Chapter 5: Bed Time
Derek returned from his shift at the copy shop to a void. His room was empty. Not just clean. Empty. The faded band posters were gone. The dented desk was missing. Most importantly, his twin bed with its squeaky springs and familiar depression in the middle was simply… not there. Only a rectangle of slightly less stained carpet marked where it had been.
A note was taped to the wall, written in lipstick on the back of a pizza coupon.
“Sweetie! Rats! Big ones! Had to toss the bed. SO SORRY! You can sleep with Momma tonight! <3 V.”
The smell of the lipstick—waxy and floral—mixed with the lingering ghost of burnt cheese from the coupon. Derek just stood in the doorway, his backpack dangling from one hand. He could hear them whispering and giggling down the hall, the sound dampened by the pile of laundry that permanently clogged the corridor.
Dinner was a tense, sloppy affair of microwaved nachos where Veronica “accidentally” dripped synthetic cheese directly into her cleavage and Crystal made elaborate shows of linking extra-long noodles into her mouth. Their eyes never left him. The dish soap incident had not deterred them. It had, if anything, sharpened their focus.
“Gonna be a tight squeeze in my bed,” Veronica said later, her voice a purr as she wiped a smear of grease from her chin with her thumb. “But we’ll manage. Just a family sleepover! Like when you were little.”
“Yeah, just like that,” Crystal echoed, her smile all teeth. “Except you’re, like, way bigger now.”
The master bedroom was a biome of its own. The air was thick with the scent of discount body spray, sweat, and something vaguely metallic. The promised mattress was a landscape of stains—mysterious Rorschach blots in yellow, brown, and a concerning rust-color. It sat in a low, sagging valley within the bed frame, a topographical map of bad decisions. The sheets, a faded pink satin, were tangled at the foot like shedding skin.
“Now, we’ll be good,” Veronica announced, she shimmied out of her tube top and yoga pants, leaving on only a pair of lace pantries that were mostly holes. Her body, in the dim light of a salt lamp shaped like a grotesque nipple, was a staggering array of surgically maintained curves. She flopped onto the far side of the bed, making the whole structure shudder and groan. “Momma’s just tired. Won’t lay a finger on you.”
Crystal, in a microscopic camisole, slithered in from the other side. “Totally. I’m beat from looking for that earring all day.” She flashed Derek a look that was anything but tired. “Middle’s all yours, D.”
Trapped. Derek stood, rooted to the stained carpet. The bathroom wasn’t an option; the lock had been “broken” for years. The couch in the living room currently hosted a leaky bag of garbage Veronica had been “meaning to take out.” With a defeated sigh that started in his toes, he toed off his socks and slid onto the cratered mattress, still in his t-shirt and shorts.
He lay rigid as a board, staring at a water stain on the ceiling that looked like a screaming goat. The bed was unbearably warm, a residual heat from their bodies that felt alive. Veronica’s perfume—vodka and regret—wafted from his left. Crystal’s scent—bubblegum vape and ambition—drifted from his right.
“Night, baby,” Veronica cooed.
“Don’t snore,” Crystal muttered.
The nipple lamp clicked off.
Darkness, thick and hot, swallowed the room. For a few minutes, there was only the sound of the refrigerator’s distant hum and the creak of the house settling. Derek dared to hope. Maybe they were actually tired. Maybe the dish soap had been a final, humiliating line they wouldn’t cross.
Then the rustling started.
It was a slow, stealthy shift of satin. From Veronica’s side. A slow, deliberate scrape of a heel against his calf.
From Crystal’s side, an answering shift. A whisper of fabric, then the feeling of her petite, viciously strong foot sliding against his shin.
Derek held his breath.
“So cramped,” Veronica breathed into the dark, her voice suddenly right next to his ear. Her movement had been silent, seismic. The entire sag of the mattress tilted toward him.
“Tell me about it,” Crystal whispered, her own body now pressing against his other side. Her hand came to rest, with faux-innocence, on his stomach. “You’re taking up, like, all the room, Der-Bear.”
Before he could mutter a protest, the dynamic changed. It was as if a silent starter pistol had fired.
“Ugh, get off me, Mom,” Crystal hissed, but her hand didn’t move from Derek’s stomach. Instead, her other hand shot out in the dark. There was a wet, smacking sound. A slap. On flesh.
“You little brat!” Veronica gasped, but it was a gasp of excitement, not pain. “You’re the one crowding me!”
The bed became a storm cell. The pretense shattered. Derek was no longer a barrier between them, but the ground over which they waged war.
Veronica rolled, her massive, oil-smooth ass sliding directly over Derek’s face, smothering him in a cloud of coconut and body heat. He choked, sputtering, as she lunged across him. Her mouth found something in the dark with unerring accuracy.
Crystal yelped—a sharp, theatrical sound—then moaned. “You bitch! That’s my tit!”
“Tastes like cheap body spray!” Veronica slurped, her words muffled.
“At least mine are real!” Crystal screeched. She scrambled, her knee digging into Derek’s ribs as she launched a counter-assault. There was a furious, sloppy sound of mouths clashing. Not a kiss. A battle. Tongues slapping, lips smacking, wet and frantic.
They were on top of him, writhing and grappling, their limbs a tangled, sweaty prison. The satin sheets twisted around his legs. The stink of their arousal, sharp and animal, flooded the hot air. Derek was pinned, a terrified raft on a heaving, carnal sea.
Crystal broke the kiss with a gasp. “Think you’re the only one who can suck?” she panted. Her head dove down, across Derek’s chest. There was a frantic, gnawing sound, followed by Veronica’s shriek.
“MY NIPPLE! YOU’RE BITING MY IMPLANT VALVE!”
“Suck my ass, you old hag!”
The wrestling intensified. A hand—he couldn’t tell whose—clawed at the front of his shorts, yanking the fabric. The elastic waistband dug into his hips. Another hand, slick with sweat, groped blindly at his thigh.
Their fight melted into a frenzied, collaborative debauchery. They were no longer fighting each other for space. They were competing for him, using each other’s bodies as props. Veronica ground her ass into his hip. Crystal slithered her taut, clapping backside over his knees.
The sounds were unbearable. Guttural moans, filthy promises hissed into the dark, the wet symphony of mouths on skin, the thunderous applause of flesh on flesh. The entire warped box spring shrieked in protest with every movement.
Derek squeezed his eyes shut, the baby face burning with a blush that felt radioactive. He was trapped in the exact center of a loud, sloppy, greasy nightmare he’d only ever heard through walls. And now the walls were gone, and the nightmare was wearing him like a mattress pad, and it was only getting started.
One thought, clear and desperate, cut through the sensory hell.
The dish soap was all the way in the kitchen.