Chapter 1: The Milking Table Setup
The lamp on Martha’s dresser flickered, casting long, nervous shadows across the half-unpacked poster of a sun-drenched beach still taped to her wall. The air in her childhood bedroom smelled different now—like the cheap cologne she’d sprayed to mask the scent of home, and something sharper, oiled and leathery, from the thing currently dominating the center of the floor.
“It’s… lopsided,” Chloe whispered, hovering near the door like she might still bolt.
Martha stepped back, squinting at their creation. Two massage benches, scavenged from a closing gym supply store, were pushed together. A jagged, head-sized hole had been cut through the center of each, then covered with a borrowed black leather jacket, the sleeves roughly stapled underneath for padding. It looked like a bizarre, low-budget surgical table.
“It’s not lopsided. Your perspective is off. Come stand here.” Martha grabbed Chloe’s wrist, pulling her to the foot of the benches. “See? Symmetry.”
“It looks like a torture device from a garage sale.”
“It’s a surprise,” Martha corrected, her copper-red hair catching the dim light as she bent to adjust a pillow. “A sexy, mind-blowing surprise. Jake’s always going on about how predictable everything is. Well, surprise! We built a milking table in my old bedroom.”
Chloe wrapped her arms around herself. Her long blonde hair was pulled into a nervous, perfect ponytail. “The tutorial made it look smoother.”
“The tutorial was probably made by a carpenter with a fetish. We’re working with a handsaw and sheer will, Chlo. It has character.” Martha ran her fingers along the leather-covered rim of the hole. Her heart was doing a frantic tap-dance against her ribs. This was it. The big leap from watching blurred videos on her laptop to… making the blurry thing real.
She’d spent three nights researching. The mechanics. The psychology. The right oil—she held up the bottle now, clear and slick. “Warming massage oil. Unscented. Very important. We don’t want them thinking of a spa day. We want them thinking of… this.”
Chloe took the bottle, her green eyes wide. “How do you even know this stuff?”
“The internet is a vast and educational place.” Martha’s grin was all mischief, but it wavered for a second. “Do you think they’ll hate it?”
“Tom won’t hate it,” Chloe said quickly, blushing. “He’ll be… shocked. But he’s always saying I’m too in my head. This is definitely not in my head. This is very, very outside my head.”
“Exactly!” Martha’s confidence rushed back. “We’re the cool girlfriends. The adventurous ones. We’re not just… basic.” She said the word like a curse. Basic was her greatest fear—a life of predictable kisses, boring dates, a future that unfolded like a grocery list. This table, with its rough edges and ridiculous premise, was her declaration of war on basic.
She flopped onto the edge of her bed, the springs groaning in familiar protest. “Okay. Run through it with me. One more time.”
Chloe sat beside her, the bottle of oil clutched in her hands. “They ring the doorbell. We act normal. We tell them we’ve been learning massage techniques online. For, like, stress relief.”
“Right. Very wholesome. Very ‘we care about your wellbeing.’ We lead them in here. The room is dark, just the lamp and maybe some candles if we don’t set the house on fire.”
“We have them undress to their boxers and lie face down on the benches. Heads through the holes.” Chloe’s voice grew steadier, rehearsed. “We drape sheets over their backs so it feels professional. We start with a real back rub. To relax them.”
“Then,” Martha continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, “after a few minutes, we let our hands wander. Slowly. We use the oil. And then… well, the table does what the table is for.”
A heavy silence followed, broken only by the hum of the old lamp. The image was suddenly, intensely vivid in Martha’s mind. The feel of Jake’s skin under her hands, the utter shock and hopefully thrilling disbelief. Her face felt hot.
“What if they laugh?” Chloe’s question was small.
“Then we laugh harder,” Martha said, but the doubt was a cold seed in her gut. “If they’re jerks about it, we’ll know. And we’ll have learned something important about them.” She nudged Chloe. “But they won’t laugh. They’ll be speechless. They’ll be worshipping us.”
The doorbell rang.
The sound was electric, jolting them both off the bed. They stared at each other. All the bravado evaporated, leaving behind two eighteen-year-olds in a room that suddenly seemed far too small, containing a far too insane object.
“Oh, god,” Chloe breathed.
“Okay. Okayokayokay.” Martha smoothed her shirt, took a deep breath that did nothing. “Massage students. Wholesome. Stress relief.”
Chloe nodded, her ponytail bouncing with robotic stiffness. “Wholesome. We learned it online.”
They walked out of the bedroom, closing the door softly on the flickering shadows and the waiting table. As they moved down the hall, Martha linked her arm through Chloe’s. She could feel her friend trembling.
“Hey,” Martha whispered, just before they reached the front door. “No matter what happens in there… we did this. We built the weird thing. That’s something, right?”
Chloe managed a tight, genuine smile. “It’s definitely something.”
Martha turned the knob, opening the door to the familiar, grinning faces of Jake and Tom on the porch, their breaths making little clouds in the cool evening air. Normalcy. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat for the performance of her life.
“Hey,” Jake said, his eyes already scanning past her, curious about the closed bedroom door. “What’s the big mystery? You said you had a surprise.”
Martha felt the words from their rehearsed script stick in her throat. She swallowed, tasted the faint, metallic tang of anticipation, and let her own mischievous grin spread across her freckled face.
“You guys look tense,” she said, her voice miraculously steady. “We’ve been learning some new massage techniques. Thought you could be our practice dummies.”
