Love is in Her Air - LivelyTH

By: LivelyTH

PART 1

The faucet dribbled water into the sink and I cupped a handful to coat my face with. I stared at my reflection, droplets slowing or pausing at its ridges and protrusions before continuing their descent, then I looked down at the splat coating the crotch of my trousers.

“McCarthy? You in there? You ok? It’s been like ten minutes…”

My life was so regular - so exactly where I wanted it to be. Everything had its place, and I liked it that way.

I never accounted for something like this.

***

10 HOURS EARLIER

Monday
8:20 AM - Main Office Space - Rise and Supplies

***

I like to get to work early. Sue me.

It’s an opportunity to take in the quiet atmosphere: fluorescents on their last leg and printers not yet whirring, but standing strong like urban sentries. It’s also an opportunity to get a headstart on whatever my workload is.

Is it brown-nosing if you enjoy it? I wondered as I clacked up the stairs to the 5th floor. The elevator - the only elevator - had been out of commission for some time, but that too presented a pleasant opportunity. The sound of shoe on stone resonated louder when not being dulled by mundane chatting over sports or celebrity gossip.

It was these kinds of meditations that kept me sharp.

As I creaked open the door I was surprised to see someone behind the front desk; Charlotte was barely here at 9:05 on a good day, and those were rare. Usually it was just me here until 8:50. At least.

But it wasn’t Charlotte; I was pretty good at keeping track of any nudges in the workforce, yet this change alluded me. Whoever it was, they were looking my way before I could call out to them.

“H-“

“Hiya! I’m Melissa! What’s your name sweetie?”

The way she addressed me felt cartoonish. She rushed around the desk to face me directly, knocking over boxes of files and paperwork, flushed with apparent giddiness that manifested in jittery legs and a closed-mouth smile stretched so wide it punctured her cheeks. She towered over me like a quivering obelisk; I wasn’t at all blessed with height, yet she was still about a 7’0 to my 4’6, with a figure plump with assets (wobbling on their own rhythm) that would make the men of the office drool like monkeys if not for her imposing stature. A golden earring glistened in the sterile white of the office, and she wore a necklace of a design I couldn’t discern from where I stood. Not because I was so short (I had only noticed it when she’d kneeled down to face me), but because it had sunk into the open cleavage of her red dress. She fluttered her eyelashes and pursed her shiny lips in a way I couldn’t help but see as condescending babying.

“…McCarthy”

“Oohh, not a first name kinda guy huh? I can dig it! But McCarthy is so cool! Are you Irish-“

“Look, er, what was it again?”

“Melissa! But you can call me Mellie, or Mels, or Penton if we wanna stick to last names, or Penny, orrrr-“

“Penton I’ve got a lot on my plate, ok?”

That wasn’t a lie; I had reports to finish drafting up, and I wasn’t going to get them finished any sooner talking to this skyscraper. She took two finger guns and shot them my way in a sort of ‘whatever you say’ double fire, before clumsily ducking into the front desk like a D-list action hero sliding over the hood of a Pontiac.

Since I worked from a desk that was close to and directly facing the reception, the brunette remained in my periphery, but I could tolerate that. As I whipped the laptop out of my backpack, I considered whether it was worth the exhaustion to ask about Charlotte, considering just a minute with this girl had left me panting for breath. That was assuming Penton had any idea where or who she was. I figured she’d probably cursed off some supplier that was still on the line, and The Old Crone’s patience ran too thin to cover for her anymore. A smile formed at the thought. Served her right.

At the very least this new girl seemed to actually fit the receptionist job description. I looked her way - smile still lingering - to see her looking back, and when she reciprocated a grin not meant for her I immediately straightened to a more solemn expression, and pressed the on-button.


***
9:07 AM
***

Right as I was entering a groove state, a singsong whistling pierced my ears.

“Penton?”

The whistling persisted

“Penton!”

The increased volume seemed to get through to her and she plucked a pair of buds out. You couldn’t even tell she was wearing them since her hair was so big and fluffy and opaque, and those things are wireless these days.

“Yo! What’s up dude?“

“Could you tone it down?”

She seemed confused as to what I meant, before it visibly clicked.

“Oh shoot sorry, I do that sometimes when I’m jamming out”

How she expected to hear the phone ring while she was ‘jamming out’ was beyond me, but I was willing to put that thought aside in the interest of reclaiming silence.

“Well, we’re trying to get stuff done”

She surveyed the room around me with a skeptical look, likely coming to the same conclusion I long since had: I worked twice - no - thrice as hard as anyone else in the building.

“Gotcha, boss” she threw a wink my way

“I’m not your superi- whatever”

Thoroughly taken out of it, I slotted the bridge of my nose into an index-thumb pincer and rubbed it, trying to ease the mounting headache. When my sights were set back on the computer screen, the brown mass no longer took up my periphery.

What the…

“So watcha workin on?”

I jolted at the sound of the figure standing next to me, turning my head only to be met with a set of weighty breasts straining against the red fabric and spilling over the top of it, and as she bent over to look at the computer screen I’m sure my face would’ve been a similar shade to match.

“Ooo I think you made a typo there, lemme just…”

“Yeh, I’m drafting- hey what are you doing?”

She leaned over me. She leaned over me! Did this girl not have any concept of social cues?

“Just ooone second.”

Her rear had taken up a sizeable portion of my view now as she stretched her legs over each side of mine. I could do nothing but fidget awkwardly and look in any direction except forward. This was unchartered territory for me.

“P-Penton!”

She continued tapping away.

“PENTON!”

“Eeep!”

The following played out in slow motion: her swiveling torso, then her loss of balance, then her rear pressing into my face.

And then to top off the whole motion:

Brrrrrrrrr

A low, succinct vibration at the bum-face epicenter. Soon the smell hit: vegetative decay and sulphur. There was no way that she… I mean, truly? 

“Wuhah, oh I’m sooo so sorry McCarthy, I’m a bit of a clutz. That’s what everyone who knows me could tell you! Unf, last night’s broccoli and lentil soup is NOT agreeing with me.”

“MMMMMMPH”

“Oh yeh! Whoops”

She peeled her titanic rear off of my face and I gasped for air.

“Just a few more changes, alright hun?”

I tried to cough out the evil she had just injected into my nostrils, seemingly without a thought in that ditzy little head of hers. It was weird - ‘sticky’ for a lack of a better descriptor. Not just lingering around the general area in which she farted, but refusing to leave my nostrils, coating them like the devil’s clingfilm.

Brrp

“Op! Scusemoi!” she fluttered her fanned palm around her face while typing with the other hand “my friends could tell you that too!”

“Ugh…tell you what?”

“That most things don’t agree with me! My stomach that is! Whoof, stinky huh? Haha!”

Turning around to escape the onslaught, I found it odd everyone was just plodding idly at their desks as this was happening - what few people were in the room to begin with.

“And there. We. Go!” she dramatized each word with a key press.

Despite the whole interaction feeling like a complete, disgusting waste of time, I restrained myself. Talk to her bluntly and she might leave you alone.

“Thank you Penton, I can take it from here.”

“Yessir yessir!” She cartwheeled her arms to keep herself upright as she stepped back over my legs, giving me two thumbs up once she found her balance by pounding her feet into the carpet.

As she skipped back to her desk I prepped my ctrl+z trigger finger - oh how often I'd use it without bimbos like Penton elbowing into my workflow. But not before I got a kick out of her ‘changes’.

…

She wasn’t wrong. There were typos and grammatical errors, and she did fix them. Still, that wasn’t an excuse to give me help I didn’t ask for, nevermind sitting and farting on my face!

It was when I got to the bottom of the last page that I saw the font change to something more cursive, and its color to a shade of reddish-pink

Later at Café 831, 6 o’clock? Xoxo

If the blushing had subsided, it must’ve flushed back in force, and to the colour of the words that were staring at me.

There is no way I’m doing this, I thought, but as I glanced at Penton and saw her straightening a stack of papers with a tongue clenched goofily between her teeth, I couldn’t find it in myself to just up and tell her that.
She was the one to turn away this time, lowering her head into her shoulder girdle and twirling one of her many strands of hair.

What is with this woman?


***

12:05 PM - Breakroom

***

I’m aware it’s unorthodox, but I plucked a vial of coffee granules from my inner suit pocket and sprinkled them into the mug. They're the only ones I can really stand, and there was no way in hell I was going to leave it out for these other cretins to siphon. They wouldn’t be able to differentiate it from all of that low-grade garbage anyway. I laid the tube on the counter and rolled it lightly back and forth with the tip of my index finger. As the boiling water splashed against the ceramic, the deep brown hue and warming fragrance, combined with the repetitive action, plunged me into a state of relaxation.

I thought back to those red words, and, after some consideration, it seemed appropriate that I go. Either I would let her down gently, or she would laugh in my face about how it was all an elaborate set-up just to mess with me. Either was a reasonable outcome so long as I could rip off this bandaid.

“M-Mcay?”

Once again snapped out of my groove, I turned my head to glance back, not wanting to maintain eye contact for longer than a second to ascertain that it was, in fact, the stinky ditz herself. It seemed we were already on a pet-name basis, though I’d die before calling her ‘Penny’ or ‘Mels’.

“What is it?”

“So…?”

“So what?”

I imagined her face deflating at that retort, and an uncomfortable wisp of guilt rose up in me - one that I wasn’t expecting, and made quick work of suppressing.

“Y’know, uhm…6 o’clock?”

“Oh, right. Yes. 6 o’clock. So where is it anywa-“

A squeal sounded out, so intense that I was shook enough to turn around to see who was injured, or what was broken. The second I did so, two long red tentacles had wrapped around me tight, and two soft sandbag breasts bounded each side of my head as I was raised a foot or so off the ground. Muffled by the fabric, my strained words turned from ‘ok, ok I get it’ to ‘mghymhgygyewit’.

In an effort to break free of the deadlock, I tapped my clenched fists on the parts of her body I could reach. As I lost air, it became more directionless and aggressive, and culminated in me pressing into her midsection on both sides.

BRLLpprrrbllbllprpbl llllllff-

“Woah!” Penton began to loosen her iron grip, though not completely “That one was… kinda… wet”

-frrrrrrrrrrfplpll

I caught her grimacing as I dropped to the floor. I’d like to believe it was because of the hard thunk my face made, and not the dribbling sound of her fart still petering to a quiet end. I breathed in with more force than I thought I was capable of.

