The Monster Within (8 page)

Last night had been a fantastic night. I don’t even know what the girl’s name had been, but she had practically melted in my hands like butter when I got ahold of her. I bought her another Cosmo while we chatted for a while. Thankfully, I never even had to tell her a lie about myself. She’d been drunk and she’d definitely been smoking something or someone had slipped her something at the least. I know that that club in particular is pretty rough on the naïve girls that go there and don’t watch their drinks. I know that she probably didn’t have the slightest idea that someone had given her something, but she definitely had taken something. I wonder if I could be charged with raping her, because I know that I definitely took advantage of her. But in the end, we all take advantage of each other. I’m not a gentleman. I’m a conqueror.

I watch Courtney open up one of the coolers as she looks at the beer, even though I know that she’s too young to buy them. It’s one of the few reasons Mr. Chen had hired me—because I knew everyone in the trailer park across the street where we draw most of our business from. I hate to admit it, but my roots reach out far. Since I was little, I had been a product of that trailer park. It was like a society that existed for only me and those who live inside those high, chain link fences to abide within. If there was a bully in the trailer park and a separate bully at school, I could always depend on my home bully to come to my aid. If anyone had claim over me for my entire life to this point, it was the trailer park. It was called Whispering Hills, but there was nothing whispering there except for the drug deals and we were still a bit away from the hills.

But for every ten worthless pieces of shit that the trailer park produced, there was always one like myself to arise or one like Courtney. Granted, Courtney was quite a few years younger than me. I remember Courtney as that cute little blonde girl in pigtails that would rush to wait for the bus while I was in middle school, and I remember her as the quiet girl waiting for the middle school bus, and when I was in high school, I never even paid her any mind. I was too busy trying to carve out my own piece of the world to spend time thinking about Courtney, but since the trailer park pulled me back, I couldn’t help but wonder about her. She was a marvel, all by herself. I imagine that she is a supernova in a corner of space with nothing but black holes and dying stars.

She has a long set of legs that reach down from her high short shorts that are so high it makes you feel wrong just looking at her perfect ass, but in the end, does anyone feel bad about checking out the lovely and the fit? It’s a compliment and a blessing for us to look at them. Her legs are long and thankfully she doesn’t have a damn tattoo like everyone else at the trailer park. She’s wearing wedges that have a high heel on them that make her look about as tall as me, if not a little taller. They’re the kind of legs that make me want to run my tongue from the tip of her painted, crimson big toe to all the way up to her pussy. I want to bite her ass, lick chocolate off of it, and worship it. It’s so perfect.

Her stomach is flat and even has a hint of abs. She clearly cares about her figure because she doesn’t have love handles or any kind of fat on her and her back is just as flawless. She pierced her belly button, which is about as trashy as it gets, but she does live in Whispering Hills, so I can’t hold too much against her or expect absolute perfection. She’s wearing a red, frilly bikini that’s covering her ample, young, perky breasts that I want to grab and squeeze and suck on. Her arms are long and slender, maybe a bit too skinny if there is absolutely a need for criticism. I look at her pointed chin, her pouty lips, her straight nose, big blue eyes, and long, honey colored hair and I can’t help but wonder what it would be like to take her into the backroom and fuck her brains out.

God, since last night, I’ve felt like a tiger on the prowl. The girl last night had been wild, screaming and moaning while she gave me the best sex of my life and I almost felt bad slipping out of that apartment this morning. But since I got home and showered, I can’t help but feel like I’ve been hunting for my next prey. Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, and Patton all knew that conquerors had to keep moving. The moment you give up or stop hunting for your next conquest, that’s when everything falls apart. I look across the room at where Courtney is reaching into the cold treat box.

The ice cream sandwiches, tacos, fudge pops, fruit pops, and otter pops are all perfectly positioned so Mr. Chen can do the exact same thing that I’m doing right now. I’m watching her reach in, staring as she bends over at her perfect, swaying tits. There’s enough trash across the street who don’t believe in bras that dirty Mr. Chen, with his low standards, gets all the tit action that he could dream of. All of us know that he goes back into his office and jerks off to customers or Tiffany. But I have to hand it to him, sometimes this job pays off, even though it’s a soul sucking vortex.

