Child

Author's Note: Child is a working title. If anyone has a better title, or thinks that Child is a fine name, let me know. Enjoy.

Child

by Dark Sploosh

It is a rather normal night for me when it happens. I am out for a walk on a warm evening around my neighborhood, a rather nice suburb of a rather beautiful city, or at least it is beautiful at night. I think that’s part of the reason I like to go for these walks, when the weather’s good. There’s another reason, though, one a bit more distant and infinitely more juvenile. As a young man, I always had a strange fantasy: that on one of these walks that I would take, sooner or later I would meet someone who would change my life.

That never happened, of course. It’s been more than a decade since I dreamed up that childish notion, that something wonderful would just walk into me with open arms because I was out there to accept it when no one else would. While everyone else slept, I was the only one with the spirit and the heart to seek it out, sometimes at four in the morning. This is what I still tell myself, every night, even as it never comes true.

Then, as I walk down the street this evening, I come across a strange scene. There is a bench on the sidewalk, on one of the many deserted streets I cross every night whose name I don’t care to remember. This bench is illuminated by a streetlight, one that is far enough away from the others so that its beam seems clear and powerful to me. This beam of light shines down on the bench, illuminating the figure of a crying girl.

To be perfectly honest, the sight arouses within me pure bliss. At last, I think, all these years of dreaming for a miracle to happen have come true This is the event I’ve been waiting for, the one which will give my life meaning and joy once again!

But as I approach the girl, thinking of what I can say to comfort her, to learn what is wrong, a part of my happiness dies. She is young, very young. Too young for me to have anything to do with. A million possibilities (to be fair, there is really only the one which I care about) are dashed from my dreams in an instant.

Her body heaves with sobbing, sharp and painful. She doesn’t see me because her head is buried in her knees, her legs drawn up onto the bench as she comforts herself with the position she spent the first ninth months of her existence in. Even with my dreams gone, I know I have to help her. She is miserable, and who knows? Perhaps aiding this girl will open a doorway to my real destiny.

I don’t know what to say in a situation like this. Sucking back my fears, I sit next to the girl and wait. A moment later she notices me, looks up from her sobbing, and our eyes meet.

She is beautiful, but it is not the kind of beauty that is manufactured by paints and cosmetics. It’s real, I can tell, because there is no smeared makeup running from her wet, shining eyes. Those eyes are amazing. They’re red and pained, but they are filled with a kind of longing and I just can’t stop looking at them.

I struggle to think of comforting words, but the girl makes it clear there is no need. She buries her head into my side, worming her way to my chest and holds me tightly, resuming her cries. I’m shocked, but I wrap my arms around her, feeling her shake with sorrow. Neither of us say anything.

Ten minutes later, or what feels about like that, she has stopped crying. My shirt is soaked, but I feel it’s worth it. I’ve never comforted a crying girl before, but it does feel about as good as TV makes it look. When she is calmed down, I gently push her away from me, hands on her shoulders. We look at each other, and I can’t even imagine what I must look like, but she seems grateful and miserable at the same time. With the way she is biting her lower lip, I feel maybe she is even a little embarrassed.

I stand up, the girl rising with me, and we begin to walk together, side by side. She holds onto me still, nuzzling her face into my side. It occurs to me that we haven’t spoken a word to each other this entire time. Maybe that’s a bad thing. I could be in danger. I learned a long time ago never to underestimate young people in that regard. They can be as evil as any adult, and their youth often lets them get away with it.

I don’t want to think about that, though. I’m too worried for the girl at my side, worried that she is in trouble or hurt, and I want to know how I can help. But I can’t say anything, because this silence we’ve shared so far feels perfect, and I don’t want to ruin it.

Before I realize what has happened, we’ve walked to my house. There is no one else home, how could there be? I live alone. I tell myself I’ll take the girl in, offer her food and a place to spend the night, and find out what’s wrong with her. Call the police, if she needs their help.

Inside, I turn the lights on and lead her to the living room. She sits down on the couch.

“Thank you,” she says with a sniffle.

Those words amaze me, because they prove that I can talk without destroying this event.

