Group Dynamics

“Huh?” Joey said. “What’s that?”

“An industrial sociologist,” I tried to explain, “studies how somebody’s job, and where they work, affects them. Like mentally, and physically.”

We both looked around and laughed.

The usual room, in the same budget motel. Still reeking of sex from last night’s shoot.

Tonight we’d pick it back up, with a different script. Or maybe work from the same one.

“Group dynamics,” I said. “You know.”

“Wow,” Joey said. “Val, you’re even smarter than I thought.” 

I stiffened. “Me?” 

I sat up in bed, blew on my too-hot coffee. If I was smart, Lars would never have conned me. Instead of being “personal assistant to the Fetish Porn King of Shangri-La Productions,” I’d be analyzing workplace dynamics somewhere.

“You are.” Joey set down his coffee. “Usually. But this time, you let your heart . . .”

I knew what was coming.

“Ass-fuck you.”

Out of nowhere, tears came. Rapes. Beatings so bad, I could only be filmed from the chest down. Choking. Lars doing it, for fun. It made him cum harder, seeing panic in my eyes. Last night, I froze up, praying . . . that he wouldn’t stop . . . until . . . until . . .

Joey nuzzled me, careful of my bruises. We hadn’t fucked this time. Just held each other, nude, enjoying the comfort of skin. His chest and head hair, both curly, were like a security blanket. Usually, he smelled like nobody else. Today, like sweat, ‘cos we hadn’t showered yet, but Joey-sweat smelled good to me. And cum from last night. But this time, it wasn’t just his. 

When his phone pinged, my heart raced. Lars! We were here, “after hours,” without him. We’d never snuck in here before. 

Would he hurt us?

As Joey reached behind for his phone, I clung tightly to him, as much as it hurt.

“Carlos.” His body felt tense. He set the phone down on the bed and turned over.

“I . . . gotta see him later.”

“Why?”

He shook his head.

Joey and Carlos: Lars’s biggest bi stars. It was Carlos who I smelled on Joey. And maybe not just from the shoot. 

Maybe more than I wanted to believe. Smart as I was.

But Joey loved me, didn’t he?

I loved him: Beautiful, perceptive Joey, who wrote songs he wouldn’t show me. Who’d stood up to Lars for me and literally got kicked in the stomach. Doubling over in pain, Joey’s eyes were twice their size. “Let’s run away,” hoarsely, he’d whispered in my ear, that night.

Carlos, too? I wondered now. 

Group dynamics, we’d call it. No fancy degrees or turned-up noses. Just a cheap motel workplace stinking of pleasure. Sometimes against our will. 

But not always.

I got dressed, slowly.

Foot Monster

She was a goddess with her stilettos on, a devil with them off.

Marcus Malley sat at the edge of his coffee table as he watched the girl take off her high heels in seductive fashion. But when the first one came off, disgust surged in his chest.

“What’s wrong, Marc?” she asked as she stripped off the other heel. “Don’t like what you see?”

How could he? They were massive, jointed things, simian, with as much hair and articulation, too. They moved with an alert intelligence, crawling up his jeans and laying on his crotch, the toes like knobby fingers. As for the nails—ugh—they were black-and-yellow, warped with fungus, and a few of them jostled like loose teeth, showing the bleeding skin beneath.

Marcus almost vomited—the stench of those dogs was apocalyptic—and made to get up but the woman moved down on the couch and caught him around his neck…with her feet!

“Getoffmeyou—” but Marcus’ windpipe was shut by the vice grip of her talons. He tried to undo them, but the musculature running through her arches, her soles, felt like a hemp rope.

She raised herself up, and in doing so, caused Marcus to trip on his coffee table and fall onto the ground.

“You said you love feet, you said you’d suckle on my little piggies.” Her hair fell down along her face in long, seaweed drapes. Her big toe stretched out and played with the corner of his tightened mouth, trying to gain entry. Marcus tried to say something, but she shushed him good

by forcing the toe into his mouth, breaking a few of his teeth in the process, her toenail breaking off like a shorn trapdoor. “Suck, Marcus, suck it good—be a man!”

But Marcus bit. Bit like a man with the teeth he still had.

The succubus howled, trying to get free, but Marcus held fast to that bleeding, hairy toe, even as his jaw felt like it was being dislodged. Her other foot finally released from his neck, reared backward, formed into an impossible fist, and cruised into his nose, shattering it. Marcus opened his mouth in pain, and the bitch went stage right onto the floor, inspecting her wounded foot.

“Get the fuck outta here!” screamed Marcus.

“You aren’t man enough, anyways,” she said, getting up and grabbing her heels. She forced her hideous feet into them and then turned with an attitude toward Marcus’ front door. She scuttled away and disappeared into the night.

Marcus lay there, hand moving to his face to inspect the damage. His mind roved through the events that led to that moment.

Back in the club, he admitted to her his foot fetish—he always laid his cards out beforehand.

“Cute,” she said, over the thumping music. “Well, I’m a foot monster.”

He had laughed at that, seeing nothing wrong. But hindsight’s a real motherfucker, isn’t it?

He crawled to the couch, got on his phone, and dialed 911.