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DISENCHANTMENT
By Toran
Disenchantment. It’s what I sense, what I feed on. It’s my “in.”
I’m a server at Cinnamon Dream, slinging cinnamon buns at yuppies while the mind that earned a Masters in Literature slowly dies. Soon I will be someone else. I am finished here but that is a story for another time. The stoplight is too long and I slip the transmission of the ’91 Escort into neutral so I can rev the tired engine and spew blue smoke into the blistering heat. I relish the coughs from those around me. Those poor unfortunates who refuse to sit inside their safe climate controlled cars. I rev the engine again. It is, after all, what I imagine a disenchanted Cinnamon Dreamer would do. I’ve spent little enough time in this body to know for sure – I hate the smell of cinnamon.
I glare at the middle-aged man in his respectable Sable next to me and the smell that emanates from him pierces the blue cloud I’ve created. Disenchantment. Strong, sensual. Alive. I grin.
And leap.
And melt.
I know he has a sudden headache, one that will pound him almost senseless. I know because the ache is me. Reading him, turning the images of his life like a page in a photo album. Martin. His name. His work day has been shit. I blow past that. The ring on his left hand is all I need to see. It’s her that I want. I want to feel her, smell her, crush her. She will quench my thirst.
Mary. What a beautiful name. I make him say it, relishing the sounds coming from our lips. Later I will take him completely and forgo the subtle commands – later I will do what I please with our hands. Do what I please to Mary. Such a pretty, pretty name. Mary.
Mary doesn’t like to fuck Martin anymore, at least that’s what he thinks. And he’s probably right. He has a middle age paunch, a small dick, and a strong case of lack of interest himself. He knows Mary’s body like the back of his hand, touched and kissed every inch of her flesh during the last fifteen years. Ten years married, five years fucking around. There are no more suprises.
Now, he takes his little dick into the study, fires up his computer and jacks off into the wastebasket as images of naked twenty-somethings play with themselves. All while Mary sleeps. I wonder if she knows. Most of them do. I wonder if it bothers her, if she falls asleep with tear stains on her pillow. I have a hunch she doesn’t. I have a hunch the house that Martin and Mary share reeks of the smell that drives me wild.
The stoplight has changed and horns are blaring. The kid in the beat up Impala looks as stunned and dreamy eyed as I assume Martin looks right now. Only Martin has a splitting headache and the kid has finally lost his. Funny thing, that, the kid is probably thinking. He revs the engine then slams it into drive and squeals the tires, lurching away in a cloud of rust and blue smoke.
Martin swears, rubs his temple and eases up on the brake. The horns stop but some fat dough-faced executive sails the middle finger at us from his climate controlled Lexus as it roars past. Martin doesn’t notice but I do, and if I had a mouth that was my own I would be grinning. I do the next best thing, and in spite of possibly the worst headache he’s ever had, Martin laughs a little.
Martin and Mary haven’t made love in almost two years. He’s pounded into her spastically off and on at a rate of once or twice a month, whenever he can convince her to let him do more than give her good-bye and hello kisses and the perfunctory hug now and then. Neither enjoy it and they haven’t lusted after the other for years. At least that’s Martin’s appraisal, and I doubt he is far off the mark.
Two kids in college, both gone, the only reminders that Martin and Mary ever produced offspring sit on their respective work desks in tiny frames. And the constant drain on the savings accounts set up long ago. Some holidays come and go with as empty and quiet a house as any other day, with only the smell of turkey in the oven or the sparkle of lights on the plastic Christmas tree to herald any change to the rut that has become both Martin’s and Mary’s life.
Lately, Martin thinks about wrapping his Sable around a tree, on some remote wooded country road. Just another crash caused by a deer, the animal making it safely back into the woods, Martin dying in the ruins of twisted sheet metal, leaving all the money from the life insurance to give Mary whatever she wants the rest of her life.
I page through Martin’s pathetic existence, my arousal growing with every glimpse of the woman that I will bind to me. I will do to her what Martin only dreams about doing while he spurts his seed into the crumpled tissue lined wastebasket where it pools and cools on the empty electric bill envelope. I’ll do everything he’s seen on his computer screen and more. To Mary. Such a pretty, sexy name.
***
I digest as much of Martin’s memory as I can. I would vomit had I a stomach. Such a waste. Disenchantment is paralyzing, this I know all too well. I wonder at the depth of the well that bubbles it out like delicious perfume, wonder how someone like Martin taps into that well and keeps the waters flowing. It is too much, sometimes, for even me to take, so strong and powerful and complete is the disenchantment. The loss of innocence. The death of wonder.
