Reliving The Future

thethemeis: The Fast Lane

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   They told me that there was a cliff just off the motorway past Staples Point where you could travel back in time, if you drove off of it at exactly midnight. I laughed at them at the time. I laughed and I told them to stop being so ridiculous. That’s not even possible, I said. But that night, there was nothing in the world that could have kept me from finding that cliff, and driving straight off of it at top speed. 

   That’s where I was going when I was weaving in and out of traffic on the M46, blasting my horn at the slugs crawling along in the fast lane, and the speed cameras just after the Fairbrook Interchange caught me travelling at 116 miles per hour. That’s where I was headed, when the lights down the centre of the road stopped and I was driving into blind blackness with just the three metres ahead of me visible, lit by my headlights, and the fox’s eyes appeared off to the left and I was travelling so fast that I had no time to react so I ploughed through it but I heard no impact so I don’t know if the fox was a hallucination or it just turned to mush in my grill. That was my destination, when that first police car caught wind of my kamikaze journey and slotted itself into my slipstream, sirens shrieking and lights blazing, and called its two friends to join the chase.

   The speed I was going by then, they had no chance of catching me. Even the helicopter bathing me in a heavenly spotlight as I ripped my beeline in the chilling night air was struggling to keep up. Without regard for my safety, on a mission to put my life and body in jeopardy just to see Jenny again, I pushed the car past 150 miles per hour on that pitch dark road, searching for Gatsby Services, where the metal barrier that I had to smash my way through sat waiting for me.

   When I reached it, I lost the two most cowardly police cars along with my front bumper and headlamps as I demolished the aluminium fencing with my jet black BMW. The third panda car continued its pursuit, following me onto the rocky path to the cliff, through the shrubs and the wildlife I murdered on the way, until its driver worked out where I was going and skidded to a halt. Left alone to meet my fate, I ploughed on through the debris to my glorious destination.

   Haloed by the light from the police helicopter, my front wheels left the cliff edge at exactly 23:59, and I went into freefall.

   For the first few seconds, time stopped and started like I was living inside of a strobe light, as the rocky beach below and the waves that broke against it drew themselves closer to my windscreen by the millisecond. I experienced a soul-crushing disappointment, as I realised that I had gone on nothing but a suicide mission, believing a rumour that was never designed to be truth. I was falling to my death at terminal velocity, and there was nothing I could do now to atone.

   But then it happened. At first, too quickly to control, the images flashing past my eyes with such disorganisation and confusion that I wasn’t sure whether I was experiencing some kind of pre-mortem highlights reel or just fitting in panic; then, as my brain tuned in to the blurry images more accurately, bringing it all into focus, more slowly and easier to affect. I soon realised that I was being transported to all of the moments in my life where I had done something that I regretted. All of the times I felt guilty or wronged or like my life had taken a wrong turn, they were rushing before my eyes, begging to be tweaked.

   Wetting myself at primary school. Cheating on tests and being caught. Cheating on schoolyard girlfriends with meaningless kisses. Arguments where the smartest, most biting retort had only dawned on me the morning after, over breakfast with my parents. Jokes I had tried to make in front of rooms full of new people, only to watch the joke fall flat and those strangers give each other pitying looks. It all zoomed past, as I disregarded the chaff to get to the crux, so that I could change my past, and in doing so, change my future too.

   I saw her face before I realised I had progressed that far through my life, and the stream slowed right down as I took her in. Here she was: Jenny, my beautiful ex fiancée, grinning at me with her thin nose and large eyes and full lips revealing paper white teeth. The face I hadn’t seen in two years had appeared in my eyes again and took my breath away with its beauty, almost making me forget what I was even doing here, physically falling through the air at a million miles an hour, but spiritually reliving a past I yearned to correct.

   I lived in that past for the entire duration of the relationship we once had, changing everything. The way I treated her, the way I thought of her, it was all renovated by the knowledge of what I had, which was only informed by the fact that in my previous future, she was gone. Every morning, I told her she was beautiful. I hugged her and I kissed her and I slept next to her with complete and utter contentment, worshipping her for being the most beautiful human being I had ever chanced upon.

