Chapter 121: Chapter 121
Instead, he sat on the edge of the sofa to wait, the silence in the apartment a high-pitched hum, his body vibrating with the old, forgotten hunger for immensity and the cold, sharp thrill of the betrayal that was yet to unfold.
Two hours later, Jonah wasn't just thin anymore; he was definitively skinny, almost fragile at thirty, though city life had kept him wiry. Tom, watching him move, saw echoes of their first apartment in the economy of his gestures. The memory receded like a tide sucked back from sand. It happened quickly. Three months after the encounter with Garrett, who had left Jonah feeling bruised and curiously hollow, Tom got the job offer in Düsseldorf. It was real, with a salary that promised a reprieve from the grinding financial anxiety that had sculpted them. They discussed it over a single, expensive bottle of wine. The Grindr accounts were deleted, not with a bang but a quiet, mutual tap of the screen one evening.
“It was just research,” Tom said, tipping the last of the Pinot Noir into Jonah’s glass.
“Data collection,” Jonah agreed, raising his glass. They clicked. The sound was a lock turning.
Life in Germany, initially, was a pact of forgetting. Their apartment in Düsseldorf was bright, clean, angular. They furnished it with Scandinavian minimalism, their movements within it precise and uncluttered. Jonah got freelance work, his style becoming as sharp as his cheekbones. Tom thrived in the orderly publishing scene. They ate well, finally, but their metabolisms had settled into a lean permanence. They were two slim, attractive professionals in a handsome European city. They still fucked, on weekends and some Wednesdays. It was pleasant, competent, like piloting a well-maintained vehicle on a familiar road.
The invitation for Oliver’s 30th birthday party arrived six years later as a digital flare of colour. Oliver was Tom’s colleague, a gregarious translator whose warmth had helped them navigate their first lonely year. The party was at a cavernous Altbierkneipe in the Altstadt, all dark wood and roaring noise.
The noise hit them first, a wall of German shouted over a thumping bass line. Then the smell: spilled beer, fried food, a hundred warm bodies. The sheer physicality of the crowd was disorienting. A man carrying five foaming steins barged past Jonah, his shoulder a blunt impact.
“Verdammt, Mann, entschuldigung!” the man yelled, laughing, not stopping.
They found Oliver near a long table heaped with half-eaten platters of Schnitzel and currywurst. His face was already flushed with drink and joy.“Jungs! Da seid ihr ja!” Oliver bellowed, pulling them into crushing hugs. He reeked of cigarettes and aftershave. “Trinkt etwas! Ihr seht aus wie ein Paar steife Buchhalter.”
The first beer was a reluctant, polite concession. The Altbier was heavy, malty, a liquid loaf of bread. The second one followed because holding an empty glass felt conspicuous. By the third, Tom’s careful posture had softened. He was laughing at something a woman from the marketing department was saying, his hand resting on the small of Jonah’s back. It felt like a gesture from another life.
“This is actually fun,” Tom shouted into Jonah’s ear, his breath beery and warm.
The fourth stein arrived in front of them as if by magic, a foam-topped, sweating monster of a glass.
“Achtung! Diese hier müssen ausgehärtet werden!” bellowed a burly stranger, slamming the beers down. It was a challenge. They drank. The alcohol coiled through Jonah, a molten loosening. His joints felt fluid, his thoughts pleasantly fuzzy. He watched Tom chat animatedly with a group, his hands cutting the air, his German fluent and rapid. He looked beautiful. And distant.
The fifth beer was a mistake. It crossed the line from pleasant buzz into a true, devouring drunk. The room began to tilt and pulse with the music. A man bumped into Tom from behind, hard, spilling a splash of beer down his shirt.
“Scheiße! Sorry, Junge!” the man laughed, a big, friendly guy with a rugby player’s build.
“Passier’ halt nichts,” Tom slurred, smiling, wiping at the damp fabric now clinging to his slim chest.
The man’s eyes lingered on Tom’s hand, on the thin fabric. “Schon in Ordnung. Hier, nimm mein Bier als Entschädigung.”
He thrust his own half-full stein into Tom’s free hand. Tom, too drunk to protest, took it. He drank from it. Jonah felt a twist in his gut that wasn't the alcohol. That was familiarity. That was a code, recognized. It was the way Tom’s eyes, glazed with drink, sparkled at the attention from the large, confident man. It was the electric charge of an offer being made, and accepted, in plain sight.