Martin sits through his beef stroganoff, hardly eating. His headache is killing him, but I’m almost done. Almost ready to fully slip into his body like a pair of soft leather gloves. Mary is pissed. She looks even more delicious in person – for some reason, Martin frames her angry faces with gilding and hangs them prominently on the walls of his memory. I see a soft, slightly pudgy woman with stunning green eyes and an ass that will look wonderful as it glows red from my paddling. Mary is pissed because she knows that beef stroganoff is Martin’s favorite and it takes her a long time to make it the way he likes it and even though he’s told her he has a headache and has even followed her orders to take aspirin, Mary has a wounded suspicion that Martin is only biding his time until he can excuse himself and retire to the den where behind closed and locked doors he will beat off to the surgically altered sluts on the computer, the sluts who are ruining their marriage. That’s my hunch, they’re my words. Mary just sits and stews quietly.
He’s given me few options. Her mood is irreversible, at least tonight. A bottle of her favorite wine, a gift card from Macy’s, tickets to Vegas – nothing is going to get her to willingly hop in the sack where I can play her body like a fine Stradivarius as she enters the Hall of the Mountain King. So I go the other way. Mary is going to be a bad girl tonight. Even though she’s made Martin his favorite meal, cleaned the house, done the wash and ironed his uniform white collared shirts and pleated every-color pants for tomorrow’s work, Mary will be a bad girl and will need to be tied down and spanked. And then fucked.
I surge forward and Martin’s headache disappears. In fact, Martin disappears. I lock him far away, deep down with his demons – the ones that have fishing hook teeth and huge glowing eyes and sleep under his bed or far back in the closet. Leaving him caged and screaming to be released may be good for him – maybe give him some balls.
I push away from the table, just another middle aged middle management husband, middle paunch and all.
“Hon, I’m going to finish up the bills in the den.”
Her glare is hot and hits me like a laser. “The bills? Do them out here.”
I smile, feeling Martin’s lips pull back from his teeth, stretching maybe just a little too much. Phony. “That’s ok. I like the den better. I won’t hear your TV.”
Her cheeks flush and her eyes smolder. “You’re not doing bills back there. Why do you lie to me?”
I take a few steps towards the hallway then I stop. I try to imagine the nervous little guilty voice before I use it – Martin has this tone embedded in his vocal chords. “What do you mean? I’m just doing bills.” I pause, savoring the silence. “Nothing else.”
I hear her stand up, feel her heat. I imagine her as being so beautiful when she’s enraged but to turn now and take in her beauty would be too hard to conceal the arousal between my legs.
“I know what you do back there,” she hisses, and I wonder how she will sound when gagged with her own panties. “I have to peal the paper out of the wastebasket when I empty it. You’re looking at porn.”
I turn around forcing her to look me in the face, not at the bulge in my pants. Were she not standing so close to the knife rack I would rush her now – Martin fears her anger and sometimes wonders if keeping a loaded pistol in the house is a good idea, especially on those nights when she loses her voice, slamming and re-slamming doors as he retreats to his bed. I already know where the rope is – Martin told me earlier. But I’ll content myself with words as I draw close to her. Close enough to spring.
“Why would I look at porn when I have you to look at?” I say it with just the right amount of Martin indignation. I know she hates that tone. Martin knows it too. Her distraction will give me the opportunity I need to get to the drawer that holds the clothesline. An old image of ropes crossing her breasts floats to me, a fragment of Martin’s memory, and I’m surprised that Martin has tried bondage with his pretty wife. In the image she looks much younger. College experimentation. I wonder if she liked it and I grin.
Her lips are drawn down at the corners. “You don’t know how often I think of leaving, do you?” She points a finger at my face as I brush past her. “Almost every fucking day!”
Oh, Mary swears nicely. I fight the urge to pause and wrestle a kiss from her swearing lips but the utility drawer is before me and the rope that will tie my Mary up tight is just inside.
“You’re getting on my nerves, Mary. I told you I had a headache.” Buying time while I bend down and fumble through the drawer. Ahh, there’s the rope. Heavy-duty clothesline. It will leave chafe marks on her lovely skin for days.
“Fuck you, Martin!”
I close my eyes, savoring the symphony in my ears. Mary swears poetically. I whirl and confront her, loosening the rope coils and getting the lengths ready. Mary doesn’t notice, so intent on my reaction.
“You’re being a very bad girl, Mary. Do you know that?” I can tell by her reaction that she’s never heard Martin talk like this. It’s as if I’ve slapped her in the face, and though that is on the agenda for later, all I’ve done is used Martin’s tired voice to deliver a new world to pretty Mary.
