Chapter 5: The Taste of Degradation
The phone lit up with a reply before the drool on the carpet had even cooled.
BigBenny87: Turn the camera around. Show me the mess you made on the floor.
Charlie fumbled with the phone, his fingers slick with spit. He flipped the camera, zooming in on the dark, wet patch on the beige carpet. It looked like a crime scene, a small, shameful lake.
BigBenny87: Now clean it. With your tongue.
Charlie didn’t think. He lowered his face to the floor. The synthetic fibers scratched his lips. The taste was overwhelmingly his own—saliva, faintly sour, mixed with the dust of the house. He lapped at it, his tongue flat and desperate, sucking the moisture from the carpet until his tongue felt raw and the spot was just a damp, roughened patch. He showed the phone.
BigBenny87: Good. You’re housebroken. Now get a bottle from the kitchen. Whiskey, vodka, whatever he drinks. And a glass.
A cold clarity pierced the fog. He. Sarah. The bottle was his, a twelve-year-old single malt gathering dust in the cabinet, a gift from a client he’d never opened. The glass was from their wedding set, crystal, etched with a delicate vine pattern.
He padded downstairs, a ghost in his own home. The kitchen was a landscape of silent appliances. He retrieved the unopened bottle and one of the crystal glasses. The objects felt alien in his hands, artifacts from a life that was sliding away from him. He brought them back to the bedroom, placing them on the floor beside his kneeling spot. The amber liquid in the bottle was the colour of old honey.
BigBenny87: Open it. Pour three fingers.
The crack of the seal breaking was obscenely loud in the silent house. The glug-glug of the whiskey filling the wedding crystal was a funeral dirge. The smell, peaty and rich, cut through the stale air.
BigBenny87: Now piss in it.
Charlie stared at the message. His bladder was full, a tight ache from the beers he’d drunk earlier, before everything. This was a new threshold. It wasn’t about tasting another man’s filth; it was about corrupting his own sanctuary, permanently mixing his shame with the symbols of his pretense.
He lifted the glass, careful not to spill the expensive whiskey. He held it under himself. He closed his eyes and let go.
A hot, amber stream arced down, splashing into the crystal glass, mixing with the whiskey. The sound was a loud, vulgar trickle. The two liquids swirled together, the clear gold and the cloudy yellow becoming a murky, piss-brown cocktail. The sharp, acrid smell of urine rose, overpowering the peat. He filled the glass to the brim.
BigBenny87: Show me.
He held the phone over the glass. The liquid inside was warm, opaque, a foul concoction held in a vessel of love and promise.
BigBenny87: Drink it. All of it. Film it.
Charlie set the phone back against the shoe, ensuring the glass and his face were in frame. His hands shook. He brought the rim to his lips. The warmth of his own piss radiated through the crystal. The combined smell made his eyes water.
He opened his mouth and drank.
The first gulp was a violent assault. The smokiness of the whiskey was instantly drowned by the salty, bitter, ammonia-tinged flood of his own urine. He gagged, liquid sloshing over his chin, but he kept swallowing. His throat rebelled, convulsing, but he poured it down, gulp after horrific gulp, until the glass was empty. He held it up, inverted, to show nothing remained.
He dropped the glass to the carpet, where it rolled, unbroken. A terrible burning lingered in his sinuses and the back of his throat. His stomach churned, a hot, toxic lake.
The phone buzzed.
BigBenny87: Your turn. You’ve had your piss. Now give me your cum. Jerk that pathetic dick. Cum in that glass. Then piss in it again. I want you to make a cocktail of your own failure. Do it.
Charlie’s cock, which had softened during the drinking, twitched back to life at the command. It was a hideous, undeniable reaction. He picked up the glass. It was still warm from his hands and the previous contents. He positioned it between his splayed knees.
He took himself in hand. He was raw from earlier, sensitive, but the image in his head wasn’t of pleasure. It was of the screen, of BigBenny87 watching, of Bernie’s approving nod, of the five other users waiting for their turn. He imagined the glass filling up. He imagined drinking from it a second time.
He pumped his fist, his breathing becoming ragged grunts. He didn’t close his eyes. He stared into the phone’s unblinking eye. “I’m… I’m gonna cum for you,” he whispered, the words slurry from the whiskey-piss burning his tongue. “I’m gonna fill this glass up with my faggot juice.”
It was enough. His orgasm was a tight, painful clench, a few weak spurts of white that painted the inside of the crystal glass. It wasn’t much, pathetic streaks against the sides.
BigBenny87: Now piss. Top it off.
He willed his bladder, already drained, to cooperate. A last, hot trickle seeped out, mingling with the semen, creating a scant half-inch of cloudy, viscous swill at the bottom of the beautiful glass.
BigBenny87: Good. Now, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to take that glass downstairs. You’re going to put it in the kitchen cabinet. Right at the front. You’re going to leave it there.
Charlie’s blood turned to ice.