’Til My Last Breath: A Halloween Story Read online

  * * *

  I turned and I kissed him. Such a delicate word for what I inflicted on him. He was surprised by the ferocity of my kiss, and I could feel him even try to take a step back, but I didn’t let him do that. I pulled him close, that huge, strong body pressed against mine. I could feel his cock against my leg, could feel it responding.

  * * *

  I’ve never kissed anyone like this before. Maybe I’ve never kissed anyone. I’ve always been kissed--passive voice, the recipient, the target. I felt drunk on the power it gave me, pressing our lips, searching his tongue with mine, his hands rising up my back, tangling me like ivy in a tree.

  * * *

  When we pulled away it was with gasps and no words. He saw that some change had come over me, and was clearly ready for it.

  * * *

  I tried not to ask myself about that change, about its nature, its timing. I did not question whether it were a real, substantial change, or if it was just letting myself get swept in the moment regardless of the outcome.

  * * *

  Leading him back into the living area, holding both his hands in mine, I returned to the spot I had knelt before, and drew him down.

  * * *

  There was something I needed him to do, something I could not describe in words. It wasn’t that the words didn’t exist--it’s not that hard to say kneel atop me, your cock hovering over my mouth--but to say the words would dispel the need that was overtaking me, would make it too real, too obvious to myself what I was doing.

  * * *

  I was sitting on the carpet, fully clothed, with him sinking into my lap. Our lips had somehow found each other again, and we kissed with a renewed urgency. I used him as a support to gently lower my back to the floor. My hands on his ass felt the thick muscle as he began to grind against me, but I pulled him forward. He understood, and went to his knees, his body just over my chest.

  * * *

  His knees pressed on either side of me.

  * * *

  His weight was on his knees. It was not on my chest. It was not on my ribcage, pressing down.

  * * *

  Don’t think, I told myself.

  * * *

  His cock was hard again. It didn’t take much to get him ready. Nor could I have done much. The moment he began to hover over my chest, I entered that dreamlike state I was so familiar with, where my mind would wander away.

  * * *

  Pay attention, I told myself.

  * * *

  I’ve tried this before, of course. Not with everyone, and usually only once with any given person, and always ending the same way, the gasping breath, the pushing hands, unable to speak, unable to communicate, body writhing in a mute parody of passion. And before it ends? Before it ends, I go away. Sometimes I think about being out on a little boat in the middle of a lake. There’s no significance to that thought, no history behind it that would offer any great revelations. Once upon a time I took a boat out on the lake, with my life-jacket snug against me, and I rowed, and it was a cool morning, fog just now dissipating in the warming sun.

  * * *

  Pay attention, I told myself.

  * * *

  He was excited now, more excited now that I had already put him off once. He was thick and hard, his precum oozing from his slit, a little drop falling onto my lip, like the beginning of rain. He had his shaft in hand, moving it slowly upward, milking himself onto me.

  * * *

  I, the obedient lover, opened my mouth.

  * * *

  He rose up higher to get a better angle down into my mouth, and I accepted him in with a mix of relief and terror; there was less of him directly on my chest now. He could not crush me accidentally. Breathe through your nose. Swallow.

  * * *

  He was careful. He’d seen what happened before, and was taking his time. I knew he wanted to shove his entire length into my mouth. Knew he wanted to come forward and fuck my lips, feel my face buried in his crotch as I drank him in. His patience under the circumstances was remarkable. His cock was at a safe point, rubbing against my hard palate. My tongue worked on his shaft, although if I am honest, fear had dried my mouth. But the taste of him, and his eagerness for me, and this patience, I could not stay in panic forever. Soon I was sucking on him, wetting him down, lifting my head for a better angle. I had not felt this wanted in ages.

  * * *

  I couldn’t speak, and so instead I used my hands. I put them around his ass again, pulled him closer. He looked down at me, a question in his eyes. I nodded, and he pressed forward.

  * * *

  It may have taken a thousand years, he was so slow. I felt his fat cock brush my soft palate (breathe, swallow). No, it wasn’t that he was slow, it was that my reaction time had sped up. The hairs on the back of my neck and arms rose, that sense of fear growing again. I pushed further, taking more of him into my mouth, realizing that by doing so I was encouraging him to lose that patience, that care. Driving him forward, giving him permission to fuck as far and as deep as he wanted.

  * * *

  There’s this thing in my past, my mind said. I told it no.

  * * *

  Once there was a lake, my mind said. I brought my attention back to him, to the way he was passing my uvula now.

  * * *

  Swallow. Breathe.

  * * *

  I swallowed. I breathed. I took him deep, and he rocked forward on his knees, holding himself up now with his hands as well, perched over me, lowering his cock further. I swallowed and I swallowed and I swallowed.

  * * *

  This was not the hard part. I sucked on his cock, feeling my whole body responding to his desire, wanting to taste his cum in my mouth. No, this was all getting ready for the hard part. This was preparation.

  * * *

  There’s this thing in the past, I told him with my thoughts. With one trembling hand, I touched his hand. I couldn’t see his face from this angle. I couldn’t tell what he might be thinking, other than understanding his need to plunge inside of me.

  * * *

  I pulled his hand over. He was obedient in my grasp.

  * * *

  Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

  * * *

  I put his hand over my nose, and squeezed.

  * * *

  He didn’t respond at first. His hand went loose. You don’t understand, I told him in my mind. You weren’t there.

  * * *

  I squeezed my hand again, his thumb and forefinger on either side of my nose.

  * * *

  This time, he seemed to get it. His thrusts into my mouth slowed down. He closed off my nostrils.