The music seemed to grow louder, pushing them together, forcing them into the sweaty, heaving mass of dancing bodies near the bar. The rugby man—his name was Marcus, he shouted—was suddenly there with them. His hands were on their shoulders, guiding them, his body a broad, hot wall at their backs.
“Ihr zwei! Engländer, oder? Ihr müsst euch lockern!” Marcus roared, his laughter like gravel.
He bought them Jägermeister shots. The thick, herbal liquor hit Jonah’s stomach like a lit fuse. The world dissolved into a kaleidoscope of blurry faces, pounding bass, and the oppressive, wonderful heat of bodies. He lost sight of Tom for what felt like hours but was probably minutes. Panic, sharp and acidic, cut through the drunken haze. He pushed through the crowd, his heart hammering a sick rhythm. He saw them.
They were in a dimmer corner near the toilets. Tom was pressed against the dark wood panelling. Marcus, his bulk eclipsing Tom’s slender frame, was leaning in, his mouth close to Tom’s ear. Tom’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed, a smile on his lips. One of Marcus’s big hands was braced on the wall beside Tom’s head. The other was out of sight, lower.
“Wo ist dein Freund? Der dürre?” Marcus asked, his voice a low rumble Jonah barely caught.
“Irgendwo…” Tom breathed, his voice thick. “Macht nichts.”
Marcus chuckled. “Dir gefällt das, was? Kleiner, schmaler Kerl wie du?”
Jonah stopped moving. The noise faded into a dull, underwater roar. He was ten feet away, staring at a perfect, living diorama of every fantasy they’d ever shared, every collected story, every whispered betrayal. It was here, now, raw and real and uncaptured by a phone. The protocol was broken. No story. Just this.
“Wir gehen,” Jonah said, the words ripping from his throat, flat and hard. He was suddenly beside them.
Tom’s eyes flew open, wide and shocked, pupils swallowing the blue. Marcus slowly turned his head, his hand dropping from the wall to hang casually at his side. A flicker of annoyance crossed his face. “Ah, da ist er ja. Der strenge Freund.”
“Jonah, es ist nichts—” Tom began, pushing off the wall, wobbling.
“Jetzt.” Jonah grabbed Tom’s upper arm, his fingers digging into the thin muscle. He pulled. Tom stumbled after him, a marionette with cut strings. They didn’t say goodbye to Oliver. They staggered out into the shock of the cold night air. The neon lights of the Altstadt swam in Jonah’s vision.
A taxi. The ride was a silent, spinning coffin. Tom slumped against the window, breathing heavily. Jonah stared straight ahead, a fury he hadn't felt in years, a fury that tasted like Jägermeister and bitter dread, solidifying in his chest.
Their apartment was a glacier. Jonah slammed the door. The sound was a gunshot in the pristine silence. He turned on Tom.
“What the fuck was that?” His English was a harsh, ugly gash in the German night.
“Was?Nichts! Er hat nur geredet!” Tom fired back in German, his voice rising, weaving on his feet.
“His hand was on you. You were fucking melting into the wall. ‘Macht nichts’? Does nothing matter, Tom?”
“Es war nur Spaß! Wir sind besoffen! Du hast auch mit Leuten geredet!” Tom shouted, throwing his arms out. His accent thickened with rage and drink.
“I wasn't getting felt up by a goddamn rugby player in a corner!” Jonah stepped closer. The beer and fury roared in his ears. “You liked it. I saw your face. You fucking missed it.”
The words hung between them, true and terrible.
Tom’s drunken bravado cracked. His shoulders slumped. He looked suddenly young and lost. “Vielleicht,” he whispered, looking at the floor. “Vielleicht hab ich es vermisst. Dass jemand… dass jemand mich so ansieht. So wollte.”
The confession was a punch to Jonah’s sternum. It stole his breath. He saw the yearning in Tom’s slumped posture, a yearning he hadn’t seen since their bodies had been temples. A desperate, pathetic hunger. The rage morphed, twisting into something darker, more carnal. A cruel understanding bloomed.
“He wanted you because you’re skinny now,” Jonah said, his voice dropping to a venomous calm. He advanced. “Because he could snap you in half. Because he could put his big hands all the way around your waist and lift you onto his fat cock and fuck you until you screamed.” He was describing it, painting the picture, just like they used to. But this wasn’t a story from a stranger. This was a prophecy for the man in front of him.
