Thesis:
He stared at her from across the room, his expression filled with contradiction. His mouth was locked into a primal grimace, even as he looked on her with dilated pupils, the blacks of which reflected the bright orange light of the venue.
Your mom only sat there, shuffling every so often in her seat, the flesh of her body electric with nervous energy. And though his eyes occasionally drew from looking at her apparently-stoic expression in her face, down toward longingly admiring the side of her ass and thigh in her form-fitting silver dress, he had yet to notice just how nervous she was.
Maybe it was because he always assumed her to be on top of everything. That was why she was there, listening to the speaker up on stage, waiting for her turn to speak. Her speech sat on her table, next to her wineglass, and he just knew it was filled with her long list of accomplishments for the fiscal year, accomplishments that she would attribute to her team of course (she just had to be perfect in humility too). He grimaced, watching her hand resting next to that folded piece of paper.
Antithesis:
As your mom sat there, her insides devouring themselves, the soft flesh of her curvy body twitching as if she were being zapped by subtle electrical shocks in her various muscle groups, she thought about what her colleagues were going to look like when she stood up there, looking down at them under that bright light, explaining (while trying not to come across as too pompous) all the game-changing innovations her and her team were responsible for, and all the benefits it would provide for the company and almost everyone who worked in it.
Thesis:
He only sat a few tables off, a little way further from the stage, seeing in your mom’s fidgety energy an eagerness to brag. An eagerness to boast. And an eagerness to give what would inevitably be her amazing speech, it being as amazing as everything else she did. She couldn’t help herself.
Antithesis:
Your mom looked down at the folded piece of paper. She feared she had wrote it with too much haste, too much obsession with the words themselves, and not enough with making them sufficiently legible to read on the spot, especially as the mind-blanking anxiety would swallow her alive up there. She was never good at reading from paper, even in the best of times. Now, she not only had to get over that shortcoming, she had to do so in front of a crowd that was about to realize for the first time just how bad she was at it: public speaking. She had avoided it for so long, somebody else from her team, whether it was Charlie or Susan, always gladly hoisting that flag. “Next time,” they’d say to her, as if it were a promise. And she’d nod and act amicably, secretly thrilled, hoping there would never be a next time, that that can would kick itself down the alley for foreseeable time.
But with this project, her brainchild, the product of her heart, there was no one in her team who could deliver this speech who was worthy of it. Nobody who understood what they had just accomplished as well as she had. Nobody arrogant enough to try. Her boss commended her that morning in an e-mail: “I don’t think anyone’s accomplished for us just what you have. Harry went out on a limb for you when you first started working with us. I saw he was right to do so a few months in. Six years later and I see allowing him to convince me to hire you might have been my greatest success. Not that I’m trying to steal your shine. All I did was sign your contract.”
Why was this eating her up so much? That was a logical question. And she was a logical person. She always had been. Yet phobias knew no logic. And that was what this was. She had a phobia. She always had. A deep fear of public speaking. She didn’t fear failure. She didn’t fear incompetence. She didn’t fear mice, or heights, or spiders, or tight spaces. The only thing she ever feared, and experience would tell her she had a right to fear it, was public speaking.
She couldn’t hear a word Andrew was saying up there. He made another joke and she didn’t even pretend to laugh this time. She only sat there, the pit in her stomach becoming more urchin-like and uncomfortable. She reached for her wine glass by its delicate neck, and she lifted it to her lips. Its rim rattled against her teeth as she sucked back her wine.
Thesis:
She’s not even listening, he thought, watching her in disbelief. She thinks she’s the only person worth celebrating. Little Miss Important.
Andrew finished his speech to rapturous applause amongst the clanging of silverware and glass. Your mom was not among those clapping.
Antithesis:
Only another half-an-hour or so and then it’s my turn, she thought, and without even joining in the applause, she stood up. Her chair scraping the ballroom carpet. She headed toward the hotel lobby. All the while, she was being watched by two narrow eyes.
Thesis:
Those two eyes remained laser focused on the side of her face, and her stoic, self-assured expression. And when she turned past the last of the round tables, her head turned away and her face was no longer visible, those two narrow eyes dropped, landing on the prodigious shelf of her ass, focusing on it with as much intent. It was an extremely noticeable ass.
Antithesis:
Her teeth rattled against the receiver through the flesh of her lips, and she stood there, listening to the dial tone while looking out at front entrance of the hotel into its mid-afternoon parking lot. It was such a peaceful day, yet inside her was a storm. A young man held one of the glass doors open so his grandmother could walk herself in.
The dial tone stopped.
“Hello?”
The old lady looked up into her grandson’s face, not a care in the world, smiling. Your mom stared at the sight, as if it meant something.
“Hello?” called the voice on the phone for a second time.
“Hello,” your mom replied.
“Babe?”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me.”
“How’s it going? How did the speech go?”
“It didn’t.”
“It didn’t?” your dad repeated.
“I didn’t… I didn’t do it yet. I’m…”
“Oh.”