   Where before I had criticised her taste in music or literature purely for the sake of contradicting her views, which I thought of as overconfident and ill thought out, this time I agreed wholeheartedly. I grabbed her hands and danced with her around her bedroom to Paramore songs and kissed her neck while she read cheap crime books, because I realised then that life was too short to disagree over such trivial matters; and also because if I was honest with myself, we shared so many of those tacky tastes anyway.

   I took back all the times I had been snappy and uptight. When the urge overcame me to shout at her or cut her down nastily in the middle of one of her uninformed rants, I chose this time to resist it. I heard her out, I let her finish, and then I grabbed her shoulders and kissed her mouth and told her that I loved her because that’s all that matters and heated debates are made for ponces in suits, not young lovers. I never told her she was wrong even when she was, I never took her for granted, and I never let her think she was anything other than perfect.

   And most importantly of all, I stripped away all that jealousy. All the insecurity I’d felt at the time, weighing me down like the world’s heaviest gelatine chainmail, I deemed to be completely useless, and left it locked in a time capsule in the past. I let her talk to whoever she wanted to talk to and flirt with whatever she felt like flirting with, because I knew that deep down, she was devoted to me, and everything she did was for me all along. Having the gift of hindsight made it infinitely easier to watch her throw herself around the dancefloors I could never navigate, and our relationship blossomed under the sunshine I allowed it to bathe in, as I blew away the clouds I had manufactured the first time.

   After we made love on her birthday, Jenny dressed in one of the kinky costumes she always loved to wear for my benefit in the bedroom and I burning with desire and love for her stronger than I had ever felt, after that, I felt that my work in the past was done, and decided to fastfoward to the present day, to my new future that awaited me like a light at the end of the tunnel. I relinquished my hold on the past, and let the images zoom past once again.

   But they went too fast. The memories that I couldn’t remember because I hadn’t lived them yet, they sprang past my eyes like an elastic band pulled too tight and suddenly released. I lost a grip on the past, and it all passed me by, until I woke up in a car, falling off of a cliff.

   I had changed nothing. Or at least, what I had changed hadn’t mattered. It had all ended up exactly the same. At some point, it had all gone wrong again, despite all that I had edited out in the footage of my lifetime; and I had ended up right back where I started: falling through the air, headed toward a cold, hard death on a pebbled beach. But this time, I felt a warm satisfaction as I drifted through the beam of the police helicopter’s spotlight toward the rocks and the waves, because I had seen Jenny again, and fixed it all. The fact that our love had eaten itself alive sometime since and left me just as distraught as before was a shock that was easily assuaged by the knowledge that this time, I wasn’t completely to blame. I had loved and been loved, and to feel that again was all I had needed.

   With my soul still swimming in this feeling, my body disintegrated against the beach, along with the scarlet Audi it had arrived in, leaving only ashes and smoke in that helicopter’s beam.

Erica

thethemeis: Erotica

theauthoris: Aaron Twentythree

   Now, she haunts my dreams.

   Erica, the girl who once spoke endlessly of how one day she would live on the banks of the Nile or in the very centre of Hyderabad or in an apartment with a clear view of the Golden Gate bridge (if she could ever break free of these chains), she now inhabits the dark space in my mind only visited in sweaty bouts of unconsciousness. Trapped inside my subconscious, she keeps her stranglehold on my thoughts, my actions, my entire being, despite that she has had no real contact since that one night.

   That one night that plays in my dreams, on repeat.

   I sit there on the edge of the bed in my grotty flat, my head wading in a shallow pool of Glenfiddich, desperate not to give in to lusty temptation this time, but to talk her out of her decision and persuade her to faithfully surrender herself to the future I have planned for the pair of us. ‘Erica,’ I whine, ‘give it some thought, please. You don’t have to do this your whole life. It could be so different. We could move anywhere. We could be in love. I know you want that, even if you won’t admit it.’

   My dingy bedside lamp reluctantly half-illuminates the room, trying its hardest to hide the blemishes that litter my walls and the drink stains that crazy-pave my carpet in a shroud of shadow.

   ‘Aaron,’ she replies as she leans against the door that links my bedroom to the stained old bathroom from whence she came, her voice a rich sauce of years of cigarette smoke and an immitigable childlike femininity, ‘you don’t even know for sure that my name is Erica. It could be Rebecca or Jessica or… Roxanne, for all you know.’ She slinks across the room toward me.

