Cthulhurotica

Don Pizarro THE C-WORD

It had been eleven months since I’d last called Anna. One day, she’d stopped answering her phone, and eventually I stopped trying to get through to her. I’d mostly stopped thinking about us until her corner of Massachusetts caught the edge of a hurricane. For three days, I resisted the urge to call.

I never thought she’d call me.

“I knew you’d be worried,” Anna had said.

“I was,” I said, shocked into honesty by the realization she’d actually given me a moment’s thought.

We spent most of the time talking about the storm’s aftermath. “Arkham’s flooded,” she said. “They canceled classes at Misk until further notice. Newburyport’s a mess….”

“How are you?” I asked.

“Innsmouth pretty much got through it unscathed,” she said.

Not the answer I was looking for. This didn’t surprise me. Neither did Innsmouth’s shelter from the storm, despite the town being situated right on the coast. After its revival in the nineties as a place where artists and hipster students with trust funds — like myself — could thrive, nothing could slow Innsmouth down. Not its own sordid history, nor the recession, not even the weather.

The tired old joke was always, “What did Innsmouth sell its soul to this time?”

We did some perfunctory catching up and had gotten to the part where we both mentioned about how little had changed in our lives over the past year, when I blurted out, “I want to see you.” I hung my head down between my knees and waited for another rejection.

“Eliot,” Anna said with a sigh.

I was mentally kicking myself, thinking stupid, stupid, stupid.

“One last visit,” she said. “One. For old time’s sake.”

The way she broke our unspoken rule about using any word or phrase that could possibly call to mind our seventeen-year age gap — that was the biggest shock of all. If it didn’t matter to her anymore, maybe I didn’t matter to her either. Still, I wasn’t about to look a gift from the Gods in the mouth.

I texted Anna as soon as my flight landed at Logan Airport, and sent several more through the bus ride to Newburyport. She texted back when she could. She was knee-deep in a stream of hipster commuter students from Miskatonic U., looking to replace the water-damaged minimalist furniture in their cheap Arkham lofts.

When, after a long series of detours, the Newburyport-to-Innsmouth bus finally arrived at the Town Centre, I called her. “I can’t wait to see the store again,” I said as I walked toward the Warehouse District, filled with fond memories of the things we used to do in the back of her warehouse. Not that I had any particular hope of reliving them.

“I’ve booked you a room at The Gilman,” said Anna, preemptively answering the question of where I was going to be staying. “It’s too wild at the store. How about you hang out and I’ll come by for dinner? My treat.”

When I was handed the keycard for Room 428, it was official. Anna’s signals were definitely mixed. Why would she keep me away from her house, only to book me in a room full of memories?

The memories did come, and I let them, lying alone on the bed in the too-familiar room. The good ones came first. From the first time we met, she and I were in transitional phases, just like Innsmouth was at the time. I was a Ph.D. student at a school as far away from Ojai, California, as I could get. She had launched a new business venture after spending her early forties trying to be something other than a woman descended from Old Money that was long since gone. Kindred spirits, or so I’d thought, bonding over meals or coffee, discussing our plans and dreams and — after graduation — trying to figure out how to make our plans dovetail.

Most of the bad memories had to do with how badly we’d danced around the elephant in the room, especially in those days. I called it enjoying the moment; she called it refusing to face reality. I could always make my head, if not my heart, understand the fact that she was slowly pushing me away for my own good. I saw her guiding me toward a life with someone to grow old with, instead of someone who’s “starting a new life” years were behind her. She had this idea that I needed someone I could have two-point-five kids with, something Anna couldn’t give me, she’d said, even if she wanted to. It wasn’t until after I’d left town that I realized how little I’d argued that particular point with her.

The bad memories got more vivid as I sat alone in the Gilman’s dining room. My gut remembered the ever-increasing frustration I felt over ever-decreasing contact. I wanted to do what I should have done eleven months ago. I told myself, while I drained another of Innsmouth’s finest local brews, that I’d march over to her house to tell her I was done with her, once and for all. If she thought to coax me out this way only to blow me off, then she’d have another thing coming. I settled for calling her, again, and promised myself that in 15 more minutes I’d be gone.

Two hours and three unreturned voicemails later, I’d had enough.