Of course, breathing in heavily after someone had just farted, much less someone who was loaded up on something as apparently stink-inducing as Penton, was about the worst possible thing I could have done in that moment. It stunk of something festering and unholy. Real ‘something crawled up into her rear and died’ energy, and lucky me got to sniff what decomposed stink crawled its way back out. It blinded me like a sucker punch to the nose.

“Shoot! Sorry hun! You okay?” She kneeled down to face me like a mother would to a child with a scraped knee, apparent concern in her voice.

“You’re really goading these bad boys out of me today…arencha Mcay?” she said with a slightly exasperated giggle.

I wanted to take my mind anywhere other than thinking about my colleague - female colleague - leaking foul air with next to no shame or remorse. In particular, her referring to them as ‘bad boys’ in an attempt to make literal gaseous waste more personable made me queasy. At least I hoped it was gaseous.

I looked up at her in disbelief, and she looked back with some half-goofy, half-sheepish grimace of an expression as she fanned her behind in a lazy waft. I could have sworn she was wafting some of it my way. If this was a prank, it was a very cruel one.

She offered an arm out and I took it, and not before we were both stood up did she start chatting away again.

“I can’t wait to try out their new latte…”

Oh, right. The date. If I was to expect any more of this then perhaps it would’ve been better to call it off. If only I had the confidence, or the ability to get a word in. This girl felt like thin glue: sticking to you and running away from you all at once.

She reached into the fridge, bending forward more than necessary to grab the carton of milk at the back. Her singsong whistling returned as she shook her dress-clad rear from side to side. I looked away like you would from anything you’re not meant to stare at for too long: leopards, the sun, yourself. N-not that it looked bad, it looked fine, I’m just not - I mean.

I suppose we do stare at the moon…

Feeling like I was doing something of unparalleled deviancy, I snuck a subtle look back in her direction.

Something stirred in my slacks.

Brrrrrrp

And again, as if timed to capture it on candid fart-camera, another one of Penton’s expulsions.

She craned her torso and head around soon after, milk in hand, to find me on the tail-end of looking away. She didn’t comment on what she saw - or rather what she thought she saw - but I could tell the gears were turning in that Lovecraftian Rube-Goldberg machine of a thought process.

“Unf, I’m just a regular fartbox today…” she walked forward into the mist, probably absentmindedly “W-woahohoh GNARLY!”

The loudness by which she said it, and the fist pump shoulder action she emphasised it with, gave me second-hand embarrassment. Was she proud of her ability to produce this stink? And god did it stink. This time the cannon was aimed in my direction, so the milky, sulphuric cloud smothered my face in an instant and had sent me into another coughing fit. This girl was taking years off my lifespan and the workday wasn’t even half-over. More embarrassing still was my erection still in the process of winding down. Paranoid that she would somehow notice it, I turned to face slightly away from her.

“Watcha think Mcay, would’ya be able to guess what I had for dinner last night if I hadn’t already told ya?” she shot a sly wink and cocked her tongue against the side of her mouth

“The same thing you have every night I bet” I said in a tone loud and coherent enough to be heard while having the cadence of a mumble.

“Oh pfft, nahh, but soup does go right through me. M’guts are like a slip’n’slide!”

Gross…

“So, about this new latte,” she pours the bone-white liquid into the mix of coffee and boiling water “I really shouldn’t, like I really really shouldn’t; milk already doesn’t sit well with me, but all that sugar? Oh man”

She takes an eager sip before paying for that eagerness with a burnt tongue, which she fanned much more rapidly than she fanned her bum a minute prior.

I give a questioning nod to the jug of whole-milk on the counter.

“Ohhh M’thay, lighthen up! Ever hear of Carpe Thiem-” She flicked her tongue around and dropped the lisp “Carpe Diem?”

My eyebrow raises further

“I might be a teensie bit intolerant to the ol’ lacky tacky, but what am I supposed to do, not drink milk and eat cheese?”

Yes?

“Impossible! I’m not gonna let some bubbly-wubbly guts and a stinky butt prevent me from enjoying life’s basic pleasures. I won’t be a slave to my biology!”

She emphasised the word guts by jostling her belly with her slender fingers, and she emphasised the word butt by shaking her rear. Despite how utterly disgusting this girl was, I couldn’t help but admire the way she presented each tenacious statement. Balling her fist at the end of her monologue and bringing it to the air, as if to spite a god that wasn’t watching. It reminded me of how my sister would talk about her preservation efforts, except instead of saving the foreign rhino population, it was about the right to eat cheese and rip nauseating farts. Yin and Yang I supposed.

“Hey, what’s this? Calico Blend no. 7? Weird-“

My eyes ripped open wide.

“Hey don’t touch that!”

The sound of my voice made her flinch, and of course - as per her exaggerated ways that I was becoming all too used to, all too quickly - that meant she flung the featherweight glass up and away from her. Of course it did.

She spun on her heel and dove for it in a snap motion that I wasn’t quick enough to follow. Her hands missed, but being that no sound of smashing glass could be heard it was apparent her fluffy cushion of hair must’ve caught it, and the vial became a literal needle in her haystack. As she was about to rise and check around to see where the thing had landed, I Interjected.

“Wait! If you stand up it’ll fall”

“Fall? Where… ohhhhh”

Getting the message, she begun to feel around her wads of fluff, stretching her arm back while she was crouched on her other 3 limbs, teetering herself concerningly off-balance.

“Actually I think it’d be better if I did it, Penton. If that’s ok”

“Oh…okay”

She turned her face down and away as I stood poised on one knee, ready to plunge my arm into the fluffy reams of hair. Why was I being so polite anyway? This was all so, so weird.

“So…you bring your own coffee to work? In a lil’ glass thingie?”

Though as I breached the surface I was lost in just how…good her hair felt; it was so pleasing to the touch, like gliding your hand through silky cotton candy. And it smelled just as good. Sweet, but not sickly, like a gentle cloud you could just…fall…asleep in.

“Helloooooo? McCarthy?”

That snapped me out of it

“Uhn, yes?”

“Any luck in there, soldier?”

“N-no, not yet” I tried, and most likely failed, to sound composed “it’s pretty small”

“Well take as long as you need hon~”

I certainly wasn’t going to take longer than necessary. I kind of wanted to, but imagine how odd - scandalous even - the scene would’ve seemed to anybody who happened in on it. Though a thought did form: where was everybody? The breakroom tended to have at least a few people idling around, here or there, but there was nary an empty plastic cup to be seen to indicate they were here to begin with. Talking to each other. Not with me.

“You can really get in there, y’know! If you’d like t- need to”

I responded only by taking her up on the offer, shifting weight off of my left knee, maintaining balance with my left hand, and submerging my right sleeve deeper into the forest of curls. A forest that was moving to the rhythmic sway of Penton’s hips, each subtle sideways thrust punctuated with a peak in her whistling. It made maintaining course difficult.

“You’re taking a while back there, haha!”

“It would help if you stopped moving!”

There was a pause - in the speaking and the swaying

“Hmmm, maybe it landed lower down? It’s worth being thorough, y'know!”

I had deliberately avoided what she was suggesting, for reasons I don’t think need explaining. Hell, I had avoided even looking at it. It had an ominous force of its own, evil but inevitable. Whether this torment was the work of a premeditating sadist, or a clueless bimbo, it didn’t change the primal fear that prevented my climb towards her lung-dissolving gas factory of a behind. In either case she was inflicting pain without remorse.

In the end I didn’t need to however. Whilst I’d been lost in her hair and my fears, she’d been shuffling along the floor such to bring me near-level with her bum. The pressure was on to find this needle, and find it quick.

“There you go hon! Don’t be afraid to really get in there deep, I won’t mind! It kinda tickles ~”

To make it clear she wasn’t kidding around, she rose herself up some distance to put me closer to her backside; my nose began to scrunch, and I couldn’t tell whether it was due to her residual waft or a new silent emission.

“P-penton, did you…f…f..fa”

Referring to the act outright wasn’t easy for me. It was much easier for her, however.

“Fart? Toot? Cut the cheese? Rip a mean one? Nah! That one from earlier must’ve had some hang time nhyaha. My soupy farts do tend to llllinger” she thrust her rear, and thus more of the persistent stink my way, at the apex of the word. Then she paused as a gurgle, faintly audible to me and certainly felt by her, bubbled in her hanging stomach

“Mmmmight wanna hurry up back there sweetie. I got somethin’ brewin in the oven, if you know what I mean”

She didn’t need to tell me twice, but I was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t vanished the second I stuck my hand in like some weird schrodinger’s coffee tube.

fssssssssssssssss-

My finger clipped something smooth and rounded - glass!

ssssssssssssssssss-

“Got it- urk!”

Any doubt that what I smelt before was only her residual fart-waft had been shot dead in an instant. If hell could be reduced to one smell, then it would’ve been what washed over me in those coming moments. Something thick and rancid - like a slush of rotten eggs boiling on a searing summer patio - violated my nostrils without even a hint of auditory warning. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t move. My nervous system was being assaulted by her casual miasma, and the pillowy cushion of her hair was replaced by one that lulled you to sleep in a much more aggressive and sinister way.

I blacked out.

-

-


—

But only for a moment. And where was my head when I awoke but planted side-on into Penton’s dress-clad cheeks, parting through a layer of hair. It was a split feeling; the sensation was pleasant on the skin, and if not for the stench I think I’d have been genuinely happy to sleep there indefinitely - naysaying colleagues aside - but the smell was even worse this close, with barely any space for it to thin out between her anus and my face.

“Woah!” exasperation in Penton’s voice had surfaced at the feeling of someone probing the nethers between her two thick mounds of butt-flesh “y’p-playin my butt like a bongo back there dude? Th-that’s cool, but FYI I just felt something reaaaal steamy come out so I wouldn’t stick around haha…McCarthy?”

I craned my neck up as she twisted herself around, and we locked eyes. I didn’t say a word, but I looked at her blankly while my face was half-submerged in her rear, holding the vial high between my fingers so that she could see it. She only blushed, widening her eyes when the smell roamed its way up to meet her. If her breathing was irregular when she made eye contact, it was sporadic after she got a whiff of her latest batch.

