Chapter 7: The Last Bounce
The hum in the marital bedroom wasn’t a sound you heard with your ears. It was a pressure, a low-grade vibration that lived in the teeth and the marrow. It came from the headboard, where intricate, non-Euclidean lines had been burned into the dark wood. They pulsed with a faint, venous light, a rhythm set to the thing happening in the bed.
David Vance sat in the velvet armchair in the corner, the one Ellie had picked out at a flea market because it had “good bones.” He was still wearing his work slacks and his loosened tie.He was hard. Again. It was a cruel, autonomous rebellion of his flesh, a direct refutation of the chaos screaming through his mind.He hated it. He hated himself more.
He was meant to be watching. It was his punishment. His re-education.
In the bed, his wife bounced. Ellie rode Mal with a frantic, piston-driven rhythm, her body a smooth, glossy machine of obedience. Her warm brown hair was sweat-damp and stuck to her forehead and neck. Her breasts, once familiar comforts, now heaved and swung with a mesmerizing, exaggerated amplitude. Each downward plunge was met with a wet, thick sound that seemed to sync with the pulsing sigils.
“Ohmygod, Mal! Ohmygod!” she chanted, her voice a piercing, singsong trill. It was a caricature of pleasure, a bad porn parody. “Your cock is, like, so fucking huge! It’s literally, like, the best thing ever!”
David’s hand moved in his lap. He couldn’t stop it. It was as if the hum in the room had taken control of his motor functions, bypassing his shattered will. His eyes were dry and aching, refusing to blink, taking in every detail: the sheen of sweat on her back, the possessive way Mal’s large hands gripped her hips, guiding her, the empty, blissed-out smile on Ellie’s face.
“Tell me what you are, baby,” Mal grunted from beneath her. His green eyes were locked on David, not on the woman writhing on top of him.
“I’m your dumb slut!” Ellie squealed, barely pausing her rhythm. “Your totally empty-headed, cock-loving bimbo!”
“And what’s your purpose?”
“This!” she cried, slamming down onto him with renewed vigor. “Just this! To take your cock and be, like, happy about it! Ohmygod, I’m gonna cum again! I’m gonna cum!”
David’s own hand quickened its pace. Shame boiled in his gut, acidic and hot, but it was distant, secondary to the grinding, mechanical need building in his groin. He was coming apart in layers. The top layer, the husband and father, was already ashes. This was a deeper, animal stratum being exposed and twisted. He was masturbating to the vivisection of his own life.
“That’s it, Ellie,” Mal coaxed, his voice a dark, smooth contrast to her screeching. “Give it up. Let it all go. There’s nothing in that pretty head but the need to come on my dick. Isn’t that right?”
“Yes! Yes!Nothing! No thoughts!” Her words slurred into a gibberish of bliss. “Just… just feeling!So good! Soooo good, Mal!”
Her climax wasn’t a quiet sigh or a muted gasp. It was a theatrical event. Her back arched violently, her mouth forming a perfect ‘O’ as a long, wailing shriek tore from her throat. Her body convulsed, losing its rhythm, shaking through wave after wave of sensation. As she clenched around him, a thin trickle of saliva escaped the corner of her gaping mouth and dripped onto his chest. She didn’t seem to notice. She collapsed forward, giggling, a high-pitched, mindless sound like breaking glass.
“Nnnngh… wow. That was, like… whoa,” she panted, nuzzling into his neck. “My brain is, like, totally smooth right now. Just… fizz.”
Mal smiled, stroking her hair. His eyes never left David. “See, Dave? This is peace. This is what it looks like when the noise stops.”
With a final, savage thrust up into her spent body, Mal finished. He made no sound, just held her tightly to him, his gaze a conqueror’s flag planted in David’s soul. Ellie mewled, overstimulated but pliant.
The room was silent except for their ragged breathing and that infernal, sub-aural hum. David’s hand stilled. He was painfully close, teetering on the edge. The denial was a fresh, exquisite torture.
Mal shifted, lifting Ellie off him as if she were a doll and laying her on her back beside him. She curled into his side, humming tunelessly, tracing idle circles on his chest. He propped himself up on an elbow.