Tom whimpered. The sound was pure need. His eyes were locked on Jonah’s, terrified and captivated.
“Is that what you want?” Jonah hissed, closing the last of the distance. He grabbed the front of Tom’s beer-damp shirt. “You want to be the skinny little fuck for some giant German bastard? You want him to use you like a toy?”
“Hör auf,” Tom whispered, but his body was trembling, and his cock was a hard line against his jeans.
“No.” Jonah leaned in, his mouth against Tom’s ear. “You’re gonna tell me what he whispered. Every word. And then I’m gonna give it to you worse.”
He shoved Tom backwards. Tom stumbled, crashing onto the sleek, low modernist sofa, his legs splayed. Jonah was on him in a second, knees pinning his thighs, hands tearing at his belt. The buckle clattered on the floor.
“Er sagte, ich soll aufpassen, sonst hebt er mich auf den Tisch,” Tom babbled, the German spilling out of him. “Er sagte, mein Arsch wäre bestimmt eng… eng wie eine Faust…”
Jonah yanked Tom’s jeans and underwear down to his knees, exposing him. Tom’s cock sprang up, flushed and leaking. He was completely hairless, a habit from the hookup days that had remained. He looked vulnerable, exposed. Jonah spat into his own hand, a crude, primal gesture. He didn’t reach for lube. He wrapped his slick fingers around Tom’s narrow hips, feeling the sharp bone, and guided his own cock to Tom’s hole.
“Und was hast du gesagt?” Jonah demanded, not entering yet, just pressing the head against him.
“Ich sagte… ich sagte ‘Versuch’s doch’.” Tom’s voice broke.
With that, Jonah shoved inside. It was dry, brutal, a searing invasion. Tom screamed, a raw, animal sound of pain and absolute surrender. He was tight, impossibly tight, just as Marcus had imagined.
“So eng,” Jonah groaned, the sensation blinding. He didn’t move. He let Tom feel every inch, the burning stretch. “Für ihn? This is what you saved for him?”
He pulled out and slammed back in. Tom’s scream choked into a sob. His hands clawed at the sofa fabric. Jonah set a punishing pace, each thrust a piston of reclaiming fury. The apartment filled with the sounds of slapping skin, of choked German curses, of the sofa scraping against the hardwood floor.
“Er wollte dich so,” Jonah snarled, hammering into him. “Ein dünnes, betrunkenes Stück Fleisch. Bin ich jetzt groß genug für dich? Bin ich schwer genug?”
He leaned down, sinking his teeth into the tendon of Tom’s neck, tasting salt and beer. Tom came suddenly, a hot, pulsing eruption that splashed up his own flat stomach, his body seizing around Jonah’s cock. The violent clenching tipped Jonah over the edge. He came deep inside with a guttural shout, pumping his release into Tom’s convulsing body, marking him, filling him.
He collapsed on top of Tom, a heap of bone and sweat and spent rage. Their breathing was the only sound, ragged and wet. The room stank of sex and alcohol and failure. Jonah slowly pulled out. He saw the mess on Tom’s stomach, the livid bite on his neck, the red, abused pucker of his hole already beginning to swell.
Tom lay motionless, his eyes open, staring at the ceiling. A tear tracked from the corner of his eye into his hairline.
“Es tut mir leid,” Tom whispered, so quiet it was almost air.
Jonah didn’t answer. He rolled off the sofa, his own limbs leaden and cold. He left Tom there, exposed and ruined on the couch. He walked to their immaculate bedroom, to the bed that represented their clean, forgetful life in this clean, foreign city. He closed the door softly behind him. He did not lock it. The silence on the other side was complete, and in it, Jonah understood that a border had been crossed tonight from which there was no sober return. The archive was open, and the most damaging entry had just been written in real-time, not with a recording, but with the brutal, silent proof staining the sofa cushions.
The silence was eaten by the heavy, labored sound of breathing in the stairwell. Then a knock, not sharp, but a thick, solid thud against the wood. Jonah opened the door. Garrett filled it. Not just the frame, but the entire visual field, a sloping mountain of flesh in a black tent-like shirt and straining sweatpants. The scent of fresh sweat and clean cotton washed over Jonah. Garrett’s beard was indeed a magnificent tangle, his eyes small and bright in the vast, round moon of his face.