“YEEESH…that…I’m…I’m kinda impressed with myself. Not. Gonna. Lie.” She punctuated each of those last words by tilting her head each way sidewards, and smiled innocently - the same cheek-puncturing smile from earlier - like she was showing me the wonders of the world by farting in my face. I could feel a mild, almost blank veneer of disgust in my face as its muscles twinged. They stayed twinged as I got up, put the tube in my pocket, and went to leave the room on account of the bell signalling the end of break.

“McCarthy?” I heard, as the door closed softly behind me, and then a string of giggles loud enough to be heard behind it.


PART 2

***
5.28pm
***

Only me and Penton remained. My first “date” was imminent. 


Second and third thoughts twisted and conflicted in my skull, and a burbling tension thickened in my throat. My resolve clearly wasn’t as steeled as I thought it was, but no rational excuse to get out of the situation was presenting itself. Not in my then state of mind. 


Sorry Penton, I won’t be able to come. See… my cactus Marlin died and… we’re holding a procession for him this evening. Oh no, sorry, it’s a small service, family only… oh my lord, just say no! Just. Say. No! You don’t want to go, right? So say that! ‘Penton, I don’t want to-‘


“Ready to go?”


I had been staring forward, eyes open but essentially shut, for what must’ve been the better part of a minute. When I was thrust back to reality, it was to the face of Melissa Penton staring inches from my own, and smiling that eager, babying smile


“I- yeess…” I said on an unsure instinct, putting a stopper on whatever ‘uhms’, ‘uhs’ and ‘ahs’ were about to leave my mouth.


“Well…let’s…GO!” she yanked my arm with force, dragging me away from my still-on laptop.


As I struggled to match her pace - her vice-grip holding tight on my wrist - I was left eye-level with, and directly behind,  Penton’s…behind. I never let my eyes settle on it, but there was an unmistakable, lingering whiff of eggy veggies that only became pronounced at this close a distance to the source. It blunted through the lesser dank air of the wider office space.


Like a farmer spending all day with cattle that bathe in their own filth without reservation, I’d found it easier to not retch with each successive slip of stink she’d pump into the office like a bloated cow. But this residual gas tickled my nose and made my darting eyes water; it was as if her behind were vying for my attention. 


Hmph, well sorry to disappoint you, ‘Penton’s Patootie’


As we approached the door she halted, causing me to continue walking straight into her crimson-clad crack, bouncing off of it after a brief plunge into blackness. 


“Oops, almost forgot to clock out. You too Mcay? Aren’t we a couple’a eager beavers!”


If she felt my unwilling nuzzle, she didn’t say anything. Just that same cutesy smile. Maybe this was just me imagining things, but I could’ve sworn I saw a blush of pinkish-red on her cheeks that wasn’t there 20 seconds ago. I gulped a soft gulp, and nodded.


“To the west wall we go! Wait, hold that thought”


Bbbrpplplpllllsssssssssssssssssssssss


Penton emptied herself of a bubbly bass turned lengthy hiss from one end, and an extended sigh from the other. The face she made in those 10 seconds - yes, I counted - displayed nothing short of pure euphoria: one eye flickered while the other remained shut; her cheekbones twitched; her upper lip curved and jutted forward. I was pained to admit it, but the way the white of the office lights and the yellow of the day’s final sunrays bounced and played on her expression from both sides made her look entrancing. It was as if I were witness to the lone discoverer of Nirvana, enveloped in a stinky bliss. A weird, quickly squashed part of me felt happy for her, as the fart finished the last of its own sigh. 


“Ahhhhhh…Fffthhh ach, what a sizzler…” 


She cringed, felt her hand on the seat of her dress as if to gauge the temperature, and waved the hot stink around aimlessly.


And then, as the smell caught up to her, her eyelids pressed open so wide that it was as if they weren’t even there.


“…oh woah WOAH” she snatched my hand with more force than before - if that was possible - and crumpled my fingers into a strained mush “You do not wanna get caught in what I just dropped hun, haha, ho-LEE!” 


And like that, we were away again. Despite her efforts I still caught a whiff. The smell wasn’t pleasant - not in the slightest; there must’ve been an ever-present, slick sulphury coating forming in my nostrils now, because the whiff had yet to ween off as we approached the west wall.


Slowing down in front of the row of ClockMeistersTM, Penton reached into the bag straddling her hip as I tickled my chin with a thumbnail.  One thin Rise and Supply worker card slid from the holding folds of her purse, then across the scanner-face, and then her loose grip gave it direct passage to the floor.


“Ah shoot, slippyfingers!” 


She opted to bend over instead of crouch, but I’d learned better than to let… temptation take hold by that point. I rubbed my arm with a reticent kind of shame, looking instead at other objects in the room in an attempt to quell any would-be arousal.


When I settled on someone's desk, I took note of the miniature solar system diorama swiveling from the breeze that filtered through the open windows, and a soft, deviant thump-a-thump formed in my chest as thoughts of Penton’s own two moons bobbed to the surface. Visions of her globes swaying a pert and lively rhythm - one that would far exceed what was necessary to pick up the slab of plastic - looped over and over.


“Mmmmmhm”


Brrp 


“Mhmmm”


Brrp 


“Mmmmhmmm”


Brolp 


Fragmented quacks of fartgas shot their way out of Penton’s cannon as she hummed in each lull, carefree. That image of a rhythmic sway became more pronounced as I imagined a fart squeezing out of her cheeks on each peak of a side-to-side oscillation. Uncomfortable thoughts… I wanted nothing but to shed them, but they stuck around. Like the still-roaming mixture of stink that lounged about the desks, pooling around the legs of chairs as if to mark ownership of them, the images came in flashes that would linger thereafter.


The hot, milky wafts of smog then curled their way up to me, punting my nose from the side one by one. I fanned my face in bursts


That girl is definitely more than just ‘a little bit intolerant’ to lactose…ugh


***
5:49pm
Venien Diamond District
***


“Y’know I think they should change it to one of those face scanner thingies” 


“You think so?” 


“Sure!” Penton used her pinkie fingers to broaden the corners of her mouth “I can’t drop this sucka down the back of a sofa…or into the toilet.” 


Saying that last part more hushly - the words spilling out of a parting in the far corner of her mouth - a cheeky grin occupied her face as her eyes flicked left to right, before rolling and then looking straight at me. It was unlikely anybody was actually listening in, but it was refreshing to see a hint of shame. Close enough, anyway.


“And…” Penton stood still and faced me, stanced like a cowboy in a western flick at high noon “…I could do a bunch of fun faces!”


She cycled from “teehee” to faux-sexy to pouty and miffed to exaggeratedly happy, her pearly whites now clear on display. She had a thin but noticeable gap between her front two teeth.


Penton never did settle. As she kept cycling through faces and walked, I took stock of all the ways I’d seen that to be true: she always had a few fingers fidgeting or a lock of hair being twirled; she’d be tapping her feet, clicking or humming some tune; she’d skip and pace and prance around the office (how that or her flatulent habits garnered such little reaction from her co-workers was beyond me). Even in the moments of silence as we walked, she’d look at everything and everyone with enthusiasm. 


“Pretty sure they wouldn’t let you” I said,  with the stray makings of a smirk at my lips. 


Penton cycled into a mock ‘about to cry’ face with wide eyes and a lip quiver. 


“Plus would you really want to be doing… that every morning?”


Penton ceased the quiver, looked up as if to ponder a thought, before dropping the face game entirely.


“Ah yeh, you’re probably right…It’d be boring doing just one every day. Oooo they should do a scanner that’s like a spinner!”


She did a circle motion with her finger, slowing it down with each rotation


“Ratatatatatataa…taa…taa… looks like I got”


She stood still to face me again and put a hand above her brow, set to strike down like a guillotine to reveal her new form. 


“Curly!”


As I looked on with bewildered curiosity at what the hell that could even mean, she swooshed her hand down to reveal the iconic expression of Jerome Lester Horwitz as Curly “Curley” Howard, of Three Stooges fame.


I chuckled. This time, as her gaze met mine, I didn’t solemn out my lingering smile.


“Y’like that Mcay?” She’d dropped the expression but her hand was still suspended below her chin. A subtle but confirming nod gave her the go ahead to keep talking.


“Papa let me watch all of his tapes on his old CRT when I was…” Penton flipped her hand from parallel to perpendicular to her body, and then raised it up and down around the point where her belly button would be, circling in on a definite answer but never quite getting there “about thiiiiiis tall? About 11 or somethin? Loved ‘em ever since”


Well, Penton’s slapstick demeanor was definitely starting to make sense.


“Ooooo do you remember the one where they were plumbers?” She bounced lightly on her knees, excited at the prospect of a shared interest


“We… never got to watch many episodes” I scratched the back of my neck “Do you remember the one where they were construction workers, on the high-rise?”


She nodded a vigorous and silent nod.


“Well we probably watched that one hundreds of times.” Somehow I felt embarrassed to admit that, even around Melissa. It was an underestimate, if anything, and that wasn’t counting the times we watched in secret.


Her bounce grew more intense, her fists clenched tighter shut, and her…breasts, even tucked into fabric, wobbled as her cleavage grew longer and shorter like the tide. Even without staring I still caught glimpses of it as my eyes flicked about the overstimulated brunette. A flush of blush was creeping through my skin. 


“There was um, also the one where they were in court-”


“Suchaclassic! YknoyoucanborrowmineanytimeMccayjustsaythewordalsowhosewe?Brother?Mama?Papa?Friend?”


The thrust of her body grew intense enough that I was sure something would slip out of her clothing and start flopping about without her consent if I didn’t intercept.


“Hey hey!” I pressed my hands into the air and motioned her to slow down, conscious of the people eyeing us as they walked past. Putting my finger to her lips would’ve felt like a bridge too far, but the impulse was there.


She kept smiling with the same enthusiasm, and though she moved her body slower, it was a deliberate “slow-motion” kind of slow.  I kept looking into her eyes: clusters of greeny-blue which clouded my words before I eventually snapped them out.


“‘We’… is my sister” I said, cautious “and I appreciate it Melissa but I don’t even own a VHS player-”


“I do” she started to twiddle at an errant curl of brown fluff and smiled so I could see her thin tooth gap again. “You can have it if you want”


In that moment I felt odd. I felt a warmth. A rare warmth I’d only ever felt around two other people. But it was more powerful here, pumped up by a romantic undercurrent I’d never experienced before. It was a lot to process - I felt like my heart was going to overheat. Like a reactor without coolant. 


