Chapter 4: Perk
His fingers were still hovering over the keyboard, the words ‘join it’ burning a hole in the screen, when a new email alert chimed. The sender was the same scrambled address. The subject line: ‘Context.’ Attached was a single video file, labeled ‘MG_CR1_Archival.mov’. The message body was brief. ‘This was taken not long after I started. One of the perks of the job, I guess.’
Dave stared at the notification. His heart was a trapped bird slamming against his ribs. Perks of the job. The husband, the security guy, was sending him a video of his own wife from a decade ago. Dave felt nauseous. He also couldn’t look away.
He opened the file. The quality was grainier, the colors slightly washed out. The timestamp in the corner read a date nearly ten years prior. It showed a small, cluttered copy room. Machines hummed. A younger Melissa Gelhman stood at a printer, her back to the camera, dressed in a fitted business skirt and a pale blouse. Her hair was a shade brighter blonde. She was pulling a stack of papers from the tray when the door opened.
A man walked in. His face was digitally blurred in the archive footage, a smudge of pixels. He leaned against the doorframe, his arms crossed.
“Hey, Mel,” he said. His voice, even through the old speakers, had a different timbre. Less weary. Almost playful.
Melissa turned, a professional smile already on her lips. It faltered slightly. " What are you doing here? You can’t be back here.”
He held up a lanyard, letting the ID badge swing. “I work here now. Started in Security last week.”
“Security?” Her brow furrowed. “You didn’t tell me.”
“Wanted it to be a surprise.” He pushed the door shut with his foot. The latch clicked, a definitive sound in the small room.
The air in the copy room seemed to change on the screen, growing thicker. Melissa’s posture stiffened. “I’m busy. I have a meeting in ten.”
“This’ll only take five.” He took a step toward her. The playful tone was gone, replaced by something harder, more direct. “I was reviewing the new hire onboarding videos. Yours came up. The one where you talk about ‘professional boundaries.’ You’re very convincing.”
Melissa said nothing. She watched him, her hand still resting on the warm printer.
He moved closer, now standing just behind her. He spoke into her ear, his voice low. “It got me thinking. About all the things you’re so professional about here. The things you do here that you’d never do at home.”
She remained perfectly still. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t you?” His hand came up and rested on her hip. She didn’t pull away. “Like how you’ve always said no to anal. At home, it’s a hard limit. A never. But here…” He let the word hang. “I’ve seen the logs, Melissa. The incident reports are very detailed. I know what you do in the conference rooms after hours.”
A tremor went through her. Dave, watching, felt his own stomach clench. He saw the moment her resistance dissolved. It wasn’t a dramatic collapse; it was a subtle yielding, a slow exhale that softened her spine. The professional mask didn’t crack—it transformed. A different kind of focus settled over her features.
“You looked at the logs?” Her voice was quiet, almost indistinct.
“It’s my job now.” His other hand came up, both now gripping her hips. “So I’m asking. Here. Now. On company time.”
For a long second, she was silent. Then, she gave a single, small nod. “Okay.”
Just that one word. Okay.
Melissa turned within the circle of his arms, her professional composure now fully submerged beneath something older and more transactional. Her eyes were bright, but her mouth was a flat, determined line. “We don’t have any lube in here,” she stated, her voice pragmatic, as if discussing a missing stapler.
He shrugged, a crude grin evident in the set of his shoulders. “Figure it out.”
Her hands went to his belt buckle, the metal click sharp in the humming room. She didn’t speak as she freed him, his cock already stiff and jutting. She looked at it, then up at his blurred face, a cool assessment in her gaze. “This’ll help,” she said, her tone utterly devoid of eroticism. It was a procedural announcement.
She knelt on the hard copy room floor, the linoleum cold against her knees, and took him into her mouth without ceremony. There was no teasing build-up, no playful seduction. She worked him with a brisk, practiced efficiency, her head bobbing in a steady rhythm. Her lips stretched tight around his girth, her tongue pressing flat along the underside of his shaft. The only sounds were the wet, sucking pulls of her mouth and the low grunt from the man as he tangled a hand in her blonde hair.
She controlled the pace, her focus clinical. After a minute, she pulled back, a thick string of saliva connecting her lips to his slick, shining cock. “There,” she panted, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “That should work.”
He didn’t wait. He spun her around, bending her over the warm glass of the photocopier. Her cheek pressed against the machine’s surface, her fingers scrambling for purchase on its smooth sides. He shoved her skirt up around her waist, the fabric bunching, and yanked her lace panties down to her thighs. He spat once into his palm, smeared it over his saliva-slick length, and positioned the blunt head against her.
