Chapter 10: Greg's friends leer as Josh stumbles in heels toward the restroom, his humiliation complete when Greg shoves his face against the cracked mirror and fucks him raw with the stall door wide open.
The dress was cheap black polyester, scratchy and too short. The heels were a size too big, clattering awkwardly on the linoleum of Barry’s apartment. Josh stood, swaying slightly, as Greg zipped up the back.
“Look at that,” Greg breathed, his hands lingering on Josh’s hips. “Fucking perfect.” He spun Josh around to face a cracked full-length mirror leaning against the wall. The reflection was a grotesque parody. The dress clung to his slender frame, the neckline dipping to reveal the flat plane of his chest. The hem ended high on his thighs. His legs, pale and lean, seemed absurdly exposed. Greg had smeared some garish lipstick on his mouth.
“Meet Jessica,” Greg said, his grin wide and cruel in the mirror behind Josh’s shoulder. “My girlfriend.”
Barry leaned in the doorway, phone already in hand. “Smile for the camera, Jessica. Let’s get a shot for the memories.”
Josh didn’t smile. The cold core inside him had grown, encasing everything. He was a doll. A thing. This was just another costume.
The dive bar was a cavern of noise and dim, reddish light. The air was thick with the smell of spilled beer, cheap perfume, and cigarette smoke that had seeped into the walls decades ago. Bass from a jukebox vibrated in the sticky floor. Greg’s hand was a vise on Josh’s wrist, pulling him through the crowd to a corner booth where three other men sat. They were variations on a theme: mid-thirties, resentful eyes, ill-fitting clothes.
“Guys, this is Jessica,” Greg announced, shoving Josh into the booth beside a thin man with a sallow complexion. “Jess, these are my friends.”
Josh kept his eyes on the scarred tabletop. He could feel their stares, like insects crawling over his skin.
“No fucking way,” the sallow man said, leaning closer. “You finally did it?”
“Told you I had a girl,” Greg said, sliding in beside Josh, his thigh pressing insistently against Josh’s. His hand landed high on Josh’s leg, under the table, fingers digging in. “She’s a little shy. But she’s a real sweetheart when you get to know her.”
One of the others, balding with a thick neck, let out a low whistle. “She’s gorgeous, Greg. How’d you manage it?”
“Confidence, Mike. Just pure confidence,” Greg said, puffing his chest out. He waved a waitress over. “Get my girl a cosmopolitan. She likes the pink shit.”
The drink arrived, violently pink with a limp orange wedge. Greg pushed it toward Josh. “Drink up, baby. Let loose.”
Josh picked up the cold glass. The sweet, cloying taste was nauseating. He sipped, because not drinking would draw more attention. The conversation around him was a barrage of grievances—women who wouldn’t give them a chance, bosses who were idiots, the unfairness of the world. They talked about Josh as if he weren’t there.
“She’s quiet,” Mike observed.
“She’s well-trained,” Greg chuckled, his hand moving higher on Josh’s thigh, his fingertips brushing the hem of the dress. Josh stiffened. “Ain’t that right, sweetheart? You know how to behave.”
The sallow man, Rick, peered at Josh. “She’s got really sharp features. Almost like a…”
“Like a model,” Greg cut in sharply, his fingers pinching the soft skin of Josh’s inner thigh. A warning. “High fashion, right babe?”
An hour passed. The pink drink was gone, replaced by a beer Josh didn’t want. Greg’s friends were drunk, their voices louder, their looks more lingering. Greg’s hand hadn’t left his leg. It was a brand, a claim.
“Gotta hit the head,” Greg said suddenly, standing up. He yanked Josh to his feet. “Come on, Jess. Freshen up.”
The hallway to the restrooms was narrow and darker than the bar, the music muffled. The smell of disinfectant failed to mask the underlying stench of piss and vomit. Greg pushed open the door to the men’s room. It was a single stall, a cracked urinal, a dirty sink with a broken soap dispenser. Graffiti covered the walls.
Greg locked the door behind them. The click was final.
“Okay, Jessica,” Greg said, his drunken affability gone, replaced by a familiar, hungry aggression. “Showtime.” He pushed Josh toward the sink. The porcelain was cold and damp against his palms. The cracked mirror showed his fragmented reflection: smeared lips, wide, empty eyes.
Greg crowded behind him, his breath hot and beery on Josh’s neck. “They’re out there thinking I’m a god,” he whispered, one hand bunching up the cheap fabric of the dress, yanking it upwards. The cool, foul air of the bathroom hit Josh’s bare skin. “They think I scored this hot little bitch. Let’s show them what a slut you really are.”