"Jonah," he rumbled, the voice deeper, resonating from a massive chest.
"Garrett. Come in." Jonah stepped back, feeling child-sized.
Garrett maneuvered inside with a careful, practiced grace, his movements slow and deliberate. The apartment seemed to shrink, the air thickening with his presence. He didn’t sit; he knew the sofa wouldn’t hold him. He stood near the center of the room, his belly a profound shelf over his belt, his thighs like tree trunks. His gaze traveled over Jonah’s thin frame, a clinical assessment.
"You really did shrink," Garrett said. "Mark wasn’t exaggerating."
"Life," Jonah said, the word weak.
Garrett’s hand, huge and surprisingly soft, reached out and cupped Jonah’s jaw. His thumb brushed the sharp cheekbone. "It’s a different canvas now." His eyes dropped to Jonah’s crotch. "But the picture’s the same, isn’t it? You’re hard."
Jonah was. Painfully so. The sheer scale of the man, the absolute physical domination, triggered a cellular memory. He nodded, unable to speak.
"Where’s your boy?"
"Out."
A low chuckle vibrated through Garrett’s torso. "So he’s listening later. Good. I want him to hear." His other hand landed on Jonah’s shoulder, gently but irresistibly turning him around, pushing him forward. "Bend over. The arm of the sofa.Now."
It wasn’t a request. Jonah obeyed, his chest hitting the upholstery, his ass in the air. He heard the rustle of fabric, the heavy sigh of effort, the snap of a waistband. Then Garrett’s hands were on his hips, not gripping, simply covering them, his fingers almost meeting over Jonah’s spine. The heat radiating from Garrett’s body was immense, like standing too close to a furnace."Remember this?" Garrett whispered, his breath hot on the back of Jonah’s neck. He didn’t wait for an answer. He pressed forward.
The head of Garrett’s cock was blunt and wide, a slick, hot pressure against Jonah’s hole. There was no slow tease. Garrett leaned his weight, a deliberate, implacable shove. The stretch was instantaneous and apocalyptic. A guttural, pained noise tore from Jonah’s throat as his body was forced to accept a girth it hadn’t known in years, a fullness that bordered on violence. It burned. It devoured him.
"Fuck," Garrett grunted, sinking another inch, a slow, tectonic invasion. "You’re tight as a fucking virgin. All that skinny, no give left." He paused, letting Jonah feel the sheer mass inside him, a living plug splitting him open. Then he pulled back and pushed again, a fraction deeper. The drag was exquisite torture. "You wanted a reminder. This is it. This is what you traded for being small."
He began a rhythm, short, deep strokes that didn’t leave Jonah’s body, just worked the penetrated depth. Each thrust was a collision, a blunt re-molding from the inside. Jonah’s fingers scrabbled at the fabric of the sofa. He was crying, he realized, tears leaking silently from the overwhelming physical shock of it. His own cock was a dripping, untouched iron rod trapped against the cushion.
Garrett’s breathing became heavier, a rhythmic huff above him. One hand left his hip, came down in a heavy, open-palmed slap on his ass cheek. The sound cracked in the quiet room. "Your boyfriend. He’s thinking about some skinny fuck right now.Not this. He doesn’t know what real fullness is anymore." Another slap, harder. "He’s never gonna know it again. But you will. You’ll know it every time you sit down tomorrow."
The words, the degrading, perfect truth of them, coiled with the brutal stretch. Jonah’s orgasm built not from pleasure, but from a profound sense of annihilation. He was being unmade, physically overwritten by the ghost of his former self. Garrett’s pace increased slightly, the fat of his belly slapping against Jonah’s slender back with a wet, heavy sound.
"I’m gonna flood you," Garrett growled, his voice tight. "I’m gonna pump you so full of my come you’ll taste it for a week. You’ll tell him that. You’ll tell him you’re dripping with me."
That did it. The filthy, specific promise broke Jonah. He came violently, his cock pulsing against the sofa, his hole clenching desperately around the impossible invasion. The spasms triggered Garrett’s own finish. With a final, deep grind, he emptied, a hot, rushing flood that indeed felt endless, filling the already-packed space. Jonah felt it, a surreal internal warmth spreading. Garrett stayed lodged inside him for a full minute, both of them shuddering, before slowly, carefully, pulling out.