“…I’m doing it in…” she looked down at her watch. “Thirty minutes or so.”
“Oh, that’s good. You’re going to knock it out the park.”
“Babe…”
“I know you are.”
“Stop, baby.”
“What?”
“I’m going to pass out.” The young man and his grandmother glared at your mom as they passed her. She looked back at them, then at the wall.
“Babe...”
“I don’t-“ she said.
“Babe…”
“I know, I know.”
“You’re thinking too hard about this. It’s going to be fine.”
“It’s just-“
“Stop talking,” your dads voice demanded, firmly but lovingly.
Your mom stood there, looking down at the grey carpet, it decorated with a pattern of muted yellow and red. Her eyes large and reflective. She was silent, waiting.
“Okay, good. Just calm down. Like I said before, you’re good at everything you do. I’m sure you’ll be good at this too. And… and this is a very big but…. Even if it doesn’t go all that well, do you really think anyone’s going to care? You made the company literal millions. They don’t pay you to give speeches. They pay you to make them money and to help them best their competitors. You’re their greatest asset. Nobody else comes close. Not Jeffrey. Not Colin. Not Susan. Not even that one you think doesn’t like you. What’s his name again?”
“Phillip,” your mom said in a low voice, looking around subtly.
“Yes, Phillip,” your dad said, chuckling to himself. “That complete idiot, Phillip.”
Your mom looked over her shoulder at the doors to the orange ballroom as if your dad’s voice would be audible to passer-byers.
“Nobody can touch you. So… let’s say you go up there, and worse comes to worst, you give your speech, and you stumble and you blush and you sweat and you find you’re missing a page of notes…” your dad chuckled again. “Anything you can think of… imagine that happens… then what? What happens after that? Everyone laughs at you? Nobody respects you? They demote you? You get fired? See how ridiculous it all sounds?”
Your mom was silent, still looking at the carpet, her mind tracing over its various patterns.
“If anything, babe, people are going to be thankful to you for failing for just once in your life.” Your dad chuckled again. “They’re going to say ‘see, she’s not perfect. She’s one of us.’ Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“No,” your mom said. She wasn’t lying. She was naturally self-deprecating around her coworkers whenever she could get the chance. Being on a pedestal was more uncomfortable for her than anonymity and doubt in her ability. Maybe that was the problem. She didn’t want to be up there on stage, standing in front of all those eyes, trying to maneuver that thin line between celebrating the accomplishments of her team, which would necessarily mean celebrating her own accomplishments (everybody knew this. And she knew everybody did. And everybody knew that she knew that everybody did.) and trying to downplay those accomplishments at the same time, despite the fact that they were the elephant in the room this entire last quarter. Her teeth trembled against the receiver more.
Your dad heard the sound of it but he didn’t put any thought into what it was. If he had been home to kiss her for the past week, instead of out on a business trip, he would have felt those trembling teeth against his lips. This day had been chewing through her mind, tickling against her angst with its numerous legs and feelers.
“Listen sweety,” he said, soberly. “When the speech is over, whether it’s a rip-roaring success, or a horrible, horrible trainwreck, I guarantee it you’re going to feel stupid for being so stressed out over it. It’s not a big deal. It’s not going to kill you. You know this.”
She did.
“When you’re finished it, whatever happens, just call me back. I guarantee you we’ll be laughing about it then.”
Your mom smiled, though no portion of it was genuine. She did it as if your dad was in the room to see her and she needed to appear okay for his sake. “Sure,” she said. “I love you.”
“I love you too, beautiful.” His voice was warm and silky.
She hung up the phone.
She put it back into her purse, and looked down at the muted pattern on the ground, its reds and yellows overlapping and criss-crossing, but in the grand scheme of it all, all moving toward the same direction.
She took in a deep breath, trying to calm the trembling.
Thesis:
As she did, Phillip came out into the lobby. He saw her standing there, recognizing her by the shape of her lower body before he even recognized her face.
He saw her there, breathing like a pop idol preparing for a performance. She was loathsome. He could find one or two in the office who agreed. But most people seemed to be fooled by her false-humility.
His eyes scanned over her, her body and aura like an alchemical mix, fusing, forming through their opposite impressions on him, thesis, antithesis, coming together as one to make a synthesis which needed its own word. Perhaps a word existed in a foreign language. Something which in English could be approximated as Hate-Lust. Or Desire-Disgust. She was the first and only person who had ever filled him with a sensation quite like it, and its violent extreme on one end only contributed to the violent extreme of the other, this process happening in both directions, and the void between them being like a giant black chasm, a place impossible for him to step.
Phillip put his forearm against the door of the men’s washroom just as your mom turned back around. The last thing he caught before disappearing into the bathroom was your mom’s stoic face, wearing its mask of self-assurance, or so he only assumed.
The last thing on his face was disgust.
Antithesis:
Your mom’s colleague’s were startled as her chair’s legs banged against the legs of the table when she pulled it back. She slowed herself down, noticing that everyone at the table was looking back at her, and she slowly sat.