“You sure about this, Mel?” His voice was a taunt, ragged with anticipation.
“Just do it,” she muttered into the glass, her eyes squeezed shut.He pushed. There was a brutal, unforgiving resistance. Melissa gasped, a sharp, pained sound that cracked her detached facade. Her body stiffened, her knuckles white on the copier. He ground forward, an inexorable, invading pressure, not stopping until he was fully seated inside that impossibly tight channel. She let out a choked sob, her breath fogging the glass beneath her cheek.
“Fuck,” he groaned, his hands gripping her hips hard enough to bruise. “Fuck, that’s it. Take it.”
He began to move, short, punishing thrusts that made the copier chassis creak. Melissa’s cries were muffled, lost in the mechanical hum. Her body was rigid, a tense arc of discomfort, but she pushed back against him, meeting each drive with a weak, desperate counter-thrust of her own. The smack of skin on skin echoed off the tile walls, a rapid, vulgar metronome.
“C’mon, you can take more,” he grunted, pulling almost all the way out before slamming back in, deeper. A genuine scream tore from her throat this time, high and ragged. Her professional resolve shattered completely under the raw, splitting intrusion.
“Yes!” she shrieked, the pain twisting into something else. “Yes, god, like that!” Her earlier pain seemed to transmute, melting into a wild, sharp-edged arousal. Her hands clawed at the copier as she fucked herself back onto him with furious abandon, meeting his brutal pace with a ferocity of her own.It was over quickly. With a final, gut-deep roar, he slammed into her and held, his body shuddering. Melissa convulsed around him, a short, sharp cry escaping her as she came, her body seizing from the violent, overwhelming stimulation. He stayed buried in her for a long moment, both of them panting, spent.
He pulled out. She slumped against the machine, gasping. A slow trickle of fluid, mixed with saliva and a faint thread of blood, dripped down her inner thigh. She didn’t move to clean it. He tucked himself away, zipped up, and adjusted his badge lanyard.
“Good meeting,” he said, his voice now casually flat. He opened the door and left without looking back.
On the screen, the younger Melissa slowly righted herself. Her movements were careful, pained. She pulled her panties up, wincing as the fabric touched her, then smoothed her skirt down. She reached for the forgotten stack of papers from the printer tray. Her hands trembled slightly. She took a deep, steadying breath, the kind someone takes before stepping on stage. The pained, vulnerable mask dissolved. Her expression smoothed into a bland, composed neutrality. She walked out of the copy room, closing the door softly behind her.
The archival footage ended. The screen went black. In the silence of his own apartment, Dave realized he hadn’t breathed for the last minute.He was shaking. The cold, clinical horror of what he’d just witnessed—the transformation from pained violation to shrieking participation, and finally to that vacant, composed neutrality—left him gutted.
The cold, clinical horror of what he’d just witnessed—the transformation from pained violation to shrieking participation, and finally to that vacant, composed neutrality—left him gutted. He slumped forward, forehead pressing against the cool laptop lid. Ten years ago. That was ten years ago. Frank, the security husband, had sent him a relic of his own wife’s brutal initiation. A souvenir.
‘One of the perks of the job.’
The words swam in his vision. He understood them now. Frank hadn’t just accepted it. He hadn’t just joined it. He’d curated it. He’d preserved this moment, this violation he’d orchestrated, and kept it like a trophy. Dave’s own hidden camera felt laughable in comparison. This was archive-grade predation.
Before he could even process the thought, another email chimed. Same sender. No subject. Just a file link labeled ‘MG_CR2_Current.mov’.
His thumb hovered over the trackpad, slick with sweat. He didn’t want to click. He knew he would. The compulsion was a physical pull, a magnetic dread in his gut. He clicked.
The video opened. It was the same copy room, but updated. The machines were newer, sleeker. The lighting was the same unforgiving fluorescent glow. Melissa stood in almost the same spot, facing a modern multifunction printer. Her hair was the same bright blonde, her body still fit, though the lines on her face spoke of the intervening decade. She was holding a tablet, frowning at the screen.
The door opened. A man in a dark security uniform walked in. His face was blurred, just like in the old footage. He was taller, broader in the shoulders than the younger Frank from the archive. He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms in an eerily familiar pose.
Melissa glanced over her shoulder. Her expression shifted instantly. The professional frown melted away, replaced by a warm, knowing smile. A sparkle lit her eyes, something playful and intimate.
“Well, hello there,” she said, her voice bright. She turned fully to face him, setting the tablet down on the copier glass. “Do you want my ass again, dear?”
