Long Legs and Cheap Perfume

Long Legs and Cheap Perfume

By Cam Reese

She called him at two, she saw him that afternoon, and now she can’t sleep, can’t rid him from her head, and now she’s calling him at two. The phone rings, rousts him from sleep. Hello? he says. Hey, it’s me. And that’s all she has to say, she could have said nothing and even nothing would have been enough. By the sight of her call alone, he knew what she did need. Come over, I need you now. Alright, he says, give me a minute—I’m on my way.

Mike grabs a condom from his computer drawer, grabs his pack of cigarettes, and gets into his car and starts driving. He knows by knowing where she’s known to stay, that drive he’s driven many times, yet never in day. Puffing plumes of grey smoke into that cold, damp, stillborn night. Where the lonely streets lay vacant, the caul of the white moon bulbs bright paving his pathway. Down those hollow streets, his car does traverse, singing love ballads tilting meter and verse.  

She doesn’t even like him, she just wants to fuck him, and she knows he loves her well, but there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell—that they could ever be. He bought her an ampoule of perfume, she keeps it under her bed. Sometimes her boyfriend smells it when he surprises her with breakfast in the morning. Smelling the traces upon the pillow, seeing her long legs with soft scratches, the nails, the nails. Her messy room evidence of that night before. The bed twill thwarted, her clothes lay like dead soldiers upon that wartorn carpet. He smiles but he knows, yes, deep down he knows.

And now its two, and Mike is on his way. Traveling as a rider to the moon. Each time for him, as magic as the first. He is large, he is ugly, he does not look at himself in the mirror.

She fucks him because she will never walk on the moon. She saw him earlier, earlier that afternoon. And now she cannot sleep. She puts on that perfume, that special perfume. Why do I act this way? she thinks. She does not know, it does not matter. She wants to and she can. She puts on that perfume for him and him only. That cheap perfume he bought her to wear.

Mike goes to the door, he knows it’s unlocked. It’s always unlocked for him. He pushes through, no hello. She hears him come down the hall—where other's step, he stomps—and then he emerges into the doorway. He stands tall and inkwell black in silhouette, menacing and big. Like an enormous beast he stands in the doorway, and he smells of late-night booze and cigarettes and she is disgusted by his scent. She knows that she shouldn’t, but that she shouldn’t makes her want to all the more.

She lies in bed and using her long legs instructs him hither, curling her toe, motioning her leg like a forefinger saying, Come, come now. And he’s a good boy, does not need be told twice, and he crawls crossing the bed, knuckles dragging, and what’s that? He smells that perfume.

Overhanging, orangutanging, looming large above her. She feels his arms and his gaseous gusts of breath. He looks down upon her and she is tiny to him by measure, insignificant by all comparison. Those dark tendrils of her wafting hair curl and unfurl down upon her naked breasts. She is small busted with thick thighs and tattoos. Her lips gloss in the faint nightglow that peers from the shades. He licks her body and taking his large hands rubs the small of her neck, choking. She pulls him in closely and feels the heat, that heated anvil of heart, the sweat steams like fog, he is inside her. She trembles in his grasp yet within those hairy, thick claws she feels the restraint; he could kill her with his hands, she can feel it, her thin neck is pencil-like in his grip, and she knows that he could snap it. But the bestial man is gentle with her, tries his best to be. He spits into her mouth, and she swallows it. Inside her pithy warmth, he feels her grip tighten and grunting gruffly he unleashes all that’s pent inside. That anger, that malice, she sees his blighted eyes. Her lips tremor, her legs convulsing electra, the octane wrath between legs, between legs. Her long legs wrapping round his round body, hairy and grizzled. Moaning into the pillow, him cavemanlike searching for her eyes, never locking too long. He bites her neck, vampiric, as he drives forth wending deeply orgasmic. Her nails clenching him and clawing, drawing blood into his back. The blood drips onto the white linen, neon in the moon. And then the slow intravenous drip of blood begins to river and stream, it falls. Outside of her ears, she hears a loud gun blast. Then the man falls atop of her, breathless, motionless, she is covered in blood. She squirms and tries to get him off, but she cannot—he’s too big. Then from the peripherals, she sees a shadow of a man, pole thin and vexing. It’s her boyfriend.

He stands beside the bed, looming long and ominous beside her, the gun lingers by his waist, the tip smoking.

He throws the man’s body aside and he plops onto the bed beside her.

She is covered in blood, naked, and the thin man, obsidian black, a shadow, stands by the bedside. He undrapes and mounts her and starts making love to her. He sniffs the air. Is that a new perfume? I’ve smelt it once or twice before.

She says, What have you done?

He says, What I should have done a long time ago.

You killed him!

He plugs her mouth shut, puts the hot barrel of the gun to her head and says, Shut the fuck up. Don’t say a word or I’ll kill you dead.

She nods, the tears in her eyes are shoring waves.

He says, You lay there and take it, you bitch.

He fucks her with a gun pointed to her head. His lank spider frame awkward and boney jilts and wilts against her slow and unorthodox. She sees his silver eyes piercing through the night, cold and unwelcoming, psychopathic. His body is hairless, smooth as an infant, and he is cold, he is so cold.

They fuck beside the large dead body, and she smells the perfume. Those grey, lifeless eyes roll like marbles and then stop, stay, they stay forever, they are looking at her—those eyes—he’s watching you from hell. She looks at the dead man’s eyes as she’s being fucked and those shored tears begin to tide. Her boyfriend says, I’ve known this all along. What? Does he fuck better than me?

She is too scared to talk, she shuts her eyes and shudders with each thrust. He is thin, he is cold, he is calculant in his stare.

He says, Ugh, his body stinks.

But all she can smell is that perfume.

She wakes up.

It was just a dream.

She reaches across the bed and grabbing her phone sees that it is two oclock at night. She calls him.