A Most Wicked Game

CW: Explicit sexual imagery

Waves gently folded into the wet sand and flowed between Claire’s toes. Rays from the sun warmed the sky, narrowing her eyelids to keep too much light from her eyes. Spray misted in the air, wetting her face but salty water flowed down her face, not that the ocean noticed. It took more than a few tear drops to roil the Pacific.

***

Claire met him on a cold smoky night, a late blast down from the Rockies that pricked up the flesh on her bare legs shivering due to the lack of cloth or hair. She went into Donovan’s, the lone open honkytonk on US 97, outside La Pine. She usually came in on Saturday nights, batting her eyelashes at Frank, the lead singer of Party Bus, who usually played a set and a half before getting into some squall with Veronica, the bassist and his wife. Usually entertaining, these fights gave Claire hope, but unfortunately more often than not the band got back together after a short trip to the men’s room.

She was headed to The Bee Room, to meet her gaggle of fellow Oregonians with credit to be out on a Thursday night. The blast of freezing air with the heavy taint of torched Canadian timber pushed her closer to the building for shelter. Otherwise she wouldn’t have heard it. Smooth as silk, low and primal, those dulcet tones leaching out into the air, unable to be contained within Donovan’s walls beckoned her inside.

On stage, a man poured his soul into the lyrics, his weathered fingers pulling the taut strings on the guitar produced sound that plucked the strings of her essence. His song flowed into every chasm of her being, drenching her latent burning desire and igniting an even bigger flame. Claire drifted to an empty table in front of the stage, as though she dreamt it.

The world was on fire and no one could save me but you.

It's strange what desire will make foolish people do.

I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you.

And I never dreamed that I knew somebody like you.

As he finished the verse, his eyes, wells of passion, looked up at her, locking her into the rhythm as she tapped her toes with each pulse. Her eyes glanced at the neck tattoo, her mind filing away the dark band that she absently knew encircled it as incorrigible.

His hands were covered in blue ink, in the shape of a wave that curled around from his thumb to his forefinger. They ceased strumming his instrument, and he announced that he would be taking a short break. Claire needed no invitation to follow him to the rear of Donovan’s. In the light of a flickering Rolling Boulder sign, she wordlessly stripped off her ripped jean shorts and wrapped her arms around the symbol of his disgrace.

Her moans were stifled by his tongue setting up in her mouth, while his thrusts provided a memorizing pulse all their own, rippling pleasure throughout every fiber of her body. His muscled arms gripped her body close to his, enveloping her in a sense of safety she had only dreamed of before. He pulled her beneath him as an undertow, unwilling to give her up.

His tongue yanked itself out of her as he spasmed and groaned, filling Claire with his seed. When his trembling ceased, she pulled back her face, to see his more clearly, and smiled. “Hi, my name is Claire!”

***

They sat at the booth near the back, nearly a dozen empty brown bottles standing guard on the pockmarked surface of the table. It took nearly three of those soldiers to get him to tell her his name was Chris.

“Another round Tracy, put them on my tab,” she said with the air of confidence, one that evaporated in just moments of catching his blue eyes.

“Sure thing Claire, I’ll bring them right back,” the bartender retreating, grabbing the bottles and placing them like an offering on the battlefield as tribute before either of them could speak again.

“You don’t have to do that, Tracy and I have an arraignment,” Chris purred.

“Yeah, you fill her up when she wants too?” Claire joked, but his face ended the mirth as soon as it began.

“There are things I must do. Many of them aren’t pretty, but that is the world that we live in.”

Someone with that tattoo would say that, or at least Claire thought they would. She had never met anyone with one since the SCS was implemented. “I can’t believe that just happened. Back in the back. I never thought I would meet anyone like you.”

Chris took a long swig, “And I never dreamt of you. I never wanted to fall in love.”

Claire’s heart skipped a beat. Love? “Did you just say that? Tell me you don’t mean it.”

He looked at her, hard eyes peeling away her last vestiges of bravado. “You play a wicked game. Someone like you and someone like me shouldn’t be together, even in the shadows.”