Her soft butt made slow and steady contact with the curve of the chair. She looked at her team.
Their concern turned into smiles at seeing how self-assured she seemed to be. They had always looked at her for guidance because of that very self-assurance. It was like an anchor for them, no matter the intensity of the storm.
She looked back at them, feeling like a fraud.
She managed a smile.
They turned back around, with only Susan taken a second longer to drag away her gaze. Your mom noticed her there, and Susan shot her wink and then turned around with the others to watch Lucas speak.
Your mom sat in her chair, not hearing anything except her heart beating in her ears. When a riotous motion happened around her, likely because of a joke or an inspiring statement made by Lucas (who didn’t even have notes to go off of), your mom didn’t seem to notice at all. She looked down at the table.
Sitting there, staring back at her, recently filled by passing staff, her glass full of white wine sat.
She grabbed it amongst the laughter and clapping, their sound somehow being her disguise, and she lifted to the glass to her lips, downing it as if it were water in the Sahara.
She put the glass back down.
Within seconds, a young pretty blonde girl neared up beside the table, like a guardian angel, almost invisible to everyone else there as they looked up at the speaker. Your mom looked up into the young girl’s mousy face.
She motioned down toward your mom’s empty glass.
“Red or white?” she asked softly.
Your mom looked at the glass. Then back up at the girl.
The girl stood there smiling nervously. She then gestured with her head in suppliance. As if to say “either/or, I’m here to provide it for you.”
Your mom looked at her empty glass. Then she looked at Susan’s empty glass next to it (Susan didn’t drink).
She looked back up at the girl. “Both,” she said. And she slid both glasses over the table toward the surprised girl’s expression as if they were one.
Thesis:
When Phillip got back to his table, the two glasses on hers were empty. His eyes were stuck to the back of your mom’s black hair. He thought he could see her smugness beyond that veil. That festering of pride and vanity. All of it behind that pretty face, with that gorgeous shapely ass on her just to throw off the scent. He knew so many other women (and some men) like that. Your mom was just the worst of them.
He imagined stripping her of her façade, and because the thought was so abstract and formless, in its place, the visual of him stripping her of that shiny, metallic dress bristled vividly in his mind. Her arms falling in place to cover up her naked shame. Shocked that it was being seen. Shocked that she was finally being understood for what she was.
Phillip shifted slightly, adjusting his pants.
He looked down at the seat of your mom’s chair, seeing the way her butt pressed into it and the sides of it and her thighs pushed outward with such soft, excessive flesh. He imagined being up on that stage, holding her metallic dress out as if it were the scalp of a defeated enemy, presenting it to his audience. With her standing there, looking away in deep shame. Her arms defending some of what she had hiding, but it was impossible to hide all of it. Her giant ass, the greatest source of insufferability, her pride or her conceitedness, still visible to the astonished onlookers. And then, without mercy or pause, Phillip imagined his hand coming down hard and fast against its soft and vulnerable cheek.
*thwap*
And that cheek rippling comically, picked up by the mic and projected by the speakers, for all who watched and listened, its sound reverberated through the high ceiling of that echoey hall, its still-loud traces heard by those standing in the lobby or working in the kitchen.
The crowd laughed.
Lucas had said another funny thing. But neither Phillip or your mom heard it. They were both preoccupied with their thoughts.
The young girl came back to your mom’s table, looking down at the two empty glasses, shocked, she seemed ready to ask to refill them, but, thinking the better of it, she turned to leave.
Thesis:
Your mom said something, Phillip couldn’t hear, and the young woman stopped. Turning around, she nodded to your mom, set her tray down and filled one glass. Your mom pointed to the other. The young girl reached for the red wine this time, but your mom stopped her. She pointed back at the white and then at the empty glass. The girl nodded, then she poured more of the white wine into the glass, set it down, smiled awkwardly, and walked off with the tray.
Your mom slid both glasses, both filled to the top with white wine, toward herself.
“Jesus,” Phillip mumbled. Just who the hell does she think she is? Marie Antoinette?
Your mom lifted the first glass to her trembling mouth. She downed it in one motion.
Antithesis:
The entire venue had become a blur. Explosions of sound and motion happened around her occasionally, and sometimes she caught it and joined in by lazily slapping her palms or fingers together. Other times she only sat there, awash in her own buzz, blind and deaf to it all.
Even with the air an electric smudge, and her gut and thighs ticklish with warm finger and toes, every moment she’d feel an occasional tug, and then a sudden oppressive dread which would wash over her. She put the glass to her lips again, and merciful wine filled her. She kept drinking, trying to find the sanctuary at the bottom of the glass. Trying to find that eternal buzz, the one so strong it drowned any neurotic nagging, no matter how acute or persistent.
Every time she thought she’d found it, she’d sit in a few moments of peace, and even euphoria, before it found her again, sneaking up at her from her lower waist, crawling up the back of her body like a creature trying to burrow into her where her spine and the back of her skull met.
