When I woke on Saturday, I spent some time just sitting on the edge of my bed. I had no idea what to make of the night before, what it said about me, or where to go from there. My only solid thought was that it had been one of the best nights of my life in terms of just watching porn into the wee hours of the morning. I sat through the entire video, jacking off more times than I ever had in one night before, and the Flannery segment in particular was mind-blowing. My only definite course of action was to pop into my computer, rip the video file for later use, and return it to the video store. It’d at least give me some time to think.
Maybe I’m on my way down the hole, I thought to myself as I pulled on some pants and went downstairs. I headed right for the door, with the case again stuffed in my waistband.
“Where are you going? I just made lunch,” mom said, turning away from her show to look at me as I headed to the door. She knew something was wrong when I ran out without even asking about lunch. She was an average looking woman, of slightly above-average height and enough on her to make me believe the irritating midget who slept one room over was adopted. Even at home on a Saturday, she wore her usual business casual clothes and carried herself like it was her office. Her hair-the same light shade of brown as Amy and I-was kept short and professional looking, and when a mother had shorter hair than her son, it always led to wonderful stares and questions.(only time she will be in storie and father never is)
I shrugged, pulling my jacket off the coat rack. “I feel like taking a walk. I’ll only be a few minutes, then I’ll come eat. Need some air.”
She nodded and returned to watching her show as I stepped out in the brisk air and made my way to the video store. The plan was simple; come up, stick it in the slot they had at the entrance, and get out in under thirty seconds. Nobody had to know what I rented, nobody had to see anything or talk to me. I was just a regular returning a movie early, and so long as it wasn’t one of the clerks I was familiar with, I was gold. Small talk was the enemy.
My head raced as I approached the door. It was so risky that the taboo thrill surged through my body again and my heart pounded so hard I was sure a vein was visible on my neck. Returning a movie had never been nearly as exciting as it was in that brief moment. Another step, and music played in my head that made me feel far cooler than I really was, likely painting my face with a massive, goofy grin. Secret agent Adam Conlon. Mission accomplished, return to-
“Oh, hey Adam,” drawled a voice, and the swirl of pride, excitement, thrill, and joy plummeted. I turned on my heel and hid the souring of my self-satisfied smile as Angie came up behind me. “Fancy meetin’ you here.”
“Yeah,” I muttered. My hand had made its way to the waistband and clutched at the plastic case, but it let go. Angie was no idiot, she’d have spotted the case immediately if I pulled it out, and I didn’t want to risk her asking about it-or, worse, recognizing it. “Just returning something I watched last night. You?”
“Same.”
I nodded, opening the door and letting her pass. She took the bait, and by the time she turned around to face me, I had pulled off the delicate procedure of getting my arm ahead of me through the door and sliding the case down the slot without her noticing me. It worked, and now I could-
“Hey, Adam,” called the clerk, and my heart sank. The manager. Terry was one of those managers of small stores that took the time to learn the names of regulars, and with an eidetic memory, knew what movies they’d rented. It was a very useful skill for recommending movies to customers, but not when you want your rental history kept a secret. His voice sounded like he had something more to say, to get my attention rather than just to greet me. I cursed myself as I turned to greet him again. “I didn’t know you know Angie.”
“He’s workin’ at the daycare with me,” she said as she slipped a case of her own into the slot, too quick for me to get a view of it. “At least, I hope. Adam, can we talk outside?”
I nodded frantically, hoping that was all he had to say, that he’d make no mention of my strange rental, and that we could get out of there as soon as possible. “Yeah, I’ve been meaning to talk to you, actually. I’ll see you next week, Terry.”
“Hold on. I noticed something on your file, and it seems like it was a mishap, but if you’d like, I can give your card authorization to the Pokephilia section in the ‘staff lounge’. Hot and Heavy in Hoenn isn’t one of our better titles.”
As he spoke and dug my hole so deep I could feel the planet’s heat scalding my feet, my and Angie’s faces both filled with colour. I darted my eyes to look away, while her face broke into a shit-eating grin so huge Amy would have picked up some tips from her. “Oh, we have so much to talk about.” She turned to him and nodded. “Put it on his account.”
Terry’s head tipped to the side, not knowing why Angie was so intensely satisfied, but doing it anyway. “It’s under the radar, and I’ll make a note to not have any mention of it get to your mom or sister. You two go have your talk or whatever, I need to sort the returns.” As Angie and I left, he picked up piles of returned movies and set out restoring order.
We stood in the cold air awkwardly for a moment, my eyes planted firmly on the pavement as her laughter rang in my ears. My face reddened further as the words just poured out of my mouth. “Look I got it last night out of curiosity, it was sitting there on the desk and I just had a stupid impulse to get it. It was stupid and I feel stupid but holy shit, it was the hottest thing ever and I masturbated so many times that I-” It had nearly been a whole sentence by itself, but when I realized how much detail I went into, my upper jaw snapped upward and caught my tongue between my teeth hard enough that the taste of blood followed the sudden pain.
