Chapter 1: The Aftermath of a Gangbang
The key felt warm in his hand, damp from his palm. Just He turned it in the lock of Polina’s apartment, the click echoing in the silent hallway. He always waited until he was sure they were gone. The sounds had stopped ten minutes ago—the deep, rumbling laughter, the thud of boots on the floorboards, the final, teasing slap of skin on skin that made his stomach clench.
He pushed the door open. The air hit him first, a thick, spent blanket of scent—sweat, her cloying jasmine perfume, and underneath it all, the salty, unmistakable musk of sex. Multiple sources. He breathed it in, his knees going weak.
“In here, idiot.” Her voice, scratchy from screaming, slithered from down the hall.
He followed it, a pilgrim to a foul altar. The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling out in a urine-yellow stripe. He pushed it open.
The heat was tropical. Peeling floral wallpaper curled towards the ceiling from the steam. Polina was sprawled in the old clawfoot tub, a queen on a porcelain throne. Water sloshed around her hips, cloudy and iridescent. Her skin glistened, not from bathwater, but from a slick, drying sheen that caught the light. On her thighs, across the flat plane of her stomach, in the valley between her breasts—maps of it. Milky, pearlescent streaks. Some were already beginning to dry into faint, flaking constellations.
She smirked up at him, her dark eyes hollow and triumphant. One arm was draped over the tub’s edge, a cigarette between her fingers, its ash dangerously long. She took a slow drag.
“You took your time,” she said, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling. “I’m getting cold.”
“Sorry,” he whispered. His voice cracked. He couldn’t stop looking. A thick, coagulating trail ran from her navel down into the murky water. His own body betrayed him with a pathetic, fluttering twitch in his trousers, a sensation that died almost before he registered it, leaving only a dull ache.
“You see what they did to me?” She gestured vaguely at herself with the cigarette. “Four of them. Big. Like fucking tree trunks.” She laughed, a sound without joy. “I feel… ruined.”
He knew what that word did to him. It was the word he used in his secret thoughts. Ruined goddess. It made his breath hitch.
“They were… rough?” he managed to ask, his hands twisting together.
“What do you think?” She raised a foot out of the water, planted it on the tub’s rim. The inside of her thigh was mottled red. A perfect, purpling bite mark stood out high on her inner leg. He felt a spike of something hot and sharp in his chest—not arousal, but a fleeting, forbidden pulse of rage. He shoved it down. It wasn’t his place.
“Your purpose, J,” she said, her tone shifting from narrative to command. It was the name she’d given him years ago: just ‘J’. Just He. Just… him. Nothing. “Your only purpose. Clean it up. Worship it. This is all you get.”
She spread her legs wider, sinking lower into the water so the mess between them was exposed just above the waterline. The sight was a physical blow. Used, swollen, glistening with a different, stickier wetness. The mingled scent intensified, a brutal, animal truth.
His mouth flooded with saliva. Arousal and horror spun together in his gut, a nauseating cocktail. This was the altar. This was the communion.
He knelt on the cracked black-and-white tiles. The cold seeped through his jeans. He didn’t hesitate. He couldn’t. This was his reason.
He leaned forward, closing his eyes for a second, then opening them to take it all in. He started high, where a droplet had beaded on her collarbone. His tongue darted out, flat and timid. The taste was complex, foreign, bitterly salty. It was them. He licked it clean, moving with a reverence that felt like prayer.
She watched, smoking, her face a mask of bored contempt. “Good boy.”
He worked his way down, along the slope of her breast, his tongue catching on the dry patches. Each taste was a sacrament. Each swallow was an act of devotion. He reached her stomach, where the trail was thickest. Here, he used his lips, sucking gently, gathering the fading warmth of strangers into himself. His body trembled. He was hard now, a frantic, straining pressure against his zipper that he knew was futile. It would be gone in a heartbeat.
“Lower,” she commanded, grinding her hips up slightly from the water.
He obeyed, shuffling forward on his knees. This was the heart of it. The source. The most profound defilement, and thus, the holiest ground.
He pressed his face into her, his nose brushing through coarse, wet hair. The smell was overwhelming, a punch of sex and sweat and other men. He opened his mouth.
A shudder, violent and total, wracked him the moment his tongue made contact. His hips jerked forward against the tub. A choked, helpless gasp escaped him as heat flooded his underwear, a sudden, mortifying wetness spreading instantly through the fabric. It was over. Ten seconds? Less. He froze, humiliated, tears of frustration springing to his eyes.
Polina laughed. A real, genuine cackle that echoed off the tiles. “Pathetic. You didn’t even touch yourself.” She stubbed her cigarette out on the edge of the tub. “Don’t stop. You’re not done.”
Swallowing his shame, tasting it mixed with the taste of her and them, he continued. His tongue worked diligently, cleaning, collecting, consuming. The final, intimate proof of his unworthiness. He was a vessel for their leftovers. It was all he deserved.
When she was clean, at least of that, he sat back on his heels, panting lightly. His face was wet. He felt empty and full at the same time.
Polina rose from the water, a dripping Venus. She stepped out of the tub, ignoring the towel he’d ready for her. She walked, naked and magnificent, into the bedroom. He followed, a shadow.
She flung herself onto the rumpled sheets, the bed a disaster zone of smells and stains. She looked at the ceiling.
“They’re coming back tomorrow night,” she said, her voice flat. “All four. They want to film it.”
He stood in the doorway, the damp patch on his trousers cooling, feeling the last ghost of his pointless erection vanish.
“I need you here,” she continued, turning her head to look at him. Her eyes were empty holes. “I need you to watch. Properly. Not hiding in the hall like a little ghost. I need you right there. And when they’re done…”
She paused, letting the promise of it hang in the rancid air.
“When they’re done, I want you to lick the camera clean.”