May 05, 2010
Fiction
For Loki
I left a trail of dirt from the door to the reception desk. Clogs of soil shaped like the soles of my boots.
From behind the counter, the old madam frowned at the black honeycombs on her floor. The same black soil that I’d just shoveled onto my best friend. A German Shepherd mix named Loki.
The old woman pushed her black-rimmed glasses up her nose and scowled at my mess. Still, she took my money.
Twenty bucks for an hour, she said. Which was long enough to forget. To forget about carrying Loki’s limp body down the hillside, his loose head knocking against my hip with each step. To forget how his body was somehow heavier that evening than the morning.
Loki had lived a good life. Thirteen years, actually. The stray dog had showed up on my their doorstep the same month my father died. An angel perhaps, or some glorious reincarnation . . .
So I carried the dog down that hillside for one last adventure. To the ravine we’d walked through so many times. Down the hill where he chased rabbits and squirrels, dug for chipmunks, and shook that groundhog to death.
He moved dizzily from tree to tree, sniffing and stumbling and falling more than once. He tried to anoint the bushes, but nothing came out.
At the hotel, the old woman gave me a key. Room 8.
If I wanted company I should go to the lounge, she told me.
So I did.
It was dark. The walls covered in deep red carpeting. Golden sconces pushing light up the ceiling.
There were girls draped over velvet couches and easy chairs. Most of them watching soap operas video-taped from earlier in the afternoon. They wore sequins and dresses made of cheap foil fabric. A few didn’t even care that their tits and twats were hanging out.
When I walked to the bar, most of them came to attention. Others kept staring at the television.
They did a half-assed roll call, some pushing out their breasts, others just mumbling as they watched their soaps.
Raven. Summer. Sparkle. Silver.
I picked Zelda. She had the ass I wanted. Like the girls I watched jogging at the park. The girls who recently made the decisions to lose weight. Their white cotton shorts that struggled to keep the flesh from jiggling.
That’s what I liked. And Zelda had it.
She wore a lacey red dress. Faded almost to pink, and cut high above her knees. Knees that were dry and chapped, with the meat of her thighs coming right to the caps.
Perfect.
“You look like my wife,” I said, taking the stool next to her.
“Lucky girl.”
“Lucky me.”
We ordered a couple gimlets. Gin and lime. Breath enhancers. I paid with a small bill.
We had a few more rounds and then went to Room 8. The room had no sink to wash the dirt from my nails. Not even a toilet. Just a bottle of disinfectant lotion on the nightstand along with a roll of paper towels. The wastebasket overflowed.
She asked me what I wanted.
“My dog back.”
“What?”
“I need to be held, and then I want to smack your ass.”
She told me the price and I paid it. Keeping the big bills out of view.
She stripped to her panties. I cried on her lap. Let her stroke my hair. Pet me.
It was a deep cry. The kind that makes your mouth gape and shake. The kind that steals your breath, then returns it in heavy gasps. Desperate and drowning.
She gave me a paper towel for my eyes.
“So how do you want me?” she said without emotion.
I sat up straight and patted my thighs.
She pulled down her panties and bent over my lap. I ran my open hand over her soft curves. With one finger I drew lines from mole to mole. Zit to zit. Played with that little valley at her tailbone.
Then I smacked her ass. Lightly at first. Then a bit harder. Testing her with each slap, to see how much pain I paid for.
Apparently, a lot.
And with each slap I felt a little better. My mind began to clear. I reveled in the erotica and forgot everything for a time: I didn’t think about camping with Loki. The holidays and hikes. The road trips. The rest-stops where we slept in the bed of my truck. Knife in one hand, his leash in the other. I didn’t think of all my tears that wet his fur. The memories of my dead father that he helped cleanse.
I didn’t think about how I used to pick ice from between his toes during our winter walks, or when we prowled the old neighborhood, hoping for an open curtain to peek through.
I didn’t think about the blue sweater I made him wear one Christmas — the first time I’d ever seen a dog look embarrassed.
And I didn’t think about his golden eyes. How they stared at me as the vet put in that needle. How I couldn’t tell when his life actually passed.
All I thought about was her ass. Her meat. The sting I felt in my palm. And how my pain now surged through her. I was sharing it. Passing it on. Transforming the hurt.
Then she said what I wanted: “Harder, baby.”
So I obliged.
I let it all out. All the weakness that I would never show my wife.
I slapped and spanked and sucked that ass until she told me that our time was up.
“We can keep going for another hundred,” she said looking up at me with her rear still perched. It was red now, embossed with my fingerprints.
“That’s ok, I feel better . . . Besides, I’m married.” I waved my ring finger at her.
I was out the door before she even had her bra on. I tipped an imaginary hat to the old woman at the desk and handed her the key.
She was still scowling.
Outside, I pulled two locks of hair from my back pocket. I’d cut them from Loki’s tail just before I covered him with dirt. One lock for me. One for my great uncle.
I twisted the hair in my fingers and smelled it all the way home.
• • •
is a professional writer living and writing on the Mississippi. His fiction has appeared in several small press and commercial magazines, and his two novels are available at Inhumanimal.com. He was born when the Earth's population was 4 billion people, and in his lifetime that number has grown to 7 billion. His first word was Baby, because that's what he was, and his last word will likely be Insignificant.