And then something else happened. Fluttering down to the nose of the woman, who stood stiller than she had all day, was a butterfly. Its wings were an orange-red, contrasting her eyes. She remained still as she processed it, narrowing her crossed vision for all of two or three seconds.


If pupils could be stars, hers’ would’ve been. Her breath became shallow as her mouth hung open in bated elation, and she shook with a low hum electricity - like she wanted to shriek with glee and kiss the poor thing to an early grave, but couldn’t. Couldn’t, and knew she couldn’t; twitches of restraint flickered across her features. 


It didn’t stick around (its jittering perch was no stable landing strip), and I focused on its path when it took its eventual leave. It rode atop a mild breeze, headed against the surge of people walking home, to somewhere near Venien Tower. A public park - one I’d often frequent - flanks the tower on its east end, so I presumed that’s where it’d end up. There were all manner of brightly coloured flora there: milkweed and goldenrod and…


Penton, hands clasped and covering the end of her sternum and looking in the same direction, had the look of someone whose heart had just turned liquid and was leaking out onto the cooling walkway. A palpable aura of awe and ‘d’aww’ emanated from her.


Speaking of palpable auras 


Prrpffprffprrrrfff


Four soft, sequential puffs eked out of the wobbling tower of a woman. The clasped hands had made their way lower - from sternum to gut - right before the shots fired, and she massaged her belly with squinting eyes. Her expression was amusing - it was like she was trying to make out the details on a sign a mile away.


Whether she was saving that for when the little guy was out of range, or it just got lucky, I was happy it didn’t have to be there. I wasn’t quite sure if butterflies could smell the chemical cocktail that was a rank human fart, but it’s for the best that we hadn’t found out. The gas had a searing quality that I could imagine withering the bug’s thin wings. 


I understand that’s physically impossible, but this woman was physically impossible.


“I’m such a STINKER tonight hun, yeesh.” 


Penton sniffed the air as she preemptively waved her hand above her backside.


“HOHo hoooweee…goshh…blep”


She emphasised the ‘blep’ by clutching the tip of her tongue between her teeth and cringing. Now both hands were dispersing the eggy cloud as she waved the other about her face.


The diversion of people widened. Some snickered, some coughed, and those to the right of us piled as close to the oncoming traffic as possible. I found the idea of her farts causing a pile-up funny, if not a tad concerning. 


“Gross bitch” a man with a pencil-esque frame said as he walked directly into the mist, grumbling as he left it


Penton turned to him, pouting as he walked away, and stuck her tongue out.


“Meanie…”


I surrendered an amused exhale at the childish comeback that the man would never hear. She must’ve caught my response and again interpreted it as a form of validation, proceeding to jump focus.


“Can you believe that guy?”


Yes.


“When ya gotta go you gotta go, y’know? Heh, that rhymed” 


“I suppose-”


“‘I suppose?’ Honestly, we should just let ‘er rip!” coils of embarrassment punctured my insides as she shouted out her position on fart etiquette for all to hear “yeh they can smell a bit…a lot funky, but it feels good, and it’s a part of us! It’s like a stinky little personal expression every time you do it. Everyone’s got their own brand! Different gut flora, diets, medica…”


She pressed an index finger against each finger that opened on her right hand, to number each separate point. My mouth hung slightly open in ramping disbelief of what I was witnessing; this girl was unbelievable. Passionate, but unbelievable.


I was growing uncomfortable though - standing still while people stared at us. The weight of their dissent was entirely mine to bear, flowing right off of her shoulders and onto my head.


“Penton, when does this place close?”


“Sphincter anatom- right!” She spun on her heel and carried on in front of me, trodding along the vacated center of the sidewalk


“Onwards!” She stuck her finger to the sky, paused, and turned to face me while gesturing I follow “come on M’cay! Unless you really wanna ‘sample more of my brand’…can’t guarantee your safety if you trail behiiiiind me, sweeeetie.”


She winked, and chuckled in a play-evil ‘nyehehehe’


Her advice would’ve seemed sound to the man of nearly 10 hours prior, but-


Butt, butt, bu


-a part of me - some irrational, indecipherable part of me - didn’t want to. Some devil’s hot red-


Red arms, soft, red dress, soft red lips


-claw was rooting my leg to the ground, tempting that deviant to look up, keep some distance and see it sway - to see them smush and grind together like shrink-wrapped dough-balls. A devil crawling out of some deep dark chasm-


Chasm, crack, soft crack, deep crack, soft smelly deep crac-


…


I went on forward beside her, as I let my confused heart steady itself.

PART 3

***
6:04 PM - Café 831
***


The atmosphere as we entered was inviting. The piano jazz murmuring out of the record player was as much a backdrop as the Art Deco-era posters dotting the walls, and it wasn’t so dense with people at this hour. I supposed Venien had the luxury of choice when it came to cafés, diners and other eateries.


Penton wasted no time, gesturing me to a corner couch snug between the windowed front and brick-layered side wall of the building. First to sit down, first to pick up the menu - she was nothing if not ahead of me.


“Oooooo nnmm.” Penton bit her lip as she whizzed her eyes in zigzags across the page, and began to comment before I’d even placed myself next to her, a comfortable distance apart. “So many goodiesss…so little time.”


Without looking my way, Penton scooted up beside me in one motion and pulled my neck close to hers with the hook of her inner elbow, like we were both on an archeological dig, appraising some ancient text.


“Whatcha think M’cay, donuts or ice cream?”


I wasn’t quite where she was. The scent of lavender had overtaken me; my cheek pushed against hers as the hazel fluff encased us both.


A jostle of her arm brought me back. As I eyed the menu, it occurred to me just how much this could cripple the week’s finances. 


“Whatever’s cheapest, I think.”


Penton turned to face me. I didn’t look straight back, so she had to pivot her upper body around mine so that she could face me eye to eye, with about as much ‘glare’ as I think she could muster: a furrowed brow and a plump smirk. I could see her pendant’s design more clearly now as it hung between my thighs. It was a scarab, and a chunky one at that.


“I’m buyin’.”


“No no, absolutely not-”


“McCarthy, I’m not askin’ - I’m buyin’.”


She winked and tucked the pendant back into her cleavage, then bopped her index finger on my nose before setting out to make good on her intention before I could intervene. 


Once she was far enough, I let go of the clamping action I’d made on my thigh to stop its jittering. I just couldn’t deny the disappointment I felt when Penton took the other exit out of the corner seat, instead of over my legs. 


Pervert


This infatuation was so sudden - so beyond logic! Was her presence just that powerful?


Oh I’m sure you’d like to see more of her ‘presence’...


We were so much more different than alike…


Or perhaps S M E L L her ‘presence’?


Though what is it they say, ‘opposites attract’?


Oh please, you’re attracted to one thing…


I clenched my eyes and held my breath, pressing the base of a clawed hand against my temple.


Lavender, suit-taut flesh, and a thick, soupy helping of R O T T E N  E G G S…


“Beep beep! Here comes the Melmobile! Brrr scrrrr vroom vroom.” My eyes opened and panned to the table to see two donuts being wheeled about like loose tires. I kept holding my head down.


“Hey…you ok hun?” 


“Bad headache…heh,” I half-lied.


“I’ve got Aspirin! And Acetaminophen, and paracetamol, and ibuprofen!”


My vision panned up to see boxes nestled into the webbings of her splayed hands - Penton’s face between them, smiling and bobbing proudly at her own preparedness - and that warmth gushed through me from valve to fingertip once more. 


“Um, Aspirin’s good, thanks,” I said as I gingerly plucked it from between her index and middle finger. 


“No sweat, Brett!”


She sat down and started kicking her heels against the cushioning, arms locked straight and pushing tightly into her lap, head swaying side to side in dreamy anticipation.


“They’ll be coming with our drinks soooon.”


“But I didn’t-”


On cue a male barista swooped in with a half dozen drinks - some steaming, some not - and, as I looked them over, I began to tick over in my head how much a receptionist would need to make to be this loose with money. 


As if to compound the point, a light thud on the table directed me to an oversized paper bag with the number 831 printed in large, blocky text. Out of it poured tubs, wrappers and paper-covered pastries. Penton bit her lip once more as she eyed the buffet, positioning them into ordered rows.


“Oho I’m baaaaad,” she snickered, licking her lips as she touched her fingers across the pudge of her midsection. 

Each finger, one by one.


1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.


“Here!” I recalibrated to the sight of a half-eaten donut 


“Ish sho yummy! I ate shum, shorry.” She gulped the wad of sugar, fat and icing down. “Good for goose, good for gander, hehe. Sooo good for gander.”


Sooo good to gander…


I gripped my leg again. She blew into the assumed ‘new-latte’, chomping on a pain-au-chocolat between bursts of air


“Sho” - she coated what was in her mouth with a splash of the hot drink - “what brought you to the big V?” 


I considered my words while I turned the half-eaten pastry over in my hand - glazed to unglazed and back - then touched my thumb against the icing, meditating on the way it clung to the skin. I had no canned response.


“I was…stuck, in a place I didn’t want to be stuck in anymore.” 


I looked up to a gooey drip of cheese dangling from the gruyère puff pastry she was holding, threatening to drop but not quite. She paused its trajectory and looked at me, almost gormless, without closing her mouth


“I just needed to leave. Wherever - somewhere.”


Melissa slid it into the hole without taking her eyes off me and started to chew. I took that as a sign to keep going.


“A change of scenery I guess…” there was a few seconds pause as I lost myself in the tropical starbursts of her irises. “Prettier pastures.” 


“I sho getsh wash you,” she gulped her food down, “mean! Did you know that there’s meant to be over 8000 species of insect that live in Venien Park alone during the Summer months?”


“I can’t say that I-”


“And in Autumn as the monarch butterfly migrates from the Northeast, they pass right over us?”


“That’s uh-”


“Ahhhh I’m so excited to see them roll in. If I’d arrived a few months later I mighta missed ‘em!”


My want to intercept was gone. Her passion was flaring the brightest I’d seen, and it was infectious. I sat there for some five to ten minutes, chin propped up with a fist, soaking in all this unprompted bug-talk as Sidney Bechet blew a clarinet solo that wrapped me tight and warm despite being three feet from the door. And as I stopped processing words, I focused on her demeanour: the crawling of her hand along the branch of her arm; a flutter of fingers flying from its edge; her two arms held above her, almost to hug the sky; her showing me her earring, shaped like a butterfly with antennae coming together to form a tight twine; her pause, her thinning eyelids, the scrunch of her nose, the fanning of her -


Both her smell and sound returned to me.


