In response to a Remittance Girl Challenge
Hand goes up, hand goes down. Done.
His hand went up, crossed down across her. Over.
He pulled his hand back, angling it up, and drew it down across her flesh, making contact in the process. A split second of time. Thank god, it’s over, what do you think, a cup of coffee?
His arm crossed his chest, up and around toward his back, repositioning his hand behind his neck, and he back-handed his wedding ring hand across her face, forcing her head to turn down and toward his left, presenting him with the mark that the metal he wore for another woman left, clarifying the betrayal they shared that she would have explain to her husband with a story about a cabinet door, in a near future, and he wouldn’t be asked about, at least no, not at home.
This was not a simple attack on her bottom, the site that mommy and daddy swatted to get our attention but not hurt too bad, despite overreactions to those corporal lessons that any more have more memories of being a bad girl or being a bad boy than of any recollection of actual pain; human psyches go to great lengths to shield people from having to relive moments that actually hurt. Inducing the firing of her seventh cranial nerve was altogether different than the connections forged when getting other parts of her nervous system to limber up that she could find a way to like, like when he chastised her ass for being resistant to his advances which she wanted anyway, or when he swatted her tits as he fucked her after she gave into his advances that she wanted anyway, or even when he spanked her pussy to get her to shake after he had had his way with her, to demonstrate that he was still having an effect on her, something to overwhelm her by, no, this was actually forbidden at their first meeting—“open handed, not on the face”—and had been an inviolate law ever since the subject had been broached; it would require less exertion than the other swings he took at her, at least, physically, but this one came with a much higher degree of risk. She might leave him over this, making the ramifications of this little exercise today last much longer than the act; things would never be the same between them again. He had yet to punch her. Something for another day.
This was nothing neither he nor she took lightly; it wasn’t a casual act. This was one of the big ones, it represented in no uncertain terms a wall that was supposed to be solid brick and mortar, one he should be able to routinely throw her up against and have nothing reliably stick, as this was something that was simply not done, you wouldn’t dare, I wouldn’t dream, we’re talking forbidden city here, and it doesn’t do any good to even ask, so don’t, I didn’t, yes you did, no it was you, and the occasion of how they even got here today was unclear in both of their minds—one thought and would always be convinced the other brought it up first, even years down the road—and however it happened it all snowballed from there, between the jokes and the bravado and the assurances and the what-if’s and the does-it-really-matters that they went through to build up to it, which would cumulatively end up getting both of them here, now, and get this done, get it over with, we’ll try it, just to see, we don’t have to, no, it’s alright, I’ll see you there, sure, sure. Are you sure? Stop asking me that. And then they could move on from there. An unpleasant moment to pass through and be through with, so help us, god. Through. Whew.
This wasn’t a movie, and there wasn’t any kind of comedic script involving the Three Stooges, nor was it a Monty Python skit involving fish, nor was it a Zucker-Abrams-Zucker production of a bad airline disaster film, and I picked the wrong day to stop…whatever, and don’t call me Shirley. No, this was more like film noire, with Davis or Crawford or even that romantic shit Cher brandishing the weapon of a woman, the act she could get away with in public that he could not, committing assault and battery against someone who was guilty of doing nothing more than annoy her, making it clear that he had better leave her the fuck alone, and if you don’t believe me, there is another weapon in the arsenal, one that would taint a man much longer than the moment of insult of being sent packing with his tail between his legs at the bar—yeah, yeah, she shot you down, loser, ha ha—one that would ruin his reputation, perhaps irreparably and make it so he would automatically be mistrusted by women, now and forever, amen. I wouldn’t do that, no, of course not. Except they were here today to turn it around, turn it against her, to reverse the insult onto her, to humiliate her, to make it appear that she had been the one who had done wrong here when she hadn’t, it wasn’t fair, no, this isn’t about fair, this is about what you can give, what I can take, what does it matter, why is this hard, overcome yourself, overcome me, make me, make you, make me, I can’t tell you how much I hate this, yes you can, please, take me, shut up, you got it. Let’s get this over with.
His hand it went up. Should be simple, shouldn’t it? His hand it went down.
She whimpered from the crack, the room shook for a split second and then upended, there was a pinpoint of something deeper and a radiated expanse of something sharp spreading over the side of her face that felt like fire water, am I bleeding, it felt like it hurt far more than it hurt, hell, people pay to have this done, it’s a Thai beauty secret—no, really?—there was more to it than a smack across the cheek, he didn’t hit her very hard, but the wound ran deeper than flesh, it was a matter of pride, it was abhorrent, no greater insult to her than this, it was judgmental, it’s always a surprise, even knowing it was coming, it was shocking, startling, overwhelming, she cried out when he struck, oh, fuck, god, I hate this, oh, oh, ow, thank god it’s finished. She shuddered as she tried to breathe again, and she lifted one knee up off the floor, wobbling as she put her one foot flat, kneeling time was over, and she leveraged her way into moving up and...