“Calm down, boy. You’re redder than a Throh eatin’ razz berries. Why don’t you come by my and Bill’s place? We’re just about to heat up some leftovers, and there’s enough for a third.”
I threw up my arms in surrender. “I haven’t had lunch yet, so I guess so.” Only after we began walking did I catch the part about her and Bill living together, and my steps falter a little. She didn’t notice it, as I had slipped behind her both so she could lead the way and for eye candy, carrying on as normal. That was a bit of a surprise to find out, but I shrugged it off and shamelessly continued to check her out.
…
Their apartment was rather sparsely furnished and bordering on unkempt, with mismatched furniture in varying states of use that collectively screamed second-hand like a street worker with ruffled hair. It was all functional, but lacking in decor. It was cramped though, the kind of low-rent apartment you’d regularly see two crazy kids with bad furniture get. Bill sat on the couch with a game controller in hand and a Lopunny beside him, watching intently with her arm around his shoulder and her side a little too close to his for me to still be totally comfortable with. On the other end, a Gardevoir sat looking bored, and an Arcanine curled on the floor in the next room. I was surprised an Arcanine even fit in the house.
“Must be a tight fit with Clifford over there,” I muttered as we stepped in and I kicked off my shoes.
“Whoa, Adam?” Bill asked, and life felt like such a movie. “I didn’t think we’d see you again.”
“I think that every time I pass a mirror.”
“That must be messed up.”
Angie sighed, walking through the house to the kitchen as she spoke. “Adam wants to talk, and after what he rented last night, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of him.” Various pops and miscellaneous kitchen sounds were almost rhythmically matching her words before the flat tones of a microwave beeped, and her sentence ended on the dull hum of the machine. She emerged again. “Ain’t that right, Adam?”
I blushed, leaning awkwardly against the door and putting my hands behind my back. Silence was the only response I could muster, because the idea I rented Hot and Heavy in Hoenn was still difficult to vocalize.
“Was it porn?” Bill asked as the video game chimed with its level complete screen and he lay the controller down. “Pokeporn?” It was a bit of a surprise. I had only been around him for half a day, but he struck me as rather dim, almost enough for that to be a rare shimmer of insight.
“Hot and Heavy in Hoenn,” she snickered, striding over to me with a sway in her hips that made my eyes shudder in torment. I couldn’t look at her like that when she had her eyes on me. I may have been a pervert, but hell if I didn’t have a bit of chivalry.
“Can you really judge me?” I asked, the thoughts of what happened in this apartment sinking in. My mind’s eye perverted the image in the apartment, playing out the scene of Lopunny beginning to jack off Bill as they kissed sloppily, of Arcanine mounting Angie over the table, and of Gardevoir finding some entertainment in fingering herself to the proceedings. My pants tightened a little, prompting my legs to draw in a little and my lean to shift a little, minimizing the noticeability of my bulge.
The hostess shook me from the mental wonderland. “I ain’t. I’m just curious how you can go from not being sure if you can be in a room with us to renting it is all.”
I sighed, sliding down the wall so I sat against it with my knees to my abdomen. “It was an accident. I was curious. Just, something came over me when the clerk left it there, and before I knew what was going on, I was on my way out with it.”
“And?” she asked, kneeling down in front of me. Bill and the two Pokemon leaned in too, and my eyes tightened.
“You guys win. It’s hot. And I’ll take the job, I guess.”
“Excellent!” Bill shouted. “You’re pretty cool, dude. It’ll be awesome working with you. Shame about your mirror problem, though.”
“Yeah, you too,” I muttered, taking Angie’s offered hand as the microwave beeped.
“Lunch time,” she said with a smile, patting me on the back before ushering me into the kitchen, which followed the same decorating scheme as the living room had, though at least some of the appliances seemed to match, maybe hand-me-downs from parents. The table had four matching chairs at it, and Bill carried a fifth into the room. The two Pokemon scampered into seats across from each other, Lopunny moving hers over a little to give me space. I thanked her and sat down, which brought my gaze rather uncomfortably to Gardevoir, who gave me a very amused look that worried me greatly, so I diverted my eyes over to my usual pastime of late.
“Don’t feel bad about looking at my ass so much,” Angie said over the sound of shepard’s pie plopping onto plates. “It’s a compliment, really.”
“How did you-“
“There is little you can hide from a psychic.” The voice called in my mind, female and with layered echo that sounded ripped straight from a cartoon. Gardevoir didn’t so much speak as put into my mind the idea that she had, which was a little disconcerting. On top of that was the fact she must have seen-
Aw, crap.
As Angie slid the plate over to me, a fork sank into the top of the pile, she smiled enough to push my eyes to the floor. “Nothin’ to be ashamed of around here. My, you’ve got quite the imagination, don’t you?”