  * * *

  Adrenaline flooded my body, a cascade of pure energy I had not felt in a long, long time. I wanted to fight him. Bite his cock, scratch him with my close-bitten nails, push and shove until he was off of me.

  * * *

  There was no boat on the lake now. There was no memory. There was nothing but the sheer need to survive, to flee this.

  * * *

  I could not breathe.

  * * *

  Pay attention, I said, but did not have to say that. My attention had grown to take in the entire world.

  * * *

  I swallowed him. I continued to suck, tightening my lips, feeling the ridges of his cock as he shoved it down further, and slowly pulled back.

  * * *

  My hand stayed on his. I wouldn’t let him stray. If anything, I made him tighten his grip still further.

  * * *

  The urge to turn my head away was almost overwhelming. Pressure began to build in my lungs. Nothing more primal than breath, nothing your body tries to force you to preserve as much.

  * * *

  My other hand approached my face. I think it wanted to pull his fingers from me, I think it wanted to free me. I forced it back to the floor.

  * * *

  When you are trying to calm yourself, they tell you to breathe. Take deep breaths.
How do you calm yourself when there’s no air?

  * * *

  I focused instead on his cock. On the way it filled my mouth, the way it touched my throat, the way its size seemed to match me perfectly.

  * * *

  There was a high-pitched sound somewhere in the room. It wasn’t the stereo. It wasn’t anything; there was nothing electrical left in the world to make that sound. It was accompanied by a much lower sound, a rhythmic rushing.

  * * *

  I kept my eyes open even when things darkened. Dark doesn’t mean anything. I had only dim lights, and a man above me shading my eyes. It didn’t mean anything that my vision was growing dark.

  * * *

  I was out on the boat again, the life-jacket snug on my chest. Where had the oars gone? The boat was gliding smoothly through the water, its wake a widening gentle V. There were no birds in the distance, only the sound of my heart pulsing, and the sound of whatever that was, that high, high note that got louder and louder.

  * * *

  Pay attention.

  * * *

  His groan brought me back to the world, a raw, primal sound. He let go of my nose, catching himself with that hand, his hips flexing, forcing himself still further down my throat. There was no reminding myself to breathe this time, it all came out of me, all the air gone, and I couldn’t even gasp, my gulping was useless with his fat cock swelling with seed, shooting down my throat. I swallowed. Don’t drown, I told myself.

  He was carrying me back to the sofa. I had the strange thought that I was watching a movie but had missed a few frames. He slipped the pulse ox monitor onto my finger. Red numbers. I watched him pull the tube close to my mouth. Were my eyes open? It was hard to tell. They hurt.

  He was next to me. We lay together, taking sips of air. His hand was between my legs.

  * * *

  “There’s this thing in my past,” I tried to tell him, but my throat was raspy. He shushed me, and I snuggled closer to him.

  I am on the sofa, and he is gone.

  I am on the sofa, and he has returned with a bag that clanks and rustles. The pulse ox is back to green, yet all I want to do is lie down. I force myself to sit up, and look at the bag with a note of worry. I hope it is not full of things planned to test my boundaries. One in a night is enough. I couldn’t yet think about what happened. There would be time for that...a short time. Just until all the oxygen ran out of the dome, and the air scrubbers shut down, and everything was over. I promised myself, sometime before that, I would think about what had happened between us. Would think about how frightened I was, and how foolish, and all the rational reasons I should not have been so happy to see him return to my apartment.

  * * *

  The bag is full of tools, none of them to do with breathing.

  * * *

  “Let me show you,” he says.

  * * *

  “Show me what?”

  * * *

  “That we’ve been lied to. That the world isn’t ending. I know a spot in the dome, it’s behind the old movie theater. Nobody patrols back there. We can cut our way through.”

  * * *

  “You can’t do that,” I say in a hoarse whisper. “All our air will spill out of the dome. Or poisons will rush in.”

  * * *

  He kneels beside me. I realize he is dressed now. His shirt is black. He has on a black cap. He looks like a burglar.

  * * *

  “They’ll catch you first thing, dressed like that,” I say.

  * * *

  “If I’m wrong, we’ll tape it up, we’ll come back,” he says. “We’ll spend whatever time we’ve got left sitting right here. We’ll dance, or we’ll fuck, or go looking for more beer. I don’t know. But let me show you I’m right.”

  * * *

  Will he be right? If the public service announcements with their terrifying lack of emotion are right, then we are doomed anyway. If they’re wrong, then we might stumble into something far more dangerous than a pretend apocalypse.

  * * *

  Yesterday it would have been an impossible decision. Today, it was just a hard one.

  * * *

  Let’s face it, we’re all going to stop breathing one day. Whether it’s nature or the dome or just getting old, the oxygen will someday wear out. Billions of years from now, the sun will engulf the earth, and billions of years after that, it’ll all burn out.

  * * *

  There’s this thing in my past. Something that someone did to me, that I hate talking about, because that makes it into a story, and there’s all this pressure on you to make stories have happy endings. It didn’t have a happy ending, what happened to me, and I’ve been trying all my life to tell someone. If the public service announcements were right, it didn’t matter; soon enough there’d be nobody to tell, and the memory of it would go away, fading into silence. If he was right, my mysterious stranger, then I’d still have to deal with my past. It would still be there, waiting for me to reckon with. Whether he knew it or not, he was choosing himself to be the person who helped me with the reckoning.

  * * *

  I took a long, long pull on the oxygen tube, until I was almost dizzy from it, then I stood up.

  * * *

  “All right,” I said. “Let’s go look at the end of the world.”