The loss was profound. A hollow, aching emptiness followed the extreme fullness. Jonah slumped, his legs useless. He heard Garrett dressing behind him.
"Tell him every detail," Garrett said, his voice back to its normal rumble. "The stretching. The slapping. The feeling of being genuinely filled for the first time in years. Make him see it."
The door opened and closed. Jonah lay there, cooling come trickling down his inner thigh, his body a map of new, deep bruises. His phone, still on the sofa beside his head, buzzed. A text from Tom.
Komm später heim. Alex will, dass ich bleibe. Schlaf schon.
The mundane German words, the casual dismissal, burned against the raw, epic physical experience still reverberating in his bones. He didn’t move. He let the come dry on his skin and the sofa fabric, a deliberate stain. The high-pitched hum in the apartment was gone, replaced by a deafening, post-cataclysm silence. He had his story. It was the heaviest one yet.
The Düsseldorf apartment was all clean lines and muted greys, a world away from their cluttered student flat. Jonah, at twenty-nine, stood at the floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the twilight Rhine, the skeletal cranes of the media harbor puncturing the orange sky. He was lean, perpetually so now, a runner’s physique maintained with a quiet, grim diligence. Tom, in the open-plan kitchen, poured two glasses of natural wine. At twenty-eight, he had a gaunt, elegant look, his cheekbones sharp, his dark eyes constantly scanning, assessing.
“Fynn besteht darauf, dass wir vor zehn da sind. Er hat einen ganzen Kellerbar reserviert,” Tom said, handing Jonah a glass.
“Großartig. Eine ganze Nacht mit seinen Investmentbanker-Freunden,” Jonah replied, taking a bitter sip. Their German was fluent now, the language of their daily lives, of grocery lists and arguments about utilities.
“Sei nicht so. Es ist sein dreißigster. Wir gehen hin, wir trinken, wir sind charmant. Es ist ein Abend.” Tom’s tone was final.
They dressed with a familiar, parallel silence—dark jeans, well-cut shirts, the uniform of attractive, professional expats. They took a tram to Flippen, a trendy district of repurposed factories. Fynn’s birthday was in a basement cocktail bar called “Grotto,” all exposed brick and low, throbbing techno. The crowd was a blur of sharp haircuts and expensive watches. Fynn, sleek and buzzing, pulled them into the roar.
“Meine Lieblingsschwulen aus Portland! Ihr müsst alles probieren, ich hab einen eigenen Bartender!”
The drinks were relentless. Artisanal gin, smoky mezcal, shots of something herbaceous and dangerous. Jonah, who metabolized alcohol poorly, felt the room tilt after his third. Tom, who could hold his liquor better but pursued it with a grim determination tonight, was already laughing too loudly at a banker’s joke. They were islands in the sea of German chatter, clinging to each other out of habit, not connection.
“Noch einen?” Tom shouted over the music, his eyes glassy.
“Warum nicht?” Jonah shouted back, the recklessness fizzy in his veins.
They lost count. The music mashed into a pulsating wall of sound. Jonah’s tongue felt thick. He saw Tom talking animatedly with a handsome stranger by the bar, their heads close. A hot spike of something—not jealousy, but a faded ghost of their old game—lanced through him. He turned away, ordered another shot, downed it. The world softened at the edges.
Later, much later, they stumbled out into the cold, damp night. The tram had stopped running. They argued in slurred German on the empty street.
“Taxi? Wir warten hier ewig.”
“Wir laufen. Ist nicht weit. Frische Luft.”
“Du bist besoffen, Tom.”
“Du auch, also halt’s Maul.”
They weaved through sleeping residential streets, their shoulders bumping, the contact abrasive. Jonah’s stomach churned, a slick, acidic wash. He stumbled, catching himself on a wet metal fence.
“Scheiße.”
Tom didn’t look back. Jonah leaned over, the world spinning, and vomited violently onto the cobblestones. The acidic burn of wine and spirits filled his nose. He gasped, tears in his eyes. Tom had stopped a few meters ahead. He watched, his expression unreadable in the yellow streetlight.
“Bist du jetzt fertig?” Tom’s voice was flat.