“Don’t stop on my account, Dave,” Mal said, nodding toward David’s lap. “Finish what you started. We’re all family here. No secrets.”
David’s jaw clenched so hard he thought a tooth might crack. His traitorous hand remained still, frozen in shame.
“Do it,” Mal said, the words soft but absolute. They weren’t a suggestion. They were a command that slithered into David’s ear and wrapped around his brainstem.
A low sob escaped David’s lips as his hand began moving again. It was faster now, rough and desperate. He looked at his wife. Her eyes were half-lidded, unfocused, a smudge of lipstick crooked on her mouth. She was looking at Mal with a devotion that had once been reserved for birthday surprises and whispered secrets in the dark.She was gone. This giggling, drooling creature in her skin was all that remained.
That final, devastating truth broke the last dam inside him. His release was silent, a shuddering, miserable contraction that left him feeling hollowed out and filthy. He sat there, sticky and ruined, in the chair his wife had bought for them to read in together.
“Good man,” Mal said, as if praising a dog for a simple trick. He swung his legs out of bed, naked and unselfconscious. He walked to the dresser—their dresser—and picked up a glass of water that hadn’t been there before. He took a long sip.
“You know,” Mal said, leaning against the dresser, “all that tension? All that anger? It’s just unused energy. I’m giving you an outlet. A purpose.” He set the glass down. “You keep the house running. You bring in the money. You provide the stage. And we,” he gestured to the bed where Ellie lay, staring at the ceiling with a soft smile, “we provide the show. It’s a division of labor. It’s efficient.”
David finally found his voice. It was a rasp, torn from a desert. “What did you do to her?”
“I freed her,” Mal said, genuinely. “All those little worries. Were the kids doing well enough? Was the casserole good? Were you still attracted to her?It’s exhausting. I scraped all that noise out. Now she’s just… happy. Simple.” He walked over to David, crouching down in front of the chair. The scent of sex and power rolled off him. “I can do the same for you.It would hurt less. The jealousy.The humiliation. I could just… take it. Leave you with the simple parts. Go to work.Mow the lawn. Watch.” He reached out and tapped David’s forehead with a cool finger. “The offer’s open. This stubbornness is just wasted suffering.”
David recoiled from the touch. “Go to hell.”
Mal’s smile was pitying. He stood up. “I’m already here, Dave. And business is good.” He turned back to the bed. “Ellie, baby, you’re a mess. Go clean up. You know the drill.”
“Okey-dokey!” she chirped, springing up with a startling energy. She skipped, actually skipped, to the connected master bathroom. A moment later, the shower turned on.
Mal pulled on his boxer-briefs and a t-shirt. He looked at David, still paralyzed in the chair. “Guest room’s waiting. You’ve got an early day tomorrow, right? Big presentation?”
David just stared. How did he know that?
“Don’t look so surprised. Ellie talked about it. Back when she could remember things like being proud of you.” Mal’s voice was conversational, brutal. “Get some sleep. The hum will help. It quiets the dreams.”
David managed to stand, his legs shaky. He fumbled with his clothes, his movements clumsy and awful. He couldn’t look at the rumpled, stained sheets. He couldn’t look at Mal. He focused on the pattern in the rug, the one Ellie had chosen because it “tied the room together.”
As he shuffled to the door, Mal’s voice stopped him, casual, light.
“Hey, Dave?”
David paused, hand on the doorknob.
“Leave the tie. I kinda like it.”
David’s fingers went to the silk strip around his neck. A gift from Ellie for their fifteenth anniversary. He yanked it off, the fabric slithering free, and let it drop to the floor without a backward glance. He closed the door behind him, leaning against it in the dark hallway. From the bedroom, he heard Mal’s low laugh, and then Ellie’s giggling voice, muffled by the water: “Mal, come feel how clean I am!”
David slid down the wall until he was sitting on the hallway floor. He drew his knees to his chest, a middle-aged man in a ruined suit, and pressed his forehead against his knees. He didn’t cry. The well was too deep for tears.
Down the hall, from Anya’s old room, now her new cell, he heard a different sound. A soft, rhythmic thumping against a wall. A familiar, dreadful cadence.
