Page 41 of Below the Shadow of the City

Sorry I broke in, the back sliding door was left unlocked. There’s some fresh stuff in the fridge and a few cans of Diet Coke. - M

I fold up the note and slide it into my jacket pocket. It’s a small piece of him to hang onto. The bags are stocked with some staples for easy meals, and the fridge contains the same. I’m so warmed by the gesture I forget there must have been wild logistics for him to work through to be able to get all this.

His massive frame would look absolutely ridiculous in this kitchen, his horns would graze the light fixture above the island. I let out a soft chuckle at the vision.

I hardly deserve to have a stranger care about me this much, I mean, we hardly know each other.

Suddenly the realization smacks me over the head like I’m in a Looney Tunes cartoon and the Acme brand anvil dropped. Of course. His mom. He knows nights and days in the hospital, he knows the feeling of not being in control of anything, and the draining effect it has on you. He was young then, sure, but he saw it, he lived it. He knows what kind of meals are easy to make and choke down when you’ve spent three days straight in the hospital. He knows that I’d be spent entirely, and that having a few bites of my favorite dessert would help.

He’s a good man, and I think I want him to be my good man.

Admitting all this while very much under duress feels ill-advised. When I throw myself onto the couch I type out nearly a dozen different messages to him. They range from sassy (in poor taste) to sincere (too vulnerable), and I end up settling on a simple thank you and a request to see him at some point when I get back. I stare at my phone for a while, watching the text bubbles materialize and disappear over and over.

Ultimately, he “likes” the message and says nothing.

Flipping my phone in my hands a few times over in hopes of a phone call materializing is fruitless and resign myself to getting some sleep.

I forget how crushingly tiny a twin bed is, and I flip over a few times on the starched sheets trying to get comfortable. There’s an ache between my legs that I decide needs to be addressed, it’s been quietly pulsing on and off since I left his car earlier.

Suddenly, I’m a teenager again quietly touching myself to pictures of the Jonas Brothers and Orlando Bloom.

It is an absolutely fucked up coping mechanism to dispel the stress I’ve held onto all day.

I question my morals for even thinking about being horny after the events that have unfolded. I get up and pace back and forth, feeling disgusting for pursuing a brief physical reprieve from feeling anything. I give up, and succumb to the fucked up side of me that hasn’t stopped thinking about the monstrous man who got me out here in the first place.

With one hand already resting between my thighs, I open a private tab on my phone. There’s nothing I can search that’ll replicate what I experienced with Maddox. To my detriment, no one has found others like him and made porn with it, I’ve searched high and low.

A few arrangements of keywords had brought back questionable results. Monster porn returns activities involving the energy drink (creative) and beast porn returns some of the most repulsive steroid-laden alpha males I’ve seen (cringe). I soon discover that there’s nothing that’s more of a turnoff for me than a guy in a monster costume. As funny as it may have been to watch.

Finally, I find a video of a large guy with plenty of chest hair and a man bun and think it’s close enough. This Jason Momoa lookalike doesn’t quite have the same effect on me, and after listlessly circling my clit with my fingertips and getting nowhere I close out of it.

I need Maddox’s scent, his primal growls, and the feeling of his body. I need to hear his voice, but when I close my eyes and think about him I only envision the closed-off guy in a hoodie from earlier today.

I have half a mind to call him up and practically beg him to walk me through it.

I give up, hardly half satisfied, and curl onto my side. It’s incredibly silly for a grown woman to be crying out to the universe about a curse she’s under. It’s silly to believe in a curse like this in the first place.

In the morning I wash yesterday off of me entirely. I find myself back in the hospital, my mom rubbing her neck from sleeping on a cot, my dad sucking apple juice from a straw.

“Mom,” I say sternly, like she’s the kid and I’m the parent, “go home, sleep, please. I’ll stay with dad.” She looks at my dad, and he nods at her.

After more coercing she relents and quietly leaves. I know she held on as long as she could, but it’s unfair for her to carry this alone.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, kid.” he rips apart the toast on his breakfast tray once my mom leaves.

“Pretty sure you didn’t choose to have a heart attack,” I quickly answer. He looks better today, more color back in his cheeks, his eyes are less hollow. I come to realize I don’t even know what a heart attack entails, or how it could have affected him.

“No, I didn’t. I told your mom not to tell you until I got home. The doctors say it was a mild one, a few days of rest and I’ll be back home and golden.”

“A heart attack is still a heart attack, dad, and you seriously didn’t want me to know?”

“You have a whole life to live without worrying about us.” Had the distance really grown that large between us? I hardly had a life in Brooklyn, most days I was focused on simple survival and hoping things would get better. Maddox is the first bright spot I’ve had in a long time, and even that feels fragile and too precious to make real by speaking of it.

My entire adolescence I’d worked to be “not a bother.” I didn’t want to inconvenience my parents with my emotional burdens, nor reveal anything that would make me primed to get in trouble. There was nothing worse than asking for advice or sharing something and getting a lecture in return.

I’m sure much of it was self-imposed. I couldn’t handle the smallest piece of critique or criticism so I’d avoid it entirely by revealing nothing at all.

When I was twelve I had my first crush on a girl, though I had no clue that’s what it was. Crushes on boys felt normal and encouraged, and when I got the same feelings in my stomach for a girl on my soccer team, I didn’t know what to do with them.