   ‘I know you like to pretend that you’re keeping me at arm’s length like you do all the others,’ I rest my head against her bare stomach and close my eyes, as she stands in front of me in frenchies, a push-up and fishnet stockings, and I try to block out that stunning view that always seems to make the best arguments in my favour crumble around me, ‘but you’re translucent to me. I see through the act. You care about me, and that’s why you told me your name on that first night we met, that first time.’

   ‘You think you have it all figured out, don’t you, Boy Genius.’

   ‘I do.’

   She kneels between my legs, which she has pushed open with her petite, manicured hands. Her sharp nails draw lines up my thighs and her large brown eyes meet mine, her plump, dark red lips creeping into a cheeky smile as my heart stumbles over itself to get to a dancefloor inside of my ribcage.

   ‘Well, Freud,’ she whispers as her slender fingers walk their way up to the zip on my trousers, ‘if we’re going to elope, can we do it later? I have other plans just now.’

   ‘But – wait –’ I grab her hand, pull it away from my crotch.

   ‘Aaron, I love our chats. I really do,’ her fingers do their signature strut once more, up my stomach to my chest, as her other hand continues freeing me from my trouserous prison, ‘but I do find it tiresome. Can’t we save it? Hold the thought and drag it back out, say, post-coitus?’ With that, she pushes me back onto the bed by the sternum, and my resolve dissolves in an instant.

   Like it does every single time with Erica, the air around my newly freed thighs and pelvis feels strangely magical, making my heart flutter like the first time all over again. The loss of innocence is a recurring theme in the feelings mustered up by thoughts of Erica, and no matter how many times one spends the night with her, it never fails to feel new.

   Her kisses creep up the inside of my thigh, those soft, moist lips planting promises of something altogether more pleasurable slowly in a pathway to my throbbing penis, which she reaches in seconds that feel like hours, and slides into her warm, wet mouth. Her black glossy fingernails dig grooves in my thigh as her tongue slips softly up the length of my erection, the softness and warmth of her mouth enveloping me until my arm hairs stand on end. 

   I run my fingers through her jet black bob, clenching a handful as she begins to nod with more enthusiasm, swallowing me deep into her mouth before sliding out far enough that I think she’ll let go. She begins to build speed, lapping me up until the tip of me reaches the hot, dark back of her whisky-stained throat and then withdrawing to tongue my throbbing end as if licking a flesh popsicle. Faster and faster, deeper and deeper, she sucks and kisses and licks until my back arches and my skin quivers and my brain swims in an electrical storm that takes my breath away. I grab the hand she has rested on my chest and squeeze her tiny fingers and the pressure builds in my head and the blood rushes to my crotch and my penis throbs in her warm wet mouth and she laughs and I gasp and every muscle in my body clenches to prepare for an explosion and then… she stops. She takes me out of her mouth, and those round brown eyes blink innocently at me as he finger wipes saliva from her bottom lip, which creases into a sly grin.

   ‘Where next?’ she asks, as she stands and places her knees on the side of my bed, straddling my hips as my legs dangle over the side of the bed. I struggle to gain my breath back, my head spinning and my heart drumming in my chest, as I lift my upper body from the hard mattress and pull her to me, kissing her stomach and breasts and neck with the vigour of a shark on a blood high. She cackles and grabs my hair for balance, as I go temporarily insane with desire and throw her onto her back on the bed.

   She kicks her legs in playful resistance, as I wrestle the panties off of her pins and throw them to the floor. Her tiny feet, with matching black nail varnish and tattoos of song lyrics that mean nothing to no one, slap my shoulders and hands, keeping me away from the prize I desire, until I grab one and tongue it, shoving her big toe into my mouth as I stroke a finger up her shin to her thigh. My tongue follows closely, drawing a line from the sole of that perfect foot to her knee, that knobbly dimpled lump that she hates and I love, where I plant a kiss that brings forth another beautiful giggle, before proceeding to kiss my way up her inner thigh.