The Waite-Saothwick family home was an ornate Victorian, nearly a manor house, a throwback to Innsmouth’s well-heeled past that belonged off of Town Square or with the old-money houses of Washington Street. From two blocks away, I could see Anna standing on the widow’s walk at the top of the house. It was a breezy, slightly chilly evening. I was fine in jeans and a button down with the sleeves rolled up, but I didn’t expect to see her in a short, sleeveless nightgown. I paused, wondering if I should knock or check the back door to see if it was unlocked, like it always used to be.

I paced a bit as I watched her, trying to work up the nerve to get to her door. When she wrapped her arms around herself, probably feeling the chill, I finally admitted to myself that what I wanted the most was to be standing behind her and holding her.

I fumbled for the cell in my pocket. In the space between two dial tones, I let my gaze wander. When I looked up again, Anna suddenly wasn’t on the widow’s walk. She was on the balcony outside her bedroom bay window door, and making her way inside. I had no idea how she could have gotten there so quickly. If it weren’t for all the complaints about joints I’d remembered hearing, I would have thought she jumped down the staircase connecting the two platforms.

Anna answered her phone. “Hello, Elliot.”

“Hey,” I said, with hopefully enough enthusiasm to hide how pissed I was at being put out for the past several hours.

Her front porch light switched on.

“Come on over,” she said. Her front door opened and there she was, covered in a silk robe that looked slightly too long for her. I wondered if she’d gotten shorter or if she was stooped over slightly. But when I walked up her steps and stood face to face, my lips were right about at the level of her forehead, right where they were supposed to be.

Arms crossed with her phone still in hand, staring at my chest with those unblinking blue eyes, Anna smiled. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi,” I said, trying to make eye contact.

She took a quick breath, and finally looked up at me. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ve just been… I don’t know. I just couldn’t….” She brushed her mop of pale blond hair away from her face, and spread her arms to offer me a hug.

“Forget it,” I said, taking her into my arms.

After a moment, she melted into me.

“Why did you have to come back?” she said.

“Because you let me.”

“No, why really?”

“Fine,” I said. “I’m indulging my cougar fetish. Happy?”

She giggled, and that broke some of the tension. “You went straight for the c-word,” she said. “Nice.”

“It was that, or, ‘I’m looking for another mom.’”

Anna hugged me tighter. “You jerk.” And then she whispered, “I’m so, so sorry.”

Her lips looked as soft and as warm as I’d remembered. I took a chance kissing her. I was happy to find, that from the way her long tongue searched for mine, I hadn’t gotten her signals wrong after all.

I brushed her hair away, exposing her neck and pressed my lips softly against her throat. “I sure wouldn’t do this with my mother,” I whispered. I parted my lips and gently scraped her skin with my teeth.

She let my lips linger at her neck. I lightly drew swirls up along her jaw, up to that spot just under her ear. Then, she gently gripped my neck and guided my head downward. I kissed along her collar bone, and down her cleavage as far as her robe would allow.

“I’ll give you ‘mother’,” she whispered back, walking me upstairs by the hand.

Anna insisted on turning the lights off before taking off her robe. But my eyes quickly adjusted, thanks to the glow of the waxing moon coming in through her bedroom’s bay window. She pulled off my glasses and stripped me down to my boxers. We slid onto the cloud-like down comforter on her bed.

Everything was blissfully familiar: the way we laid side-by-side, the way we tasted each other’s skin. The way her mouth licked and sucked from the base of my throat down to my nipples. That moment when I’m so hard, that even boxers feel too confining and I just want them off.

I pushed them down as Anna peeled off her pink cotton panties. She licked her fingers, and teased herself, draping a leg over mine and grinding herself into my thigh.

I moistened the palm of my own hand and teased the head of my cock. Anna kissed my neck again, moaning along with me. I gripped myself and stroked, slowly, whispering her name. This was how we made love more often than not, holding each other as we got ourselves off. I was honest with all my heart when I whispered, “I missed this.”

Sometimes, if she had the right product handy, she would straddle me and take me inside her for as long as she could. I didn’t see any bottles or tubes about, and I didn’t care. But I was surprised when she pushed herself on top of me and gently rubbed herself along my length.

“Baby, wait,” I said. “Are you sure–?”

“I missed this, too,” she said. She reached for my cock and held the tip against her. I tried to keep still, to let her take her time. I moaned loudly when she pushed herself down in one slow, wet, warm stroke all the way down to my hilt.

With a limberness that I knew she hadn’t been capable of since she was my age, she sat up and peeled off her negligee as she ground her hips into me. All of the usual self-consciousness about what she always called her “sags and saddlebags” was gone. Maybe all the time I’d spent telling her how beautiful she is to me had finally paid off.