His hand, the one he just struck her with, was there to meet her shoulder as she rose, and oh shit, what, simply stopping her, her leg autonomically returned to be alongside the other, crap, that came too easy, she had to retain balance, knees and ankles together, back into position, back into praying, and her hands clasped in front of her.
Oh, motherfucker.
“You know I’m not left handed.” He slid his fingers into her hair, the ones that held his faith in another woman, a faith he was here to break yet again, and turned her face up. Try as he might to not do such a thing, his face channeled Jimmy Cagney. Jack Nicholson. Steve McQueen. He was sneering stone, and the stoniness was catchy. The erection he didn’t have at the first go-round set itself into motion because of what she did, what she didn’t do: she stayed, she didn’t fight him back, and that was what it was all about, and all the saints had something to say, something good, something wonderful, leaning on the everlasting arms.
Her face crumpled, and she avoided looking toward him, she didn’t want to see, she didn’t want to know, her eyes darted around the room, flitting about toward where she had thrown her clothes in anger at the beginning, in disgust, my god isn’t this hard enough, do you mean it, I have to do that, too, god damn it, fine, are you happy, is this enough, is this what you want, and she couldn’t keep the distraction up and she had to, he wanted her to, and she looked up, it was an eternal split second to scrape her gaze up him, to do as he wished, he wished it so and she saw him looking at her, he god yes god no god yes wanted more, fuck me, and he held her head, and pulled his other hand, his good righteous hand back, all the way back up out of her sight behind him as he bent over her, the hand that, when he hit her with this one, with everything he had, getting his own blood to race to the tips, the blood in her face where it would become red raced to catch up, she would not be able to explain the mark away as a kitchen mishap, no, the mark of fingers would be unmistakable, the irrevocable result of what sounds like a simple abstracted inducement of an impact waveform that would cross her face, and he raped her, he raped her face with his hand, he detonated her world with the impact, threatening to push his hand right on through her head so he could applaud her, that’s what hands go together to do, god, too many nerves here, and every last fucking one of them hurts, you’re breaking something, they’re all here, all screaming, complaining and shouting, it hurts it hurts it hurts ithurtsithurtsithurts, as the kinetic energy raised and lowered her nose, wrinkling through her lips, moving her jaw and threatening to dislocate it, exposing her teeth, rippling the force through her opposite cheek and passing off into into into god his other hand please catch me don’t touch me—the physics of it moved his devil’s hand off her and he had to wrench his way back there, too, and she felt him return and he was hot this time, made of burning sulfur and iron—and the sound reverberated and bounced off the far wall of the warehouse and reiterated and washed them back over, a double exclamation point at the end of a long, very long, life-long sentence of manners and propriety and rules, and never having to hurt like this before, oh my god will it ever end, and the pain wasn’t the exquisite one that got her cunt to fire, no, it was the humiliating one, the one that focused everything in and screeched like a car crash and became the only thing in the world, the one that did nothing but take from her, and she didn’t just cry, she sobbed, and his fingers hurt when his forward sweeping motion gave out, and they would ache longer than her face would, and he flicked them in space beside her, and the motion picture stars, the old song and dance man who was better known as a gangster and the private dick and the thief all faded away and left him with his own face and it softened for a moment, and something welled up inside him he didn’t want her to see, not yet, something else was going to take priority, moreso than breathing, and he would tell her about it later, how it hurt him to throw her over the wall they had agreed on, and how when all that had been violated, all that seemed to be left was what he did next and how it seemed to somehow be the only right thing to happen, and it was alright, really. But her pride, it would suffer for a long, long time, and the wrong thing about her was that she relished it, god fuck him and god bless him, and when her husband asked about what had happened she couldn’t answer him, no, she had betrayed him, and had been performing that infidelity for a long time now, and this was only the beginning of what she deserved, and he knew what he was setting her up for, and he opted to go through it with her, because it was time, it was time for them stop doing this the way they had been, stop hiding in hotel rooms and in bathrooms and in parking lots and in this god-forsaken unfinished building that was sealed off from the elements but cold, where she knelt naked for him here in the chill and she shivered in her angers and rebellions and disbelief that she was allowing for this, that they were here to quash something in her before they even got started, really started, they had been simply playing before now, it was time to come out, and he would stand with her, be there with her when she confronted her husband, when she would be seen, seen like this, it was so obvious, seen as a woman who accepted what he did to her, for her, with her, and it hurt god yes it hurt, but it was worth it, after all this time it was worth it, she was worth it, he was worth it, yes, yes, yes, this will happen again, yes, fuck me, yes...
Neither of them even considered stopping him when his pants fell, and he presented her with something else to do with her face, her face which burned throughout the act and had a use beyond ache after all, and he took a pleasure from her, a pleasure that was arrogant and demanding and didn’t offer her any, and she gave and she accepted and it was right.
It was never about her. It was always about him.
Oh, the things she would have to do to keep reminding him of that.
Christ… woah.
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