Click

A couple, Daniel and Allie, were arguing while drunk. Allie rolled her ankle and fell. Daniel tried to help but she pushed him away. Daniel realized how the situation might look to others and started reflecting on how they got there. They had a day of adventures, including coffee, pizza, and a party. They eventually made it back to Daniel's apartment where they laughed and kissed. The next morning, Daniel noticed Allie's bruised ankle and was concerned. Welcome to Urban Shorts, my personal collection of bite-sized literary fiction. I'm your host, Daniel Morris, and today's story is called Click, a word straight from my pen to your ears. Chat GPT told me to say that. I was looking for an engaging intro that gave me that little advice. Before we start, a quick heads up. This tale includes explicit language, graphic depictions of sex, and references to rape. If you prefer a censored version, just let me know and I'll be happy to provide it. So settle in and let's explore this intense, thought-provoking, yeah, I'm gonna stop doing the chat GPT thing. Here we go. Click by Daniel Morris, previously written in 2017. We were both drunk, whereas I was aware of alcohol's effect on me and made up for it by doubling down on my cool, calm, and collected persona, Allie was more of an extrovert, honest with her actions, making them match what she felt inside. We were arguing, well, she was arguing, well, I guess you can't argue by yourself. She was emoting to me in a loud tone. As she gesticulated, she wobbled on inebriated feet. I tried to grab and anchor her, but she snatched away. Her foot bent sideways as her ankle hit the earth with a click. I winced as she quickly corrected her misstep. When she tried to step down again, she promptly collapsed and tumbled back into the bushes. I grabbed at her, but it was like trying to snatch a blink. It felt like my reaction was incredibly delayed, as if she had been sitting in those bushes forever and I just now tried to stop her from falling. Shit, are you okay? I said. As I reached down, she snatched away again. Get off me, she said. Don't try to pretend like you care. As she sat there, I looked down the street to my apartment, a dark three-story compound at the edge of the hood. I then looked around at the few stragglers that were still on the street. I pictured the scene from their viewpoint, a black man standing over a drunk white woman. That's when I had that, how the hell did I get here moment. My mind started piecing together the situation from the beginning, perhaps trying to find an answer for what to do next in the context of what happened leading up to this point. It started when we woke up in the afternoon, and because every day had to start with a legal drug, we were debating on whether or not to get coffee and breakfast, or just coffee. Well, I said sitting up and covering my groin with a fitted sheet that had come undone from the air mattress. I am hungry, but the coffee place is closer and we could walk to the strip. It's up to you, Ollie said lying in the nude next to me. She was like a Greek painting reimagined as a modern fantasy, a 21st century birth of Venus. Ginger locks replaced with a buzz cut, gauges, and a small nose ring. Yet beyond her flawless hip to waist ratio and exquisite posterior, she was like an untouched renaissance beauty. I'm cool either way, I replied, confident she'd come up with a plan that would please the both of us. That's what I liked most about her. She was a beautiful weirdo, a manic pixie dream girl, and I thrived on surprises and adventure, so doing what she wanted to do was usually a win win. How about this? She said. She popped off my air mattress, causing the air inside to shift. She stuck to this mountain, stood on sturdy legs as her ass jiggled defiantly while I slowly sank to the ground. We walked down to the coffee shop, continue walking to the strip and get some pizza. Sounds like a plan. I said. Soon we were a few blocks away where the newer developments were taking over. We stopped for coffee at a trendy, fern green cinder block building with a logo of a pouncing fox on the outside. This is always the first sign of gentrification inside a bustling business with middle class patrons enjoy drip coffee and expensive pastries. We continued our adventure. We made small talk as we walked. She pointed out the pleasant looking houses and mentioned how she would love to live on one side of a duplex and rent out the other. I pointed to a guy who looked like a famous comedian, which started a whole nother conversation. I tried to keep it light, telling her that my dad looked like the father on the Cosby show. Then I stopped with a gasp and grabbed my phone. I pulled up his Wikipedia page. It's funny how an entire biography could stay the same save two words that are the difference between life and death, is or was. When I saw Earl Hyman is an American stage, television and film actor, I sighed with relief. We tossed our drained coffee cups into the trash so we could walk inside of a local meadery. After that, we stopped at a shipping container that was repurposed as a pizza shop. We had a few