Joel

Ever since I was old enough to have a phone, I spent most of my time wreaking havoc on social media. Its lack of real-world obligations paired with the fact that my parents were completely oblivious to how it truly worked made it my personal playground. No holds barred. I could be whoever I wanted to be: a problematic “woke-ivist” on Twitter, a cutthroat Kali Uchis stan on Reddit, or my personal favorite, barely-legal jailbait on Instagram.

Instagram was the most efficient way to connect with other inner city gays of the twenty first century. It was a competition to see who could show the most skin without having to leak your own nudes, unless that was your prerogative. Posing shirtless in a pair of low rise jeans and a pair of lacy pink panties I swiped from Victoria Secret’s sale table for a bunch of strangers online had a specific thrill to it. The possibility that a greasy middle-aged man with a balding comb over and cheeto-stained fingers could be hiding behind a twink with a fairy filter was sickening yet intriguing. Attention was attention regardless of who was paying it.

It’s also where I met Joel, using the word “met” loosely.

I had noticed an unfamiliar username liked the oldest photo on my page: a portrait one of my closest friends had taken of me for her portfolio for Parsons. The photo closed in from the tops of my shoulders and cut off at the curly brown locks that tangled in a heap at the top of my head. A black sweater hugged comfortably around my neck underneath a dainty gold chain, the image of La Virgen De Guadalupe burnt into its pendant’s face. My focus was targeted straight into the camera’s lens, a blank expression in the grayscale void set behind me.

Out of all the beat-off material on my page, it fascinated me that this was his pick.

The only reasonable reaction was to perform a deep dive investigation. His profile avi was a picture of himself in what seemed to be a baseball uniform. The crop of the picture wasn’t too zoomed in where he didn’t seem self absorbed but not too zoomed out where he showed a decent level of technological competency. A private profile showed he was selective, intentional. And no mutuals? This meant the gays haven’t broken him in yet.

Fresh meat. Consider me interested.

It wasn’t too long until my follow request was reciprocated with one of his own. The most recent of his three posts was a rear-camera mirror selfie in a gym’s locker room. Dim lights casted a warm shadow over the left half of his squared face. One arm was bent at the elbow in a subtle flex, not overtly cocky but still self aware of his impressive physique.

This was followed up by a landscape of a seashore. Palm trees were planted sparsely throughout the beach as crystal clear water spit waves towards the camera. The glass neck of a beer bottle peaked above a mound of white sand, its body buried deep below. Two bronze legs laid out beside the beer bottle. His toenails were even and well manicured. Clusters of borderline blonde hairs sprouted at his shin but sheered out by the time they reached his knees. Very tropical. The Bahamas, perhaps?

A four-year old photo of him in a cap and gown concluded the series. He flashed a wide, toothy smile in front of a gothic style cathedral. “All Hallows High School” emblazoned the cover of a leather skinned diploma in a glittering gold font. He was one of those preppy catholic school kids. The branches of the trees behind him were bare of leaves and gripped icicles at their ends. He either graduated a semester early or a semester late.

It was a pretty generic string of pictures, the casual type that wasn’t entirely thought provoking but still found its way to charm you.

Conversation was born in our DM’s and carried itself onto iMessage. Nights were spent thumbing away at my keyboard until my phone began to overheat and blister the pads of my fingertips. I swayed Joel to bare his soul. He raved about his greatest fears, blabbed about his most memorable childhood injuries, and enthused about his fool-proof strategy against an impending zombie apocalypse. He promised that if I were to ever get infected, he would let me eat his brain no questions asked. How sweet.

But it was that specific sweetness that made me resent him. It didn’t truly exist. Men like Joel were always too good to be true. There was always an ulterior motive in every action, every word. Behind their Colgate sponsored smiles was a need for power. It was that desire that widened wage gaps, hoarded generational wealth, and waved an imminent world war over our heads. The truth was hidden behind a manufactured facade and the only way to shed its flawless exterior was through man’s greatest weakness: sex.

Men would do anything for the simple pleasures of sex. I’ve watched men empty their bank accounts, ruin happy homes, compromise their sanity, for a suck and a few pumps. There was something rewarding about their desperation, something empowering in their fragility. I reveled in the fact that for that split second, all the power belonged to me. Every knight in shining armor had a chink in their chainmail and I made it my mission to find the chink in Joel’s.

Shame me all you want, but at least I’m honest. Everyone has their ticks and yours aren’t any more virtuous than mine. People have obsessions over bullshit like fast food or nicotine, but you don’t see me walking around smacking quarter pounders and mango-flavored vapes out of their hands.