I’m dying, she thought. Why doesn’t anyone see it? I’m scared. They have to know I’m scared. The world has to know.
She looked at the abandoned silverware on the table. A flurry of hands exploded into motion around the sight of the inert utensils and plate.
Oh no, she thought. I’m drunk.
She licked at the roof of her mouth.
Really drunk.
She leaned back in her chair. Her black hair spilled over its back rest.
Thesis:
Phillip looked over at her, seeing her careless leaning. Her inability to even pretend to care what Adriana was saying up there. She was in a world all her own. It had her name, and she was the mayor, plus its biggest celebrity and the chief of police and sanitation.
Another moment for applause. Another moment where she sat, he arms hanging there, here hands open, directionless, unconcerned with any other success besides her own, her wrists resting at the sides of her giant ass and thick thighs.
Phillip smiled. There was something freeing in knowing he had her down so perfectly. Whether or not she’d ever be exposed for who she really was to those who had yet to accept it, he didn’t know. But just knowing who she really was himself, even if he were the only man on earth who did, was enough for him.
She shifted in her seat. Phillip watched her ass move and fluctuate in shape as she did. It finally was still, finding a new position and shape at it settled.
Antithesis:
Your mom sat there. I’m supposed to give a speech she thought. She looked up. The podium was empty.
Now?
She looked on. Her team sat there, now facing the table, talking amongst each other in between bites of leftover food and sips of wine or water. Susan occasionally looked at her to flash a sisterly smile.
Not now. Not now. They’ll tell me.
Thoughts came through in waves, clipped and awkward. The anxiety came the same way, and left just as suddenly, forgotten in a fog of indistinct thought.
She put her hand to her face, and let it slide down, then she put her palm under her jaw and she rested her elbow on the table. It made a quaking thud, shaking the silverware. Everybody stopped where they were, Todd mid-sentence, and they all looked at her.
She looked out, seeing the accumulated faces of her team in a semi-circle before her, all focused on her at once.
Oh no, she thought. Looking out at what appeared to her to be a crowd of recognizable faces, the number of which too high for her to register or count. She imagined them as if they were looking up at her from below, expecting her mouth to open and words to come out. Her arms rested on the table’s edge as if it were a podium. How did I get up here? she thought desperately. I’m not ready.
She quickly bolted upright.
Their gaze rose when she did, every one of them startled.
Thesis:
Phillip saw it happen from behind. First he saw her tanned upper back, complimented by the metallic straps of her dress, and not long afterward, he saw the vivacious shape of her buttocks in its place, its cheeks still shaking, and shaking some more as she stabilized herself against the table with her palms.
Her team looked into her eyes, astonished by her uncharacteristic behavior.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” your mom mumbled. “I’m a… a frud.”
She spun around, and pushed forward, stumbling over her own chair as she did. It fell to the floor with a thud, one which drew a few eyes from nearby tables.
Phillip watched, his mouth hanging open, as he followed her butt and thighs, which jiggled with her awkward stomping, with his astonished gaze. She then regained balance, stumbled passed a few more rows of chairs, drawing some attention as she went, with most in the venue remaining oblivious to her, attending to their food, drink, or discussion. Phillip was one of the few sets of eyes who watched her go, and he did so with the utmost fascination and confusion.
By the time her boss, sitting at the opposite end of the floor, looked over at her table, knowing that her speech was soon-coming, he saw only an upturned chair on the ground, and nothing else. She was gone.
He thought nothing of it. She still had a few minutes to spare. But before he turned back around to discuss the wine with his wife, he saw Phillip stand up, and move, like a spirit on a mission, towards the lobby. He thought nothing of that either, except a small tinge of disgust at the possibility (one which came to him quite naturally) of Phillip deciding to use the bathroom, or to make a phone call, at the exact moment of your mom’s speech just to avoid celebrating her accomplishments with everyone else.
He had wanted to fire Phillip for a few months now. But he was persuaded by Lucas to keep the lunkhead on. He had done so, assuming Lucas could shape him up in time. That time had passed, and Phillip was still Phillip. Your mom’s boss wasn’t savoring Monday. Because it was then he was going to tell the useless idiot that he was being let go.
Phillip disappeared into the lobby. And at that, your mom’s boss turned back around, looking at his occupied wife. “This wine is quite tasty, isn’t it dear?”
She nodded. “It is!”
Antithesis:
The world whizzed past your mom indistinctly, like its contents were melting, and she trudged through it all like one would a swamp.
A solid object met her shoulder, painfully, but then gave as she pushed into it.
She emerged on its other side, and something sucked shut behind her. She moved forward, finding another obstruction, this time prepared for it, she pushed passed it, and again it sucked shut behind her, but now the air felt fresh and the sound of car motors and a distant siren played like music around her.
She stood there.
“Excuse me,” someone said from behind.
Your mom tried to move.
“Excuse me.”
She was almost pushed out of the way.
She stood there, watching the old lady walk out of the fuzziness, past her, and then back into it.
