors coming and going to the Johnson house, but now there is only one. She sees him every day when she picks up the mail. He watches her. She figures, by the state of his overalls, he is a painter. The house needs a new coat of paint, literally. Then it won't be the Johnson house anymore. The Johnsons will be washed away by the serene light blue of the exterior, a color deemed tasteful and approved by the home owners association.
He takes lunch on the curb, sometimes a sandwich, sometimes just a cup of coffee and a cigarette. He is tall, wiry. His hair is closely cropped silver. He wears paint splattered overalls, that he peels down to the waist, a white t-shirt beneath stretching over the contours of his torso.
His eyes are small, perpetually squinting. They watch as if they see through her, and she hates that feeling. He is older than her, certainly, but by how much, it's difficult to tell. Ten to twenty years, she figures. Smokers always age quicker, she thinks with a degree of disgust.
Her mother raised her with a paranoia about manual workers. The plumber whose quotes are too high to be reasonable. The cleaner who steals cash if you leave it out. The gardener who slacks off, or the pool boy who is useless. She wondered as a child why they hired these people in the first place if they were this untrustworthy, but she understands it better now. Just because one deems something necessary, doesn't mean one has to like it.
The garbage truck is necessary but she doesn't have to love its smell.
She is not paranoid about him. She is just being careful, and smart. The way he watches her is like a burglar casing a jewellery store. Her house is big but it isn't fancy, and it is filled with inexpensive things. Her furniture is second hand or IKEA. Her laptop is six years old. She ordered her cheap mattress online in a hurry when she realized she had to move out and her ex kept the bed, the sofa and even her makeup vanity. What the hell did he need a vanity for? But she told herself she wouldn't dwell on these things.
So if her house isn't worth robbing, then what he wants has to be something else entirely.
What he wants has to be -- her.
The heat that washes over her at the thought pricks the skin on the nape of her neck. Danger and need. The need in itself is danger. There are smart ways, careful ways of fulfilling the need. She should date the boy who her friends can vouch for. The boy who reads poetry by Adrienne Rich and follows a few feminist influencers, as well as butt models, because he is so sex positive. A boy who asks if she's okay if he does this, or if he touches her here.
She doesn't date that boy, because that boy ended up putting her on the couch of an expensive therapist and without a vanity. That boy made her flee to a house she leased from her brother's boss in a hurry, when she had nowhere else to go where he would not try to find her. The words she thought were just buzzwords are suddenly a part of her own vocabulary and her own history. Gaslighting, emotional abuse, frog-boiling.
It has been six months since she fled and she can now argue against the things he put in her head. No, she is not worthless. No, she is not ugly, or disgusting, or stupid.
Now she thinks she is just average. Her brown hair, the small bump on the bridge of her nose. Her height is average. Her body is average, her breasts are average. Her thighs could be a little smaller, her belly a little less round. Her therapist has encouraged her not to engage in negative self-talk.
It has been three months of watching contractors in the Johnson house. It has been five weeks of the painter staring at her, every day, at noon, when she walks to the mailbox.
She could leave the house at another time. In the middle of the night, if she wanted, because it is not like she is sleeping during those hours. Instead she watches shows she loved in her youth, One Tree Hill and Buffy, smokes weed and goes to bed around four am, her bones like jello inside of her. Her therapist tells her this is just her coping.
Her friends tell her this is her life stalling. They are all buying houses and getting engaged or married. Two of them already have kids. Some of them sided with him in the breakup. After all, it's not like he beat her up, and she has always been crazy. Who's to say she is not just being her old crazy self again.
She thinks about the painter, a lot, actually. Maybe she really is crazy, that he disgusts her so in reality but in her fantasies, he is what brings her consistently over the edge. He mixes within her usual fantasy about a billionaire who is inexplicably twenty five years old and yet not an asshole. She starts out with the fantasy of the billionaire but then when she's naked and writhing beneath the man, it's the painter pinning her down.
He holds her hands over her head, sometimes he just grabs hold of her thick brown hair as he takes her from behind. He never says anything, except after she has climaxed, she imagines the throaty whisper, like treacle and honey, a tacky trickle down her spine:
"Good girl."
The worst part is that he never asks for permission.
The best part is that she never has to tell him no.
The fantasy could break so easily. She remembers it happening many times in college. She could spend weeks eyeing some boy in class, and when he actually spoke to her, the fantasy melted away, like snow in the rain. So she will never speak to the painter, to hold him in the grip of her lizard brain and not let him become the complete picture, an actual voice and scent and touch, an actual person.