beers and spent $20 on four slices of New York style pizza. As the sun began to set, we walked closer to the main university. I told her I once took a stroll through seven mile road in Detroit at night without fear, but this place made me nervous. Once regarded as a no stopping zone for nine to fivers and a nesting ground for drug dealers, broke college kids, as well as the underprivileged, it is now overrun by hipsters, business owners and a new kind of college kid to take selfies on elegant rooftop bars. Packs of privileged youths roam the land looking for excitement. These are the people who poke beers just to record a reaction. I didn't have much confidence in my self-control, although I do try to keep a level head. Now and again, a volcano erupts and surprises everybody, including me. I didn't know whether to address my lack of emotional intelligence or to avoid certain things altogether. My thoughts scattered when she grabbed my hand. Suddenly, we were shooting through the kitchen of a restaurant downstairs to a secret party. A college coed with a quasi fake smile was pouring vodka down a luge in an ice sculpture in some frat boy's mouth. I had been away from the city for 10 years. She had been here the whole time, maintaining her connections. With intertwined fingers, she led me into the main room underneath the restaurant. A stuffy, dark speakeasy where an undulating mass of people bounce to the sounds of a DJ in the corner. She dropped me off at the bar, releasing my hand so she could join the crowd on the dance floor. Amidst a sea of women in dressive skirts, none caught my attention as she did. Despite her modest attire, a loose-fitting comfortable shirt, sandals, and jeans that didn't quite do justice to the extravagant figure beneath, she stood out. How could I describe her? Like a winning lottery ticket that resembled all the rest? Undecidic with a million dollar interior, she was something I had discovered, a true value hidden from everyone else. Suddenly we found ourselves back upstairs and through the doors to the outside. We retraced our steps along the opposite sides of the streets we had taken to arrive there, all the while we continued our small talks. It was a little different after the drinks. She seemed to debate me at every turn. I just chalked it up to that second personality that everybody has when under the influence. Before long we stood across from the coffee shop separated by just one stretch of asphalt, the divide between the impoverished and the well-to-do. Ahead, a quarter-acre mound of debris lay between the past and the future, patiently awaiting decisions on whether condos or complexes would rise. Since my apartment still fell within ghetto limits, I often joked with family and friends likening myself to a baseball player. Across the street was home plate. If I made it, I was safe. And this is where our little tats started. I remember being fully comfortable telling her a story while walking closer to the streets to keep her as safe as possible, something a gay guy taught me in LA. Before long she was stepping on uneven surfaces and going about how I kept interrupting her. I disagreed, possibly with an interruption. I said she was interrupting me, and I kept telling my story. I think we were both right. Eventually she said something about some dude who was talking to her back on the dance floor. I honestly didn't remember this, and that really seemed to bother her. She was gesticulating wildly, and that's when she rolled her ankle and fell. When I reached to her the second time and she snatched away from me, I looked up to see a white couple laughing as they turned a corner. Unfortunately, they didn't notice us. I calmly kneeled next to her as if she were an angry dog barking because it was scared. I spoke with a slight smile, made a few jokes, and eventually slid down next to her. Before long we were both laughing and then kissing. Crisis averted. We arrived back at my place, and it wasn't until the next morning that I noticed her ankle. It was purple. It was blue, dyed by red blood that created a purple underneath the surface of her ankle. Nothing more than a bruise on tight skin, too tight for her age. She kept youthful with yoga and healthy eating. Even her feet looked soft and appealing, which was weird because I never liked feet past a functional extremity. They were below me, constantly in contact with mud, dirt, and filth, second only to the anus. On any other body, I would avoid these two parts during intimate attention, but I loved every part and piece of her body. I loved her body from head to asshole to toe. But I hated this blemish. I lay beside her, looking, no, staring down at her foot. The sheets were bunched up underneath her, so I grabbed a pair of my crumbled boxes and set them over my chain. I sat up and reached for her damaged flesh. Does that hurt? I said, brushing her skin softly. I did this to draw attention to it. I wanted her to see that something was wrong. I passively touched her bruise and hoped for aggressive actions, but I would not command or prescribe. I was no physician. No, she said softly. Her answer was