A young man, holding the old lady by the crook of her arm, turned to look back at your mom. His gaze locked on hers. He held there, then he looked away shyly.
Your mom stood there, trying to balance herself.
She didn’t know where she was. She didn’t know why. If somebody were to ask her her name, she wouldn’t have known that either. She was in an empty canoe, a million miles from not just civilization, but the words and symbols which kept civilization itself afloat. Her feet were up resting on its edge, and her fingers ran serenely through its cool water.
She knew, somewhere in the deep recesses of her mind, that she had something to be upset about. She knew it vividly, and she could almost trace the outline of that notion, knowing its negative shape. But even still, she didn’t dread it. She felt nothing. Nothing except peace. She wondered how she could ever feel anything else.
A smile began to form in her expression, and she could feel it before she knew it consciously, just by the pressure in her cheeks. The blue-grey world, its soft buzz and rippling, existed all around. And she was its pearl.
She tilted her head back. She shut her eyes.
Suddenly, a violent force gripped her at her wrist and elbow.
She felt a tug.
The world around her jostled.
“Let’s go,” someone nearby said.
“I…”
“This way, this way.”
She heard a giant honk tear through the peace.
“Okay, okay,” the voice said.
Another honk.
“Okay! We’re walking. Shut up!”
The presence in front of her, the one her wrist seemed to be attached to, slowed down, and she could feel it now against the front of her right hip.
“Come close,” he said.
She felt an arm wrap around her waist.
“Like we’re husband and wife….”
The hand on that arm caressed her lower left side.
“That’s what everyone will think.” There was a nervous urgency in his voice. “And we’ll be out of here before any of our colleagues come out here.”
The arm pulled her in closer against that soft trunk.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’ll be over soon.”
She heard a clicking noise and a beeping.
“Okay, get in.”
She stood there.
Suddenly she was pushed downward violently from behind.
“Get your ass in that seat,” the hushed voice demanded urgently.
Before she stumbled inward, she felt a sudden violence against her right butt-cheek, one which stung her and was accompanied with a loud smacking noise.
Then she was sitting down, over the spot of sharp pain.
There was a slamming noise. The beeping stopped. Then some silence. Then another click, to her left, and some beeping, and then she felt the contraption she was sitting in shift. There was a slamming noise. The beeping stopped.
Thesis:
“Okay,” he said. “Coast is clear.”
She felt a soft weight being lifted from her lap. “Let me see that.”
He opened her purse and began to rummage through it.
“My wife’s not going to appreciate it if I bring you around. We don’t have to worry about your significant other though. Not for another week I hear.” He got hold of something. He pulled it up. “Here it is,” he said. He opened up your mom’s wallet. Inside, ignoring her pictures with you and your brother as kids. Ignoring her credit cards, and her gift cards, he found her driver’s license. He took a look at it, smiling down at the pretty and smug face which stared back up at him. Then he looked at its address.
“Oh,” he said, throwing the license and the wallet back in her purse and throwing the purse down at her feet. “It figures you would live there.”
He turned the ignition.
“Where else would Little Miss Perfect live?”
As the car booted into life, the young girl stood outside in her work clothes, holding a cigarette between her fingers, watching as it went. She had seen that woman, the one she had felt uneasy pouring more wine for, being rushed into that car by someone who wasn’t even at her table.
She stood there, taking another drag of her cigarette to kill the pit rising in her stomach.
When she was done, she dropped her cigarette to the floor, stomped it with her heel, and went back in to work.
She felt like she should tell somebody. But then she remembered, she was the one who kept supplying the lady with more drinks. If it was anyone’s fault, everyone would know it was hers.
She came back out onto the floor, grabbing the tray of wines from the kitchen counter, and then she headed to the ballroom door.
If anyone asked, she hadn’t seen the woman. And besides, even if she had, what’s the worst that could happen? He had to be just driving the lady home. That was the only thing she could stand to entertain.
Antithesis:
Your mom could see a blurry world rush past her, with only pieces of it remaining constant. There was a tickling sensation within her, as if the fuzzy visuals ran through her as physical objects would, or like a soft Persian carpet or a long unbroken velvet curtain massaging the inside of her tummy as it was dragged past softly.
She tilted her head back.
Then she felt a sensation on her thighs.
It moved.
“Oh, it’s smooth,” the voice said.
The sensation moved softly, but aggressively, rubbing up and down her thigh.
“Fuck…” the voice exclaimed huskily.
She felt the sensation pull against her inner-thigh, and she offered no resistance, her left leg extending outward.
The sensation climbed up her thigh, and then she felt it against her crotch, through the fabric of her underwear. She breathed softly.
“Let’s see if you’re as perfect on the inside as you are on the…”
She felt a sensation in between her legs. First it moved slowly, up and down, and then it picked up its pace and intensity. She tilted her head back and her jaw fell open. The sensation had a specific locality, inside her, but it seemed to radiate in waves along her lower half. Her toes felt the brunt of it, and they extended outward, causing her shoes to fall of her heels.
