Something Real

CONTENT WARNINGS: Physical and Sexual Violence; Brief Description of Gore; Sexual Content

“We have all the time in the world. I don’t care if this takes all night, if that’s what you need,” Lily said slowly from a chair next to the bed.

Josh continued to pull at his restraints. “You can keep me here as long as you want, but I’m never going to know what you’re talking about. I don’t know how many more ways I can say you’re making a mistake.”

Lily smiled. “Oh, don’t be like that. I promise I’m a good listener. I just want to hear your side of the story. Maybe you tell me what really happened and I can help you out of this thing, what about that?”

“If you really wanted to help me you’d let me go.”

“See, you don’t even understand the situation you’re in. I’m your best friend in the world right now. You want me to let you go? You know who I work for, you know what they’ll do to get what they want…you really want to be alone, unprotected? At least you’re safe with me, at least I won’t hurt you like they will once they get impatient. All I want is to have a conversation. I’m here to make this easy for you.”

“Listen, I don’t know who you work for! I don’t know anything! All I know is one second I was walking to my car, then some guy knocks me out and I wake up handcuffed to a random bed. That’s all I’ve got, I swear. Who the hell even are you?”

Lily cocked her head. “Ok, we can start there if you want. You can think of me as a sort of mediator, a neutral party in this. Sure, I technically work for them but, like I keep telling you, I’m also here for you. They trust me—if I say you were honest with me and that you won’t be a problem going forward, they’ll be lenient. All you have to do is start talking. Does that sound like something you would be interested in?”

Josh rattled his handcuffs against the headboard, the metallic clanging echoing around the sparsely furnished room. “Please, there has to be something I can do to convince you to let me go. I don’t know who “they” are, or what they think I know. But I’ll do anything you want.”

“I can hold them off for a while, but not forever, especially if you keep playing dumb.”

“There has to be something I can do for you. I don’t care what it is, I’ll do it, no questions asked.”

“Tell me what you know.”

He looked at her quizzically. “Okay, I thought we established I don’t know anything. I thought I could do something for you. Anything you like.”

She sighed and paused for a moment before speaking. “You and I both know that you saw something. Something you shouldn’t have seen, and you probably felt that instinctively. Maybe you got that prick at the back of your neck, the one that tells you you’re in danger. And I’m sure you spent the drive home uneasy, already trying to forget what you’d seen, trying to convince yourself it was nothing. And maybe you did forget about it on some shallow level but, deep down, I know you remember. The human brain is designed to hold onto threats like that, so you’ll recognize them fast enough to run away next time. It’s an evolutionary thing. And that same evolutionary thing should be telling you to talk to me now because, if I leave this room without the truth, there will be nothing I can do for you. Do you know what they do to men in your position?”

Josh stared at her wordlessly, his mouth slightly open.

Lily leaned forward, lowering her voice. “You know, when I first started this job, I was desperate. I was deep in a hole, and they knew I’d do anything to get out, so they had me on cleaning duty. And you wouldn’t believe the volume of mess I saw after they got through with someone like you. Blood, of course, but other things, too. You could tell they’d tried a lot of…creative problem-solving before they resorted to a gun. One time, I found an ear inside—”

Josh tried to sit up suddenly. “Lily, what the fuck? Don’t finish that sentence. Sycamore!”

She froze.

“Lily, Sycamore! Come on, I’m done with this.”

She shook her head and stood up. Pulling a key out of her corset, she leaned over Josh and unlocked his furry handcuffs. “Seriously? We never even got to the good part.”

He sat up and rubbed at his wrists. “Yeah, I was trying to get us there until you went full-on serial killer. Did you actually think that was sexy?”

“I’m sorry, I guess I got a little lost in the character. You know, I did take an improv class in college,” she said lightly as she settled next to him on the bed, her leather catsuit squeaking with every move.

Josh laughed shakily. “Where did you even learn to talk like that? Is there some sordid past you haven’t told me about?”

“Ha. I guess I watch so many crime shows it just started coming out of me. And I may or may not have done a little research. But, hey, we did want to spice things up, right? Even if we never got to the main event, I’d still call it a win.”

“You wanted to spice things up. Lily, I actually started to fear for my life for a second there. Definitely not what I imagined when I agreed to this.” He stood up and reached for his clothes on the floor.

“Wait, you’re actually leaving? You could still stay over. I promise I won’t bring up severed ears again.”

Josh pulled his shirt over his head. “Honestly, that kind of took it out of me—I’ve never been handcuffed before and I don’t think I liked it. I think I’m just gonna go home and knock out but I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Aw, okay. I’m sorry I ruined the night! I just wanted it to feel more real, I guess.”

“No, don’t worry about it, babe. I think I was too tired to do this tonight, anyways. I’ll see you tomorrow, we’ll get dinner or something.” He leaned down to kiss the top of her head and left the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

Lily leaned back against the pillows and listened for the click of her apartment door, Josh’s rapid footsteps in the hallway, and finally the creak of the building door. She watched through her bedroom window as Josh got into his car and drove out of the parking lot. When he was out of sight, she picked up her phone from the bedside table and scrolled through her contacts until she hit “Work.”

He answered on the second ring. “You’re not supposed to be calling me.”

“It’s fine, Josh isn’t here.”

He sighed. “What do you need, Lily?”

“I think I messed up. I pushed too hard and I might have scared him off completely.”

“What did you do?”

“I don’t know, I took your advice and introduced a little roleplay to get things moving. But I went too far with the torture. He practically sprinted out of here.”

“The torture? Jesus Christ, what kind of operation are you running over there?”

“Relax, it was all hypothetical. I just thought if he was actually a little scared then that might unlock something primal? Something real, at least…God, I don’t know why I’m so uncomfortable talking about this with you all of a sudden.”

