Chapter 7: The Bathroom Breakdown
The gas station bathroom door stuck, then gave with a metallic shriek. Morgan shoved it closed behind her, fumbling the cheap lock until it engaged with a solid click. Silence, then the hum of a dying fluorescent tube overhead.
The light was a sickly greenish-white, buzzing and flickering, making the shadows jump. It fell on cracked linoleum tiles, stained with unknown fluids, and walls of chipped yellow paint. The air was a thick cocktail of pine-scented disinfectant that didn’t mask the underlying reek of piss and vomit. A single sink, rust bleeding from its fixtures, stood below a mirror segmented by a lightning bolt fracture.
She approached it slowly, her shoes sticky on the floor.
The woman in the mirror was a stranger. Her long blonde hair was a tangled mess, matted in places with what she knew was drying semen. Her mascara was a black tragedy smeared down her cheeks, giving her the look of a weeping clown. Her lips were puffy, the lower one split and crusted with a tiny scab. A faint bruise was blossoming on her jaw where a hand had gripped her too tightly.
But it was the eyes that held her. Her own striking green eyes, now flat and depthless. They weren’t windows to anything anymore; they were just wet, reflective surfaces, like tarnished glass. The inner turmoil had calcified into a blank, cold staring. She watched the stranger watch her.
A slow, cold trickle down her inner thigh broke the spell.
She looked down. A rivulet of milky-white fluid, streaked with pink, traced a path from under her skirt onto her skin. It was already drying, itching. The physical evidence of it, leaking out of her, was a violation that continued without them. It was an endless, passive defilement.
She needed to stop it.
With mechanical movements, she grabbed a thick wad of coarse, brown paper towels from the dispenser. They felt like sandpaper. She didn’t look as she hiked her skirt, hooked her thumbs into the waistband of her ruined panties, and pulled them down. They were soaked through, a soggy, stained rag. She let them fall to the floor. The sight of her own cunt in the mirror, puffy and abused, made her stomach clench. It glistened, an open, used thing.
She folded the paper towels into a thick, crude pad and stuffed it into her labia, wedging it tight against her entrance. The dry, abrasive material scraped against her raw flesh, a fresh pain that was almost a relief. It was a feeling she commanded. She pulled her skirt back down. A temporary, pathetic dam.
Turning to the sink, she cranked the handle. The water came out in a rusty cough, then a thin, cold stream. She cupped her hands under it, splashing her face. The water was icy, shocking. She scrubbed at the mascara with her fingers, grinding the heels of her palms into her eye sockets until she saw stars. The dirt came off in grayish streaks.
She needed soap. A cracked pink dispenser on the wall offered a gelatinous, clear liquid. She pumped a large dollop into her palm. It smelled aggressively chemical, like false flowers and industrial cleaner. Punishment in a bottle.
She unbuttoned her top, letting it hang open. Her breasts, pale and heavy, were marked. A faint purple love bite on one nipple. Dried, salty trails of saliva from where Carl had spat on her. She wet more paper towels, lathered them with the harsh soap, and began to scrub.
The friction was brutal. She scoured her skin, over her breasts, across her collarbones, down her stomach. She rubbed until the skin flushed an angry red, as if she could peel away the memory of their hands, their mouths, their filth. The soap stung the split in her lip. She didn’t stop. The smell of the disinfectant-soap filled her nostrils, replacing, for a moment, the musk of sex and sweat that seemed baked into her sinuses.
She was scrubbing her inner thigh when a noise outside made her freeze. The grinding whine of a large truck’s air brakes. Voices, muffled, male. Laughter.
Her heart, which had been a sluggish, cold thing in her chest, gave a single, hard thump. Her eyes snapped to the locked door. The paper towel in her cunt felt suddenly absurd, a child’s attempt to hold back an ocean.
The voices passed. A car door slammed. An engine rumbled to life and faded away.
Silence rushed back in, louder than before.
She looked back at the mirror. Cleaner, now. The smudges were gone. But the redness from her scrubbing looked like a fresh humiliation. The hollow eyes remained. She buttoned her top with trembling fingers, not caring that the fabric was damp and clung to her.
She couldn’t stay here. But the thought of going outside, of walking under the vast, indifferent sky to a bus where people would sit next to her, unaware of what was leaking into a wad of paper inside her, was impossible.
The five-dollar bill. Ronnie’s mocking charity. It was in her pocket. She could buy something. A coffee. A way to sit in the light for a while without moving.
She left the bathroom, the door groaning behind her. The night air was colder. The gas station convenience store was a bright, overlit box. A bored-looking clerk with a zit-ravaged face glanced up from his phone, his eyes lingering on her damp top, her messy hair, for a second too long before flicking away in disinterest.