He sat there in the dark, the hum from his former bedroom seeping through the walls, tuning his heart to its frequency, as the thumping down the hall kept time.
He sat there in the dark, the hum from his former bedroom seeping through the walls, tuning his heart to its frequency, as the thumping down the hall kept time. The vibrations traveled up through the floorboards, into his bones. They were a part of the house now. A part of him.
Hours later, or maybe only minutes, the bathroom door clicked open. A wedge of light cut across the hallway floor, followed by the sound of bare feet on hardwood.“Mal? Maaaaal?” Ellie’s voice, slurred and sleepy, floated out. “Where’d you go, silly?”
David didn’t move. He held his breath, pressed into the shadow of the wall.
She stumbled into the hallway, a pale ghost in the dark. She was naked, her skin glowing faintly from her shower. She shuffled right past him, her eyes glassy and unseeing, and pushed open the door to the guest room. She stood in the doorway for a moment, silhouetted, looking at the empty bed. She scratched her head.
“Huh,” she muttered to herself. Then she turned and padded back down the hall, disappearing into the master bedroom. The door closed softly. The lock clicked.
David released a shuddering breath. She hadn’t seen him. Or she had, and he simply hadn’t registered. He was furniture now. Part of the architecture of this new hell.
He finally forced himself to stand. His body ached with a cold, deep fatigue. The guest room was sterile and quiet, a museum of neglect. He lay on top of the covers, still in his ruined clothes, and stared at the ceiling. The hum was fainter here, but present—a discordant lullaby. He didn’t dream. His sleep was a black, silent pit.
Morning came with the scent of bacon.
It was wrong. It was a Tuesday. Ellie didn’t make hot breakfasts on Tuesdays. Tuesdays were for granola bars and rushed coffee.
David followed the smell, his body moving on autopilot. He found them in the kitchen. Mal stood at the stove, flipping pancakes with an easy flick of his wrist. He wore David’s dark green apron over his jeans. Ellie was perched on the countertop beside him, legs swinging. She wore only the pink hotpants. Her feet were bare.
“And then I was like, ohmygod, no way!” she was saying, her voice a bright, empty stream. “But, like, literally yes way!”
“No way,” Mal said, playing along. He slid a pancake onto a plate.
“Yes way!” She giggled, stealing a piece of crispy bacon from a stack. She nibbled on it, her eyes locked on him with dopey adoration.
Anya was at the kitchen table. She wore a simple, shapeless grey shift dress. She ate a bowl of cereal with mechanical precision, her eyes on the milk. The collar was a permanent fixture. The silence around her was a thick, isolating bubble.
“Morning, sunshine!” Mal chirped, not turning from the stove. “Sit.Fuel up. Big day.”
David stood in the doorway, unmoored. This domestic scene was more horrifying than the obscenity of the night before. It was the obscenity, dressed for daylight.
“Dave, honey, you look like, super tired,” Ellie said, popping the last of the bacon into her mouth. “You should have, like, slept in with us!”
Her words were a hot knife. He slid into a chair at the table, as far from Anya as possible. Mal placed a plate in front of him: pancakes, bacon, eggs perfectly over-easy. The presentation was impeccable. David’s stomach turned.
“Eat up,” Mal said, leaning on the table, his voice dropping to a confidential tone. “Gotta keep your strength up. For the presentation.” He winked.
David picked up his fork. The metal felt alien in his hand. He took a bite.It tasted of nothing. He chewed. He swallowed.
“So, Ellie-bear,” Mal said, turning back to her. He left the spatula on the counter and walked over to her, placing his hands on her bare thighs. “We figured out your new job last night, right?”
“Mhmm!” she nodded, her expression turning serious, or her best approximation of it. “My most bestest job.”
“Tell Dave what it is. So he knows.”
She swiveled her head toward David, her smile beatific. “My job is to keep Mal’s cock hard and warm!” she announced, as if stating she’d taken up gardening. “And to keep my cunt stuffed and slutty for him. Like, 24/7. That’s literally my whole purpose.” She nodded, proud of her perfect recall.
The fork screeched on David’s plate. He set it down, carefully.
Mal kissed her shoulder. “Perfect. And where is your favorite place to be?”