Last night was the first time he had ever invited me over to his house, a milestone that signified my web had been woven to its completion. This virtual rom-com fantasy I had spent the past couple of weeks suffering through would finally come to an end. The average person with a balanced sense of priorities would be worried about the possibility that Joel could be a total slob living amongst heaps of Little Caesar’s pizza boxes, black-footed tube socks, and germs yet to be discovered by Fauci and the National Institute of Infectious Diseases. There were also the chances that he could be a disturbed axe murderer waiting for the right idiot to fall into his trap. I, on the other hand, was more concerned in the fear that he would think I looked better on Instagram.

Anticipation began to twist my stomach into itself as I sank lower into my seat. Between the obnoxious blue of the BX6 and the mysterious brown stain seeping into the seat beside me, nausea ensued. I watched my neighborhood zip past me as the bus bobbed through a continuous strip of potholes. Lucky’s Chinese Takeout blurred into Tio Julissa’s Beauty Salon in ethereal hazes of fluorescent purples and greens. The turning leaves of the trees bled in warm hues of yellows and oranges. Dark clouds spilled over the setting sun.

Every now and again, my reflection would flash in the smudged window. The arch in my eyebrows began to camouflage in the new growth of untamed hairs. The remaining heat of the past summer’s tan melted away and revealed a paler complexion. Splitting strands of short, artificially blonde hair divided at a deep brown root and laid flat against the top of my head. I looked down at what I was wearing: a pair of slouchy grey sweats, a yellowing pair of air forces, and a Queen t-shirt spotted in burning red bleach stains. Not my hottest look to say the least.

There was no use looking at my phone to keep me entertained. The only notifications I’d been getting lately were from Blackboard reminding me of an assignment I was purposefully trying to forget or from my Citizen app alerting me of a new missing person. According to News 12, a bunch of gays had gone missing in the past couple of months. If you asked me, it was a bunch of bullshit. Gays are flighty; it’s in our nature. Any of them younger than seventeen probably just ran away from home with their boyfriend of a predatory age gap and any of them older than twenty one were most likely laid out by a dumpster recovering from a bender of poppers and Sunday brunch at the village. Either way, no one was actually trying to find them.

Instead, I wondered what kind of underwear Joel would be wearing. You could find out everything you needed to know about a man by the type of underwear he wore. Power bottoms only wore jockstraps and underwear that resembled dental floss. Baggy Hanes boxers let me know the likelihood that you've taken a shower in the past week was zero to none. And any guy still wearing white briefs that cut underneath the cheek was a freak with a fetish for long division and MLA formatting.

A shrieking hiss interrupted my thought process as the bus gradually lowered itself to the sidewalk’s curb. My stop.

The brisk autumn air slashed against my face as I started my trek to Joel. Google Maps estimated a fifteen-minute walk which, in reality, meant five minutes for me. If gays were good at one thing, it was our ability to speed walk at paces heterosexual men couldn’t dream of imitating.

I was led down a long street with two never ending rows of houses facing one another.. Halloween decorations lit up the cave of foliage and the deeper I walked in, the more dramatic they seemed to get. Spiraling string lights of oranges and purples, grimacing jack-o-lanterns glowing from their insides, animatronic ghosts swinging back and forth with voiceovers eerily similar to a conductor’s service announcement on the 6 train. This was nothing like my neighborhood. The closest thing you’d get to Halloween decorations in Hunts Point is a crackhead fiend leaning in front of the bodega on my corner. These motherfuckers had money.

My destination was reached at a two story townhouse. A cobblestone stoop prefaced a dark wooden door with a circular glass ornament in its center. There were no Halloween decals in sight.

As reckless as I may seem, my mother taught me to never stand at a stranger’s doorstep.

They snatch up pretty boys like you and make a fortune was a warning that repeated itself in the back of my head ever since I was old enough to walk to school by myself.

I texted Joel that I had made it and only a few seconds had passed before his front door swung wide open. A towering figure stood inside of the door’s frame. His warm pigment reminded me of dulce de leche. He had dark curly hair that was pressed down into glossy waves rippling down from the crown of his head. His eyes were big and bright, a hazel color, matched with long lashes that curled up to a pair of bushy brows. A full set of sheeny lips sat underneath a charming strip of peach fuzz. He was even more beautiful than I had imagined.

