The Outsider
Copyright 2009 by EC
EC's Erotic Art & Fiction - http://www.ecgraphicarts.com/
EC's deviantART collection - http://caligula20171.deviantart.com/ 

(warnings: language, adult themes, public nudity, sex between adults)

Chapter 26 – Ruthie’s only choice

Throughout April, Mike quietly continued driving Sam’s truck around campus 
and collecting money from meters. It was a routine that he started to enjoy, apart 
from the extra income that he was taking in. He spent his afternoons listening to 
news on the radio, took breaks when he wanted, and spent most of his time 
working alone. He could certainly see why Sam had no ambition to do anything 
else, because it was not a high-pressure life.

Nevertheless, Mike realized that he would need to start taking a ticketing machine 
with him, because the freeloaders of Lot Econ-A had noticed that he no longer 
was out there to harass them. Meter collections began to drop as students returned 
to the lot and found their cars had been parked all day and were not ticketed. No, 
that wouldn’t do. Those meters were Mike’s main source of personal income and 
those little bastards had no right to just sit there and not pay. Starting on the fifth 
week of Sam’s vacation, Mike always took a ticketing machine with him when he 
worked the meters and spent as much time writing tickets as he spent emptying 
canisters. He started working hard again, not because of his old determination to 
persecute the rich crowd, but because he wanted to make sure the meters 
(especially the ones that were jammed) always got paid.

During the sixth week of Sam’s absence, Mike accelerated both his ticketing and 
his collections. He figured out how to jam meters himself without making it look 
suspicious, and in doing so took in an extra couple hundred dollars per day. He 
assumed that Sam would be back next week and with his co-worker’s return, his 
“perk” would come to an end.

It turned out Sam wasn’t coming back. The department director took advantage of 
his absence to force him into retirement. Over the next several weeks Mike would 
hear enough rumors and gossip to figure out that Sam was forced out because of 
his health insurance premiums, which had been set up decades before during a 
time there still was money in personnel budgets for that type of thing. It was 
ironic that had Sam known about the health insurance issue, he easily could have 
paid the premiums from the money he was taking out of the meters. However, 
because the manager considered Sam an honest and loyal employee, he assumed 
that there was no way Sam had the extra income needed to pay those high 
premiums. It was easier to push him into retirement. 

Mike was aghast when he realized what the department had done to his mentor. 
He also felt very guilty about his role in facilitating Sam’s removal, because it 
was obvious that he had been selected not to assist Sam, but to replace him. 
Neither Mike nor Sam had any clue that was what had been plotted in the front 
office. When he found out the full story, he wanted to call Sam and apologize, 
but…apologize for what? That he had been the mope who was used by the 
director to make sure Sam could be pushed out the door?

Mike knew that the department, on paper at least, would save a bundle by 
replacing Sam with a student employee. Mike’s pay went up only slightly and he 
was not eligible for any benefits. Also, Mike would be even easier to replace than 
Sam if he ever ended up costing the department too much in wages.

Throughout the final weeks of the semester Mike noticed that two other older 
employees of the parking department had disappeared, also forced into retirement, 
no doubt. By the beginning of May noticed that the dispatcher was not her usual 
smirky sarcastic self. At the end of the semester, she too would be gone.

Because Mike was more observant than most of the other student employees, he 
could understand how truly corrupt the parking department was. The department 
was a money-making machine, and yet it did not share any of its income with the 
rest of the university. Obviously a huge amount of money had been spent to build 
the parking garage, but a lot of that expense had been funded with credit and not 
paid up front. As for everything else…the parking trucks were old and in poor 
condition, the meters were all older (which was part of the reason some of them 
were always jammed), and the parking lots received only minimal maintenance. 
So where was all the money going? Not to the employees, that was for sure, 
because the students were earning barely more than minimum wage and had no 
benefits. Well, conditions in the main office totally contrasted with what was 
outside. The secretaries had the newest computers and office furniture and the 
director had an oak desk. Mike started noticing what the office staff was driving 
to work. All of them had very nice cars. So…that was what the efforts of Mike 
and his co-workers were paying for: a fancy office and fancy cars for the director 
and his favorite staff members. As Sam had said:

“Ain’t spending it on us, that’s for sure.”