His other hand fumbled with his belt and zipper. Josh stared at a scratch in the porcelain. He focused on it. A tiny, grey crater.
Greg didn’t bother with pretense or lube. He spat into his hand, a wet, crude sound, and slicked himself. He was already hard, pushing insistently against Josh. The dress was hiked around Josh’s waist, the heels making his stance unstable.
“This cunt’s still loose from the other night,” Greg grunted, lining himself up. “But we’ll fix that.”
He shoved forward. The intrusion was a brutal, tearing familiarity. Josh’s head snapped up, his eyes meeting his own shattered gaze in the mirror. A strangled gasp escaped his lips, fogging the glass. Greg was thicker than Barry, and the dry, savage thrusts burned.
“Yeah, that’s it,” Greg moaned, his hands gripping Josh’s hips hard enough to bruise. He set a punishing rhythm, his pelvis slamming against Josh’s sore flesh. Each impact jarred Josh’s teeth, rattled the sink. “Look at yourself. Look at that slut in the mirror. That’s you, Jessica. My fucking whore.”
The pain was a white-hot wire, centering him in the humiliation. Greg’s grunts were animalistic, loud in the tiny room. The sounds of their bodies meeting were wet, flesh slapping against flesh.
“You love this, don’t you?” Greg panted, his face twisted in the mirror, a mask of sweaty triumph. “You love having a real man’s cock in your little pussy. Tell me you love it.”
Josh’s vision blurred. The graffiti on the wall swam. He saw the words “EAT SHIT” scrawled next to a phone number. The sink smelled of stale water and metal.
“Say it!” Greg growled, and he reached around, his rough hand grabbing Josh between the legs, squeezing cruelly.
“I love it,” Josh whispered to the crack in the mirror.
“Louder!”
“I love it!” The words tore from his throat, raw and loud.
Greg fucked him harder, faster, driven by the declaration. His movements became jerky, frantic. “Gonna fill you up, you bitch. Gonna mark you.” He was babbling now, lost in his own cruel fantasy. “My friends are gonna know. They’re gonna know I fucked this perfect ass right here in this shithole.”
With a final, shuddering roar, he climaxed, his body locking against Josh’s as he pulsed inside him. He stayed there for a long moment, slumped over Josh’s back, his weight oppressive. Then he pulled out, staggering back a step.
Josh slumped against the sink, his arms trembling. A hot trickle traced the inside of his thigh. The dress was still hiked up, ruined. He stared at the smeared lipstick on his reflection.
Greg zipped himself up, adjusted his shirt. He looked at Josh in the mirror, a satisfied smirk on his face. He ran a hand through Josh’s hair, a mockery of tenderness. “You did good, Jess.” He leaned close, his mouth next to Josh’s ear. “Now fix your face. We’re going back out there. You’re gonna sit on my lap and smile. And you’re gonna make them all so fucking jealous.”
He unlocked the door and left, the noise of the bar flooding back in. Josh was alone with the stink and the fractured reflection of a boy in a cheap black dress, a boy who was disappearing, piece by piece, into the cracks of the porcelain. He reached a shaking hand for a brown paper towel. It disintegrated in his grip. He was still holding the damp, crumbling pieces when Greg’s voice boomed from the hallway.
“Jessica! Let’s go!”
He smoothed the dress down. He wiped at the smeared lipstick, only making it worse. Then he turned from the mirror and walked, unsteady in the too-big heels, back toward the noise and the light and the men who thought Greg was a god.
The walk back to the booth was a slow-motion nightmare through syrup. Every clack of the heel on the sticky floor echoed the throbbing between his legs. The cheap polyester scraped against oversensitive skin. He could feel the warm, tacky leak of Greg’s come tracing a path down his inner thigh.
Greg was already holding court, arm slung over the back of the booth, a conqueror’s grin on his face. “There’s my girl! What took you, baby? Primping?”
Josh slid wordlessly into the space Greg made, the cold vinyl sticking to his bare thighs where the dress had ridden up. Mike, the balding friend, leered. “Everything okay, Jessica? You look a little… flushed.”
“She’s fine,” Greg answered, his hand possessively clamping onto Josh’s knee. “Just had to show her who’s boss. Right, sweetheart?” His fingers began a slow, creeping ascent up Josh’s thigh, under the hem of the dress. Josh’s muscles locked. He stared at a water ring on the table, his mind blank, a white noise filling his ears.
The conversation droned on, a buzz of resentment and boasting. Greg’s hand moved higher, a rough, warm weight. Josh kept his breathing shallow, his eyes unfocused. He was a shell. A vase holding something foul.