“Whewwwie! Food’s fartin’ to kick in ehee…” 


Brrllp frp frp frrrss


“Ooho MAN! That cheese works quick!”


She continued chuckling with one eye closed, pressing curled fingers against wry-smiling lips, and I gave a nervous imitation of the same. 


The miasma pooled up around us. The other patrons seemed not-so-pleased; the ogling eyes of men and rolling eyes of their dates turned to an identical look of disgust as the sharp stench spread its wings. Sounds of coughing and dry-heaving became as much a part of the café ambience as her flatulence, but I imagined the café staff couldn’t care less if she tipped as well as she ordered.


Fssssssssssssssrp 


Her derrière hissed out another batch of ‘dairy-air’, her mouth agape and stretching low towards its natural limit. The long, near-silent fart was injected into the cushion like a syringe administering a foul, sulphury drug. I could just imagine it rising in hot, steaming waves through the cushion’s cross-stitch perforations.


ssssPrfffblrpblorp frpss fss 


As it began to waver and bubble, she massaged her belly with one hand while wiping beads from her forehead with the other. I never thought farting to be something one could work up a sweat over, but this post-Penton world was full of surprises.


She grabbed my hand as her expression hardened like a woman in delivery (though I supposed that’s what she was), and not being dragged around an office floor meant I could slow to process how her fingers felt against mine. Plush, long and delicate, the nails were tipped with a rich red - like bloody chocolate that sought to drip through the skin of my wrist. I became too aware of the perspiration stippling across the length of my own brow as she clenched her eyes.


Prrrrrrrrmmmmrrrrrrrrrr blrp blrp blop -


Her waist and chest twitched in opposite directions with each short plap succeeding the long, rank purr drifting up from her nethers, causing her breasts to wobble to and fro like they were playing catch-up - an entity all their own. My nether region, captured in hypnosis, twitched in-sync.


-BLRpplplpl plop!


The torrent seemed to finally meet its wet end. Her grip stiffened as we approached the summit of her farting, before easing as she took laboured breaths on the decline. She then retracted her hand to gently waft up the stench that was leaking from between her thighs.


“Ahhhhoooooo…OOOF haHA!” Penton’s initial look of relief was rattled by an inevitable but excited response to her smelly creation.


She fanned her nose in a hurried flurry, forming an ‘O’ shape with her mouth.


“Man that is ripe! Pffflehh. But I’m so lucky y’know, hehe.” she said.


I didn’t respond


“No matter where I go, every seat’s got a built-in seat warmah!” She rubbed her rear into the cushion, before lounging back with her arms atop the backrest. “So co-o-ozyy…”


The rod refused to soften, even despite the raw scent of egg raping my nose


Blrporvvvvvp


Another wet clap sizzled out beneath her


“Ughmf. I’ll tell you what though, I could do without this big ol’ booty o’ mine getting so sweatyy…yucky.” She grimaced 


I imagined a damp patch in the crevice of her dress - moistening the fabric of the seat in a blotchy, stink-infused line. It was a dreadful image. A disgusting, slobbish display. Clenching my body from jaw to foot was all I could do to avoid the thought.


The rod continued to grow. 


“Hey Mcay, I’m gonna give the puppies some air” she said as she gyrated her hips to clarify the puppies she was referring to “want anything?”


A sliver of sense remained in the driver’s seat - enough to acknowledge and respond to the question.


“Lemonade would be-” I gulped and steadied the growing shake in my voice “-wonderful”


As she left, my mind lingered on how the dress’ fabric would’ve collapsed into her crack as she stood up - all threaded with juices tinged with raunchy fartsmell, now compressed to marinate in wonderful fleshy blackness. I didn’t look - I couldn’t bring myself to.


Thirsty…


I instead shifted my sights to the table, then one of her drinks, lipstick staining the rim. A morose jealousy arose. I then looked further down at the wide imprint her rear had made on the cushion - a geyser of stink gushing from the centre of the vacated seat, roaming freely without its fleshy barricade. It was only a few inches away…


Come on…


I made a head-jerk to the window. The light of the cafe against the darkened backdrop of the Diamond District made for an apt mirror. And, in my line of sight, a swaying pair of balloons tightly wrapped in red. She was fanning her rear with one hand, only using her fingers. It was in a way I’m sure she thought was inconspicuous. 


Live a little…


I slapped my face firmly, perhaps so Penton didn’t have to. I kept my eyes shut, with a finger and thumb pressed against the lids, and tried to think of other things. Calmer things. The drip of dew (mmf) off of the soft skin (ngh) of a flower’s petal. Shoots growing in timelapse (gah).  A pair of red cherries bobbing on a branch as a breeze flowed through them (NHHNMF). Wilting flowers…wilting flowers. 


That was it: wilting flowers. The pressure began to ease. Be it in prep for a deadline or to escape the thought of a woman’s…behind, there was always a nook to curl into, in the far reaches of my mind, to ease some steam. 


Easing steam…


Penton’s face flashed into my darkness. Then her rear. Her steamy rear. Her bulbous, warm steamy rear. Her shaking, bubbly, hot, silky slimy soft sweaty stinky steamy rea-


“Sleepy?”


The question caused me to shoot up into a pair of breasts that were dangled directly above my head. In a moment, the impact caused her to arch back, and her hand reflexively spilled forward the contents of the glasses she was holding. 


A mix of Ice-cold lemonade and strawberry-chocolate milkshake splashed onto the crotch of my slacks…


Brrrrfp


… and a curt but hefty fart trumpeted out of her crack.


“Ohmygoshohmygoshohmygosh I’m so sorry,” she scrambled around with aimless hands, looking for something to correct her error.


She went for the table napkins, and then for where the liquid landed. The smell of simmering sulphur was attacking me above the table, her breasts were being jostled about my chin and chest, and although she didn’t know it at the time, by rubbing the rod below-deck that had been in the twinges of confusion for hours now, she had crossed the wires of desire completely.


Oh SCREW it


I jolted up - shouldering against her - and sped to the restroom, erection in a state of meltdown. The action turned heads, but I didn’t care. I just needed out. 


I needed release.


I slammed the men’s door open. Not a stall occupied, thank God! Before I could process what I was doing, much less give myself the chance to stop it, I had locked myself in the first stall with cock in hand, wrist gripped hard by the still-buckled belt that kept my slacks tight, and I went to work pleasuring myself. Every section of the day and each “incident” therein: the morning, the lunch, the clock-out, the walk and this very café - they cycled over and over. Her lips, her eyes, her breasts, her thighs; the dress in my mind had become impossibly tight around her bum - to the point of plastic-wrapped absurdity - giving a clear and inviting indication of the canyon crack that was sure to haunt me every night from then on. 


Oh lord her rear. Her smelly, farty arse. Every sulphury whiff of what Penton had pent up and pumped out was plunging through the folds of my brain like a freight train. In that sinful moment I would’ve paid anything to sniff more of the fog that billowed from her canyon… there was no word for it other than ‘haunting’. It stunk - it stunk so bad. And yet the more I thought about how bad it stunk - my brain and chest set to burst from every synonym I knew for the word ‘nasty’ - the more it set me into overdrive! I didn’t understand it. I didn’t want to understand it. At that moment I just wanted more of it. And I… I wanted more of her. Her voice, her smile, her charm, her style. 


Her kindness, her radiating warmth.


Hot fluid pumped its way out, glazing my fingers and plastering the inner wall of my pants. As a groan foamed through clenched teeth, so too did guilt splatter across the walls of my heart as I began to think more clearly about what I’d just done. I took shallow, choppy breaths that slowly deepened, bit by bit. 


“Mcay? Mca-mph, McCarthy? You ok in there?” 


Hearing her speak - hearing the words crystallize beyond the restroom walls - that made it sink in. I slunk into myself, pressing a hand against the back of my downtilt neck, and I resisted the urge to scream my lungs dry.


***
??? - Rise and Supplies
***


I peeped into the office, as if some replaying of the morning’s events would occur if I’d just casually strolled in. It was empty, naturally. The shine of the digital clockface that hung above The Old Crone’s office read 8:00PM. 


I’d camped in the cafe bathroom for longer than I’d thought.


I flipped the switch and the fluorescents brightened. I rubbed my eyes while making my way toward the desk’s inner alcove.


Placing a hand on its faux-marble surface, I wondered how I’d broach tomorrow's apology. She deserved some sort of amends for how I’d acted - surely - but these things were never my forte. 


I observed the length of a red ballpoint pen clipped onto the rim of a plastic drawer, a blue and black one on either side of it. Perhaps a note? I did know cursive…


I scanned over the desk, thinking of a spot that would be plainly visible, and in doing so I noticed a self-standing nameplate tucked in front of the phone.


D E L I L O N 


The air grew sour. Sour like an overripe tamarind. 


No, sour like a migraine…


A grimace - one that Penton’s gnarliest farts couldn't have induced - smeared over my face from arch to arch. I hadn’t thought about that Charlotte all day - Penton had made sure of it. At that moment I silently thanked her for it.


I was quick to take my attention away from the plate and onto the main reason I’d come back. I’d worried it’d been poached by the evening cleaners, but the jumble of junk was probably worth less than the table on which it sat. Flicking my finger across the trackpad, I was met with what I’d left: a sparse document that took a backseat to thoughts about Melissa. It suddenly seemed so trivial in her wake. A sombre feeling arose, like when you outgrow a childhood interest and are left only with the nostalgic aftertaste - something you’ll never experience quite the same way again.


Flooding into that sombre, however, was a sudden air of newness - of feeling and confusion and hope.


I found myself sitting down - all at once I was fully engaged and filled with purpose. 


M e l l i s a  P e n t o n  F a c e B o o k 


M e l l i s a  P e n t o n  I n s t a g r a m


M e l l i s a  P e n t o n  L i n k d n


M e -


I opened a set of tabs with the intention of learning more about her. A feeling of invasiveness manifested in the form of hesitance. Peering into somebody's life like this, even if it was on display…


But put her life on display she did. Thousands of images peppered her Facebook account, neatly categorised into albums. “Papilonoidea”, “Isopods”, “Hexapods”, “Arachnids”, “Apidae”; “Preston Butterfly Conservation Site (05/08/XX)”, “Bug Hotel DIY #23”, “The Mound - Day #54”; “PARTAYYY (05/06/XX)”, “DA CLUB (06/06/XX)”, “BEACH FUN! (07/06/XX)”.


