Ben had the strangest sensation, like waking up from a dream about waking up from a dream—but he had woke up ten minutes ago. He felt a strange tingling pain at the back of his skull, but after a few moments it subsided.
"Are you sure you packed everything?" Vic asked before yawning mightily, closing the driver's side door with a heavy enough slam to shake the snow off the window, "Your laptop? Your wallet? Your toothbrush?"
Ben's eyes were wide, his breath panicked as everything came back to him. He had just watched Ashling—and the whole hotel room around them—evaporate, layer by gruesome layer. He clamped his eyes shut, shuddering.
"Ben? Are you ok Babe?" Vic asked, putting a hand on his shoulder, but Ben pulled away from her touch without thinking.
"I...I..." he floundered, still processing the horrors burned into his mind, "I'll be fine. I think I'm just getting a...a migraine or something."
It was a clumsy lie.
"Oh babe! I'm sorry! Are you sure you still need to go?"
Ben nodded. It had gotten to the point where he was hardly even thinking of Vic as a person anymore. Not only had she cheated on him more times than he could care to count, but with the loop resetting with him in the car with her, saying the same things every time, she was starting to seem more like a piece of the scenery—or like some non-player character in a video game who always mutters the same line when your character walks by them.
"Yeah. Yeah we should get going. I have some ibuprofen I'll be ok," he said, committing to the lie and reaching for his bag as he thought about what to do.
"We should make a stop first, by the way," he said after taking an ibuprofen just for show, "There's a reward for this lost cat and I think I know where it is."
"What?"
This time, Ben found the picture of Jafar he had taken the loop before, and sent it to Salma before they even got to the right street, and when she called him back he knew just what to say. He managed to keep Vic's questions at bay again, milking his fake migraine for as much as it was worth until Salma showed up in her BMW and he stepped out and pointed out the cat to her. Just like she had before, Salma managed to lure the exotic creature into her arms with a fistful of treats, and Ben was soon back in the car with the reward, brushing off Vic's questions while she drove him to the bus station. Once there, he managed to extricate himself from her even faster that before, rushing out into the cold to stand in line at the bus.
Once in his seat, Ben fished his phone out of his pocket, put in some earbuds, and then opened up the folder with all of the files from the previous loops. He tapped on "L0005," scrolling past photos, call and text logs...everything, until he found the video Ashling had started recording at 3:59 AM. He huddled against the window, holding the phone at an angle so that no one else might see it, and tapped the play button.
At first, seeing Ashling, her glowing grin, hearing her sexy Irish lilt, made his chest swell—until, as expected, things changed. He watched as the recording went from a cute little message from Ashling to her future self to some kind of horror movie as the world dissolved into nothing, pixel by pixel, and then the video ended. Ben shuddered, tucking his phone away as the bus pulled out onto the street, and tried to get some sleep.
Unfortunately, sleep was hard to come by after revisiting that scene, and he ended up spending the next few hours catching only scant minutes of unconsciousness as he wrestled with his own mind, trying to get the troubling images out of his head. When the morning light finally came and the bus finally made it's first stop, Ben had managed to snag what probably amounted to a grand total of five minutes of uncomfortable sleep.
Just as expected, Ashling was boarding the bus again, bundled up in her winter gear as always. Ben caught himself shooting her a familiar smile as she approached, quickly looking down to his phone as he realized his mistake, hoping that it wouldn't put her off too much to have a stranger give her such a look.
"Pardon me, is this seat taken, like?"
"No...uh...go ahead," Ben answered.
Everything happened as expected: she stripped off her winter gear, the pushy man in aisle behind her knocked her into him, then she apologized, introduced herself, and their little conversation got rolling again. Ben knew it would happen this way, but now, having this conversation for the third time it felt...wrong. Soulless. He knew the questions she was going to ask...knew the answers she would give...but she had no idea who he was. Meeting her, and going through the ritual of their first conversation, was already starting to feel stale, almost creepy. He caught himself tapping his fingers against his leg impatiently more that a few times, waiting for her to finish some anecdote that he had already heard. He managed to steer their conversation to some new areas now and again, but she would gravitate back towards familiar ones pretty quickly.
Still, despite his lack of enthusiasm, the two hours on the bus passed full of flirty laughs and touches from Ashling. Ben was excited for their relationship to move forward, thinking that once he had won her over, he might try showing her the video—or at least the first part of it—and see what she would believe. Besides, despite the fact that he had had no shortage of sex the last time through the loop, it seemed his libido was reset just as much as everything else, and sitting next to her, having her flirt with him and touch him, was arousing even if the emotional connection they had shared had staled with repetition.