But today, he doesn't just watch her. He abandons the cardboard cup of coffee on the curb and stands up. He crosses the street, eyes still on her.
A panic lights her up from the inside. This is precisely how girls end up the stars of true crime podcasts. She doesn't have her phone with her, because the dress has no pockets. She has nothing left to do but to turn around, grab the mail, and walk back into the house.
But there isn't ever any mail. Why would there be any mail. Nobody but her family knows she is here and her brother pays for the utilities directly to his boss. All she picks up is flyers for local restaurants that she never orders from.
She walks down the driveway, and the heat pools with the panic in her abdomen. He follows her. This goddamn creep actually follows her. She walks. She could run. She won't make this a chase.
Her ex told her she wants to be dominated by men because of the patriarchy. His kinks were thinking man's kinks, tall black women stepping on his neck, giant women eating him alive. So why did he end up making her feel so small?
She is at the door and he holds it open after her, pausing at the threshold and then stepping over. She looks at him, anger rushes ahead of her panic, makes her glare at him.
"What do you think you're doing?" she asks.
"Mrs Brandt told me she wants every room and the outside repainted, too," the man says and it's the first time she hears his voice instead of imagining it. It's deep, less gravelly than she imagined. It's slow, like a Southern drawl, but without the twang and it is clear like an NPR host's explanation of the latest Latin American coup.
"I don't give a fuck, you need to leave before I call the cops," she spits out and her phone is in the bedroom, plugged in. She remains there, in the foyer. The house phone is unplugged because she didn't need the anxiety she felt every time it rang.
He looks around, the house as big as the Johnson house, but with the very sparse decor. She is the only occupant.
"So I told her it would be a five week job knowing I could probably get it done in four," he continues, his eyes settling back on her. "I could hire outside help but I like to work alone, always have."
"Are you soliciting? I don't need your services. Please leave."
Her voice wavers. He has taken a step, just a single one, closer. His eyes are blue, same as hers, but hers have that splash of green and grey in the middle, given the right lighting. She wonders if he can see it. The foyer is lit by the sun, the big windows. She keeps all other lights off until the night arrives.
"I spent four weeks figuring out what our little game was," he tells her, and takes another step closer. "I don't normally play games of this type. Don't normally meet other players."
She backs away. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I think you have an idea," he says, and his hand reaches out, a finger tracing up her bare arm until it meets the thick cotton of her dress. "Five weeks picking up mail that isn't there at the exact same time. What's that about?"
"I'm expecting something," she says, a lie slipping past her lips so easily, but her voice doesn't deliver it with conviction.
"I'm expecting something as well," he says and leans down, and his hand tilts her chin up. The nudge isn't forceful, but she doesn't have time to react.
His tongue opens her mouth when she gasps, an invitation. He licks a heat into her, sets it further alight. She stands, powerless, as her heart hammers away in her chest, the panic subsiding, the anger receding. She gets wet, her body rushing with sensation, betraying the logical reasoning. He's dangerous. He's a threat. He should not be here.
The thing that makes her push him away finally is the cold truth: he is not her fantasy. He is too real.
It is just a pity that reality also turns her on this much. His scent, coffee and cigarettes, sandalwood and leather. The sandpaper skin on his chin. His tongue and its movement, giving promise to a fantasy she didn't even think possible.
She wants it, so when he walks close again, a new game for them, she no longer backs away.
"Tell me, how does the game end?" His hand cups her face, making her stare up at him. "I'll tell you what I think and you can tell me if I'm right. You barely sleep at night. You look so sad until you arrive at that mailbox. Your cheeks turn pink, your pupils widen. You look like you're burning up inside."
"You're delusional," she says, and wonders whether it can be that obvious. It's not like she watches herself in the mirror as the fantasy sweeps through her.
"I like it when a woman is so turned on she can barely think," he continues. "Her breath catches and her nipples harden and her delicate wrist betrays that quickening pulse."
His hand on her throat, not holding, but the possibility exists. His hand takes her wrist. "Are you there yet?"
"Don't you have work to do?" she asks, but instead of stern, her voice is a mere whisper.
"You tell me," he says and a hand is wrapped around her waist. He pulls her to him, pressing their bodies together. She can feel him stiff against her stomach, the tent of the hard cock.
Get the fuck out, she could say. I'll call the cops right now. Leave. No, stop. She doesn't say anything.