“Ugh,” he moaned. The sensation disappeared. “I’m almost there.”
She was floating through a dream. But even in this dream, she could sense an infinitesimally small, and shrinking smaller, nightmare which existed at some distance behind the back of her own head, like a pin-prick in her peace, which only added to it by reminding her, in the smallest way possible, what it was she had escaped.
With each moment, that nightmare grew smaller, less visible, less audible (the sound of clanking glass was almost gone entirely now). And likewise, with each moment, her very own home got a little bit closer.
“Where’s the girl of the hour?” your mom’s boss asked, turned around with his elbow resting on the back of his chair.
A series of eyes and bodies were in search for her among the general ignorance of her absence.
Her chair sat there, sideways on the floor. A member of the staff walking past, leaned down and picked it up, setting it back into place.
Your mom’s boss looked at the chair, empty and innocuous, and he wondered at the woman who had just filled it so completely only a few minutes before.
Antithesis:
Your mom felt arms wrap around her and take her in a full embrace, lifting her from any solid reality below.
The beeping noise sounded over the background of bird-chirping and the distant sound of child laughter. She felt her feet slowly touch, and then plant themselves on, pavement. She heard a slamming noise. The beeping stopped.
“Okay,” he said. “Nice and softly. Let’s not make ourselves too suspicious.”
She began moving.
The hands which held her up did so softly, assuringly. There was no rush. No demand. No responsibility. And best of all, no obligation or expectation. Just a soft guiding hand, which pushed-pulled her forward. The feeling of hot pavement was replaced by the cool touch of grass.
“Almost there,” he said.
Pavement again.
Her foot hit something solid and abrasive.
“Lift your legs,” he said.
She felt a hand wrap beneath her kneecap and pull it upward. She then felt herself being lifted at the waist and then set down.
She heard a squeaking noise, she was pushed forward, and the sensation beneath her feet changed in a fundamental way, from stony, abrasive, and hot to cool and smooth, almost featureless. Then the sound of the birds and ambience became faint. Something clicked shut, and the world suddenly sounded sterile. The air felt cool and artificial against her exposed skin.
The surrounding blur was indecipherable, though she felt faint hints of familiarity and comfort within it. A safety came back over her, even above the warm embrace of the buzzing air previously.
Her feet were bare against the ground. Hardwood floor. A small hint of worry sat like a clump of disbursing muck inside the pure water of her thoughts when she felt the cool wood against the soles of her feet, and she inevitably wondered where her shoes had gone, only to forget that worry within an instant and sink back into the soft cloud at the hind of her being.
“Finally,” the voice said. She felt another broad sting against her right butt cheek. “I have you right where I want you. Right where you always should have been.”
She felt a sudden violence behind her, pushing against her spine, and then a solid block against the entirety of her upper body. The side of her face rested against it.
Suddenly, she felt a strange clothy sensation rubbed thinly from the backs of her thighs, running up her flesh all the way to the small of her back. She felt a sudden chill along her lower body.
Thesis:
Phillip stood there, his lower lip hanging open, looking down at your mom with his hand pressed against the back of her neck. She looked up at him indistinctly with one eye.
She was bent over, her chest against her kitchen table, and her dress hiked up all the way to the middle-section of her back.
Phillip looked down at her, naked from her heels to lower back. Her ass, big and round and as perfect as everything else on and inside of her, looked back at him, unobscured and open. Her butt-crack a visible line.
“Yes!” he hissed to himself. “Fuck yes! You fucking bitch.”
He winded up his open palm behind his waist, readying it to come down against the bare flesh of his hostage.
Antithesis:
Your mom felt a sudden pain, sharp, broad, and horrible all at once, explode into her consciousness, though she knew not from where its source resided.
She tried to move her head, but she felt an intense pressure press it flat against the hard service.
“No, you’re not going anywhere, you bitch. I got you right where I want you.”
She heard a bubbling, grinding noise above her.
“Ackhckhckh”
And then she heard a “Sptw”
A sharp sensation, not painful but sudden, hit her cheek. She shut her eyes, and by the time she opened it, she realized the side of her face was wet.
She then felt another sharp pain. And then heard a zipping noise. And then felt something, like two pieces of her flesh being pulled away form each other.
“Oh god,” she heard being thrust outward huskily. “Let me get a picture of this.”
Thesis:
He stood there, looking at the face of his phone. In the camera app, he could see his object of interest. He held his phone steady to stabilize the camera. And when he did, a pristine butthole, perfect and untouched between two gargantuan walls of flesh, came into view.
He snapped a picture.
Your mom’s boss stood at her table, looking down at Susan and the others.
“I have no idea. We saw her get up, and she just sort of left.”
“Did she say anything about where she had to go?”
Susan shook her head.
“No emergency, or worry she had? Nothing?”
“She didn’t tell us anything,” Susan said. “I thought maybe she left to practice her speech, but…”
The other members of your mom’s team, sat there, just as obliviously.