So… at the beginning of the seventh week of Sam’s absence, Officer # 36’s 
temporary assignment became permanent. Permanent, in a manner of speaking, 
because he could be dismissed at any moment. But, as long as he could hold onto 
his job, Mike would grab as much money as he could and pad his savings. He 
wouldn’t think about the future, because the future would come soon enough. He 
would concentrate on the money, because to have money was to have power and 
control over one’s own fate.

As he stared at the growing stacks of rolled quarters hidden in the wardrobe of his 
dorm room, a thought crossed his mind: the possibility of helping his dad make 
mortgage payments. Why not? If he continued with his new gig into the 
foreseeable future, why couldn’t he use some of those quarters to give back to his 
dad? 

Mike pondered what to do. The problem with helping his parents was that Mr. 
Sinclair would want to know where he was getting the money. If he suspected that 
Mike was obtaining his money from doing something illegal, he would angrily 
refuse it. Mr. Sinclair always had been scrupulously honest and would berate his 
son for touching “dirty money”. There was some hypocrisy in his attitude, 
because of what he was planning to do to his lender when they foreclosed. 
However, he considered his slight-of-hand with the “underwater mortgage” 
payback to an economic system that had betrayed him, and thus different from 
what his son was doing: stealing money outright.

Still, it was a relief for Mike to think that he no longer was worried about his own 
finances and instead had enough money to start worrying about those around him. 
Another pleasant thought occurred to him: he now was in a position to help his 
girlfriend. If she wanted to, Ruthie could tell Jake Burns to go fuck himself. At 
the rate he was bringing in money, Mike would have enough to pay her tuition as 
well as his own and still have plenty to spare. As for living in the dorm next year, 
there would be no need for that. He’d get an apartment and simply have her move 
in with him.

----------

Ruthie did notice the ongoing change in her boyfriend’s fortunes. Now, if he 
wanted something, he bought it. If she wanted something, he bought it. That 
became especially apparent when Mike and Ruthie went to his parents’ house to 
celebrate Easter and Mike treated his entire family to a catered Easter dinner. The 
food was the best food anyone sitting at the table had eaten for a long time and 
must have cost Mike a small fortune. Ruthie noticed that her boyfriend’s parents 
were grateful for their son’s generosity. However, they also appeared bewildered 
concerning where he could have earned the money. Mike sensed his father’s 
unease, so he talked about the change of assignment at his job as though it were a 
major promotion and told them that he had received a big raise. 

Ruthie wondered what really was going on at Mike’s job, because back in January 
Mike had mentioned that he was working with one of the older employees and it 
did not seem like his meter job was that big of a deal. Now all of a sudden it was a 
big deal, and there was no further mention of that older co-worker. She knew that 
something was going on. 

However, she decided not to confront him about it. It was nice to see him not so 
bitter about his life, and even nicer to be dating a person that had some money and 
was willing to spend it on her. There was one favor in particular that convinced 
her to not ask questions. A few days after Easter, she had a bad toothache. Two 
mornings later he drove her to Santa Cruz and took her to his dentist. It turned out 
she needed two fillings. Ruthie objected, knowing that there was no way she 
could afford two fillings and X-rays. The hygienist gave her a strange look.

“Ms. Burns, it’s been taken care of. Your boyfriend just paid.” 

“He did? How much was it?”

The hygienist looked at her clipboard. “Looks like it was $ 537 dollars.”

“…and he paid it? All of it? Just like that?”

“Yes. Paid in cash. Why? Is there a problem?”

Ruthie shook her head. Bewildered by her boyfriend’s generosity, she lay back in 
the chair and winced as the Novocain was injected into her jaw.

----------

As April progressed and the end of the semester loomed ever closer, Ruthie 
understood how totally dependent she had become on Mike. There was no way 
she had wanted that to happen, but it seemed that her life had not given her any 
choice. All of her attempts to reach out to anyone other than her boyfriend were 
rebuffed. Most people were not nearly as rude to her as Shannon had been, but it 
was clear that everyone Ruthie talked to, especially other college students, simply 
were not interested in getting to know her. 

