To Go Too Far For Sex

tw: gruesome death

Mom always told me, “Don’t ever look towards the stars. That’s how your dad died.” So I’ve avoided staring at the night sky for years, even though Dad has been dead longer than I can remember, so I don’t think anything I do can kill him again. 

It wasn’t until I entered adulthood when I started looking towards the stars for answers behind my mother’s back, only looking back down when she’d turn around. At first the stars gave me no answers, but then I realized that I had to ask it questions first, such as “How can I ask out Samantha, the cute girl with dyed pink and blue hair and huge tits from my statistics class?” The stars, in a roundabout way, answered, “Ask her, ‘Do you want to go on a date with me?’” She seemed pleased when I told her this, because she did not question me talking to the stars, which is an admittedly weird habit, and confirmed she would like to go on a date with me.

Tonight, we ate sushi, then she wanted me to take her to the movies to watch the latest Jennifer Lawrence film. The Jennifer Lawrence film confused me, because she went by a different name the entire time. When I admitted my confusion to Samantha, she giggled, and although I wasn’t trying to tell a joke, it’s rare for attractive women to find anything I have to say funny. 

“Would you like to come inside and see my Lego collection?” Samantha asked when I parked in front of her place. It was getting late and I was getting tired, but I wasn’t sure how to say no without coming off as a jerk. Through my driver-side window, I looked towards the stars. 

Once more, I was transported. I left my body to sit there, an empty husk keeping my seat warm, and I floated away. Beyond my car. Beyond the street where I parked. Beyond this town. Beyond the state. Beyond the country. Beyond Earth. Past the moon. Through the emptiness of space. So cool, so breathtaking. 

Billions upon billions of stars surrounded me, each one a sun, each sun hosting its own solar system, each solar system occupied by self-conscious beings believing they are the only intelligent life in the universe. I drifted past an unknown planet where I caught bits of a conversation between two of its beings, but what they said was completely alien to me.

I floated further. This system’s sun appeared smaller and smaller, until below my dangling feet I saw so many I could not count. I was so far along that I could see all the twinkling suns together, forming a spiral of radiant colors bright enough to light the nothingness of space—revealing more nothingness.

I traced the spiral’s milky way with a finger until the numerous rotations left my vision spiraling out of control, and then all I can see was a blinding light. And in my blindness, I instinctively reached around for something to ground me, like a ground or a floor. All I felt were grains of sand between my fingers, through my fingernails.

My vision was restored, and was I saw was an old man just a few feet away. He was very pale, very thin, very naked, surrounded by infinite white sand, under an infinite Colombia blue sky. His thinning hair and beard were so dry they might as well have been bundles of straws glued to his head. The bags under his eyes were so large and heavy that they caused him to hunch over as he stood there, squinting at me. I squinted at him, too, so as to not look down at his flaccid penis. 

Where I was taken to before was different, I think. A different plain of existence that sits between the universe in which life exists, and a world transcended. I could not remember exactly where I was taken before—I’m probably not supposed to remember—but it wasn’t here, in this desert. 

Behind me was a little wooden hut with smoke floating from its chimney. I trudged through the sand until I reached the hut and walked through its open door. I knew once I inhaled the smoke inside the hut that I’ve reached the end of my cosmic journey and would not get any higher than this.

It was dark inside of the hut. Not space darkness but regular darkness. Then, all at once, I was bombarded with images of girls from my past. Every girl who’s ever initiated a conversation with me, or gave me a funny look, or casually touched my arm or hugged me. Girls that piqued my interest. Girls I’ve fell in love with, or was head over heels for. They all washed over me like a wave of disappointment, with me still dry by the end of it.

I never took the hint, never read between the lines, never seized the opportunity.

As sudden as a eye blink I was back in my body again, back in my car, where Samantha sat in the passenger seat. She was asking me if I wanted to see her Lego collection. I’m staring at her without saying a word, building suspense. 

I understood what the I was meant to learn in the hut, in that plain in between the universe and transcendence. She was not really asking me to admire her Lego collection. She was asking me for something more.

“Yes, I will sleep with you tonight,” I told her. She had a stunned look on her face when I said this, and I don’t blame her, because even I didn’t expect to come off so confidently.

Just then, I felt something coming up from my stomach. I held it down as best I could, but it was coming out no matter what. I saw Samantha leaning away from me as I covered my mouth with my hands to muffle the retching sounds. I felt them, crawling up my throat, digging through my mouth, reaching past my teeth. I clutched as my throat because I was choking. That was when I see them: pale, wrinkly fingers with long, brittle, yellow fingernails attached to the fingertips. They were the fingers of the old man standing in the white desert sands.

I could feel both hands reaching past my teeth, pushing down on my jaw until it broke off its hinges. I could hear Samantha screaming in abject terror, the soundtrack to my demise. Mom’s words play in my head: “That’s how your dad died.”