She got a cheap coffee in a foam cup, the change a few coins. She took it to a small formica table by the window and sat, her body screaming in protest at the hard plastic chair. She stared out at the pumps, at the long-haul trucks idling like sleeping beasts.
One of the trucks, a rig with a battered blue cab, had its door open. A man in a plaid shirt and baseball cap leaned against the fuel tank, smoking. He was big, with a round gut and thick forearms covered in faded tattoos. He finished his cigarette, crushed it under his boot, and ambled toward the store.
His eyes found her the moment he entered. They were small, dark, and traveled over her with a slow, appraising thoroughness that was different from the clerk’s dismissive glance. This was a conscious inventory. He bought a pack of gum and a energy drink, his gaze returning to her table every few seconds.
On his way out, he stopped. His smell reached her first: diesel fuel, sweat, and spearmint gum.
“Rough night?” he asked. His voice was a gravelly baritone.
Morgan looked up at him. She said nothing. Her silence seemed to be the answer he expected.
He nodded toward her coffee. “That’ll put hair on your chest. But it won’t fix what’s wrong.” He shifted his weight. “I’m heading north. Got a bunk in the cab. Empty. You look like you could use a place that isn’t… here.”
It wasn’t a gentle offer. It was a transaction waiting to be named. She heard the unspoken words: You’re broken goods. I’ve seen a thousand like you. I can use you for a few hours.
She thought of the bus, of her empty apartment, of Mark’s voicemail likely waiting on her silent phone. She thought of the video Carl had on his. The threat was a leash around her neck, held by men who could be anywhere. What did one more man matter? In the cab of a truck, she would be moving. The leaking inside her would be someone else’s problem to fuck into.
She stood up, abandoning the full coffee cup. “Okay,” she said, her voice a rasp.
A faint smile touched his lips. No surprise. “Name’s Roy,” he said, not offering a hand.
He led her to his truck. The cab was up a steep set of metal steps. It was a world of its own: cluttered, lived-in, smelling of old fast food and Roy. The passenger seat was piled with logbooks and empty bottles. He swept them into the floor with a forearm. “Make yourself at home.”
He climbed into the driver’s seat, fired up the engine. A deep, rumbling vibration filled the space. He pulled onto the highway, the gas station lights shrinking behind them.
They drove in silence for twenty minutes, the white lines of the highway hypnotic. Then, without looking at her, Roy spoke. “So. We got a few hundred miles ahead of us. What’s your fare?”
She looked out at the darkness. “What do you want?”
“A mouth’s a mouth,” he said casually, one big hand dropping to his crotch, giving himself a slow squeeze through his jeans. “And you look like you know how to use yours. Been used plenty tonight, huh?”
Her confirmation was silence.
“Alright then,” he said. “Unzip me.”
She leaned over, the seatbelt cutting into her shoulder. The denim of his jeans was rough. She found the metal tab of his zipper and pulled it down. The sound was loud in the cab. He didn’t help, just kept his hands on the wheel, eyes on the road.
She reached in, through the flap of his boxers. His cock was already half-hard, thick and uncut. It warmed in her hand as she pulled it out. It lay against his thigh, heavy.
“Get it wet,” he commanded.
She bent further, her hair falling around her face. She took the head into her mouth. The taste was salty skin, stale musk. She worked her tongue around the foreskin, coating him with saliva. Her jaw ached instantly, a deep, familiar protest.
“That’s it,” Roy grunted. He adjusted his seat, leaning back slightly. “Now get to work. And don’t fucking teeth me.”
She began to bob her head, establishing a rhythm as the truck hurtled through the night. It was purely mechanical. In, out. The head of his cock bumped the back of her throat. She didn’t gag. That reflex had been fucked out of her hours ago. Her mind floated somewhere near the roof of the cab, watching a blonde girl service a trucker.
Roy drove one-handed, the other coming to rest on the back of her head, not forcing, just guiding. “Yeah, you know the drill,” he muttered. “Just a needy little cocksucker. Bet your pussy’s just as used up.”
His words washed over her. They were just sounds. The reality was the sliding pressure on her tongue, the ache in her neck, the vibration of the road coming up through the floor. He grew harder, thicker, his breathing becoming more ragged.
“Gonna come in that pretty mouth,” he announced, his fingers tangling tighter in her hair. “You swallow it. Every drop. That’s the fare.”
She didn’t change her pace. Her eyes were open, staring at the dark fabric of his jeans. She thought of the paper towel, still stuffed inside her, probably disintegrating into a pulpy mess.
Roy’s hips bucked up off the seat. A hot, bitter pulse flooded her mouth. He held her down, grunting, as he emptied himself in several long, rhythmic spurts. She swallowed automatically, the act as meaningless as breathing.
When he was done, he sighed, a sound of profound satisfaction. He pulled his softening cock from her lips with a slick sound. She sat back up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, staring straight ahead at the road disappearing under