“Going to the pool?” I ask Courtney, deciding that it’s time to change things up. It’s time to start talking to her. It’s time to make my way into her shorts.

She looks up me with those big, emotional eyes of hers and I see that she’s pleasantly surprised by the exchange, and I let her catch me staring at her breasts. Why should I shy away? It shows her that I’m interested in her. Hell, I’m more than interested. She stands up straight and looks me over for a second before answering.

“Yeah,” she answers in her soft voice that you don’t expect, from a girl who has remained mostly untarnished from a place like Whispering Hills. “I’m meeting Tommy there and he’s going to take me out on his motorcycle.”

Tommy, that guy is a piece of shit that she should have given up on a long time ago. Last I heard, Tommy was stealing from his parents and working at a meth hut out in the hills somewhere on the edge of town, coming back to the trailer park to sling his product. It was only a matter of time before the local boys got real tired of that and Tommy ended up a piece of pulpy flesh on the side of the road. But Courtney had an ongoing relationship with him. I knew that much from just seeing them together. But if they wanted each other, that was fine. I just wanted to show her that there was a better world out there, and if she still wanted him after me, then that was fine too. I wouldn’t hold that against Tommy. After all, there were plenty of girls out there, just like the one I’d spent last night with.

“I didn’t know that people still went to the pool this time of year?” I want to keep the conversation going. The pool is what some in Whispering Hills call the Water Park, but it’s just a pool, there’s nothing fun or exciting about it, which that name would imply. It’s a pool with a shower faucet spraying over a slide that heats up to temperatures that rival certain sun spots. It’s a shitty pool that someone always pisses in or shits in at least once a day. But I remember that when I was in high school and it was summer, the pool was where everyone went.

“You seem a little out of touch with things,” Courtney smiles as she approaches the register counter, walking like a model on the runway.

“Want to keep me up to date?” I ask her playfully, hoping that she’ll latch on.

She looks me over and opens her fudge pop, slowly lifting it to her lips. She pokes out her glossy, pink tongue, taking the shaft of the pop and sucking on it as she closes her lips around it. I can feel my penis hardening, and her eyes study me like a cat watching a mouse. She’s looking for any sign of weakness.

I dropped out of college my sophomore year and it was probably the worst day of my life when I picked up the phone and my mom told me that she had lung cancer. It wasn’t the kind of lung cancer that medicine and chemo will treat. It’s the kind of cancer that you drop shit loads of money on just so she can die with some dignity, not screaming and hacking too much. I decided after a week of hell that I was going to enjoy this little detour that my life had taken. I was going to get something out of this exchange, if I was going to stay with Mom. So I started fucking anything that I could get my hands on and I have to admit that for the first time, I’m interested in a little more than just fucking and dumping Courtney. In fact, I know that she’s going into her senior year, but I’d be willing to make her my girlfriend after a year of secretly dating and sneaking off. Hell, she might even be up for keeping our affair secret, adding to the drama so we don’t get caught. Yeah, I’d take her out. I’d take her to the clubs that I’ve been running off to every night. I’d show her the possibilities of the world. When Mom finally dies, the two of us will run away from Whispering Hills and never look back.

“Can I be honest with you?” I say to her as she’s blowing the fudge pop.

“Sure,” she says, lifting an inquisitive eyebrow.

“I want to get to know you, Courtney,” I tell her. I feel like I’m sitting in a confessional booth and the priest knows everything already, I just have to say the words. I just have to have that moment of catharsis to receive my glory. “I think you should blow off Tommy and stay here with me and when I get off my shift, I’ll go home, change, and we should hit the town.”

“Yeah?” Courtney keeps her eyebrow raised. “But what are we going to do while we wait?”

I can probably count the number of customers that I’ve had on one hand today. I look at her and smile. Pushing away from the counter, I motion for her to follow me. I push through the swinging doors that lead past Mr. Chen’s office. I hear the door bang and I lead Courtney into the backroom where we have the shelves of candy, beer, wine, chips, and other shit that people come to this gas station looking for. I turn and look at her. She looks so beautiful. I wrap my arm around her waist and I pull her close to me, pressing my lips to her and tasting the chocolate of the fudge pop that she drops. Her arms wrap around me and I can feel her clawing at me.