“What? Fuck you,” she stammers taking a step back. She hasn’t noticed the rope yet. But I’ve noticed a shifting of shade. Her eyes have changed. She’s still angry, oh yes. But someplace deep inside, Mary is puzzled. Intrigued. Possibly intrigued enough to pause the relentless attack that she is just warming to.
I take back her step. “Yes, Mary. You’re being a very bad girl. Do you know why?” My voice is a purr. Martin’s voice is gone. I’m playing his vocal chords now. I’m the lone cello playing the major refrain in the minor, slowing drowning out the rest of the orchestra by my pulsing discord. Mary has entered the Hall of the Mountain King, whether she knows it or not.
Mary says nothing, confusion plainly evident on her face. The corners of her lips relax, giving her that pouty look that both Martin and I have fallen in love with. Her eyes can’t conceal the sparkle that dance just behind her green pupils. Her cheeks seem more suffused with blood.
I wait until she has enough time to glance down at the coil of rope in my hand. Her confusion deepens. I know she isn’t thinking about ropes binding her wrists behind her, anchored by a waist and crotch rope, while more rope serves to keep her legs from flailing to block the onslaught of my palm against her ass cheeks. Honestly, I don’t think she gives the ropes much thought at all. Mary simply registers that her husband is now holding rope in his hands and talking in a way that somehow has caused her anger to shift gears into something else. Her choice is to either devote time to thinking what that something else is or to answer me. Her decision is voiced by her silence.
I step close to her, looking down into her upturned face. She steps back, but only a half step back. “Answer me, Mary. Do you know why you are a bad girl?”
“No.”
With one trembling word I know that Mary has crossed over from anger to fear. I’m not the Martin that carefully locks the door to the den before pounding my meat in time to internet porn. I’m not the Martin that prefers to kiss his wife briefly on the lips only once on his way to and from work. I’m not the Martin that can only master two things in the bed he shares with his wife – sleeping and farting.
Mary’s afraid because she doesn’t know who I am. I slip a coil of rope around one delicate wrist and Mary lets me.
“You are a bad girl, Mary, because,” I pause, appearing to think about my words while I snug the rope tight and knot the end. “Well, I guess you are a bad girl just because. Just because. And do you know what happens to bad girls, Mary?”
“I’m not a bad girl,” she whispers, almost in a trance. This is not the way the standard tirade goes, not at all. I know I’m only seconds away from her reaching the conclusion that this is scary shit – that either Martin is crazy or, well, that Martin is crazy. I hope that deep down inside, a part of Mary is equating the rope with sex. Wild hope, but that’s what crosses my mind as I finish with one hand and reach for Mary’s other hand.
“Yes you are, Mary. You are a very bad girl. We’ve established that.” Martin’s voice is smooth, so fucking smooth. And condescending. “My new question is do you know what happens to bad girls?”
Mary seems to stop breathing. I watch her eyes closely, then see the fear and anger shoot into them and realize that I won’t be getting her other wrist as easily as the first. I feel myself grin. Showtime.
“Fuck you, Martin! You’re fucking crazy-“
The orchestra swells with the beginning of the full fledged anarchy that accompanies Mary as she races through the Hall of the Mountain King. I forget about Mary’s other wrist and spin her around, keeping her roped wrist in my hand. Mary’s smallish body is suddenly off balance, largely due to me holding her arm behind her back and she slumps against the kitchen table, the soft mound of one breast pressing flat in her plate of beef stroganoff.
I press down on her with Martin’s body, quickly capturing her flailing free hand and binding her wrists together behind her with the course rope. Her profanity, though limited mostly to the fuck word, sing shrill and sweet. She squirms beneath me, her hands testing their cruelly limited freedom and I can’t hold off any longer. She just feels so good underneath me. Holding her chest fast to the kitchen table I flip up her skirt and tear down her dainty pink panties. Her profanity stops for the moment, as if her sudden confusion can be intensified by the actions that have made her helpless and lying in her own dinner isn’t enough. But a few sharp slaps to her ass get that wonderful stream running again and I busy myself with undoing Martin’s ridiculously nerdy work pants and briefs.
Then I lean in with the money line, the line that every hero utters before ridding the world of scum like me. It’s different in every case, crafted to suit the needs of the situation. But it’s bronze plaque worthy all the same. As I press Mary into her beef stroganoff, feeling her hands wriggle against my chest, Martin’s little erect dick poised at the dark tunnel of Mary’s virgin asshole, I whisper in her ear, the thundering crescendo of drums and strings and trumpets heralding the demise of disenchanted little Mary in the Hall of the Mountain King.
“Bad girls get hurt.”
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