Nonsense. “Don’t say that. Listen, I think I can work something out. There has to be. I have never felt this way before. What we just did, I can’t live my life without it.”

“What kind of life would that be? We had but a moment, a respite from the evil world we find ourselves in. To continue down the path you want would condemn you to the dregs where I must live. You know not what you ask.”

Claire sat up, and took a draw from her beer. “But I can stop it. I’m out on a Thursday, aren’t I? My credit is good, even great. It wouldn’t be too hard to erase what you did, remove that and bring you into the world.”

Chris rubbed his neck as though as shackles bound his being to his existence. “In this world I earned my mark. I will not sully myself to deny it now.”

Claire shook her head in confusion. “Why the hell not? I know the feelings you brought out in me, and I can see that those same feelings are roiling in you.”

Chris’s fingers reached into his shirt pocket, removing a cigarette and placing it into his mouth. He lit it, and exhaled the light blue smoke into the air. “I cannot deny that. I have sung that song many times, but I tonight I felt those words electrify my soul.”

How the hell did he get cigarettes? “First, you shouldn’t be smoking in here. No wonder you were marked. Incorrigible,” even as she said those words, her womb ached to be held by this man, that desire for his rebellion and strength overriding her normally sensible nature, “I can make this work if you stop antagonizing people.”

Chris smirked, “Now that is something that I can’t get behind. If this antagonizes people, then that's their problem, not mine. I don’t see you getting up and leaving,” as he blew out another cloud.

She didn’t get up. “Its okay for me. How did you get them? You can’t have money or a job?”

He chuckled softly, “Just because those in power say something, doesn’t always make it so out here. Plenty of people still use paper, and those who honor older ways.”

She should be mad. Maybe tomorrow she would be. “I never knew that. They told us that had all gone away.”

He curled the beverage to his mouth. “Even in Portland I can still find places willing to put me for a night or two,” he took a small drink, “people are still gonna be people. Even in your brave new world.”

“My brave new world? What do you mean?” even as she knew what he meant, part of her wanted to forget that, even for just tonight.

He set down his beer, the look on his face saying that he too wanted the endless weight of reality to be held back by the dam of smoky magic that Donovan’s held within its walls. “You are out on a Thursday, and Tracy knows you by name. Only someone with high credit could do that. You almost certainly work for the government, or SCS itself. Or even worse, you are a habitual informer, which I don’t think so. Someone like you is who makes this world. Someone who shouldn’t be seen with someone like me. Someone who cannot fall in love with an incorrigible.”

Claire blinked. Even she didn’t like the HI’s. Nice to your face, but they got additional points for every person they reported. And you could never tell who was one. “Actually I believe the correct term is irredeemable for someone like you.” She was the only one who laughed at that.

“I know what the word is, and what it means. I prefer to be difficult to control than impossible to reform. There is nothing to remedy about me.”

Claire reached out and grasped his free hand. She squeezed his thick fingers, rubbing the hard callouses and chipped nails. His hands spoke of a lifetime of hard work. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with you either. But we as a society have determined that there are somethings we shouldn’t tolerate. Its a system that we borrowed from our friends on the other side of the Pacific, and it works well. Of course there are adjustments that need to be made from time to time, and fortunately we met each other. I can do so much for you.”

Chris broke out in a deep rumbling laughter, its tide crescendoing into Claire beating down her fragile fantasy. “There is nothing you can do, because I won’t let you. Are you going to march in and tell them you are in love with me, and that they must let me rejoin your paradise. You play such a wicked game. You will be tossed into the very pits themselves. And what shall I do? I would do what I must. Prostrate myself before them, forsaking all to bring you back.”

Claire nearly swooned. “You would do that for me?”

His azure eyes narrowed to slits, “You make me dream of you, you make me feel this way.”

“But I can’t live without you. I wish to be lost within you.”

“And what would I do? Do you think that the sea will submit forever? It cannot be contained, in four walls or by decrees from self-important masters who ride above the waves, not seeing the tsunami at the horizon.”

Claire emptied her beer. “What are you talking about?”