The last one made me squirm; a bikini-clad Penton on the album’s cover was pursing her lips cutely and winking, sand and seawater flecked over a pair of - uhm.


“COLLEGE FUN! (03/04/XX)” 


I smirked at that one and clicked it. A camera was looking up at the underside of her chin, Penton taking up the lower quadrant of the frame, and the rest was taken up by a big arched gate with a sign that read “UNIVERSITY OF FART-” before being cut off by the picture border. Her expression was smug and self-satisfied


She was a student of biology, I’d come to find. But even with a labcoat and goggles, her silliness radiated. Tweezers in an underhand grip, she pointed them at the camera holder and smiled with an eyebrow raised.


With each passing image the world seemed to lighten. My smirk turned to smile, then to toothed smile, then to an audible chuckle.


And then it all flattened.


D E L I L O N


Staring through the camera - staring down her nose through the camera - was Charlotte Delilon. Melissa was next to her, smiling her familiar smile.


D E L I L O N 


The next along featured Melissa and Charlotte in front of a cylindrical tank - perhaps some kind of industrial centrifuge. Inscribed were the words ‘DELILON COMPANY CHEMICALS”, and the label that wrapped around its visible edge read “PROPERTY OF FARTHORNE BIOCHEM DEPARTMENT”. 


D E L I L O N 


The next was just Delilon (in what seemed to be a kitchen) looking up at the camera with a  confused sort of scowl. Presumably it was due to the bag of compost sitting on the table in front of her, leaking out a handful of its contents onto an otherwise white surface. The caption read: “Bezzie grumpy! ;D”.


no no NO NO NO 


It’s hard to pin down just one emotion I was feeling. It was a shifting rotation of anger, denial, self-loathing and grief, all culminating in me slamming the lid of the laptop hard enough for the bevel to crack. 


I sat there for a while, hands still pressed down hard against the matte surface. When I started to feel the circulation in my outermost finger joints being cut off, I peered back at the clock.


20:45


I shook my hand - blood flowing back to where it ought to be. Next I knew, I was standing up and making my way towards the exit. I paused at the threshold, as if there was a barrier of elastic film blocking the doorway. A barrier that wouldn’t go away unless I spared one last glance towards the desk.


D E L I L O N


It’s like it moved to face me. To taunt me.


And, next to it, the chair that had taken the brunt of her bum and all that came out of it, stared at me also.


From it, an hallucination of brown and yellow smog started to fizzle and grow. Slowly it morphed into the vague shape of a human, fuzzy at the edges, tapering at where the legs would be into a singular stream of gas that plugged itself into the epicentre of the seat cushion. Distinction started to form between the face of the creature and the mane of clouds that lingered around it; it was distinctly feminine, but with a lick of serpentine. 


Her shifting face began to cackle - a hoarse perversion of Penton’s giggles - and burp out smog that shouldn’t have stunk but I’m sure I could smell. Acrid, raw, festering. 


Evil 


It pointed a finger in my direction, its laughs only intensifying as it caught wind of my expression. 


My laptop fell to the ground as anger rose above all else


I threw a punch directly into the stomach of the beast, only for it to dissipate as I fell further into the seat. My nose sunk into the spot stained wet with humidity, Penton’s fart-stink still clinging to it - pressed heavy into it - all these hours later. A putrid concoction of sulphur and sweat, straight from the devil’s cauldron.


It was 21:45 when I left.


PART 4

***
Tuesday
9:07 AM - Main Office Space - Rise and Supplies
***


I arrived late. Sue me.

The flickering line of ‘text yet to be’ was as taunting as the wasp zipping from point to point around my desk in a vain attempt to catch my eye, but she wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of it. I wore a pair of headphones (the right earphone would, if not for a strand of duct tape, hang flaccid by a strand of wire weaselling out of the headband) and feigned focus, letting her voice mush into incoherent garble. They didn’t actually transmit sound anymore. Not since a choice encounter with Delilons’ heel. 

Eventually she seemed to get the message, buzzing back to the former hive of her ‘bezzie’. The idea that they were in cahoots made me nauseous - sick to the point of wanting to deny it - but why else would she be here. I’d fallen for that foul floozy so intensely, so inexplicably. Now I had to purge those feelings, but the events of yesterday had left me haggard. I lightly rubbed my ring finger across a bag draped under my right eye and sighed.

“Yo.”

I was taken aback by the sound. It'd been over a day since I’d heard a voice directed at me that wasn’t Penton’s or my own. He was snapping his fingers in a repeated, slack gesture while looking at his phone instead of me.

“Grab some reams from utility, would ya? Cheers Carth,” he said as the slack gesture turned from clicking to a slight shooing motion, still not having looked me in the eye.

God I hated that name, 'Carth'. No prizes for guessing that Carl Green was the monosyllabic kind of guy - the word “utility” was surely a challenge for him. 

He’d recently been made supervisor, y’know. For what, I could not tell you; his working habits consisted of flirting with Charlotte and little else. Maybe it was the poster-card smile he saved for those with authority and sway, not least the Old Crone. But hey, now that Delilon was gone and he had more responsibilities, perhaps Carl would take his thumb out of his you-know-what, stop thinking with his you-know-what-else, and change his behaviour.

As I prepared to leave I saw him walk towards the reception, placing a hand on the desk and chatting up the buxom brunette, his tall, built frame blocking her from my viewpoint. The sight made me shrink and simmer, but I gritted it out and escaped into the hallway, pursing my lips.

‘Spose not

***
9:13 AM - Utility Room - Rise and Supplies
***

Top shelf.

It was on the top blasted shelf, and it was behind one of those mesh-plastic containers; it was filled with a bunch of loose wires and stationary, so it took about three minutes to see the XEROX(TM) icon peeking through the gaps 

Whatever, I was hardly in a rush to get back. But how to scale this mountain…

Seeking a ladder or footstool and finding neither, I pulled out a box to get a foothold on the lowermost shelf. My hands got clammy in anticipation of falling a distance that even a person of average height could dust themselves off from, but I pressed on, little McGuiver I was. 

Little

At that moment I felt small, figuratively and physically. I felt small often, really. It wasn’t always bad; you’re easier to not notice, and I appreciated the quiet it could bring. At times, however, I felt like a rat among wolves and wildcats. 

I climbed another layer, and was soon approaching the summit. I thought about how I’d get this thing out of the way; it was jammed snug between objects packing the length of the shelf on either side of it. I could try to pull on it, but that would see the contents fall right out. There was a smidge of space between the ceiling and the container. Large enough for a man of my size, surely? 

Now I really did feel like a rat. But a rat that could one day flee to a sanctuary of my own, sequestered from society…

I went to clip the surface of the shelf above, but I miscalculated how much space there was between the box face and shelf’s edge during my reverie. The pull-up motion fell apart as my hands were starting to grasp air and the pivot of my once-planted foot was crumbling away and-

I was floating.

Hands - slender hands - were holding me up by the pit of my arms, and delicately I descended towards the ground, being placed to the left of her. I’d never felt so light. 

I looked up, knowing who I’d see. She was wearing a dark blue shirt tucked into satin trousers, with a royal blue jacket on top, and with hair tamed as best as it could be into a low ponytail still falling to her lower back. It was a cold contrast to yesterday. Besides her lipstick, which itself took on a more pinkish hue than before, all of yesterday’s crimson vitality had sunk to the heels guarding her feet. 

She plucked the box out in a swift, painless motion, bringing it down and bending over to place it to her right. I made sure to turn my sights away from her taut…ahem.

A curious item caught my attention as I did so: a black duffel bag had been placed between the door and the shelves lining the right wall. It was not there when I came in, I was sure of that. Hairs were prickling along the circumference of my wrist

“Umm…” Melissa began to speak while I stared at no particular part of the linoleum “I just-“

CLUNK

The door’s sudden closing snapped both sets of eyes towards it. I made a hesitant few steps towards the handle and tugged it. Jammed. I poured the weight of my diminutive frame onto it. Jammed. Another hand pressed on the handle, its fingers slightly overlapping my own, and our combined weights poured into it. Jammed!

I started banging against the metal, as did she, and we took on an alternating rhythm shouting out pleas for rescue. The knocks became less forceful and more hopeless as time went by, until eventually, after about five minutes, we both slinked back to separate corners of the room. The space was small - no bigger than 1.5m wide and 6m long - so if me and Penton were to stretch out our legs, our feet would’ve easily touched each other’s ankles.

The duffel bag was in her lap now. She had her fingers on the zipper, rubbing the gold-plated surface and looking at it as though she were making a difficult calculation. She then propped it between her knees and chest, mouth pressed against the fabric - a fetal position.

“Mmmmmph” Penton pressed a sad little whine onto it, then craned her head down in apparent defeat, sniffling.

A woman whose guts I abhorred half an hour ago was jerking a string of sympathy out of me. The teary blear, the sulking frame…

No. If I let up my defense again, I’d regret it. I wouldn’t let those two continue to seesaw my emotions.

After another minute of silence, broken only by a whimper or sniffle, she was the first to speak.

“I always do this” the words were muffled but discernable.

The statement was open-ended enough to prompt, perhaps against my better judgment, a faint but pointed question.

“This?”

Penton looked up in a flash of surprise at my acknowledgement of her words, before staring back down at the bag.

“Screwing things up”

Unsatisfied, I pushed up firmly against the vague response.

“Things?”

Her face contorted into an overwhelmed cringe. Like those difficult calculations were screaming at her from every corner of her skull, ready to siege and melt her prefrontal cortex.

“My friend - she’s always doing stuff for me -”

“Charlotte” 

The name came out faster than my mind could formulate it, stony and cold through a seized jaw - like a toxic venom it needed to eject as biological fact, not as a question of interest, or a question at all.

“Yeh! You know her - she’s the best, right?” She looked at me with an eager fondness blooming on her features

Were we even referring to the same person? It was like she wanted me - expected me - to mirror her enthusiasm, and that felt somehow crueler and more manipulative than if she just insulted me. As it became clear I would not reciprocate, she once again dampened and continued.

“Like in college, with my research. The Delilons have fingers in soooo many pies these days” Penton splayed and dotted her fingers about out in awed wonderment. 