“What took you so long?” she whispers between kisses.

I push her against the wall and I can feel her hand going over my khakis, feeling my rock hard dick and I kiss her again, letting my tongue slip in through her lips and together our warm tongues mingle, hers is a little colder from the fudge pop and she tastes like strawberries and chocolate. I reach up to feel her breast, running my hand up her side and cupping her bikini-clad breast in my hands, feeling her perky, puffy nipple underneath, ready, begging for me to bring my lips and tongue down to her. I squeeze the nipple gently and roll it between my fingers. She lets out a little gasp and I kiss her again, wanting her to moan into my mouth.

Taking my other hand, I feel my fingertips slipping beneath her short lines and under her panties, moving past her smoothly shaved flesh and searching for her warm, wet slit, but that’s when we both hear the doorbell ding. I feel my heart stop and I lean back from her. Her eyes are wide and scared, afraid that we’ve been caught. I smile and shake my head. Of course, this was obviously going to happen. With my luck, it was going to be Tommy with some of his crack buddies, here to fuck me up for touching his woman. I give her another kiss on the lips and grab a carton of smokes, making it look like I’m back here for a reason.

I push through the swinging doors and I find myself instantly face to face with the barrel of a pistol. I feel my heart stop and I pray to God that whoever this is, they’re only here for the money and they don’t give a shit about me. Thanks to stingy Mr. Chen, I know that there’s only one camera that works in here, and that’s the camera looking over the register, since he assumes that all of us steal from the register, ripping him off. The gunman leans forward and presses the cold barrel to my forehead. I drop the carton of smokes and slowly lift my hands, giving him my silent surrender. I close my eyes and bite my lower lip. This is going to suck. This entire day has been shot to hell.

“I want everything out of both of those registers,” the man says to me in a raspy, grumpy sounding voice. He has the kind of voice that warns me that he’s not here to fuck around, that he’s here on a mission and I am totally willing to help him get whatever it is he wants so he can just leave me alone. “You trip any kind of alarm, I’ll blow your goddamn brains all across this place. You understand me?”

I nod to him and he gives the barrel a little forceful shove and I instantly move toward the first register, keying in the code that I’ve had since I first started working here. But as I’m keying in the number, there’s a wave of calm, of relief even that washes over me while I stand here, this close to death. It worries me that I might be some sort of adrenaline junkie, but it’s more than that. I feel like a piece of metal, caught in the warm, forceful embrace of a magnet. Maybe this is my destiny. Maybe this is the glory moment that I’ve been looking for all along. To be honest, that’s what it feels like. It feels like that hunger has finally been satiated. It feels like the hunt has ended, that I’ve found whatever it is that I’m looking for.

Looking over the man, I stare at him for a moment, taking in as much as I can while he stares through a pair of aviators, gazing out the window, impatiently watching for someone to show up and foil everything that he’s working for. The register dings as the till rolls out and I start to stuff the bills into a plastic bag. I start with the ones, then the fives, taking out the few tens, and then the twenties. I hesitate when I look at the coins, wondering if he’s going to want those. I resist the urge to ask him and just lift up the till, taking the three fifties and one hundred dollar bill from their little hiding place that every register has. Closing the till, I look at the man and he nods to me.

“Stop fucking looking at me and get the other till,” he shouts. I hope that this is enough of a warning for Courtney to keep hiding. But instead of worrying about her life or mine, all I want to do is break down in tears and hug the guy. I want to reach out and wrap my arms around him, kissing his cheek and letting him hold me. Is this what it feels like to almost die? Is this how wonderful the end can actually feel?

I key in my number and listen as the till dings open and I once more take all the money from the till, stuffing it into the plastic bag. This guy is not making off with much that will make all of this worth it. He’s got maybe a thousand dollars, but there are twelve cameras that work outside and there’s no way that he’s hiding well enough for the police not to get his car, his license plate, and his description from just looking at the footage. He’s toast. He’s done for.