“Don’t mention it,” I say, and then I disappear into my bedroom. I change out of my tear stained shirt and am halfway into a new one when something grabs me from behind.

The warning lights in my head explode. This girl is clearly distressed, and this is not how she should be thanking me, not in the least. I want to tell her to stop. I want to.

Then she places a light kiss on my lower back. The feeling is unmistakable, the sensation remarkable. She does it again, this time lightly grazing my skin with the tip of her tongue. I throw the shirt completely off, but only so I can turn around.

“What are you doing?” I ask, not angry enough. She doesn’t say anything, because nothing she says could convince me, bring me over to her side. Instead, she reaches up and kisses me on the mouth. I have plenty of time to move, plenty of strength to push her away.

Her tongue, small but powerful, is forced into my mouth. She lets out a high pitched moan. For some reason, I can feel her breasts through her shirt. They feel soft and shapely. I never had any idea a child’s body could be this developed. My hands wander down her stomach, to her legs, moving around to her behind, touching everything. Her hands are doing much the same to me, enjoying the feeling of my stomach and chest, and messing with the fly of my pants.

That is when I spend the next fifteen minutes doing something very stupid.

-------

Somehow, I don’t realize how stupid it was until I wake up the next morning. Of course I am entertained by the dream I had the night before. It was so amazing and satisfying. I’d never had a wet dream as perfect as that one.

The little, naked girl cuddled up to me in the bed, her breath soft against my chest, reminds me that it was not a wet dream, and now I am in a nightmare. My heart begins to race with fear as I slowly pull myself out of the bed, as if waking her up would make things worse.

In the bathroom, I stare at myself in the mirror. There are little red marks all over my neck, and I can remember the feeling of the girl kissing my throat as I moved inside her, the sounds of her breathing and moaning and gasping the entire time. That sensation of her legs wrapped around me, pushing against me, begging for more. All of it the kinds of ecstasies and joys I had wanted for so long. Half of the reason I went on all those goddamn walks.

Given to me by a child.

I have fucked a child.

I want to throw up. Not because I am disgusted with myself, because that girl lying in my bed most certainly doesn’t look like a child, nor did she feel or sound like one. I want to throw up because I am scared. I am now a monster, the worst kind of filth that society hates. I am more loathed by the world now than terrorists and serial killers combined. I am a living Adolf Hitler, joining all the other worthless, disgusting Adolf Hitlers waiting in their tinted window vans, browsing through chat rooms, winding up on Dateline time and again.

“Are you here?”

The girl’s voice calls out to me. She sounds scared, worried. The sound melts my heart, and makes me hate myself even more. There is no question of what I have to do now.

I walk back into the bedroom, smiling at the girl. She smiles back, rising off the bed to embrace me. We’re both naked, of course, and that gives me an odd moment of clarity. Here I am, at my age, being held with so much affection by a naked little girl in my own bedroom. I feel her skin on my skin, and enjoy the smell of her hair.

She jumps up into the air, giggling. It surprises me at first, as she wraps her arms around my neck, her legs around my waist, forcing orgasmic pressure between both of us. She kisses me, just as she did the night before, and I’m hard almost in an instant. What do I say to this?

I can’t say anything. I just lay the little girl back on my bed and fuck her again.

-------

It goes on like this for days. The girl is insatiable, as I suspect is a byproduct of both her youth and her gender. I’m not quite the boundless well of sexual energy that she is, but determination and testosterone allow me to do enough to please the both of us. She never leaves the house, and is rarely away from me. She is always smiling at me, always cheerful. The very sight of her warms my heart in a way that I have not experienced since my own childhood.

Sometimes I have to go out, usually to go to work, sometimes to buy food and the women’s products that she needs. I find that, every time I do, I fear that the girl will be gone when I return. I fear that she will have left me, with the money I keep hidden away gone with her. I fear that I will arrive home one day with police officers waiting for me, ready to take me away to where all the Hitlers are sent to.

My fears are always unfounded. Every day I come back, and the girl is waiting for me. She usually wants to have sex, and usually I do too. On the days I don’t, for one reason or another, she seems understanding.