Rick, the sallow one, squinted. “Seriously, Greg. She hasn’t said a word all night. What’s her deal?”
“She’s submissive,” Greg said, his voice dripping with mock solemnity. “A real traditional girl. Aren’t you?” His fingers, now high on Josh’s thigh, brushed against the soaked, tender flesh between his legs. Josh flinched. It was a minute, involuntary spasm.
Greg felt it. He smiled, a slow, ugly curl of his lips. His eyes remained on Rick. “See? Sensitive.” His fingers pressed inward, finding the slick, violated heat. Josh’s spine went rigid. He could feel the rough pad of Greg’s index finger circling, then probing, not for pleasure but for proof.
“Fuck, she’s soaked,” Greg murmured, more to himself than anyone. He worked a single finger inside, a brutal, claiming intrusion right there at the table. Josh’s knuckles were white on the edge of the seat. He locked his jaw, staring at a neon beer sign across the bar until the red blurry rings burned into his vision. Greg’s finger slid in to the knuckle, a grotesque violation masked by the table and the dim light.
Greg withdrew his hand slowly, deliberately. He brought it up onto the tabletop, under the pretence of reaching for his beer. There, in the murky light, his index finger gleamed, slick and streaked with white. He held it up, not hiding it, turning it so the viscous fluid caught the gloom.
“See that, Rick?” Greg said, his voice a low, triumphant rumble. He held his finger close to Rick’s face. “That’s what a real man does. That’s my mark. She’s carrying my load right now, at this table, while you sit there doubting me.”
Rick’s eyes widened, a mix of revulsion and twisted awe. He blinked, then a slow, complicit smile spread across his features. “No shit.”
“No shit,” Greg echoed, bringing his finger to his own mouth and sucking it clean with a loud, obscene pop. He wiped his hand on his jeans. “Now apologize to Jessica for giving her boyfriend a hard time.”
Rick chuckled, shaking his head. “Sorry, Jessica.”
Josh felt the world narrow to a single, piercing point of light—the exit sign over the bar’s front door. It was a green, impossible beacon a million miles away. The cold core inside him fissured, not with feeling, but with a crystalline, absolute understanding. This was the air he would breathe now. This was the texture of his life. The record button on Barry’s phone, the sting of a belt, the taste of lipstick, the cum on a stranger’s finger in a dirty bar—these were the facts of him.
Greg’s laughter boomed in his ear, a sound of pure, uncomplicated victory. Josh sat perfectly still, a beautiful, broken doll in a cheap black dress, feeling the slow, cold drip of his own ruination seeping into the vinyl booth beneath him. The noise of the bar swelled, a wave about to crash, and he prepared to go under.
Rick leaned closer, his pupils wide in the low light. He stared at the empty space on the table where Greg’s slick finger had been, then his gaze darted to Josh’s unnaturally still face. “Greg, man,” he said, his voice dropping to a confidential rasp. “That was… fucking impressive. Seriously.” He took a gulp of his beer, his throat working. “Could I… I mean, could I watch you do that? To her? I just want to see it up close. Watch you finger her.”
Greg’s grin was slow, predatory. He looked from Rick’s eager, sallow face to Josh, who had stopped breathing. “You want a show, Ricky? You want to see how a real man operates his property?”
“Yeah,” Rick breathed. “Fuck yeah.”
“Okay, baby,” Greg said, patting Josh’s leg like he was a dog. “Slide down. Under the table.” The command was casual, delivered with the same tone someone might use to ask for a spare napkin. Josh’s mind, which had retreated to that cold, blank place, stalled. The physicality of the command—the cramped, filthy space under a bar table—jarred something loose. A spike of raw, unprocessed horror lanced through the numbness.
“Now, Jessica,” Greg said, and his fingers dug into the tender joint of Josh’s jaw, forcing his head to turn and meet his eyes. There was no playfulness left, only a flat expectation of obedience. “Unless you want to explain a black eye to your nice, new boss on Monday.”
That threat, the one that connected this hell to the sterile world of his job, was the final cog that locked the mechanism into place. Josh’s body moved, detached from his conscious will. He slid down from the booth seat, the grimy floor tiles biting into his knees through his thin socks. He crawled the short distance into the black cavern beneath the table.
The space was a tomb of gum and spilled liquor. The tablecloth, a sticky vinyl flap, was lowered, plunging him into near-darkness pierced only by faint slivers of light from the booth’s seam. The smell was concentrated here: decades of spilled beer, mildew, and now, his own stale sweat and the sharp, biological scent of sex on his skin. Greg and Rick’s knees boxed him in on two sides.