It was true; I had to hear Charlotte brag incessantly about it day in, day out, so I’d done some due research. Fashion, music and home decor; automotive, construction and biomedicine; all manner of ‘ponics’ in their agricultural pursuits, from hydro to aero to aqua. They’re big players in tech, they’ve got a foothold in law, they even dabble in the food industry. But the true source of the Delilon fortune was, and continues to be, their stake in industrial chemicals. Not as pretty to brag about, but it was inextricably entwined with their other branches and the broader manufacturing economy. Look closely at whatever you own, and a little 'DELILON CHEMICALS' might just be embedded like a ghoulish patch of lichen.  

“And when we went clubbing -” Penton smirked sheepishly, not looking at me “- she was my wingwoman.”

The seized jaw became a seized esophagus, then became a seized upper-chest, as I too looked away.

“But I never even finished my degree, let alone hitched a date!” Penton looked at the ceiling and let out a bewildered chuckle at her perceived incompetence.

“Char’s been tried on for a secretary position at one of her family’s companies…I think it was Delilon Records…” Penton puffed her cheeks and scratched her chin with a thumbnail, lost on the precipice of a tangent before shaking her head and returning to her original line of thought “...and I was looking for work in the city, so she said she could help me out. After all this time she’s still…heh”

She melted into each use of the word 'she' and the name 'Char', tender and low-lidded eyes laid upon the fabric of the bag before turning to me.

“Did she say anything else?” I asked with genuine but cautious curiosity. A crack was inching through my once rock-solid stalwartness of opinion. 

She smiled, subtly biting her lip and twiddling on a strand of hair.

“That I should come in extra early on my first day…”

The silence was renewed. I could feel a blush coming on again. 

“But I’ve made a whole funky fuzzle of that too! So that’s why I…I,” She closed her eyes and exhaled in one long thin breath, calculation seemingly over with, “bought you spares!”

Penton near-flung at me the trove within the bag, packed dense with slacks and trousers. It was a wash of blue, black and brown fabric; the tags were still on them: 'GUCCI', 'LOUIS VUITTON', 'DIOR'. More money in one black sack than I’d make in a year.

I just sat there, unable to process what was happening.

“I shouldn’t have woken you up the way I did!”

I stared blankly at the designer apparel, then up at her. She tapped a closed fist on the top of her head a few times, eyes closed 

“I know how bad milkshake stains can be.” She looked away, as if she was recounting many an unfortunate memory

“You’re apologising…for the spill?” I asked, my worldview as furrowed as my browline, and in response Penton nodded her head furiously.

I surveyed her face, still trying - desperately trying - to find some hidden ill intent amongst the lashes, lips and tinted cheeks. There wasn’t. The corners of my mouth upturned, and in quick succession the tension in Penton’s shoulders began to lax. This girl - this woman - was hopelessly genuine. For a moment, thoughts of Delilon were distant. Thoughts of anything else in this room - this building - were miles from where I sat, locked into the words of the most beautiful woman alive and her bag full of trousers. The blush was surely intensifying now as my smile picked up into the stray makings of a chuckle; my expression was one-part attraction to Penton, and one-part embarrassment for how I’d quite literally profiled her. 

Grrble

Penton winced and clutched her stomach. I reached out my hand on reflex, and she responded by putting up an index finger

“I uh, ughhhhhh,” she moaned in apparent agony, “might have gone too far with the Ben & Jerry’s last night…Oooogh”

I soon cottoned onto what Penton was implying and it tickled at my heart, bringing my breathing to a stuttering shallow as I anticipated what was coming next. As she caressed her bloat - gurgling with intensifying fervour, trying to soothe it with a coo - I had suddenly flashed back to visions of my mother, hazy-faced and young, cradling my screaming sister. It was a comforting, if not entirely unexpected reprieve.

fsssssSSSSSSsss 

It was a short-lived vision, however, dissolved by the jetstream of gas angling out of the cross-legged woman.

“Owowowow” she winced again, this time from an SBD’s burning exit, before exhaling in relief.

It splashed over to my side of the room. It was, if I had to describe it, dense: a type of molten, slow-moving sludge of sulphur dripping into my airways. It was foul. It was putrid.

It was angelic.

Penton was fanning her crotch and blowing it, as if she was trying to cool the region rather than disperse the eggy smell. The room had no ventilation, so it wouldn’t have mattered either way.

“Carpe diem?” I joked, scrambling for common ground.

She gave a pained smile, breathless and panting, “Ice cream’s my comfort food.”

Ouch. If I felt like a rat before, I felt like a roach thereafter.

Grmmm

The clockwise rubbing motion sped up in anticipation of a new wave of intestinal fireworks.

“Hoh, hoh goshhh.” 

BBRMmmmpsssss sss frmp psshh

A resonant buzz and a triad of puffs made its way out of the dampening seam of her dress pants, which acted as one of the only barriers between our noses and ground zero. It was at this time she shed her coat, placing it to her right with an equal measure of haste and care.

Prmm pffrrrp

The 'woman in delivery' analogy felt realer here than it did at the café, and out of some learned instinct I shuffled forward to place my hand in hers. An urge to help? An urge to huff, perhaps? Who knows, but only when our skin touched did the forwardness of the action dawn on me. I was about to retract when her grip pulled me further in. 

Frrrrrrrrrrrrrrm frrrm frrrrrrrrm

Another stream of greasy farts slithered their way upwards and lingered about our faces. Melissa put a hand over her mouth in shock, a smile peeking at its edges as she spoke against the skin of her palm.

“Hohm my gmsh!” 

She took her hand away from her mouth and fanned the air around our faces, eyes at a squint, nose ruffled at the bridge. My nostrils flared, marinating in the rotten stench like one would ease into the feeling of a warm bath. It was getting more intense with each release, mixing with the stagnant clouds of prior expulsions that hung around us. 

I wanted to forever etch into my mind the sound of it all - the oscillating character of her flatulence. The bubbling and bobbing, the hissing and purring. Further still I wished the stench would never leave my nostrils - the stench of ripe decay was mulch for my soul. The prospect that this would eventually end spurred an ache that throbbed and jolted from organ to organ in a paralysing circuit. The day before last I’d have never thought I could feel so deeply for something so benign; it was just a fart for crying out loud! A rotten blast of gut-funk! 

But it was important, wasn’t it? What was more intimate - more brave - than splaying your guts out for everyone to smell? Only here it wasn’t everyone. It was just me and her. Feeble me and wonderful Her.

“That was-“

“Gnarly?” I finished her sentence, mouth again moving faster than the mind. 

“Something like that, hehe,” she nodded her head, a more plump smile returning to her.

Grmmm

Another forecast sounded out, made more ominous by its succinctness, and we both hung on the air of what was to come, staring at the marvel housing so much stink. It just kept churning!

“Mmmmhey, M’cay, I might be pushin’ my luck here but…could I ask ya something?” she looked at me with pleading eyes, to which I nodded.

“Could you uhh…” she trailed off, clearly unsure of herself

I squeezed her hand in an attempt to be assuring.

“…rub my tummy?”

I was captured in a break in time. Every pore of my being was screaming yes oh God yes, as hallucinatory fireworks whizzed and banged in a lightshow around us both. Choirs were aloud with songs, cherubs were draping her figure in robes of description more exquisite than those donned by the highest cardinal, and phantom fireflies circled a halo of light around her hazel mane. 

“S-sure” was all that puttered out of me 

I shuffled a flea’s hair closer, reached out a palm and lightly glided my fingertips over the taut blue shirt. One might think it was set to bite or smite me by how timid my movement was.

Giggling, she pivoted about her left cheek so that I was directly behind her. It was like that scene in Ghost, only with someone much less hunky than a young Patrick Swayze, and someone much more beautiful than a young Demi Moore. With effort, she undid the buttons of her shirt up to the point where her bloat could break free, and guided both my hands toward her exposed stomach

Together we kneaded into it, the tips of my fingers submerging into and emerging from the skin the same way you’d press them into a balloon.

“Mmmph ahhmph ahh. That’s - oh that’s nice. That’s soo nice”. I couldn’t see her face, but her head lolled backward in evident pleasure as gasses began to shift and glug beneath the surface. Now this was unchartered territory.

Pprp plllrppblbl blrp 

Her rear started to bubble out moist purrs, harmonising with her moans in a tune that was intimate and pleasant. Penton’s hands reached for the band tying her ponytail together, trusting that I could handle her gut solo for a bit while searing fartgas collected around my now-titillated lower-body.

Pvvvvvvvvvrp

Penton lifted a cheek for the next fart, which allowed any of the gas still festering under her weighty rump to break free. Now the spectrum of smell spanned 3 groups: the fresh fart she’d just pumped out, the aforementioned farts which had been left to swelter and marinate between her cheeks, and the stagnant farts that had been lingering around us for some time now. Perhaps every nook and inch of this room would become acquainted with Penton’s insides by the time this was over. 

FUMP

My vision darkened. Not falling unconscious, it was in fact her hair encasing me. It smelled like pine this time - a more subtle but homely scent, and once again I was transported to my youth, tucked into bed tight by Mom, her face shrouded in the darkness of my bedroom as she pecked my forehead. I wanted this forever: warm, protected, complete. No concern for anything beyond those 4 walls, or beyond that exact moment in time. 

“Ah, sorry! I kinda lost myself there, I’ll tie it back up-“

“It’s fine!” I said as if my life was at stake, impulsively gripping hard the bloat I was kneading, pulling it closer to me  “I uh, think this works better if you’re comfortable…Penton?”

“Ouughf” 

PFFFFFFFFFsssssssss

The bubbling bloat depressed an inch as the steamer was forced out of her, and I had to lean forward to match her pained doubling over. Her hair combined with her back formed a sort of alcove that cocooned my body from all angles, and thus the smell of her fart was mostly contained, rising up from her -

Her exposed asscrack.

Vision now adjusting to the darkness, I had looked down for the first time, and what I saw was a canyon between two overflowing sacks of buttfat - like a ruptured pipe hissing something sinister. I could imagine the fart with form - green and steam-like - spiralling into me, whiff after whiff. A serpentine lifeline from her anus to my brain to every nerve ending in my body.

Who knew heaven smelt like brimstone

“W..whahow..pah” Penton panted femininely “that one burned my tushy!”

I could only imagine how radiator-hot it must’ve been a layer deep between those cheeks. If a bug crawled, buzzed or fluttered its way into that cavern, it was not coming back out alive. And if it did, its sodden body would never be free of the stink stuck onto every inch of its skin.