The two unrelated sentences made me think a little, tilting my head, before my glare snapped back to Gardevoir, who smiled at me. “Oh, stop it,” came that ethereal voice again. “Nobody in this house would be offended by the thought, and I felt like sharing your wonderful fantasy with the rest. We don’t look down on it here, so calm down.”
“Fine,” I grumbled and started eating the shepard’s pie, which was actually rather good; I was usually a bit tepid on the dish. Bill and Angie dug in as well, the former spurting heavy amounts of ketchup onto it, while Lopunny and Gardevoir nipped at their own food.
After clearing most of her plate, Angie coughed a little to grab my attention. “Now, time to talk. I’m guessin’ you have some questions.”
“So many, but I’ll try to spare you the obvious and the philosophical,” I said as my fork clattered against the plate when I put it down. “Completely legal?”
“One hundred percent. It helps that most of the Pokemon League’s involved in it. I know you’re just some city boy, never gone out on an adventure or been around Pokemon, but it’s more common than you think. Heck, a lot more trainers do it than don’t, these days. Same goes for folks in all the ranches and daycare centres, breeders, training centres, hospitals-“
“I get the point,” I said through a mouth of food. “Do your grandparents know?”
She laughed a little. “No. Not sure how they’d react, but it’s not a risk I wanna take. Ma and pa do, though. Caught ’em doing it once, too.”
“So, it’s kept under the radar.”
“Completely. Keep it in the break room and they won’t notice.”
I paused for a second to think of the next question, before something struck my mind and I shivered a little. “So, does this mean I’m, er, going to do it?”
“We won’t make you do somethin’ you don’t want to. Some people just watch; rent videos, go online.”
Bill cut in at that point, his plate empty as he shuffled over to grab more. “What about Chikorita?”
“I forgot all about her,” Angie said, the immediate upturn in her tone of voice making me adjust my place on the seat a little. “You remember the Chikorita, Adam?”
“Where is this going?” I muttered, shovelling in some more food and playing dumb. Anyone could tell what she meant, but hell if the sudden realization that the act was actually approaching didn’t make me step back and cower.
“She’s been ’round a few times, know what I mean. Nice girl. Came by yesterday asking for you, thought you were one of us.”
“She wanted to…”
“Gal’s just on the verge of her heat cycle, too. If you’re gonna do it, she’s your best bet right now.”
The slow, rumbling doubt and cowering dialled up as tentative plans and ideas became more and more realized. I had merely been a guy watching porn the night before, and it’s easier to justify watching something, maybe even masturbating to it and starting to like it, than to do it. Vague notions of maybes could be passed off and ignored, but for all they weren’t pressuring me, I was supplying it tenfold. Aspects of my mind took sides with dizzying speed and reliability, beckoning me to advance. A hundred different voices shouted out to me in one mess of noise. Whatever thoughts or rationalizations I may have made in my own time were thrown to the ground too quick to make any ground myself.
“No,” snapped a voice in my head. It sounded like my voice, but it was angrier, more abrasive. “This involves getting laid, something you haven’t done in too long. This decision goes to a higher court.”
I expected there to be deliberation, to be some arguments, sides drawn, and actual time to think on it. If the sum of my parts was so contemplative and sometimes indecisive, then surely the parts themselves would take some time. Instead, a near-unanimous vote sent the words, “I’ll do it,” sailing from my mouth so quickly that it wasn’t until I took and swallowed a mouthful of food that I even realized I said them.
“Interesting mind you have,” Gardevoir’s echo mused.
Angie’s lips curled into a smile. “You won’t regret it. So, we can expect you at work tomorrow?”
“Looks like it. Say, why are you guys not at work now? It’s the afternoon.”
“Saturdays are our days off. We don’t do much in the way of relaxing, but it’s less rough than work.” As she said that, Arcanine stood up and clamoured over to her, rubbing his nose into her thigh. “Settle down, boy,” she laughed, running a hand through his fur. “You want to stick around? We’re just about to start, and Chikorita doesn’t necessarily have to be your first.” To drive home that point, I noted Lopunny in the corner of my eye making lewd gestures toward me, and my pants made their intention clear.
“I’m expected back home,” I lied. Mom would probably be too absorbed in the TV to notice I’ve been late for a couple hours. “Rain check?”
Angie nodded, the rejected Lopunny didn’t miss a beat in turning her attention to Bill, and Bill waved me goodbye. “See you tomorrow, man. And good luck with that mirror thing.”
As I walked through the small apartment and closed the door behind me, I wasn’t entirely sure why I had shot down the offer. Maybe I just needed the day to prepare. Maybe Chikorita seemed less imposing than a sultry-looking Lopunny. There was certainly no turning back if my pants had anything to say about it. This way, I’d at least have the day to psych myself up for it.
What the hell did I get myself into?