Your mom’s boss looked down at his watch. “We’re running late.”
The server stood off to the side, a metallic coffee pot in her hands, watching the kerfuffle around your mom’s table. She saw another woman coming back from the washroom and shrugging her shoulders at the table. The young girl looked away, walking off with her pot in tow, the pit in her stomach getting larger.
Your mom’s boss looked back up at the team, then he looked back down at your mom’s seat.
“What’s this?” he said. He grabbed the bit of paper next to the empty wine glass.
“I think that’s her speech.”
He picked it up and opened it. “It is,” he replied dryly.
“So we know what she wants to say,” Charlie said. “But she’s just not here to say it then.”
Your mom’s boss looked up from the paper, directly into Susan’s eyes. “Do you feel up to giving a speech tonight.”
She was flustered. “Uh, sure. Of course. But…”
“We’ll give ten more minutes, starting now. If she’s not back, and nobody can get a hold of her, you take this up there and let it rip.” He placed the folded paper in her hands. “Just read it over once or twice first.”
“Sure…” she said, looking down the speech.
“I’m sure she’ll be back,” her boss said, and began to walk off. “She’s always there when we need her.”
Thesis:
Your mom felt something big dragging through her mouth, tasting strange against her tongue, but soft and stiff at the same time. She breathed, and every time she did, she inhaled a strong aroma. She moved her head back and forth on her own accord, but every time she didn’t, she felt a force doing it for her. There was a sensation on her scalp, which was rough but not too rough. Most of all, she bobbed back and forth for the taste, which was tangy and overpowering, which ran past her taste buds.
“Yes,” she heard above. “Take it. Keep your pretty mouth shut. Don’t want you bragging again.”
The pungent aroma filled her nostrils.
Antithesis:
Thesis:
The source of taste and weight was plucked from her mouth, and she could immediately feel its absence. She felt palms, and indeterminable amount, slide along her body, and she felt herself moving through space before being hoisted up, and then dropped. She sucked back air, feeling the drop would be a large one, only to feel a soft cushion beneath her with an accompanying squeak noise in her ear. Her face fell against something equally as soft and cool.
“No,” she heard. “You’re not just going to sit back for this one. Not while your team is doing all the work. Get up.”
She felt herself being lifted again, only to fall for a second time, this time onto something fleshy. It rubbed against her inner-thighs.
She felt her butt-cheeks being pulled apart.
“Let’s get these out of the way then…”
And then something, something hard and powerful, was being pushed into her.
“Okay now,” she heard. “Shake that ass.”
The first few shakes were done for her by forceful hands. It didn’t take long for her to continue where they left off.
“Ohhh, ffffuck yeah!”
Antithesis:
Thesis:
“Oh, Little Miss Perfect just has to be good at this too, doesn’t she? Overachiever…”
She felt hands against her waist.
“At least your perfection is to my benefit now. Now you can do something right for somebody other than yourself for once.”
The hard shape moved within her, or at least she thought so. She could barely distinguish it from her emotions, or the blur of the air around her. All she knew about the strange sensation was that it fit into a vague category, one beyond her ability to articulate now, but which she would register on any other day as: “wonderful.”
Antithesis:
Thesis:
“Dance for it,” the voice hissed. “Dance for it, you bitch.”
She barely understood the words, not even understanding that they were directed at her. But that word, dance, put a novel thought into her mind. She jerked her body, as if in primitive imitation of dance, and she felt that sensation running through her take on new life.
“Yesss,” he groaned. “Like that!”
She didn’t know what the words coming up from beneath her meant. All she knew was that she wanted to move more. She wanted it more than anything. Because as long as she did, that sensation remained constant.
Antithesis:
Thesis:
She was then lifted again, and the world rotated past her, like constellations through lapsing time.
She looked out at an indistinct scrolling fuzz of beiges and whites. Something was missing, and it wasn’t until she felt it pushing into her from behind that she knew what.
“No matter how perfect they are. They’re all just dogs at the end of the day. Dogs in heat.”
She heard that from behind herself, then she felt a slapping against her backside.
“I think the name for that…”
Another slap.
“…is bitch.”
Antithesis:
Thesis:
Whatever that strange sensation was, it seemed to be happening deeper in her now than before. She felt her hips being pulled back, only to be pushed forward again by a smacking opposite force. No matter how many times it happened, and it seemed to be happening consistently, she was shocked.
She murmured softly to herself in between the quakes of shocking stimuli.
“What was that?” he asked. “Speak up, it’s time for your speech.”
She only caught the last word, but at catching it, a sudden dread came over her.
The smacking noises sounded to her like a polite smattering of applause. The blurs before her, while still in motion, took on steadier shape, vaguely human and attentive, looking up at her with their hands clasped in their laps or above the cloth and silverware of their tables.
She gripped something before her. She looked down at it to see a speech, but it seemed to be scrawled out indecipherably on something large, soft, and square. She focused on it, trying to acquire what she could from the black dribbles, only to realize that the slate she held before her diagonally was the armrest of her couch back home. Why did I bring this here?