She knew that there were guys who would have been interested in her, but only 
for the same reason that piece of shit at Junior Prom had been interested in her. 
She knew that she was physically attractive and that there were guys who would 
have brushed aside her creepy personality if they could use her for their own 
sexual relief. She wanted no part of that. The squalid experience on that dirt road 
two years before was a sufficiently painful lesson for her. There was no way she’d 
want to risk going through that again. 

There were women that Ruthie looked at longingly. Jen was the one she was most 
attracted to, but there were others. She understood there was not a chance she’d 
ever connect. One unpleasant incident at the student center stood out in her mind; 
that involved a female customer who periodically bought coffee at Ruthie’s shop. 
The student sat down to drink her coffee just before Ruthie went on break, so 
Ruthie took her snack and took a seat at the next table. She sat admiring the other 
woman, working up the courage to try to talk to her. Suddenly the customer stood 
up, approached Ruthie, and snapped:

“You got a fucking problem?”

Ruthie blushed, but was so shocked that she couldn’t answer. She just shook her 
head.

“Then you need to stop staring at me!”

The other girl walked off and Ruthie never saw her again. It was a minor incident, 
but one that left her badly shaken.

So that was it. Guys didn’t interest her, she could not connect with any of the 
women she liked, and she was becoming increasingly distant from her family…as 
though she were ever all that close to them anyway. She was totally alone, except 
for a single person who cared about her.

Mike was the only one…

----------

At the end of April, Ruthie received a call from her mother. She was surprised, 
because the two women had not spoken to each other for over a month, not since 
the conversation when Ruthie “came out” as an atheist. When she picked up her 
cell phone, Ruthie tensed up, torn between wanting to make up with her mother 
and wanting to be firm with her opinions about religion.

To Ruthie’s surprise, the topic of religion never came up. Doña Lisette had other 
things to worry about. Ruthie’s grandfather had fallen ill, was bedridden, and 
required constant care. As the only daughter in the family, the responsibility fell 
on Doña Lisette to return to Culiacan and care for her invalid father. Of course 
Ruthie’s cousin Alex already was right there living in his grandparents’ house, but 
there was not a chance in Hell he’d demean himself by doing something useful for 
his family.

At any other time Doña Lisette would have tried to find another solution for her 
father’s care, but at that moment she had nothing to keep her in the US. Her 
possessions were gone, she was estranged from her daughter, and it was very 
likely she’d finally be laid-off from her job by the middle of the summer. As far 
as she was concerned, it was time to go home.

Ruthie was trying to recover from that shock when her mother hit her with 
another piece of bad news. Gerardo’s baby was in coma and was not expected to 
survive more than another day or so, which was the reason she was calling. Doña 
Lisette wanted Ruthie to go with her to the funeral, since that probably was going 
to be the last time she would have a chance to see her brother and her daughter in 
the same place. Ruthie responded:

“Mom…of course I’ll be there. Why wouldn’t I go?”

“I don’t know about you, Ruthie. That’s why I had to call you and ask. I never 
know what you’re going to do. I don’t really feel that I know you. You’re my 
daughter, but I don’t know who you are.”

No Mom, you really don’t know me, thought Ruthie to herself. You never knew 
me. You never understood me, and it was the same with me and you. Our worlds 
are different. We’ll never understand each other, but that’s no one’s fault. I guess 
it was too bad that we got separated when I was a little kid…I know that didn’t 
help any. I know you tried with me. You did what you could, and maybe I didn’t 
turn out so bad…not like Alex…but we’re strangers, and we always will be 
strangers.

She would have wanted to say some of that, but all she could get out was:

“Mom…I’ll be there, OK? I’ll be there. You don’t have to guilt-trip me about it.”

----------

A funeral is never a pleasant event, and certainly if the ceremony is to 
commemorate the death of an infant, that makes a funeral considerably worse. 
However, the baby’s funeral was exceedingly somber for another reason, because 
it seemed to be, in a way, a funeral for the entire family. Ruthie’s relatives would 
be going their separate ways as soon as the ceremony was over. Her mother was 
going to back to Mexico, her cousins Rosa and Alex already were absent, and 
Ruthie had heard a rumor that Gerardo and his wife were splitting up. As for 
herself, she had always been the outlying member of that family, the one who 
really never fit in. She was going away too, because with her mother departing for 
Mexico, she would never again have any reason to set foot in Salinas and had no 
intention of doing so. Whatever the future held for her, it would have to be 
somewhere else.