The casual, affectionate phrasing landed like a sucker punch to Dave’s diaphragm. ‘Dear.’ It was a term of endearment, dripping with familiarity. It wasn’t the tense, procedural negotiation from a decade before. This was a routine. A shared, comfortable ritual.
The security guard—Frank—pushed the door shut. The lock clicked. “Thought you’d never ask,” he said, his voice gruff but warm. There was no menace in his tone now, only a deep, settled knowing.
He walked up behind her, his hands coming to rest on her hips in a gesture that was both possessive and routine. She leaned back into him, her head tilting to rest against his shoulder. She brought one hand up and caressed the side of his blurred face. “Long day on the monitors?” she asked softly.
“Better now,” he murmured into her hair.
The ease of it was what sickened Dave most. There was no hesitation, no coercion, no painful negotiation. Melissa turned within his arms, her hands going to his belt buckle with a practiced swiftness. She kissed him, deep and slow, as she freed him. It was languid, affectionate. She dropped to her knees without breaking the kiss, her movements fluid and willing.
Dave watched, paralyzed, as she took him into her mouth. But this was nothing like the clinical, lubricating act from the archive. This was slow, sensual. She took her time, her eyes closed, her movements savoring. A soft, contented hum vibrated from her throat. Frank groaned, his hands gently cradling her head.
After a minute, she pulled back, smiling up at him with wet, shining lips. “Ready?” she asked, as if asking if he wanted coffee.
“Always,” he breathed.
She stood, turned, and bent smoothly over the same copier. She guided him into position with one hand, offering herself without a trace of stiffness or pain. He entered her in one smooth, slow stroke. She let out a long, shuddering sigh of pleasure, not pain. Her body accepted him completely.
“God, that’s good,” she moaned, her voice muffled against the glass.
“Yeah, it is,” he grunted, his thrusts beginning not as a punishing rhythm, but as a deep, rolling grind.
This was not a violation. This was a reunion. This was a marriage, consummated again on the copy machine. Melissa’s moans built, not into shrieks of overwhelmed sensation, but into low, voluptuous cries of genuine gratification. Her hands pressed flat on the glass, her back arched, pushing back against him with eager synergy. Their breathing fell into a shared, heavy rhythm.
Dave could only stare, his earlier nausea crystallizing into a cold, hard understanding. This was what ‘joining it’ looked like after a decade. This was the destination. The pain and the shock from the first video had been sanded down, polished smooth by ten thousand repetitions, until it shone with this perverse, comfortable glow. The pained cry had been annealed into this sigh of pleasure. The professional mask had fused with the private person, until there was no seam left.
Frank’s movements became more urgent. Melissa chanted his name, a soft, repeated prayer. “Yes, Frank, yes, right there.” The use of his name, real and unblurred in her voice, made it all horrifically concrete. This was her husband. This was their normal.
With a final, deep thrust, Frank stilled, burying himself inside her. A low groan rattled from his chest. Melissa shuddered through her own climax, a series of soft, trembling gasps. They stayed locked together for a long moment, breathing heavily.
He pulled out slowly. She stayed bent over the machine, catching her breath. He gently pulled her panties back up and smoothed down her skirt, his hands tender on her skin. He kissed her bare shoulder.
“Love you, Mel,” he whispered, the words barely picked up by the microphone.
“Love you too,” she sighed, straightening up. She turned and kissed him, a soft, post-coital peck on the lips. Then she picked up her tablet from the copier glass, as if retrieving a pen she’d set down. “Don’t forget, we have the Andersons for dinner at seven.”
“I’ll be home by six,” he said, adjusting his uniform. He gave her one more look, a smile in his blurred features, and left.
Melissa stood alone in the copy room. She took a compact from her purse, checked her reflection, and smoothed a strand of hair. Her expression was calm, satisfied, utterly unremarkable. She walked out, turning off the light as she went.
The screen went black. Dave sat in the overwhelming silence of his own apartment, the hum of his refrigerator suddenly deafening. The two videos played side-by-side in his mind: the brutal genesis and the comfortable, loving present. This was the arc. This was the system’s perfect result.
A new message appeared in the chat box, the three dots pulsing slowly, as if Frank could sense his watching was done.
‘See the difference?’ the message finally read. ‘Time does things. It smooths the edges. It makes everything fit.’
Dave’s hands were numb. He looked at the silver-framed photo of Katherine laughing on a picnic. He thought of her coming home ‘happy’ and ‘sated.’ He thought of her falling into that deep, contented sleep. The edges of his own life felt suddenly, violently sharp. Unsmoothed. They were cutting him to pieces.
He typed a single, trembling sentence into the reply box.
‘How does it start?’