Joel’s thick arms wrapped around my waist in warm embrace after climbing the steps of his stoop. His solid torso collided against my skinny rib cage.

“Make yourself at home,” he invited as he pulled away from the hug and guided me through the doorway into his living room.

The first thing that drew my attention was the handsome black couch in the room’s center. It was the type of furniture my mother would double wrap for the holidays, meant to be admired rather than actually used. A flat screen television mounted against the wall in front of a glass coffee table with piles of loose leaf and textbooks sprawled across its surface.

Underneath the television was a steel entertainment center. At its top was an old-school camera, not the overpriced modern Polaroid they sold at Urban Outfitters, but an authentic Kodak. Its black, blocky body felt dense in my hands. Joel had told me about his love for photography in one of our more meaningful conversations. It was a hobby that his grandfather had passed onto him when he was younger. His grandfather would drive him to his cabin up in the Catskills where they’d spend the weekend taking pictures of the scenery the forests had to offer. It was just him and the surrounding nature, his safe haven. He told me he always carried his camera on hand in case he ever felt the need to snapshot a moment in the bleeding ink of film. To him, photos were about much more than visuals. They brought the feelings of that specific memory and simulated the magic that made them worth remembering. It was kind of a beautiful sentiment when I really thought about it.

I placed the camera gently into its original position and turned my focus to a large wall decorated by tiny black picture frames. Each frame contained a vignette of Joel’s life titled with handwritten captions: “First bubble bath”, “First baseball game”, “First communion”. That photo held my gaze.

Joel couldn’t be any older than seven years old. His expression was still; his doll-like eyes glared up to the camera at a tilted angle, chin buried in his chest. To his left was a busty woman in a fitted black dress that hugged every curve and swerve of her body. Pearls at an almost comical scale laid strategically above the cleavage exposed by the deep cut of her ensemble. Her pouty lips were spackled in a bright red paint accompanied by a beauty mark dotted at its perimeter. Thin brows topped smoldering eyes. She was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but she wasn’t the modest, God-honoring woman I would have pictured her to be.

A Dominican Pamela Anderson was the only description that did her justice.

A stocky man in a tight-fitting polo stood at Joel’s right hand side. His face was a matured replica of Joel’s. Age was indicated by thin wrinkles above a pair of unruly brows that flicked up at their ends. The corners of his mouth curled down into a permanent frown. By the looks of it, a smile hadn’t graced his face since Raegan was elected into office.

This was the same man that had sent Joel to that all boy’s school when he was fourteen. From Joel’s retelling, his father had caught him dry humping his living room’s couch to the NCAA collegiate wrestling semifinals on ESPN. This obviously didn’t sit well with him. He didn’t delve into much detail, I could tell it still bothered him, but all I knew was that there was some ear twisting, epithet screaming, and sin repenting shortly after. The next four years for Joel consisted of weekly Sunday service confessions, avoided eye contact in the boy’s locker room, and short lived flings with girls from their sister school in thigh-high socks and plaid skirts hiked up above their belly buttons. I joked that an all boy’s school seemed like more of a reward than a punishment considering the circumstances. I don't think he found that funny.

That was the problem with being an only child, too many expectations. You had eyes on you at all times. Perk of growing up with five sisters was that I could fly under the radar and do my dirt in peace. I’d be surprised if my mom even remembered to fix me a plate for dinner. My parents never gave me much shit about being gay but they never really gave me shit about anything. They were too busy making sure those lights stood on. Plus I have a sneaking suspicion they knew I had a little sugar in my tank ever since I asked to be Baby Spice for Halloween that one year.

“They’re away on a mission,” Joel whispered in my ear from behind. He held two glasses of water in each of his hands. I reached out and took one of them, inconspicuously inspecting it for any bubbles or suspicious color. I was no rookie and I refused to get spiked. Been there, done that.

“A mission?”

“You know, a mission with our church. They were going to be in Haiti for the next couple of weeks.”

Although the guarantee that his parents couldn’t walk in on us doing the nasty brought me ease, the fact that they were religious freaks who shoved the love of Jesus Christ down the throats of third world countries under the guise of charity was a major boner killer. Big colonizer energy.

From the corner of my eye, I watched a shadow linger from the dark hallway. As it grew closer, light revealed it to be a cat in a shiny black coat. It circled Joel’s ankles in a figure eight formation and finished its routine by rubbing its head against his calf. Joel reached down and cradled the cat in his arms like a proud father holding his new born baby.