Antithesis:
Thesis:
Her face began to burn, not just from the heat given off by the light above, but in fear that someone would notice the nature of the tablet she held before her.
She looked up over its edge, out at the crowd, their expressions at the place between boredom, curiosity, and eager expectation. She could make out the lines of their faces better than she could make out the alphabet of her speech, and her gaze pulled slower from those which implied confusion, or hints of disapproval, than it did others, as she scanned over her audience.
Just as she was about to lift the soft tablet back to her face, its contents starting to become clearer, she felt the tablet rip from her hands, and fling itself over her shoulders.
She looked out at the audience. They looked back deeply into her face. Their expressions serious, impatient.
Her bottom lip began to tremble.
Then she felt something, like the satisfaction of a stretch, happening at the back of her thigh, and she felt it reverberate outward, slowly covering the rest of her body, like an ecstatic warmth.
She looked out into the fuzzy sea of faces.
She opened her mouth.
Words came out.
Antithesis:
“What the fuck are you saying now?”
Thesis:
The words kept coming to her, the end of each sentence leading to its next as naturally as puddles followed rain. They flowed from her mouth with consistency, and though her voice initially shook within her throat, she now felt it become sturdy and robust, going from vulnerable, to strong, and from strong to weak, before stabilizing between the latter two, like two languages written on the fleece of her soul, which she now realized she knew, wielding them with expert proficiency, discovering her gift with them rather than creating it.
She saw the lines of the faces before her, near-lost in the buzzing air, begin to form into agreeable fashion. The neutral smudge of mouths bending up at their corners, into smiles, eyes lighting up and becoming rounder, and their shapes bobbing up and down like debris in water every time she made a joke.
Antithesis:
Thesis:
The cheer pushed within her, strong and firm, and she took it as the rock of her very own soul, stiffening up into ready-shape for the occasion, this obstacle been none-too-different from any other in her life. Your dad was right, the teeth of this day glimmered in the distance at her, over numerous hills and mountains, precipices of infinite drop, the danger of which she had ignored, her mind entirely consumed by the thought of those ever-expanding teeth.
And now she was here, her arms clasped around this paper tiger. And her coworkers, colleagues, and the waiting staff, all hovered around the warmth of her words the same way they moved, acted, and spoke in congruence with her direction in all other avenues.
She had done it again, but unlike her other victories, which she shyly expected in the back of her mind, this one was all the sweeter, its novel flavor being that of surprise.
And as she neared the end of it all, somehow knowing its final note, her voice rose and swelled with all the emotion of her heart: joy, pride, humor, victory, and relief, and she saw the finish approach with coming intensity.
She gripped hard, and with her last word, she tore the head off that paper tiger, and now she held it, with an extended arm, before her audience of grinning applause, her victory theirs, and their approval hers in turn.
And she held onto the podium, a grinning, sweating mess, feeling more like a concert conductor than an orator.
She smiled.
Antithesis:
“Fffffuuuuuccckckkkk. I’m cuuummmmiiinnnnggg!”
Synthesis:
Susan stood before the room, the paper in her sweating fingers. She looked up, having finished your mom’s final word.
They all sat there.
Before Susan could thank “her” audience, and turn to walk off stage, a sudden rush lifted them up to their feet, and palms met their opposite palm in jubilee, your mom’s speech bringing them to it as if it were a compulsion.
From its first line, its build up at its start, rising as if it were a narrative in three acts, jokes sprinkled across it in comic relief between its dramatic moments, all culminating in its glorious end, which, after throttling its audience up to the height of the stars, brought them back down again to the earth they all knew and loved with all the care of a whispering mother.
As the applause tore through them, her boss sat at his table, grinning, his legs crossed. He looked over at his wife, as the mousy member of staff stood at his table’s edge, filling his coffee cup. He smiled at his wife. Then he looked back up at Susan, who awkwardly stood in your mom’s place, receiving your mom’s applause, which was above and beyond any she herself had every received.
And your mom’s boss looking at her, imagined your mom standing in her place, looking out at the crowd she had eating from her palms, proudly, confidently, and with perfect humility, looking down at the loose sheets of her speech, folding them back into her hands as if they were none more than a grocery list. He smiled to himself, the sound of his own applause being the soundtrack to his thoughts.
And yet another skillset, he thought to himself. And he felt a reddening heat rising to his face at just a single thought alone: that he had underestimated her yet again.
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Either way, I'll have a new story coming out relatively soon. For patreon supporters it will be out up to a week earlier. I have a few half-to-mostly finished stories to release, but I want to space out their release dates so that they all get the attention they deserve. Though I’ll be open to releasing many of them even more than a week ahead of schedule for patreon supporters. I'm also open to hearing from supporters what kinds of extra content they'd be interested in seeing. Unfinished stories, rough outlines, autobiographic details, and making-of posts are some ideas I have so far.
Anyways guys. See you at the next one.