Jonah straightened up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. A cold, clear hatred cut through the drunken fog. Not for Tom. For them. For this empty, mechanical performance their life had become. He walked past Tom without a word. They reached their building, fumbled with the key, rode the elevator in a stifling silence that reeked of puke and cheap gin.
Inside their pristine apartment, Tom went straight to the kitchen for water. Jonah stood in the living room, the alcohol now a leaden, depressive weight in his veins. The memory of Garrett, of that crushing, transformative fullness, ambushed him with a visceral, humiliating clarity. He looked at Tom’s skinny back as he drank from the tap.
“Weißt du, was ich heute geträumt habe?” Jonah’s words were thick, dangerous.
Tom turned slowly. “Was?”
“Von dem Abend mit Garrett. In unserer alten Wohnung.” He saw Tom stiffen. The name was a landmine, never discussed, only alluded to in their darkest, most explicit fuck-fights years ago. “Ich habe gespürt, wie er mich wieder auseinander gedrückt hat. Jeder Zentimeter. Es hat sich angefühlt, als würde ich wieder richtig existieren. Weil er so verdammt massiv war.”
Tom’s face was a stone mask. “Du bist besoffen und widerlich. Geh schlafen.”
“Warum?” Jonah took a step closer, the anger heating up, looking for a crack. “Weil du es nicht ertragen kannst, daran zu denken? Dass ich etwas hatte, das du nie anfassen konntest? Dass er mich auf eine Art gefickt hat, die du nie mehr könntest, selbst wenn du es wolltest?”
“Hör auf.”
“Nein.” Jonah was shouting now, the German words ugly and precise. “Du warst bei deinem kleinen Alex, der deine Rippen geleckt hat. Während ich wieder ein Mensch war, für fünfzehn Minuten. Weil er so riesig war, Tom. Er hat mich einfach ausgelöscht.”
The word ausgelöscht — erased — hung in the air. Tom moved first. It wasn’t a romantic advance. It was a collision. He slammed Jonah back against the cold window overlooking the dark river, his hand fumbling at Jonah’s belt buckle.
“Du willst gefickt werden? Gut.” Tom’s breath was toxic with alcohol. “Aber du kriegst mich. Nur mich. Vergiss Garrett. Der ist nur Fett und Geilheit.”
He yanked Jonah’s jeans and briefs down roughly. He was painfully hard himself, his cock angry and red. He spat into his own hand, a crude, wet sound, slicked himself, and without any further preparation, drove into Jonah.
It was a dry, tearing entry. Jonah cried out, his forehead thumping against the cold glass. There was no warmth, no rhythm, just a harsh, punishing piston motion. Tom fucked him with a brutal, efficient rage, his bony hips slamming against Jonah’s ass.
“Das bin ich,” Tom grunted, each thrust a punch of a word. “Nicht er.Ich. Dein magerer, besoffener Freund, der dich hasst.”
Jonah felt the sting, the ache, the emotional violence of it. And it worked. The pain became a focal point, a anchor in the drunken sea. He pushed back against Tom, meeting his thrusts with a ferocity of his own.
“Ja! Hass mich!” Jonah choked out. “Mach’s schlimm! So schlimm, dass ich alles andere vergesse!”
Tom’s hand snaked around, gripping Jonah’s cock, jerking it in a tight, rough fist in time with his pounding. It was not pleasurable. It was an exorcism. The pressure built from a place of shared, profound misery. Jonah came first, a sharp, agonized spurt against the windowpane. The clenching of his orgasm triggered Tom’s, who emptied inside him with a low, guttural moan that sounded like grief.
They collapsed against the window, a tangled, sweating, stinking heap of limbs and undone clothing. The silence returned, heavier now, polluted. Tom slowly pulled out. Jonah winced at the fresh, raw feeling. They didn’t look at each other. Tom staggered towards the bedroom.
“Ich schlafe auf dem Sofa,” Jonah mumbled, his voice shot.
“Wie du willst.”
Jonah lay there on the floor, the chill from the window seeping into his bones. The wet spot on the glass, the cold come on his stomach, the throbbing, torn feeling in his ass—they were the only real things in the room. The high-pitched hum was back, but now it was inside his skull, a deafening ring of absolute emptiness. He had wanted to be erased. In the brutal, drunken act, he finally had been. There was nothing left to trade. No story left to tell. Just the sour taste of puke and regret, and the long, silent hours until the grey Rheinland dawn.