   Sigh, she sighs, as I breathe my frantic breath against her smooth leg skin and lock my fingers in hers. I kiss her clitoris softly, a peck that is over as soon as it began, and she sighs again, her legs hinting at closing before I delve my head between them once more. I kiss her again, longer this time, and harder, and she gasps. I repeat this twice more, taking my time, building the anticipation until her head lifts from my pillow and she growls with frustration, grabbing my head and pushing my face into her crotch.

   I begin to lap slowly at her clitoris, licking her up and down, as I slip a finger into her hot, wet hole and massage slowly inside of her. I draw circles with my tongue and my hand simultaneously, one way and then the other, clockwise and then anticlockwise, until her breathing reaches a pace that tells me that she’s ready for the speed to be built up. My left hand creeps up the smooth skin of her thigh and tummy until it meets her hand that rests there, which I grab and hold tightly; and my right hand works another finger into her, pushing in and out gently to the rhythm of her fast-beating heart. My tongue does its own dance, drawing the letters of the alphabet and the numbers from one to nine and ancient hieroglyphics and whatever the fuck else I can manage on the tiny pink face of her clit. Faster and faster I lap, suck and gently gnaw at her until she writhes on her back like one electrocuted and her fingers squeeze the blood out of my left hand. As her other hand pushes my face closer and closer to her, not allowing me a moment’s air, I slip another finger in and push into her hard and fast, sucking her clitoris into my mouth and running my tongue along it in slow, long laps. Her back arches, and as I pound my aching hand into her the final few times, I feel her quiver all over, her muscles convulsing involuntarily, as her grip on my hair relaxes and her vagina pulses intensely around my three fingers, still knuckle deep inside of her. FUCK, she screams, and her legs clamp shut, narrowly missing my grinning head.

   She lies motionless for a while, still holding my left hand, eyes still closed, breast heaving. When she does open her eyes, they meet mine immediately, and she sits up to kiss me on the mouth, with both of her dainty hands wrapped around my neck. ‘I want you inside of me,’ she says, ‘and I want it now.’ She lies back, dragging me with her by my bottom lip, which is clamped between her teeth.

   We’re like scavengers that have found fresh meat. We’re insatiable as we collapse together onto the bed, she scratching lines into my back that almost draw blood and I biting her neck, her shoulders, her ear lobe, so that she gasps from the ecstasy. We fuck like sixth formers in an empty house, carefree and youthful and so full of love and lust that no amount of orgasms could ever satisfy us. I pump myself into her from on top as her left leg sits on my shoulder and her right sits at my side. She smokes a cigarette which she puts out on my chest as she sits on top of me, massaging her breasts and crying out for God to help her. I lick beads of sweat from between her soft round breasts while I push myself into her as far as I can and kneed her buttocks in my hands. From behind, I pound her so hard that she clutches onto the headboard for stability and can’t utter a sentence from her clumsy cumming tongue. She lies down flat on her front, and I straddle her, entering her from behind and pushing as far into her as I can while pulling her hair just as much as she likes. Then, we do it all over again.

   Finally, after all of the breathlessness and the sweating and the cigarettes and the fucking and the pouring whiskey onto each others’ searing skin and the fuck me harder, fuck me harder, I want to feel you fuck me harder, I reach a blissful, serene orgasm that silences the entire world. Troubles, issues, debt, duty, sin and evil crumble away to leave me in a heaven of my own creation, as Erica lies there underneath my exhausted body, panting and giggling and asking me what has happened to me tonight. We kiss, we embrace, and everything that was ever bad about life disappears as I lie there with my one true love.

   And then I wake up.

   I wake up in a new town, in a new city, in a new country, with only the cigarette burn scar on my chest to prove that that dream was ever a reality. 

   I know how the dream would end if it played on. It would end with me begging her to reconsider her life choices to accommodate a life spent by my side. I’d tell her we could find a way to pay off whoever was running her. I’d tell her we could run away, start a new life, and she’d never have to do any of this to anyone else again. I’d say all these things, and she’d just smile at me as she redressed and took money from my wallet, before purring, ‘I’m leaving the country tomorrow. If you can find me again, I’ll marry you, Boy Genius,’ and walking out of my life forever. 

   That’s why I wake alone. That’s why I’m constantly on the move. That’s why no one else will ever do. 

   Because I am forever searching for Erica.