I should probably clarify that I’m always safe about it. I’ve always had condoms in that bedside drawer just in case. If I’m going to be a monster, I might as well be a responsible monster.

Days of this go on. We talk a lot, but never about ourselves. I still don’t know her name, or how old she is, or even why she was crying on that bench in the first place. She doesn’t know my name either. A part of me is scared that will destroy it, just as I feared breaking the silence would.

When we are together and not having sex, or napping afterward, we are usually eating meals together in the dining room, or watching television, cuddled up on the couch. We get most of our talking done during the meals, and she always talks about the most interesting things. The other day she told me about the kinds of books she liked to read, and they all seemed to be science fiction, a genre I wouldn’t have guessed in a million years. The day after that, at dinner, she began to talk about oral sex. It was actually a very funny conversation, and I didn’t think much of it until that night, when she performed oral sex on me for the first time, and I did the same to her. Now I think about it often.

-------

One night comes along, and I’m not sure how long it has been since the girl has started living with me, but that’s the night when she begins to talk about herself.

We just finish having sex, and I am getting ready to drift off to sleep, when I hear her little voice speak up in the darkness.

“I’m so glad you found me,” she whispers. I stroke her hair and nod, trying to think of something better to say than, “Why?”

I say it anyway.

“Life sucked before I found you,” she says, nuzzling against me in that way that I love so much. “No one cared about me, not really. My parents were assholes.”

“What do you mean?”

“All they cared about was turning me into this perfect little angel of theirs, you know how that works. I couldn’t do anything at all. I wasn’t allowed to go on dates, or do anything without them around. I had to go to Church every Sunday, hell, they wouldn’t even let me go see movies with my friends without my older brother coming to watch out for me.”

Should I say that her parents were just concerned for her, even if they were doing a very bad job of expressing it? Somehow, I feel like keeping quiet about it.

“I just ran away when I couldn’t take it anymore,” she says. “They were getting ready to transfer me to a private school, so I couldn’t be surrounded by bad influences. I don’t want to move away from all of my friends to some uptight, horrible place like that.”

“Well,” I say, unable to decide whether to agree or disagree, “I didn’t want to say anything, but you know we can’t keep this up forever.”

All I hear in the darkness is her cute breathing, soft and slow and hypnotic.

“Yeah, I know,” she admits. “Everyone’s probably worried sick about me. I don’t care about my parents, but my friends probably miss me a hell of a lot.”

“Do you ever want to go back?” I ask.

“Just for them? I’ll have to go to that stupid school and lose them all anyway.” She kisses my chest as if that’s an actual answer. “Besides, if I go back I can’t ever see you again.”

I can’t argue with that. Even if she never tells her parents or the police about me, it won’t make it safe for me to ever approach her again. Not in the near future anyway.

“We’ll worry about that later,” I tell her, giving her a kiss. Then I ask something I’ve wanted to ask for a few days now. “It’s pretty late out, no one would see. You want to go for a walk?”

Her smile is all the answer I need.

-------

More days pass. We still talk about interesting bits of nothing. I still don’t know her name, and she still doesn’t know mine. We still make love all the time, and I can tell she’s happy, but at the same time, there’s doubt there.

Every time she talks to me about anything, every time we go to bed, every time there is even silence between us, I can sense that she’s beginning to realize, really realize, that this won’t last.

The funniest thing of all is that the sex is becoming even crazier, as if she’s trying to do everything she’s ever wanted to do or ever can do with a man in these last days we have together. Unique positions, odd techniques...every night is something new. She actually commented the other day that it was a shame she couldn’t try double penetration with me. It actually is possible, with some creativity, but I neglected to mention it.

I don’t want to go into any details of the stuff we actually do, it’s between me and her after all, but some of the stuff she brings up even I’m not so sure about. We do it anyway. Generally, everything is amazing, although it continues to solidify for me the fact that our relationship is based entirely on sex. Is it wrong that I wish it could be more?