Ruthie’s mother was not leaving for Mexico until the following day, but Ruthie 
decided to say goodbye to her after the funeral had ended and return to 
Davenport. They hugged each other for the last time. Whatever they needed to say 
to each other would remain unsaid. 

----------

That night, Ruthie decided it was time to share her darkest secret with Mike. She 
put her bath brush in her backpack and went over to his room. The two students 
stripped off their clothes and Mike assumed that they would be massaging each 
other shortly and that either he would get to enter her or would have to settle for a 
hand-job. Instead, Ruthie laid the bath brush on the spare desk next to her 
computer. Already Mike suspected what she wanted him to do with it, but Ruthie 
said nothing. Instead she told him to turn on his computer and handed him the 
thumb-drive she had taken to Dr. Hartman’s office a few weeks earlier.

“I’m gonna trust you with something. It’s something that no one, except my 
counselor, knows about.”

Mike looked at the pictures in amazement. Ruthie noticed that, when he was 
about a fourth the way through, his penis started to stiffen. He was embarrassed, 
but he couldn’t help himself. A lot of the pictures were very sexy.

“You were doing this to yourself?”

Ruthie blushed and nodded.

“With the same brush that’s sitting on the desk. It’s a long story. Someday I’ll tell 
it to you, but a lot of it’s in the pictures.”

“It was something you got off on?”

Ruthie blushed and nodded. Then she continued:

“I…I’m feeling kinda sucky right now…I can’t explain it…but I was kinda…you 
know…wondering if you’d like to…you know…with the brush…”

She noticed his penis was totally erect. He was blushing. She picked up the brush 
and handed it to him. Then she placed her hands on his bed and spread her legs.

Even though he already had spanked her once, Mike couldn’t believe what Ruthie 
was doing. She was asking him to punish her.

Mike’s mind was full of doubts over what he was about to do. Among other 
concerns he was wondering what would happen if Ruthie modeled in art class on 
Monday with bruises on her bottom. However, he was more worried about hurting 
her lovely body. He treasured the sight of his girlfriend’s naked figure and was 
reluctant to do anything to injure her. And yet, at that moment he found the sight 
of her bent over his bed extremely erotic.

He positioned himself and touched the brush to her bottom. She was trembling 
slightly. He was curious and did not start spanking right away. Instead he rubbed 
the back of the brush over her vulnerable backside. She took a deep breath and 
started trembling more, but did not move out of position. Finally he was ready to 
begin.

He started out slowly, giving her moderately hard swats on the lower and middle 
part of her bottom. He was careful to hit only one side at a time and not hit 
anywhere near her hips or her pelvis. He suspected that in high school she had 
probably punished herself in rapid bursts, nerved herself for the next round, and 
then started with another burst. He would not punish her rapidly, but make her 
anticipate each swat. He struck, then rubbed the brush over the next spot where he 
planned to hit, and struck again. The spanking was very painful and unnerving for 
Ruthie. Her knees were trembling. She just wished the spanking were over with, 
but the irony was that it was up to her to end it. All she had to do was tell Mike to 
stop, and yet she was determined not to do so. She wanted the spanking to be as 
severe as possible.

Finally, she did break down and started crying. Mike noticed that no longer were 
her knees shaking from fear and anticipation, but instead her upper body was 
shaking from sobs. Mike was totally aroused, but he knew that, unlike the night of 
her birthday, she was not aroused at all. And yet, she needed a release…and was 
trying to find it with the bath-brush. Her bottom already was very red and 
swollen.

Mike didn’t want to hurt her any further. He placed his hand on her shoulder.

“That’s enough, Ruthie. I want you to stand up.”

She obeyed him and stood up. She then hugged him and cried into his shoulder. 
They said nothing more. 

They lay together in Mike’s bed. Tears were still running down her cheeks when 
she noticed he was still very hard. She massaged him until he came. She didn’t 
want sex that night, but she felt that at the very least she owed him a hand-job. 
When he finished and shot semen all over his stomach, she toweled him off. Then 
he fell asleep. 

For Ruthie sleeping was more difficult because her bottom was so sore, but that 
feeling was what she had wanted for the past three years.