“On his cock!” she chirped, as if answering a quiz show question. “Bouncing and babbling! Just like a good bimbo slut. It’s, like, the best. Better than yoga!”
“See, Dave?” Mal said, turning his head but keeping his hands on Ellie’s skin. “Clarity.Purpose. It’s a beautiful thing.”
David looked at his daughter. Anya’s spoon clinked against the ceramic bowl. She gave no indication she had heard. She was gone, fully and completely, down some deep, silent well.
“She’s happy,” David said. The words were ash in his mouth.“See? He gets it.” Mal squeezed Ellie’s thigh, then smacked it lightly. “Alright, go get dressed.Something easy-access. You have maintenance duties in ten.”
Ellie hopped off the counter. “Okay!” She skipped out of the kitchen, her bare feet slapping the tiles.
Mal watched her go, then turned his full attention to David. The easy charm was still there, but it was a thin veneer over something absolute. “You’ll be home by six?”
David nodded.
“Good. We’re having spaghetti. Your old recipe.” Mal smiled, a predator’s smile. “It’ll be just like old times.”
“It’ll be just like old times.” Mal’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were cool, assessing stones. David pushed back from the table, the legs of his chair shrieking against the tile. He didn’t look at Anya. He didn’t look at the pink hotpants on the counter. He walked out of his kitchen, grabbed his briefcase by the front door, and stepped into the bland morning light.
His car smelled of old coffee and desperation. He gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles bone-white, and tried to breathe. The image of Ellie on the counter, swinging her legs, saying those words—“hard and warm”—played on a loop behind his eyes. A hot, unwanted throb pulsed in his groin. He cursed, slamming his fist against the dashboard. The pain was clean, sharp, a fleeting anchor. It didn’t help. His body was a separate, treacherous country with its own revolting rules.
The commute was a blur of traffic and screaming silence. Every red light felt like a taunt. He saw a woman in a minivan laughing, and his brain supplied Ellie’s giggle. A billboard for a jewelry store showed a happy couple, and he imagined the sigils carved into their headboard. He was sweating. The fabric of his slacks rubbed against him with every slight shift, a constant, maddening reminder.
In his office, the sanctuary of blueprints and calculations, he found no peace. The hum had followed him. It wasn’t audible, but he felt it in his teeth, a phantom vibration. He stared at the schematic on his monitor, the lines of a future beach house blurring into the patterns Mal had burned into the wood. He shifted in his chair, uncomfortably hard. The pressure was a cruel joke.
He tried to focus. He typed an email, deleted it, typed again. His secretary, Linda, poked her head in around eleven. “You okay, David? You look flushed.”
“Fine. Just a bug.” His voice was sandpaper.
“Want some aspirin?”
“No.” It came out too sharp. He softened it. “No, thank you, Linda.”
She left, concerned. He closed his eyes. Behind his eyelids, he saw it. Not the act itself, but the aftermath. Ellie’s face, smooth and empty as a pond, drooling onto that monster’s chest. The sound of her pleasure, so loud and fake it sounded like pain. His own hand moving in the dark corner. He opened his eyes with a gasp. His erection strained against his zipper, urgent and humiliating. He couldn’t stay here.
He got up, pretending to head for the men’s room. He walked past the break room, the copy center, his colleagues’ offices. He saw a framed photo on a desk—a family at Disney World. He saw the father’s arm around the mother and felt a dizzying rush of nausea and heat. He locked himself in a stall, leaning his forehead against the cold metal partition.
This was the trap. The more he fought the images, the brighter they burned. The deeper the shame coiled, the tighter the physical need gripped him. He was a prisoner in two hells at once. He fumbled with his belt, his breath hitching. It was quick, desperate, a silent snarl twisting his face. He thought of the sigils. He thought of the hum. He thought of his daughter’s vacant eyes at the breakfast table. His release was a shuddering collapse, a pulse of pure self-hatred that left him weak-kneed and trembling. He cleaned up, avoiding his reflection in the mirror above the sink. The face that looked back was a stranger’s, pale and slick with sweat.