“And this little guy is Ace,” Joel mused as he pressed his lips tenderly in between Ace’s ears.

I wasn’t really much of the animal loving type of guy. I would change the channel every time commercials for the ASPCA popped up on my television, the ones that showed slow paced montages of dogs with missing ears and cats with brown crust around their eyes. I blame my parents. They never let me own anything besides a couple of lousy goldfish and they always died because I would constantly tap against their glass in an attempt to get them to talk like Nemo did.

I faked interest in Ace with a tilt of the head and a soft spoken “aww”. I took a step closer and reached out a hesitant hand towards the cat’s belly for a pet. Ace’s eyes widened in anger as he bared his tiny sharp teeth and let out an ear-splitting hiss.

The fuck is his problem?

“Don’t worry,” Joel reassured as he let Ace drop softly to the floor, “he just needs time to warm up to you.”

As the evening progressed, we traded our glasses of water for tall tin cans of cheap strawberitas. We laid out lazily on his couch, my head settled on his chest as his hand dived deep underneath my sweats and cupped the flat ass my father accosted me with at birth. We engaged in playfully passionate debate as we sifted through the best Netflix had to offer.

“How have you never seen The Strangers?” Joel questioned in disbelief.

“It’s pretentious,” I rebutted, “people only say they like it because everyone and their mothers decided it was a good movie.”

“And Jennifer’s Body isn’t?”

“Don’t you dare! Jennifer’s Body is a cinematic masterpiece. Megan Fox is the bisexual icon the world needs right now.”

We reached common ground at a Nightmare on Elm Street, equal parts slasher gore and full frontal nudity.

As we laid there, I studied Joel’s heartbeat. It was a smooth and steady pattern like the bassline in an R&B love song. He smelled great too, like the sample cards Macy’s employees stationed at those fancy perfume counters attacked you with when you first walked in. It was a bit unnerving how unphased he was, calm and collected. It only made me more motivated.

We started with a few taps kisses, the kind you would sneak behind the teacher’s back in elementary school, and shortly graduated to the good stuff. Our mouths stretched over each other, the bridges of our noses grazed against one another, our hands grabbed at each other like ledges on a rock climbing course. His skin was as smooth as his lips, kind of how I would imagine a Fenty Skin ad would feel.

It wasn’t until Joel lifted himself up from his original position and pulled off his shirt from above his head that my heart began to race. His hands sunk into the leather beside my head. He bent his elbows in a push-up stance and lowered his face to mine.

It was finally time.

“Stay right there,” he breathed softly.

I watched him grab his polaroid from underneath the television and return back to the couch. His thumb flicked rapidly against the camera’s dial to situate the new film. With a squinted eye, he looked through the camera’s viewfinder and aimed the lens at me. A beaming white flash burnt my eyes without warning. My arm lifted in instinct and a flexed hand shielded my face.

“Move your hand,” Joel teased as he continued to set off the camera’s flash.

He lifted one leg over my body and targeted the camera at me from a bird’s eye view. The hand that wasn’t holding the camera caressed my cheek and migrated past my jaw and to my neck. His fingers wrapped at the sides of my neck, his calluses rubbed roughly against my skin. I tried to pose for his pictures but I couldn't pretend like his grip wasn’t tightening with every flash of his camera. His palm slowly pressed down onto my trachea. I could feel the veins in my forehead begin to bulge out. I knew some people were into kinky shit like this, but damn. Regardless, I couldn’t chicken out; my mother didn’t raise me to be anyone’s punk. I had convinced myself that it was just a challenge on America’s Next Top Model like that episode where they had spiders crawling across the model’s faces or when they were thrown off a cliff and into the ocean.

Three heavy knocks banged at the front door and froze time. Joel’s hand lifted from my neck and desperately grabbed his shirt from the arm of the couch. I followed suit and sat myself up, nonchalantly trying to gasp for air. The panic in Joel’s face only incited curiosity. It was too late in the evening for any deliveries from the post office. Maybe trick-or-treaters? I quickly dismissed this theory. It was common knowledge that houses with no decorations in their front yard were the ones that only gave out toothbrushes and dental floss. Could his parents have come home early? Or was it an unsuspecting girlfriend making a surprise visit?

My speculation came to an end when Joel answered to an empty doorstep. He turned to me, a look of confusion shared between us. We silently agreed that it must have been a group of neighborhood kids playing a game of ding-dong-ditch.

It was when Joel began to close the door that a store-bought Ghostface costume jumped out of hiding and into plain sight.