“Jeeahsh louiesh.” The initial muffling of her words made clear she was clasping her nose and mouth. “Are you really ok to keep going sweetie? I can barely stand the ol’ tooter when it gets like this, and you’re closer!”

Her second pair of arms took pause from rubbing her stomach to give a thumbs up from both sides. I wanted to believe that I would’ve reacted the same way even if I hated it, that I would’ve sucked up this foul mix of stink, heat and vapour for no reason other than because she was a kind woman in a bad situation, for no reason other than it was “the right thing to do”.

Oh McCarthy… Theodore Helen McCarthy…

My hands took on a mild tremor, as if my body didn’t know whether to align with the idealist or realist within me. The former a poisonous liar, the latter telling dirty truths so glaring that I couldn’t bear to acknowledge them.

“Well, if you’re suree…” she put her hands over mine once more, rubbing them with the care one might give to an ailing dog that still wants to play fetch, inadvertently calming the shakes the second our skins made contact. And then she pressed down. Hard.

I caught on quickly and added to her efforts. Regardless of what dwelled within me I felt responsible for the state she was in, and so I resolved: it was time to get this demon out of her.

Pffffffffffffffff

The hiss was unwavering, the temperature of the alcove had increased noticeably compared to the prior fart, and the smell…

ffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I directed half of my energy towards heeling my fully formed erection, feral dribbles of precum slickening the boundary between flesh and fabric, and the rest towards one last major push.

fffffssssssss fss fs pffsss sbrrpbl brrvpl 

“YES!”

With each inch shaved off the bloat, the silent burners started to break up, then morph into a splat of bubbling plaps as we approached the finish line. As I stewed in that unbroken bubble of pure fart, something stirred in me beyond arousal. Pride? Happiness? Getting to perform some kind of reconciliation - guilt shaving off - but with the knowledge that she was more satisfied and comfortable than she was 10 minutes prior. That I had anything to contribute to it, even if I was also its catalyst. It made me feel euphoric in an unfamiliar way - like I had purpose. A singular, focused purpose: to make Penton happy.

Pbrbrlob pbbrlop lplplprlrbl plb plb ppblp brp-rrm plrmp plap plap pllap 

“OH Muh-CAY! YES! Right THERE! OHHhhhHHhhhh” 

Creak

“Ohhh...uhm…hehe…hi?”

Brrp 

***
10:35am
Ecclemeyer’s Office
***

“I expected better of you, McCarthy”

Ecclemeyer tapped a finger on her folded arm and bore through me with her aged, ever-miffed eyes. 

“These types of…excursions,” she flourished her fingers in a judging flutter, “in the workplace ought to be grounds for immediate dismissal under gross misconduct. And to say nothing of your lateness.”

I cringed in a flash of shame, bracing for the inevitable

“But I like to think myself a fair woman. Your prior conduct has been exemplary, so…”

She tilted her head up and breathed in, as if to deliberate on an exact thought before committing to it. 

“Consider this your first, and last, warning.”

Ripples of relief swam through my chest.

“Thank you Cessandra I’m so-“ I reeled back the enthusiasm as I caught her unimpressed. “This means a lot to me”

“Mhm,” Ecclemeyer gave the barest of acknowledgements as she ticked her bic across paperwork that was there when I came in, her signature so practiced and forms so repetitive that she didn’t need to look at it, instead staring only at me like a cobra sizing up its next mouse.

“I have no qualms with immediately terminating your contract if you so much as try to test me on this.” Her tone was firm with bony matter-of-factness, and in her eyes was an uneasy mix of glazed detachment and unquenchable detestation

I nodded and rose to my feet, as eager for my exit as she was. As I clutched the knob of the office door however, there was a remnant bubble of unease

“So… what about Melissa?”

A telling, ugly ‘hah’ was all the response I got or needed about my coworker’s imminent fate. I paused a second more, chewed helplessly at the inner wall of my cheek, then left.

**
10:49am
Rise and Supplies - Office Floor
**

The space felt emptier without the peripheral bundle of fluff. It’d been about 5 minutes since I left Ecclemeyer’s office and she entered - little more than a tempered, anxious smile on her end while I fizzed with guilt trying to reciprocate it. The duffel bag sat at my feet, and I guided the nose of my foot across its skin in a figure-8 formation. Anything to burn off the nervous energy.

Creak

“Sor-“

SLAM 

I was the only one to turn around at the sound, and only for long enough to absorb the image. Penton looked shy - rubbing her arm as if it were a clipped wing; her dejected expression was understated compared to most of what I’d seen from her, but that made the scene all the more poignant. I resented Ecclemeyer a great deal in that moment, imagining how she must have crushed down on her without even needing to raise her voice - inside her a glut of quieted, piercing hate for anything and everything accumulated over years of living. A woman barely twice my age, I thought, as my heel thudded restlessly against the carpet.

Go up to her, apologise. She was in that room because of you - lured by worry for you. She was in the state she was in because of you, in pain because of you. Go! Do it!

My heel may have been restless - chattering with no rhythm or intent - but my toes were wired to the ground. She’d slowed beside my desk, and had paused briefly. I had all the chance to say it now, she was right there. But of course I didn’t. I was, after all, a coward. I let her click clack away from my desk, out of that door, and by proxy out of my life, forever. I was willing to give up the best thing that ever happened to me, because at least on this side of the veil I knew what my life was about. 

I stared at those pinkish-red letters. Kiss hug kiss hug. Highlight. Backspace. Gone. 

I was foolish to think that one such action would do anything to alleviate the lump in my throat or the titanium weight in my core. That would likely take time - a slow erosion back to status quo over the course of weeks or months.  But it was a start.

Some 10 seconds after her departure, something unexpected then happened. For the first time in 2 days, the office lit up with the voices of its workers. One by one, they spoke up:

“God finally~” one woman muttered with a mix of relief and bottled contempt.

“Not sure I could’ve taken another day of that chick’s ass. Never thought I’d be sayin’ that,” said another.

“You’re such a creep dude,” a third responded.

“She dresses like an absolute slut too.”

“She tried to talk to me about fucking cockroaches yesterday?”

“Weirdo.”

“Whore.”

“Bugslut.”

FSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

“Yeesh, thought that stinkin’ bimbo would never leave. Anyway drinks are on me this week, guys.”

A series of woots, hoots and hollers sounded off at Carl’s proclamation. He was pressing down the push button of an air freshener, its nozzle delivering a steady stream of fragrance to wherever he pointed. He lounged on the table next to mine, spraying the contents absentmindedly above my head. I looked at him with seething confusion.

“Oh right, you don’t drink, do ya Carth. Well at least you got your pump and dump, eh? Personal vibrator? Didn’t think you had it in you,” he put added emphasis on the ‘pump’ and ‘dump’, before leaning into a whisper “hell, I don’t think I could've porked that cow…well, not without a few shots in me. But I get it; might as well get your somethin somethin after all that…y’know.” 

He proceeded to make an open-close gesture with his hand, his lips mouthing ‘blah blah’ while he rolled his eyes. The sour, choking smell of apple was clearing out whatever bits of Penton still clung to me. The vapour irritated my skin and my eyes - I needed to close them with how leisurely he spritzed the damn thing around my desk.

When I opened them, it was as though the mist had gathered into a stationary blob, refusing to succumb to gravity or convection. Then like a draped sheath falling, the vague impression of a figure emerged: ‘arms’ crossed, ‘head’ cocked up, ‘eyes’ pointing down. And then a tight-packed, tumorous high bun sprung out, just beyond the top of its skull. Not a follicle of hair out of place, pulled towards that self-impressed centre. Charlotte…Delilon. Delilon. 

And then it struck me all at once. I was blind to not see it, but how was I to know somebody could be that petty? That cruel, conniving… how could she? To someone who treated her like goldust? It made sense now - all of it. Poor Penton…oh God, poor Penton. 

Whatever hatred Ecclemeyer held for her fellow man, I could match and triple for everyone in that godforsaken office space - quintuple for myself - as I marched towards her door. Two words were knocking at the front of my mind, geared to exit my lips without a wasted second once I was sure she could hear them.

“I quit.”

**
10:52am
Building Hallway
**

I ran as quickly as my little legs and the combined weight of two bags would permit. The reality of what I’d just done had yet to set in as adrenaline drove my movements. 

A breadcrumb trail of Penton-brand butt-puffs still lingered, so I knew I had time. The idea that she could be out of my life forever drove an engine of fear in me that was long-untapped. I couldn’t let it happen.

I wouldn’t let it happen.

As that thought formed I had been so unfocused on anything but the scent, that I had neglected to notice the floor giving way to steps. The resulting fall was a tumbling blur.

At the base of the steps, a harsh crack sounded off, but there was no immediate pain. Did I break something? Seconds later, still no pain. Was this shock? Was I going into shock?

It seemed not; I wriggled about my appendages, and everything seemed about in order, save for raw spots of exposed skin on the knuckles of my right hand, leaking blood from tiny patches that were dragged across the floor. The duffel bag had cushioned what would’ve been a concussion-worthy blow to my left temple, and my elbow was pressed into my own bag. Not willing to give it more thought, I rose back to my critical mission. 

I turned the last corner with my eyes closed. If she was out the door already, then finding her would be a crippling list of logistical barriers - but I would do it, if that’s what it took. I opened them, and breathed a mental sigh of relief when I saw her silhouette framed by the light shining through the glass panel doors. Her fists were balled and arms locked straight at her sides. 

“Wait!” I heaved out between breaths.

She turned around, teary-eyed, and fidgeted her hands in a clamp over her bosom. I slowed down in front of her. Seeing her backlit with light, and near enough faltering to my knees anyhow, I felt like a disciple at the feet of a deity. No words formed easily. 

“I-“ my voice cracked “I don’t actually need…all of these.” 

I jostled the duffel bag as best I could a few inches off the ground. Penton once again looked at her feet with a sense of shame. 

“W-which is why I thought we could return them,” I extended a hand I had no right to extend, “…together?”

Her chest heaved with increased pace, and the corners of her mouth upturned. She wiped an arm in a smear across eyes, mouth and nose. The smile that shone after that motion could melt the iciest of dispositions.

“I’d like that”

She clasped both hands around mine, the blood from my knuckles imprinting on the base of her palm.

“I’d like that a lot”