not surprising. She was not only sturdy, she was tough. She had told me stories of her collegiate activities, which involved standing in an ice barrel. It seemed extreme, like something reserved for world-renowned athletes, not for individuals on a girls' volleyball team. I wondered why this was my first thought. After all, a human being had been pulled out of a ten-centimeter opening in her body four years prior. I wouldn't dream of using the words dilate for such an extreme procedure because I wear glasses and have experimented with an ecstasy pill or two. Pussies don't blink and people aren't pulled through pupils. She popped up and put the full weight of the world on her damaged ankle without a single wince. I didn't want to tell her what to do, but I was interested. Are you going to get that checked out? I asked. What? She said, looking down at her ankle. Oh, it's fine. I thought it would be best for her to rest and heal. This, of course, was half concern and half selfish on my part. Whenever we were in a room together, I felt the urge to be lying down with her. Even after we had engaged in so many intimate activities, she still seemed distant. But this was on my part. I had felt this way with every woman I had ever been with. I longed to embrace them, kiss them passionately, make sex with them over and over again, endlessly, even if they were lying right next to me. Yet it always felt like a gamble, a roll of the dice. I could treat any woman in the world the same way, and she might or might not reciprocate, but it may or may not reflect her genuine desire. But if I were honest, I couldn't help feeling somewhat emasculated whenever I didn't assert myself and take control. It was as if I was suppressing a primal, caveman-like nature that overly simplified the male identity. As she walked to the bathroom, I heard a clicking sound with each step that she took, and with each one I had to debate myself, saying I don't want to tell her what to do. She walked past the kitchen and into the bathroom to do her business with the door open, as per usual. My brain sent nerve signals down my body as I considered how comfortable she was with me at my place. Playing house described it perfectly, all the enjoyable aspects of cohabitating without actually cohabitating. She had her own place, so she could come and go as she pleased, at least from here. I uncrumpled my boxes and then put them on. Then, after a self-conscious moment, with the air of my skinny legs and my weirdly shaped chest, I grabbed my jeans and my shirt. I was fully dressed as I walked to the fridge and grabbed a beer. You want a truth? I heard a flush, then the clicking of her ankle as she walked around the corner. She answered as if she was irritated. Do I want a truth? I guess it was kind of weird drinking this early in the morning, especially one of these new fangled beers. Alcohol content for some of these new IPAs is far above what we had in the early 2000s. Boatwisers ABV is 5%, Rheingau's truth is 7.2. Hell, I even had one called Dogfish Head 120 minute IPA that had a whopping 15.5% of alcohol by volume, but I soon found out that's not what was bothering her. I just walked past the kitchen on my way to the bathroom. Why didn't you ask me to get you one? I don't know. I guess I didn't think about it. I don't think that's it. You never asked me to do anything for you. Whenever we have sex, I'm the one that initiates it. Hell, I pursued you. It was the continuation of the conversation we had from last night, although in the sober light of day, she was concise with her thoughts and strategic with her delivery. I believe most males hate repetition. It's probably the silent killer that acts as a catalyst for most divorces. Although if I'm being honest, I bet women hate that they have to say things over and over again. I did take in what she said, though. I think the actual truth was that I just wasn't that macho. I couldn't bring myself to say this out loud. You think of sports, businesses, and relationships, male aggression is always celebrated. To say I wasn't aggressive was like saying I wasn't a man. Now, it's one thing to have a thought shrouded in darkness inside the inner cosmos, but when another person out in the real world addresses it, it's like having an embarrassing secret vocalized out loud that makes it real. In your mind, there's a chance that none of your flaws even exist. They literally say you're imagining it, but as soon as someone else notices and speaks it aloud, that's when it manifests from a mere possibility to a definitive reality. I cocked my head and smiled, looking off into the distance as if I were acting for a camera. It all started with a girl named Isis. I began. She was a very promiscuous, very nice young lady. She let me do anything and everything to her. I met her online in an AOL chat room. We found out we went to the same college, but I didn't know who she was. She interrupted with an exaggerated side-grown wine amalgamation. You told me this before, she said. She let you do anything you wanted, so you tested your limits before you felt like you were reaching into her brain and