Only my disbelief kept me from coming right then.

Before I could stop myself, I slid my hands up her thighs and held her hips. Mine gained a mind of their own, and their only thought was to push myself as deeply inside her as I could. And to do it again, and again, and again.

I tried to slow myself down. I had to, if I wanted this to last. But Anna leaned forward, posting herself on her elbows on either side of my head, and stroked my hair. “Don’t,” she whispered. Her hips picked up my slack. Her eyes, even wider now, stared straight into mine, as if they were penetrating me as deeply as I was her.

“Let me have it,” she said. “Let me have you.” And I did.

Having forgotten how gray Innsmouth can be some days, I thought it was dusk when I opened my eyes. It had been a long evening of pillow talk, interspersed with another orgasm (or three) each. But after the sleeping and cuddling, there was silence. I was afraid to say much, and I think Anna was, too.

There was a herd of elephants in the room, now.

I didn’t mention being woken up by whatever dream she was having that made her heel hit my shin, or being kept awake by her incoherent mumbling in her sleep. I didn’t want to say anything that could broach the topic of how things used to be, because that would lead to talk of how things should be, and could or could not be, despite what had happened last night. The only innocuous words I could think of were, “How about breakfast?”

She let me fix her something simple, and we ate out on the balcony outside her bedroom. When she finally looked at me with a wide smile and told me, “I can’t believe how you could make me fuck like that at this age,” I was on top of the world. Overlooking the Harbor, eating breakfast with a woman I hadn’t expected to see again, I couldn’t just let myself sit there and grin like an idiot. I had to open my mouth.

“You trained me well,” I said. “You turned this prince into a frog.”

The smile disappeared from her face, and suddenly that perpetual wide-eyed stare of hers wasn’t as endearing. “What was that?” she said quietly.

I realized what I’d said.

“No, no — frog into a prince.” I didn’t listen when my head screamed to my mouth, Shut up! “Why, do you have something against frogs?” I joked.

Anna let her fork drop and bounce off her plate, and then pushed away from the table, spilling both our juice glasses. She stormed up the staircase to the widow’s walk. I gave it a moment before following her up. Even at our closest, she always insisted that she wouldn’t let herself be smothered, not at her age.

I found her looking out at the Harbor, standing just as she was the night before. My first instinct was to hold her. I crossed my arms and supported myself on the walk rail next to her instead. I should have told her she was being too dramatic for a woman her age.

Instead I said, “I’m sorry.”

Anna sighed. “Don’t be,” she said. “I’m just crazy these days. Now I’m wondering if this was such a good idea.”

“Why?” I asked, fixing my eyes on that famous blackened rock jutting out of the ocean known as Devil’s Reef, praying she wasn’t about to push me away again.

She shrugged. “Too many changes lately.”

“Change. That’s the real c-word. Always looking to mess things up,” I said. “Change isn’t always a bad thing.” She tensed, getting ready to make some big pronouncement, and I knew it was happening all over again.

I didn’t know what I was thinking when I got down on one knee. I didn’t even have a ring. I just knew I had one chance to keep her from sending me away.

“Anna Waite-Saothwick…” I said.

She put her finger on my lips. “Please, don’t.”

“Why not?” I said. I pulled a speech out of my mind that I’d been rehearsing for the better part of a year. About how a seventeen-year age gap didn’t matter. That I wouldn’t be better off with someone my own age. That there wasn’t any way her body could change that would matter to me (though, she really scoffed at that one). “Let me prove it,” I said, squeezing her hand. “That was all I’ve ever wanted.”

“What about the c-word?”

“What, cougar?”

She slapped my shoulder.

“Screw the c-word,” I said.

“You’re not worried about what I might change into?”

I smiled. “I didn’t before. And definitely not, after last night.”

Except for any evidence of tears, Anna had that look people get when they laugh and cry at the same time. “But you don’t know—”

“I don’t care.”

“Really?” she asked.

“There’s only one way you’re going to find out,” I said. “Let me stay.”

“Actually, there’s another way.”

Anna slipped her hand from mine and faced out toward Devil’s Reef. She cupped her hands and shouted some words I couldn’t understand, but that reminded me of her mumbling last night. And unless I was hearing things, she was answered, from the Reef, with the most bizarre and disturbing sound I had ever heard.

As I stared at the Reef in awe, with my stomach churning at what I heard, I reached my hand out towards Anna. She took it.

I felt better.