Then, one night comes along, and she insists that I don’t use a condom. I argue, but she’s adamant, tells me it’s a safe time of the month. I’m not sure how much I believe in that, but it should be obvious by now that I’m bad at arguing with her, so we do it raw. I can’t honestly complain, and the orgasm we both experience is phenomenal. Clearly I am getting good at this.

And then she begins to cry. I hold her and ask her what is wrong, but she doesn’t tell me. So I comfort her until she falls asleep, and pretty soon I follow her.

When I wake up, she is gone.

-------

I don’t go to work for the next couple of days. I phone in sick, and although my boss doesn’t quite believe me, he’s a nice guy, so I get a few days off anyway. I may as well be sick.

After the girl disappears, I actually check to make sure nothing is stolen. I know she wouldn’t take any of it, but part of me wants to make sure. Everything, including my money stash, is safe. This does not bring me the comfort I want.

Days pass, and I begin to get paranoid. I’m worried that, any moment now, the police will break down the door and drag me off. I’ll wind up on the local news, just another pedophile who brought a good time to the wrong person. Just another irredeemable monster, like all the rest. The girl will have sold me out. For one reason or another, she will tell her friends about me. They will tell her she was raped, and she will believe it. Then I will go to jail, where I likely belong.

That doesn’t happen, either. No one ever comes to visit me, cops included. I guess I should be thankful for that.

What the hell am I supposed to think about all of this, though? I’ve never been more confused. I often wondered throughout the couple of weeks that girl was in my life whether or not I took her virginity. I have no way of knowing. They say they bleed the first time, that it hurts, but then again I read elsewhere that’s only some girls. I couldn’t imagine a virgin being that sex crazed. Then again, I don’t know anything. The only virginity I know got lost was my own.

Jesus Christ. I can’t do anything now except cry. You can be too damn old to have sex with a child, but you’re never too old to cry about it.

-------

One day a news report comes on. I only notice it because a picture of the girl is displayed behind the news anchor.

“Some good news today, a local missing girl has returned to her parents. Thirteen year old Tanya Carrington reappeared at her family home a few days ago, after being missing for nearly three weeks. Her parents feared she had been abducted, but Tanya says that she ran away on her own after a family argument, and was perfectly fine the entire time. Her parents are, of course, overjoyed to have her back.”

That is it. They go on to some other piece of news I don’t care about, so I shut the television off and laugh. I’m forcing the laughter, but it seems appropriate. I hope Tanya’s parents aren’t being idiots and restricting her even more now. Maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe they’ll even be so grateful for her coming back that they’ll listen to what she wants, and she won’t have to go to that private school.

It shouldn’t matter to me. Whether she goes to some school a thousand miles away or stays right with her parents, I’ll never see her again.

-------

I get a letter one day. I don’t recognize the address at all.

Inside is just a single picture of Tanya, smiling at the camera. I can tell she took it herself, somewhere outside. In the background I recognize the streetlight and the bench.

On the back of the picture is a phone number. All that is written beneath it is the words ‘cell phone’.

Tanya. She’s a very amazing and very stupid girl. Does she realize how irresponsible she’s being, sending me this? How am I supposed to resist? There is no way, of course. I rush to my phone and pick it up, but before I can finish dialing the number, I calmly place the receiver back down.

Going into my room, I open my bedside drawer. I place the photograph next to the condoms, close the drawer, and force myself to smile.

I waited over a decade, so I can wait just a few more years. Once she’s older, maybe a bit more responsible, I’ll give her that phone call. Hell, by then I’ll only be in my thirties. If I take good care of myself, I’ll still look as good as I do now. She might just want something to do with me.

I know, of course, that a million things are wrong with my line of thinking. Tanya will get depressed, likely, when I don’t call. She might get over it, she might not. If she does, she’ll move on, to real boyfriends, even if her parents don’t allow it. I’m not dumb enough to think they can stop her. By the time I finally call, she’ll have forgotten all about me, and her memories will be diluted and twisted. She’ll hang up and never want to see me again.

I should really know better by now than to have such negative thoughts. More of a decade of going on those stupid walks night after night eventually led to something different, didn’t it?

Which reminds me, I’d like to try going for a walk during the day. See how different it is.

THE END