Jake’s eyebrows lifted, a slow, intrigued smile spreading across his face. Tom, standing just behind him, mirrored the expression, though his held a hint more confusion. “Massage?” Jake said, stepping inside as Martha moved back. “Since when?”
“Since the internet.” Chloe’s voice came out a bit too high. She cleared her throat. “We wanted to do something nice for you guys. You’re always so… stressed.”
Tom snorted, kicking off his shoes. “From what? Playing League for eight hours straight? I’ll take it.”
The boys followed them down the hall, their familiar presence making the air feel different. Martha was hyper-aware of the closed door at the end, the thing lurking behind it. Her palms were slick. This was either the best or worst idea she’d ever had. No middle ground.
“So, what’s with the secrecy?” Jake asked, his eyes on the back of Martha’s head. “You just need us to take our shirts off and lie down. This feels like a whole production.”
“It’s about ambiance,” Martha said, throwing a look over her shoulder. She willed her smile to be magnetic, not manic. “Proper technique requires proper atmosphere. You can’t just flop on a bed. That’s amateur.”
She stopped at the bedroom door. Her hand hesitated on the knob. For one terrifying second, her mind went blank. All the rehearsed lines vanished.
Chloe saved her. “Just… keep an open mind, okay?” she said softly to Tom, touching his arm. “It’s a work in progress.”
“Okay,” Tom said, his easy-going nature softening his curiosity. “I’m open. I’m a blank slate. Massage me.”
Martha pushed the door open.
The flickering lamp light hit them first, then the strange silhouette of the benches in the center of the room. The leather gleamed dully. The jagged holes were dark, waiting mouths.
Jake was the first to step inside. He didn’t speak. His gaze traveled from the stacked pillows to the staple-gunned jacket sleeves, over to the bottle of oil on the nightstand, and finally back to the holes. His head cocked slightly.
Tom just blinked. “What… is that?”
“It’s a massage table,” Martha said, the words rushing out. “A special kind. For full-body relaxation. You lie face down, see? Your head goes through here, so your neck is supported.” She was speaking too fast. She pointed to the pillows. “See? Comfort.”
Jake walked a slow circle around the structure. He tapped one of the benches. It wobbled. “You built this?”
“We adapted it,” Chloe corrected quietly.
“Adapted it from what? A wrestling gym?” Jake crouched down, peering through one of the holes. From that angle, he could see the pillows placed on the floor directly beneath. His breath huffed out—not a laugh, but a sound of pure, stunned realization. He looked up, his eyes finding Martha’s. They were dark, unreadable in the low light. “A massage table.”
“Yes.”
He stood up slowly. A slow grin began to transform his face, starting at his eyes. It wasn’t a mocking grin. It was something else—recognition, admiration, sheer shock. “Martha Campbell. You did not.”
Tom finally connected the dots. His eyes widened. “Wait. Is that… like a…”
“It’s for a massage,” Chloe insisted, her cheeks flaming. “A very thorough one.”
Jake walked up to Martha, stopping just a breath away. She could smell the cold air still clinging to his jacket. “You learned this online?”
“I did my research.” She held his gaze, daring him to laugh, to ruin it.
He didn’t. He looked from her to the table and back again, as if reassessing her entirely. “It’s the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.” He paused. “Where do you want me?”
The question hung in the thick air. Martha’s mouth went dry. All her elaborate planning hadn’t scripted this exact moment, the transition from theory to the terrifying, tangible fact of their bodies. She waved a hand toward the benches, hoping the gesture looked casual. “Right there. Just, uh, get comfortable. Lose the clothes. Boxers are fine.”
The permission, once given, made the room contract. Jake held her gaze for a second longer, that unfamiliar grin still playing on his lips, then shrugged out of his jacket. It dropped to the floor with a heavy thud.
Tom followed suit, his movements more hesitant. The rustle of fabric, the click of a belt buckle, the soft sigh of denim sliding down legs—each sound was amplified in the quiet room. Chloe stared fixedly at a peeling corner of the beach poster, her cheeks a permanent, deep rose.
Martha forced herself to watch. This was her idea. She had to own it. Jake peeled his shirt over his head, his torso pale in the lamplight. He wasn’t shy; he moved with a loose-limbed acceptance that was both thrilling and unsettling. Tom, more self-conscious, turned slightly away as he stepped out of his jeans, folding them neatly over the back of Martha’s desk chair before standing in just his dark boxers.
“So,” Jake said, his voice a low rumble. He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of his own boxers, looking from Martha to the ominous hole in the leather. “Face down? Head through the… portal?”
“Yes,” Martha breathed. “Yes. Exactly. The portal.”
Jake nodded, as if this made perfect sense. He and Tom exchanged a look—a silent, baffled, amused communication that excluded the girls entirely. Then, with a final shake of his head that was almost admiration, Jake approached the benches. He lowered himself onto the leather, the material creaking under his weight, and maneuvered his head and shoulders through the cut-out space. His head disappeared from view on the other side, his back and the rest of him now presented to Martha at chest-level.
Tom let out a shaky laugh. “Man. Okay.” He mimicked the action, lying down on the second bench, his body tense until he was settled. Two prone forms now, side by side, their heads invisible beneath the tabletop, their backs awaiting touch. The sight was surreal. Intimate and clinical all at once.
Martha’s heart hammered against her sternum. The theory was gone. Only practice remained. She caught Chloe’s wide, terrified eyes and gave what she hoped was a reassuring nod. It was time to begin.