controlling her. You told me the story like three times. Did I? I said, shit, I need to stop drinking. She sighed again and started looking around on the ground. I gotta go, she said, picking up her underwear. Um, okay, I said. Really? She said, lifting and then dropping her hands to her side, her black lacy panties gripped between her fingers. Now, usually when she couldn't find the right words, she would just sigh and say, forget it. I would push, trying to prove that not only was I listening, but I was trying to see where she was coming from. This is what I prepared for, but what she said next took me by surprise. The story she didn't let me finish was from my college years. So Isis started as a girl I just had a crush on when I first moved to the city, but I was shy and very religious, so I didn't say a word to her. After the transformation that most people go through in this stage of life, I was more confident and open-minded. I don't even remember how me and Isis started going out. I don't know if I saw her at a party or sat next to her and figure drawing. I don't remember the first time I went over to her house, the first time we kissed, the first time we boned. All I remember was being on her couch one day and she reached over to a drawer and produced a letter. It scared the shit out of me. It meant she took the time to think about me and write something to me when I wasn't even there. Isis walked out to the back porch, stating she couldn't be here when I read it. The letter contained a lot of things, but all I saw was, I love you, as if it were highlighted. Without hesitation, I approached her and sat down, explaining that not only did she not love me, but she was too young to even understand what love truly meant. We both were. Love is a big word. It shouldn't be used so lightly. At the time, I believed what I was saying. After all, how could a one-sided love even exist? And to add to that, I think it takes a certain sense of maturity to love, which comes with experiences that she hadn't had yet. I wasn't lying to her, but if I would have put the truths in order of what I prioritized, I would have told her that I was fucking and wanted to continue fucking other chicks. I wanted to call her whenever I struck out with some strange at a club. I wanted to borrow her car. These are all things that I continued to do, even after I rejected her heartfelt declaration until one day she was just gone. I don't remember when. I don't remember the last time we hung out. I just remember that one day I was in a different place and she wasn't there. From then on in, I continued using women for sex, places to stay, money, rides, anything else that I could convince them to give me. I never verbally lied. I always told girls that I wasn't ready for a committed relationship. However, I wouldn't hesitate to summon them over in the middle of the night, stare into their eyes, cuddle, and stay for breakfast, which I later learned was wrong. It was as if I was saying I would never get married while buying a wedding ring. Naturally, none of my relationships ever ended well, but unlike Isis, I was able to see the aftermath. This is because we crept into an era of social media where you could stay in contact with people that you weren't in contact with. So whenever I did have various shots of different colored liquor, I tried to reconnect with one of my exes and I always got an earful, enough to make me sit down and think and realize that I was a bad person. I made a vow that I would never use women again. Never again would I mold a human being to meet my needs. This is how people get hurt, in my experience at least. Hell, I must have spent hours equivalent to days searching for Isis. She's not on Facebook or Instagram. I Google her name and nothing comes up. She's just gone. I still can't believe or understand why I told Allie this. Maybe it was an explainer brag. I wanted to show her that I could be a man, I just choose not to. Anyway, I thought this was what she wanted. She told me her husband was emotionally abusive and controlling. I'm like the opposite. She was free to randomly dance, smoke, and drink without care of being judged. With me at least. Now her husband was the anti-me, for I was a feminist who believed every woman or man should be able to do whatever the fuck they wanted. Allie turned away and walked on her damaged ankle. With every click, I cringed and wondered if she was just pretending that she couldn't feel the pain. She bent to put on her panties. She pulled them up and said, I just want you to man up. One sentence is all it takes to cause a reaction. All of my thoughts were instantaneously manifested and life was calling me out in front of every woman who never told me the truth. This was a time where words and actions didn't need to line up. I had to chill without a false humility and show her that I was a man. No time passed from when she said those words to when I was walking straight towards her. I felt a rush of emotions as I grabbed her arm, twisted her around, and angled my lips to her face, adjusting my trajectory to kiss her passionately. I breathed in deeply as if