“Probably because you shouldn’t be talking about anything with me. What is it you want me to say here?”

She sighed. “I know, I know. It’s just that going to you for advice is like muscle memory at this point, and we used to be so good at this stuff…”

“Listen, I made a mistake getting wrapped up in this conversation last week. Maybe I still miss you on some level. But I’m trying to be a better person than I was when we were together and I shouldn’t be getting in the middle of your relationship. Especially not your sex life.”

“What, we can’t still talk as friends? It’s perfectly normal to talk to your friends about your sex life.”

“Be honest, am I still in your phone as ‘Work’?”

“No comment,” Lily muttered.

“That’s what I thought. You know this is wrong, and knowing you, that’s probably half the reason you do it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You can’t ever just be happy, Lily. You always need excitement and intrigue, even if it’s just you starting a fight. But for once you’re with a decent guy who won’t play that game, so of course you’re calling me.”

She was silent for a moment.

“Can I ask you just one more thing and then I swear I’ll never bother you again?” She asked.

“Fine.”

“Why is it that I never got bored with you? We were together for two years and we never fizzled out. I still think about you all the time, even when I’m…with him. Josh and I haven’t even been together for a year and I love him, and he’s so nice to me, but it’s just kind of flat. And it’s not that I’m not attracted to him, or that I don't care about him. I care about him more than I ever cared about you. No offense. So what is it you had that I just can’t find in him?”

“Honestly? It's probably that I never liked you that much. Like, as a person.”

“Ouch.”

He chuckled. “Hey, it went both ways, I think. We hated each other by the end. But we got addicted to the constant cycle of break-ups and make-ups. You’d get drunk and say something crazy, or flirt with my friends. And then we’d be screaming at each other in the bar. By the time we got home all we could do was have insane hate sex on the kitchen floor. And I’ll admit it was a lot of fun. I wouldn’t have minded keeping it going for another year, at least until I found something better, but when you broke up with me you said you wanted something real. And it sounds like you found it. So what are we even talking about here?”

“I don’t know. I remember I was so sick of our whole rollercoaster, but this is…hard in a different way. I thought if I was with someone good I would be better by association. I guess I was for a while. But now bored doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel. It’s like I have this constant itch, all the time, and nothing can scratch it. And I don’t want to lose him, and I’m so tired of self-destructing. What am I supposed to do?”

“Just talk to him. Apologize for being so uncomfortable with a healthy relationship that you needed an elaborate torture scenario to get off. Have boring missionary sex while staring into each other’s eyes, and appreciate that you actually like each other enough to do that. Learn to be happy for once and stop blowing everything up just to feel something.”

She blinked. “Wow. Did you start therapy again?”

“Goodbye, Lily. Have a nice life.”

He hung up before she could respond.

Lily spent the next few minutes composing and deleting a text to Josh. Finally, she threw her phone on the pillow next to her without sending anything. She stood up and started unlacing the leather catsuit she still wore. The cheap fabric seemed to have fused to her skin, and she winced while she slowly peeled it off. Naked, she walked over to her dresser on the other side of the room and stuffed the catsuit into her bottom drawer, which was already overfilled with a random array of out-of-season clothes. She opened the top drawer, pulled out sweatpants and a faded men’s t-shirt, and quickly dressed. Without so much as looking in the mirror, she shoved her feet into the sneakers she kept by the door and left her apartment. She got into her car and let autopilot take over.

***

Lily knocked three times. The door swung open so fast that she jumped.

Josh’s eyes were wide. “What are you doing here?” He asked, voice low.

“Sorry, I know I should have called, but I didn’t like how we left things. Can I come in?”

He nodded and guided her through the door, closing and locking it behind her.

Stepping around him, she walked into the living room and stopped short. The couch was covered in clothes and random belongings, and a suitcase was open and half-full on the floor.

“Are you…going somewhere?” She asked.

Josh walked into the bedroom as if he didn’t hear her.

She followed. “Okay, I don’t know what all this is about, but can you please talk to me? You said you were just tired earlier. Are you mad now?”

 He opened his closet and started rifling around. “You really shouldn’t have come over. I was going to let you be.”

“What?”

He pulled something off the top shelf and held it out of her view. “So, who sent you? You might as well tell me now.”

“I don’t—oh! Okay.” She suppressed a smile and sat down on the bed, crossing her legs. “You already know who. Which means you know they hate to be kept waiting.”

Josh came over to the bed and sat next to her. There was a flash of metal and, before Lily could react, he gently pressed the dull side of a pocket knife to her throat. She tried to lean away, but he wrapped his other hand around the back of her neck.

Lily went white. “Oh my god? Oh my god. That’s not what I—Sycamore!”

He didn’t move an inch.

“Sycamore,” she whispered.

He shook his head, never breaking eye contact.

“Josh, please, this isn’t what I wanted.”

He tightened his grip on her neck. “In case you couldn’t tell, you really scared me earlier. And at first I thought it had to be a coincidence that you would say that. I was about to write it off. But then I remembered that I don’t believe in coincidences. I can’t afford to, not when you got that close. So you’d better start talking.”

She squirmed, wincing as she felt the knife press deeper into her neck. “You’re scaring me.”

“Good. What was it you said earlier? Something about threats and evolutionary instincts?”

“Josh, please. Please. You know that wasn’t real.”

He put his lips to her ear, pressing in until he was almost on top of her. “I don’t want to hurt you. Just start from the beginning, baby. Take your time.”

Gradually, Lily’s short, gasping breaths returned to normal. She heaved a sigh, shifting the knife against her throat, and sagged into Josh’s rigid body.

Lily closed her eyes.

“Make me,” she breathed.