“Ready to die?”

The raspy voice exploded from behind the mask as he brandished a knife in a leather-gloved hand. Thick blood ran alongside its edge and dropped slowly to the ground.

In one swift motion, Joel jumped back from the door and grabbed the handle of a metal bat propped up against the wall. Just as he brought the meat of the bat to his shoulder in preparation of a vicious swing, the masked man raised both hands in front of him, palms faced out, sending his knife falling to the floor in the process.

“Dude, relax. It’s just me.”

He brought one of his hands to grab at the mask’s chin and revealed a young face. His skin had an olive tone to it, his eyes were of an almond shape. His stature reminded me of a human pitbull; he was almost as short as me, but twice my width. He looked like the type to dry-scoop pre-workout for breakfast and confuse ripped jeans as consent.

“You’re a dickhead Seth, you know that?” Joel sighed in relief.

Seth followed Joel further into the living room bursting into laughter.

“You should’ve seen your face,” Seth joked with a playful punch to Joel’s shoulder. Tears welled up in his eyes and an occasional wheeze would sound with every inhale. Shortly after the laughter subsided, Seth’s focus turned to me. His eyes slowly scanned my existence and began to dart from me to Joel.

“Who’s this?” Seth interrogated after pointing a puckered lip in my direction. I could see the gears turning in his head.

“Seth, this is Christian,” Joel answered, “we both take Psych 200 with Kozlowksi. Midterms are kicking our asses. We're waiting for the rest of our study group.” I looked down at the notes that were laid out on the coffee table in front of me, each headed with a date, name, and course subject. The lie came so effortlessly that I had almost believed it. Impressive.

I stood up and extended my hand to Seth’s for a dap. I was no stranger to having to butch up. There were very few instances like visiting my grandparents for the holidays or going to the barbershop for a haircut where I packed in the frills and stored it in the deep recesses of me. My performance mostly consisted of subtle head nods and staying completely silently. My voice was usually my giveaway. It was the kind of voice that would spin and twirl in the air once it left my lips. The look on Seth’s face didn’t read as entirely convinced. I couldn’t determine whether it was my nose ring, my limp wrist, or my shitty Slim Shady dye job that had blown my cover.

“So I guess you’re not coming to the costume party the team’s throwing tonight,” Seth concluded, turning his attention back to Joel.

“Can’t. Coach threatened to bench me if I don’t get my grades up,” Joel replied with the artifice of regret.

“I was afraid you’d say that.”

“And why’s that?”

“Well, you’re the only one old enough to buy the booze.”

“Doesn’t Malik have a fake?”

“One of the waitresses at Hooters held onto it when she figured out it wasn’t legit last week.”

“And Jacob?”

“Lost his wallet the night we stripped him while he was sleeping and threw him into the fountain on campus.”

A silence crept across Joel’s face. The solace that was once visible began to melt into alarm. He was calculating his next move; he hadn’t planned this far ahead.

“Aww come on Joel,” Seth began to plead, “don’t be a pussy. Christian won’t mind, would you?”

There was an inflection at the end of his question that was unsettling. It was the kind of question that knew the answer before it was asked. He knew more than what he was letting on.

I slowly shook my head from side to side.

“Attaboy! I’ll meet you at the car,” Seth grinned as he tossed a set of car keys to Joel’s chest and made his way down the stoop’s steps.

Joel stood motionless for a moment, his mind buffering as he registered what just happened. Stillness was broken when he turned to look at me, his eyes almost apologetic.

“Ten minutes max,” Joel promised before following Seth to the car.

I waited a considerable amount of time before deciding to go on a hunt for some dirt around Joel’s house. He did tell me to make myself at home after all.

I stood up from my seat, walked past the kitchen, and stood in uncharted territory. With the flick of a light switch, a wooden staircase leading up to a second floor was uncovered from the dark. A large bathroom of sparkling chrome finish greeted me at the top of the stairs. His parent’s room opened at an immediate left turn. From a peek inside, I saw a corner of a king-sized bed partially covered in a plush, white throw. I imagined the firmness of the mattress’s springs against my black, the feel of the headboard in my grasp. I was going to have to convince Joel to do it on his parent’s bed

Joel’s bedroom was at the end of a longer hallway. His doorknob stood stiff as my hand twisted. Locked. Luckily for me, I had a colorful history of both breaking and entering. I pulled out an old high school metrocard from one of my wallet’s pockets and slid it through the crack of his door. As one arm swiped the card up and down against the deadbolt, the other hand tugged aggressively at the door’s knob.