Greg’s massive hand came down, fumbling in the dark. It grabbed a fistful of the cheap black dress and yanked it upward, bunching it around Josh’s waist. The cool, foul air hit his exposed ass and thighs. Greg’s other hand pushed at his shoulder, forcing his upper body down until his forehead pressed against the cold, sticky floor. He was on his knees, ass in the air, face in the dirt.
“Lift the flap a little, Rick,” Greg instructed, his voice a low rumble above him. “Get a good angle.”
A sliver of dim bar light cut across Josh’s exposed hips and thighs. He could see Rick’s distorted face, upside down and peering in, a silhouette of frantic curiosity. Greg spat into his hand again. The sound was obscenely loud in the cramped dark. He didn’t slick his fingers this time. He rubbed the wet mess directly over Josh’s hole, rough and perfunctory.
“See how open she is,” Greg narrated, his voice a twisted tour guide. He pushed his thumb against the tight ring of muscle. It yielded sorely from earlier, but not easily. “Still tight, though. Needs to be worked.”
He pushed his thumb inside, a brutal, dry intrusion. Josh gasped into the floor, the sound muffled by the din of the bar. The pain was a bright, specific flare. Greg worked his thumb in a crude circle, stretching him. Rick was breathing heavily, just a few inches away, watching.
“Gets so sloppy when she’s properly fucked first,” Greg continued, withdrawing his thumb. He lined up two fingers. “Watch this.”
He pushed them in together. The stretch was immediate and breathtaking, a burning ache that made Josh’s vision spark white behind his closed eyelids. He bit his own lip to keep from crying out. Greg’s fingers were thick, unyielding. He scissored them open inside him, a ruthless, stretching motion.
“Fuck,” Rick whispered, his voice full of awe. “You can really see it stretching.”
Greg pumped his fingers slowly, then faster, a cruel, rhythmic invasion. The wet sounds were muffled by the table but audible in their intimate cage. Josh could feel every ridge of Greg’s fingerprints, every push and withdrawal. His own body, traitorously, was slick now from Greg’s earlier come and the crude spit, making the slide easier, louder.
“She’s taking it so good,” Greg grunted, fucking him with his hand. He curled his fingers, searching, and pressed hard against a spot that sent a jolt of unexpected, unwanted sensation through Josh’s core. A choked sound escaped him, halfway between a sob and a moan.
“Hear that?” Greg said to Rick, pausing his rhythm to press that spot again, deliberately. Josh shuddered, his body involuntarily clenching around the invading digits. “Even a frigid bitch’s body knows what it needs. This cunt is greedy.”
He resumed, his thrusts becoming harder, more focused on that internal point. The dual assault—the sharp stretch and the deep, grinding pressure—created a confusing feedback loop of pain and a sickening, physical response Josh could not control. He was panting now, small, ragged breaths against the filthy floor. Sweat dripped from his temples.
“You wanna try, Rick?” Greg offered. “Just for a second. See what it feels like.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”
Greg’s fingers withdrew with a slick, sucking pop. The sudden emptiness was almost as shocking as the invasion. A new hand, smaller and bonier, touched him. Rick’s fingers were tentative at first, probing, then more confident. He pushed one finger in, then a second, imitating Greg’s motions. His breathing was ragged, excited.
“Fucking hell,” Rick breathed. “It’s so hot inside. And tight. Jesus.”
He fingered Josh for a few more seconds, a clumsy, frantic mimicry of ownership. Then he pulled out. “Okay,” he said, his voice shaky. “Okay, I saw. I felt it.”
Greg chuckled. He didn’t re-enter Josh. Instead, he smoothed the dress down roughly. “Okay, baby. Show’s over. Up you get.”
Josh crawled out from under the table. His legs trembled violently as he tried to stand. Greg grabbed his arm and hauled him up the rest of the way, depositing him back into the booth. Josh’s face was pale, slick with sweat from the stifling darkness. He could feel a fresh, warm trickle of mingled fluids making its way down his thigh.
Rick wouldn’t look at him now. He stared into his beer, a faint blush of shame or excitement high on his cheekbones. Greg slapped the table, triumphant. “Another round! My girl needs a drink after her performance.”
The noise of the bar, which had faded to a distant roar during the violation, crashed back over Josh with the force of a physical blow. He sat amidst the laughter and the clinking glasses, the green exit sign still glowing in the distance. But the path to it was no longer a straight line. It was a labyrinth he could not see the end of, its walls built from the weight of Greg’s hand, the rasp of Rick’s breath, and the slick, shameful evidence cooling on his skin. Every molecule of air felt thick with the memory of those probing fingers. His body was no longer a vessel; it was a crime scene, and they were all witnesses.