“I am who I am. Like the Pacific. It appears calm, but it belies a rage that rises up from the depths when it is prodded. You ask that I ignore the typhoons, become submissive and peaceful. I could only do that for a time, even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t strike me as a violent man.”

“But I am. My violence is targeted, and just. I fight for those I love, and that love me. I would rage against the entire world, bringing down the entire rotten facade if I could. But all I can do is sing old songs in a failing bar, in the backwaters of Oregon. Spread my bit of pacific where I can. Until the storm comes.”

Claire sat shocked for a bit. “You are a regressive revolutionary?”

Chris looked down at the torn up wood of the table. “No. I never shot at anyone, never took a man from his family, nor stormed any gates. My crime was that I wouldn’t say something that they told me to say. I wouldn’t sign on the dotted line. I wouldn’t clap for the marginal intelligences that lorded over the rest of us.”

“So you think I’m a marginal intelligence?” her voice had more edge that she wanted, but she couldn’t take it back.

“No. I think you do what you do because it keeps you safe. You are but one drop in the ocean, you can’t fight against the waves. I understand that. But that isn’t how I am made. For us to be, either I would have to become that, or you would have to become the tempest. And I couldn’t do that, nor could you.”

Claire felt the bile and panic rising in her chest. “There has got to be a way. I have plenty of space at my place. Nobody has to know that you live there.”

Chris finished his drink. “Another lie. That is the real problem here. You tempt us both with them, you wicked creature,” he looked past her to the front of the bar, “Remember me in the winds and rain that lash against your perfect structure. I am a force of nature, unable to be controlled, even at a state of rest.”

A throat cleared behind Claire. “Now do you want to tell me what you are doing past curfew.” She turned around, and a red pantsuit wearing brunette, complete with a sickle pin and bright white pearls stood there. She was flanked by two DTES officers.

“Its no concern of you or your dangerous thought enforcement and suppression thugs. This young woman was extolling the virtues of the social credit system.”

“I hope so, but that doesn’t mean that you should be out here. Young lady, it is a demerit to be seen with an irredeemable,” her tone carried both matronly tones and glee at schadenfreude.

“That won’t be necessary. I am the regional director for the Social Credit System for central Oregon. I am attempting to rehabilitate this man, which is under my purview. He finished his set for this establishment and I impressed myself on his time.”

The HI’s smirk widened, “You say he has employment here?”

Claire’s voice cracked as she realized she doomed Donovan’s in that moment, but Chris came to her rescue, “No, bitch. Of course not. How could I? I have no way to be paid. You don’t let me have a bank account. She simply wanted to soothe my pride, such a sin to you people. I scavenged for scraps in the dumpster when she plucked me inside with a bribe of beer. An unrepentant patriarchal bigot like myself couldn’t resist. And she was having some luck in getting me to see the error of my ways until you scum interrupted her good work.”

Claire nodded. The HI shrugged her shoulders, “Still, I am going to have monitor this place going forward. Nevertheless, you are out past your curfew. Men, take this threat to society away. Its best that he not corrupt others. Good lady, thank you for your efforts, misguided as they are.”

The DTES officers placed their hands on his shoulders, and forcefully picked Chris up. He weakly fought against them, knocking over several of the bottles on the table with his legs. He smiled and gave Claire one last look before being dragged away. “Beneath these still deep waters lies the storm.”

***

Claire exited her conveyance, and walked slowly towards the water. She hadn’t seen Chris since that night, three months ago. She returned faithfully to Donovan’s each Thursday, waiting in their booth for him to step in, for his words to crash against her once more.

Her dreams were of him each night. She woke often to feel him wrapped around here only to find him not there. More than once she touched herself, imagining him filling her dark places with his salt and fire.

She took off his shoes, her toes sinking into the sand, with each step. It was dry then damp, the water receding rapidly as she approached. She blinked, peering through the dying rays of the sun. The water remained calm, but as it wet her feet, she looked beyond. A dark line stretched across the horizon. Tears flowed down her face.

Claire had played a wicked game, and she was here for the storm.