Need
by Cutting Kind

She struggled a bit more, but it was almost over. Blood ran colder, now, as
things took their course. The fight was over, and things had proceeded as they
always did: with her on her back.

She tensed her right leg, he tightened his grip, she backed down - that's how
it happens.

He straightened up over her, assuming a more dominant position. Breathing
became deeper, the smell of sweat and nakedness, the dry grip of the carpet
eating into his ankle, belying the sweaty intersection of his knee and her
right inner-thigh.

Time for a smile, he'd earned it.

"Julie...you know you don't have to struggle like that. Things don't have to
work out this way."

She began to tremble. Well, she was trembling before, but that was in effort.
Now was the cold tremble, when she knew what was going to happen next. What she
wanted.

And he was such a tease.


    "Yeah, I'll be there in a minute."
    
    He turned off the cell phone, and stuck it in his jacket. Cigarettes, cell
    phone, coffee, and greed. It's what made the world run. Well, this portion
    of the world.  You buy and sell people, you buy and sell their dreams. It's
    what it was all about.

    The wind picked up, so he put his hands in his pockets. The lighter's metal
    case warm against his knuckles.


*Whitch*

Hard to describe just how a Zippo lighter sounds being lit. There's the rasp of
the flint, and then the fuel catches on the wick, and it makes that tiny sound
of air being sucked in. It's the sound of heat.

Well, one of them.

"Aaaaa---kkk" his hand on her throat caught the scream, and held it straining,
like a butterfly caught on tar paper, slowly moving less and less --- like the
wax running down from her nipple, and pooling in the cleft between her breasts.

He pushed his pelvis even harder against the back of her thighs, his penis
buried inside her.  Somewhere in all this was what he wanted. Somewhere between
the glassy look in her eyes, and the pain running up and down her brain stem.


     "It's what you need. I don't have to sell it to you, you're going to buy
     it from me."

     A moment to breathe the smoke of his cigarette, choking out the cloying
     oxygen of the room. You just had to know what was real and what was not.

     The client wasn't sure about reality. Maybe his house didn't face East, or
     maybe he'd become a teetotaler. He needed convincing, he needed a sale, he
     needed a soft touch.

     But that's the thing about reality.

     Reality is what you can't wish gone, it's what you can't fit on your plate
     that morning.  It has no salesmen, only priests.

     And they gave up on sermons a long time ago.


"Oh god. Oh. God."

He steadied himself, placing his weight on a hand cupped just below her breast.
The weight of her breast slapping against his hand, the weight of his body
crushing the breath out of her, while their sweat dripped into the carpet. The
carpet chafed his knees.

He pressed his cheek against hers, his arm wrapped behind her neck. He
shuddered, finishing his conversation with her.


     "Good to hear."

     He finished his drink. There is a certain intimacy after a sale is
     finished, you're quiet and you let the client do his thinking. Think about
     what he's going to do. What's changed in his life --- what he has changed
     in his life.

     You just get out of the way.

     He picked up the cash on the table, and learned back in his chair,
     respecting the silence.


She whispered in his ear, "history knows, Michael"

And it knows damn well.

He relaxed more, letting his weight fall upon her, sticking them together with
drying sweat.

"And what will it think of me?"