trying to suck out her soul. She melted, reminding me of those old movies where a man would take a woman roughly into his arms and she didn't resist, allowing him to do as he pleased. She hardly even got this word out before I pushed her against the wall. Her damaged foot slammed into the ground with a click. I moved her panties to the side and entered. It was uncoordinated, irregular, and mechanical. There was no flow, no push and pull. It was just me drilling through dry concrete with no care to strike oil. With each thrust, I started to wonder, is this what she wanted? But even that sounded vindictive in my mind, like, is this what you want? Sounds that mimicked forced ecstasy pushed out of her lungs abruptly with each thrust. I doubt she would come to a conclusion, and maybe that was the point. It was all about me. But I wondered, whose point was being made? I flipped her around, cradling her with one arm we lowered to the mattress. I used my other arm to brace the impact of the sloppy control fall as I set her down and fell on top. Still, her ankle hit the floor and clicked. I reached down and found myself and connected with her. After a missionary stand, I turned her over to her stomach. Her knee slammed on the hardwood floor. Pretty soon we were completely off the air mattress. I was behind her, kneeling over, pumping like a dog. But unlike a dog, I had hands that I used to grab her waist and pull her to me, causing pumps to become more forceful. This was nothing like our sensual sex. Our bodies usually danced with a synchronized ebb and flow. I was usually overcome by passion until it was like I was in an alternate universe traveling through ecstasy. One time we had started in a bedroom and moved all the way to the living room before we finished, and I didn't even notice until I opened my eyes. I also didn't notice that time until I took a shower that I had skinned my knee. Maybe that's why she didn't feel it when her ankle clicked once again. Before long, a click accompanied every pump. The skin of her knee stuck to the chipped varnish as her toes bent past her extent. My body no longer belongs to my brain and moves without sympathy or pain. I was closing in, gripping her sides and pushing her to the ground, through the moans, through an ah, through a horrifying sound, a crack, and then back to the moan. Right before I concluded, I had a mixed emotional thought. Maybe there's a thin line between love and hate. Maybe there's a thin line between passion and rape. Definition seems so cut and dry, but I'm sure there were many instances where women gave in so they could pretend like it was their choice, even if at first they were feeling it and halfway through it became something else. Any other thought could be kept in the darkness of their mind, away from the light, therefore making it like it didn't exist, it never happened. Just then my eyes shot open as my soul rushed to my groin in an anticlimactic explosion projected on her soft, bulbous tissue. I hated losing control. I hated the mess. I hated coming to my senses. Afterwards, it always seemed like I had to deal with an accident. I let her lie still, keeping everything where it was as I got up and walked to the bathroom. I didn't even realize that I was in my birthday suit until I was wringing out a rag in the sink and caught a glimpse of my brown skin in the mirror. When I re-entered the room, she was lying on the floor, sandwiching the bodily juices between flesh and wood. She seemed different, like a pale, fleshy mass melted on the floor. Cock marks riddled her face, the flab of her stomach all but hung over her pubes, cellulite dimpled lumpy skin on her thighs. Her glutinous-looking legs stopped at a bulge in her ankle and angled into a different direction at her foot as if someone bent a straw. I wiped myself off of her, crumbled the washcloth, and tossed it towards the bathroom. Then I sat down and carefully lifted her leg onto mine to observe it. She jumped and stretched her arm out reactively, it was the first time she seemed protective over the damage. I observed. It looked as if the bone was bulging through the side. She needed to see a doctor, and I told her this. She told me that her aunt is a nurse and a discoloration meant something healthy about the blood flow, so that's bullshit. My words bombarded my filter and jumped through my mouth. She jerked back like I was a different person. You need to go see somebody, now. Allie seemed to smile. I couldn't tell if she was happy to hear me say the word we or if she was amused at this half-man pretending as if he was in charge. I cared just enough to make the observation before I set my focus back to the goal. I got up and I ordered her to do the same. She obeyed. Stay off of the foot, I said as I helped her over to the mattress to dress. She inquired and I gave her no explanation. She rebelled, complaining about her weight, but I didn't entertain it. I grabbed her keys and she looked up the navigation to the hospital. When we arrived, I helped her to a chair and explained the situation to a cute nurse. Both she and the nurse stared in my eyes the entire time.