A small, metallic click sounded and allowed the door to give way to my shoulder’s budge. I stepped in and was surrounded by the warm waves of central heating. His room was weirdly bare. A bland, platform bed stood at one of the room’s corners. A wide, black dresser with dingy gold handles sat flushed to the wall directly across the bed. There was no mirror in sight. He was really committed to this humility thing.

I walked to the dresser and began to pull at its drawers’ handles: T-shirts, socks, jeans.

Bingo. Underwear.

White underwear piled in neat stacks inside the drawer similar to individual Jenga towers. I unraveled one of them and held it up to the light like a cashier inspecting a fake twenty dollar bill. Tighty whities, an interesting revelation.

As I went to place them back where I had originally found them, my eye caught the edge of something poking out from behind the stacks of underwear. My hands dug deep, disturbing the tedious folds and creases, pulling out a box towards me. Stained wood panels and a velvet lining of a fading purple color was exposed once its lid was flipped open. Inside of the box were solid white squares, small enough to fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I took them in one hand and flipped them over simultaneously. They were photos.

The first of the stack zoomed in at an open mouth, a pierced tongue sticking out for the camera for a clear view of a uvula. A darker hand was positioned at the person’s chin, it’s thumb fit directly under their bottom lip forcing the mouth wider. That was Joel’s hand, no doubt about it. The next photo cropped around a neck set symmetrical in its center. Red marks indented either side of the neck’s milky white skin. Hand prints. Another picture displayed an ebony back in its complete arch. Joel’s hand palmed the back of a shaved head, shoving it deeper into the mattress they both laid on. Teeth marks dug into the person’s left shoulder, each indentation beginning to fill pools of blood.

A feeling of apprehension and astonishment swirled inside me. Aggression emulated through the grainy prints, contrasting the composure Joel had shown moments ago. Each shot was haunting.

It was the kind of blackmail I came for.

It wasn’t until I jabbed the photos inside my pocket that I became conscious of a shape hidden underneath the heap of film. It was laid out at the bottom of the box, it’s pinkish color shy of saturation. I picked it up and felt it in between my fingers, the edge of my thumb rubbed against its surface. It was damp but had a slight grit to its texture. There was something stabbed through its middle like a pencil shoved through a cheap rubber eraser. A piece of metal? Or a piercing? A tongue piercing.

WHAT THE FUCK!

The box fell to a clattering thud as I released my hold of it. A surge of shock charged my entire body in waves of trembles. Air became too thick to breathe. My stomach churned and bubbled. Before I knew it, my face was planted in the toilet bowl as I spilled my guts. My wrenching amplified in the acoustics of the porcelain that surrounded my head.

A fucking tongue? What the fuck is he gonna do with a fucking tongue? Someone’s just walking around without a fucking tongue? Type of shit is this?

I stared at my reflection in the bathroom’s mirror. Steaming tears ran down against my cheeks, voided of any color. The faucet ran water into my cupped hands creating a puddle I splashed across my eyes. The frigid cold pulled me back into reality. It was time for me to abort the mission.

I bolted towards the stairs, my feet lifting up and down each of the steps like double dutch. My hand accelerated me forward as I pushed the wooden handrail behind me. I only made it to the coffee table when the front door’s lock began to turn.

Joel stepped in behind the opening door.

“Sorry about the wait,” Joel apologized, “traffic was a bitch.”

I stood dead in my tracks. My muscles tensed up. My mind wanted to scream but my lips pressed against each other tightly. I could feel the drastic rise and fall of my chest.

“What’s wrong?” He started to walk towards me, his right eyebrow arching in inquisition.

“I- I just think it’s time I start heading home,” I managed through a stutter. I started slowly inched away from him.

“But why? We were having so much fun.”

“I’m just n-not feeling too hot right now.”

“Is this about Seth? Don’t pay him any mind.” He set both of his hands around my hips and brought them closer to his. His face dived into the crook of my neck, his mouth slowly sucking at its skin. My hands pushed against his chest to no avail. I closed my eyes tightly praying that it would end.

Then, the sucking stopped.

I opened my eyes slowly. Joel had let go of my waist and was turned to Ace who was sitting right beside us. His two front paws propped directly in front of him as he chewed at what looked to be a toy of his that was trapped in his mouth. Only, it wasn’t a toy. As it dropped from Ace’s jaws, the tongue plopped against the floor in front of Joel and I.

Great. This is how I die.