Back at his desk, the emptiness was worse. A hollow, post-coital calm had descended, but it was poisoned. He had fed the beast. He had participated. He clicked his mouse aimlessly, the beach house schematic a meaningless grid. The presentation notes for his two o’clock meeting were gibberish. All language had been replaced by a single, pounding truth: while he sat here, Mal was there. In his house. In his bed. With his wife.
The shower water was still running. Mal leaned against the bathroom doorframe, watching the steam curl into the bedroom. Ellie stood under the spray, humming. She was scrubbing her skin with a loofah in broad, childish circles. He watched the water sluice over the curves of her body, the same body David had known for two decades, now his to reprogram.
“You missed a spot,” he said.
She jumped, then giggled, pushing her wet hair from her face. “You scared me! Don’t be a sneak!”
“Everything’s for me, remember?” he said, his voice mild. “Including the scare.”
Her giggle softened into a smile.“Right. Everything.” She went back to washing, her movements slowing, becoming more deliberate. Performative. She soaped her breasts, lifting them, watching him watch her.
“Good,” he murmured. “Now rinse and come out. We’re not done.”
She obeyed, turning off the water and stepping out. She reached for a towel but he shook his head. “Don’t.”
She let the towel fall, standing naked and dripping on the bath mat. Water pooled at her feet. He walked to her, tracing a finger from her collarbone down between her breasts, over the soft plane of her stomach. She shivered, but her eyes stayed on his, wide and waiting.
“Your mind is a messy attic, Ellie,” he said softly. “Filled with junk.Sentimental trash. We’re clearing it out. Room by room.” He took her hand and led her, trailing wet footprints, back to the bed. The sheets were still rumpled from the night, carrying their scent. He pushed her down onto her back. She went easily, her limbs loose.
He didn’t kiss her. He didn’t speak sweetly. He positioned himself over her, his gaze analytical, like a craftsman inspecting his material. “You’re going to stay quiet this time,” he instructed. “No words.Just feel. And every time you feel it, I want you to let go of one memory. One little piece of clutter. Can you do that?”
She nodded, biting her lower lip.
He entered her in one smooth, practiced motion. She gasped, a sharp intake of breath, but smothered the sound. Her hands fluttered to his shoulders, then stilled. He set a slow, deep, relentless rhythm. The only sounds were the slick friction of their bodies, the creak of the bedsprings, and their breathing.
“What’s leaving first?” he whispered against her ear, his hips grinding against hers. “The memory of your wedding day? The feel of your dress?”
A single tear leaked from the corner of her eye, tracking into her hairline. She shook her head minutely.
“Let it go, Ellie. It’s just clutter. It’s taking up space where I need to be.” He thrust deeper, and a broken little moan escaped her. “There it goes,” he soothed. “Gone. What’s next? The first time you held Anya? The smell of her head?”
Another tear. Her body began to move with his, a helpless, rising tide. Her fingernails dug into his back.
“Release it,” he commanded, his pace quickening. “It’s useless to you now. You’re not a mother here. You’re my vessel. My toy.” Her climax built, a trembling tightness coiling in her belly. “That’s it. Let the memory go as you come.Push it out. Make room for me.”
She came with a silent, shuddering intensity, her mouth open in a soundless cry. Her hips lifted off the bed, chasing the feeling. He kept moving, drawing it out, until she fell back, boneless and blank. He finished inside her a moment later, a low grunt the only sign of his own pleasure.
He stayed lodged within her, looking down at her face. The tears had stopped. Her expression was smooth, placid. The storm had passed and left behind a flat, serene sea. He brushed her hair from her forehead. “What’s your name?”
“Ellie,” she breathed.
“What are you?”
“Yours.”
“Where is your husband?”
Her brow furrowed for a microsecond, a ghost of a search. Then it cleared. “At work.”
He smiled, withdrawing from her. “Good girl. Now, nap time. You need to recharge.” He pulled the covers over her. She curled onto her side, her eyes already closing, a faint smile on her lips. Within minutes, her breathing evened out into the deep, untroubled rhythm of the profoundly vacant.