They got off the bus together, Ben helping her with her things as he had before. Ben stopped walking shortly after entering, remembering that the day before they had paused so Ashling could pull on her snow pants, but Ashling didn't stop, instead looking back at him and gesturing for him to follow; intrigued by this sudden change, he took a few hurried steps to catch up to her.
"Don't you need to put your stuff on again before we head out?"
"Not yet...just trust me, like," she said, pausing to look around before heading down a hallway that curved past several more bus gates, all empty, with signs pointing passengers to other gates on account of construction.
The hallway passed a couple of neglected looking vending machines and then turned sharply one last time, ending at a single gate with another sign explaining that it was closed due to construction.
"Uh...what are we doing here?"
Ashling was flushed. She looked around a bit nervously, peeking her head back around the corner, and then closed her eyes, took a slow breath, gathering her courage, nodding to herself.
"Ok...look," she said, opening her eyes and fixing him with them, smiling nervously, "this is going to sound a bit crazy but...no, you no what? You probably don't care, and I don't care if some random guy thinks I'm a slut, like."
She slung her bag off her back, dropping on the floor next to her. Ben raised an eyebrow.
"All you need to know is that some guy cheated on me. And I want to get back at him, like. With you."
Ben froze. He knew that, but why were things playing out so differently? Why had she led him into this abandoned corner of the bus station?
"I know I bored you on the bus...I saw you tapping your fingers, sighing, whatever. But I also know you didn't mind getting an eyeful of me when a gave you the chance either, like—and I'm not looking for a good date or nothin' anyway, and you're enough of a ride to make Ian jealous, so here's the deal..."
She took a few steps towards him, putting a hand flat on his chest and pushing. He took a step back, flattening against the wall.
"You can stop pretending to care about my family or my dogs, like. All you need to do is hold my phone and take a video for my ex," she said, pressing her phone into his hand while sliding her hand down his chest to his groin to squeeze his bulge, "I'll suck you off right here, do a little performance to make him jealous—maybe even a little more—and then we can go our separate ways, like. What d'you think?"
Ben's cock pulsed against the pressure from her hand. His heart was pounding, his breaths slow and ragged. He understood, now, what had happened: there had been no spark this time, not for either of them, but she had told him the last time around that she had stepped onto that bus looking for someone for this very purpose. Only this time, whatever special connection the two of them had had never happened for either of them, and she just wanted to get things over with. It was sad, but then again, he was horny as all hell—doubly so because of the public nature of their little corner hide-away—and the idea of feeling her mouth on him again was not something he was going to refuse. He looked at the phone in his hand, flashed her a hungry grin, and nodded, tapping the screen to start recording. Ashling's shoulders quivered for a moment, and then she stepped back, giving Ben the chance to get her whole body in the shot.
"Ian," she spat the name, smiling an angry smile directly into the camera, "remember me? the girl you feckin' kicked to the curb for some scrawny, flat-chested goblin-looking
bitch
because you were
embarrassed
to be with
me?
"
Ashling gestured at her body with one hand, cheating just a bit to the side so show off her ample curves both in front and behind, covered only by her tight athletic leggings and the black tank top that was clinging to her tantalizingly.
"Well! Take a good look at what you left behind, like. You could've had
me
, making every dirty little wish you had come true. Hell, I'd've even let you bring another girl home to share you if you'd asked nice!"
Ashling stopped to take a couple heaving breaths. Her face, neck and the tops of her breasts, all speckled with freckles, were flushed red now. She shook her head.
"But you'll never have me again. You'll be stuck with that
snaggle-toothed whore
while I fuck
whoever
I want...Say 'hi,' Ben."
Ben hesitated for a moment, then shrugged.
"Hi."
"This," she continued into the camera with a furious smirk, "Is Ben. I met him on the bus a couple hours ago...and you're going to
watch
me suck him off like I
never
did for you and you're little rat-dick!"
She took a few steps forward, kneeling fast in front of Ben, and grabbed at his jeans, undoing his belt and pulling down his pants and boxer briefs in one angry yank. Ben angled the camera to follow her, catching the moment his erection popped free and bounced against her chin. She smiled. The cool air of the bus station was bracing—but the heat of his arousal, of her breath on him, was more than enough to fight it off.
"It's bigger than yours," she said, her eyes lazily sliding back up to the camera as she wrapped one hand around the base of his cock.
She pointed his cock up and buried her nose against his balls, taking an exaggerated sniff.
"He smells better too, like."
She angled his cock back down, breathing a hot breath against him, her big hazel eyes devouring the pulsing length of him before darting back up to the camera.
"Let's see how he tastes!"