Mal walked naked to the window, looking out at the quiet suburb. He could feel David’s anguish from here, a distant, sour note in the energy of the house. It was delicious. He let his mind drift to the daughter, silent in her room. She was settling in nicely, a quiet, useful pet. But the wife… she was his masterpiece in progress. Every fuck, every command, every wiped memory was another stroke of the brush. He was painting over the old Eleanor Vance, and what was emerging was so much more interesting.
The afternoon passed in a haze of repetition. He woke her with his mouth between her legs, her waking world becoming a gasp of pleasure. He took her from behind over the edge of the bed, her face pressed into the comforter, her babbling praise muffled. He had her kneel on the floor and service him while he looked at David’s architectural magazines, her muted gagging just another background noise. Each time, he prompted her.
“What’s leaving now, Ellie?Your favorite song? Let it go.”
“Forget the taste of your grandmother’s pie. It’s nothing.”
“The feel of David’s wedding ring on your skin. Erase it.”
And each time, as pleasure wiped her mind clean, she obeyed. She was becoming a perfect, eager amnesiac. By the time the sun began to slant through the blinds, painting the room gold, she moved through the house in a soft, post-coital daze. She made a sandwich for him, putting the chips on the plate wrong and giggling at her mistake. She tried to fold laundry but got distracted by the texture of a towel against her cheek.
Mal watched it all from the couch, a curator admiring his exhibition. The hum of the house was a contented purr.
David’s presentation was a disaster. He stammered. He lost his place. He called a client by the wrong name. The polite, confused faces of his colleagues and the Fischer account team blurred into a single, judging eye. All he could think about was the empty, happy look on Ellie’s face as she’d announced her new “job.” The way his own body had betrayed him in the bathroom stall. The certainty that right now, at this exact moment, she was being emptied out again.
He drove home through the creeping twilight, a condemned man returning to his prison. His briefcase sat on the passenger seat, full of unimportant papers. His tie was gone, surrendered. He pulled into the driveway, the house looming like a stranger’s. The lights were on in the living room, a soft, inviting glow that felt like a mockery.
He sat in the car for a long time, the engine ticking as it cooled. He tried to muster the rage from the first night, the clear, clean hatred. It was buried under layers of thick, toxic shame. He was an accomplice now. He had jerked off to it. He had eaten the bacon. He had left the tie.
He finally forced himself out and up the walk. The door was unlocked.He stepped inside.
The scene in the living room was almost peaceful. Mal was on the couch, barefoot, watching a cooking show. Anya was on the floor by his feet, her head resting on a cushion, staring at the screen. She wore the same grey shift. And Ellie…
Ellie was curled against Mal’s side, her head in his lap. She wore one of David’s old college sweatshirts, a bulky thing that swallowed her frame. It was zipped only halfway, and she wore nothing underneath. Mal’s hand was inside it, absently cupping her breast, his thumb stroking back and forth. Her eyes were closed, her lips parted. A line of drosh glistened on the fabric of Mal’s sweatpants near her mouth.
She looked… used. Deeply, thoroughly used. And utterly at peace.
The smell of spaghetti—his spaghetti sauce recipe—hung in the air.
Mal looked up, not pausing the rhythmic motion of his hand. “Hey, Dave.Long day? Ellie’s a little tired. We had a busy afternoon of… orientation.” He smiled. “Dinner’s almost ready. Why don’t you go change?”
David stood there, his briefcase dangling from his hand. Ellie stirred at the sound of his voice. Her eyes fluttered open. They found him, standing in the doorway. There was a long, blank moment of non-recognition. Then a faint, warm smile touched her lips. It was the smile she used to give him when he came home from a business trip. A welcoming, weary, loving smile.
It was aimed at the room.At the air. At nothing.
“Hi,” she mumbled, her voice thick with sleep and something else, something permanently dulled. Then her eyes closed again, and she nuzzled deeper into Mal’s lap, chasing the warmth of his hand.
David turned and walked up the stairs, each step heavier than the last. In the guest room, he closed the door. He didn’t change. He stood in the dark, listening to the muted sounds of the television below, to the faint, contented sigh of his wife. His entire body was rigid. A familiar, hated heat was already pooling in his gut, a twisted physiological echo to the scene he’d just witnessed. He was hard.Again. His hand twitched at his side.