IT In The Bedroom

Story A Week (SAW) 5: Jan 31st, 2018

by Adam O’Sullivan

Jake Callahan was back in Derry, Queensland, for the first time in seven years. He had grown up in Derry, and had been looking forward to the moment when he could move away from the first time he realised how depressingly boring the place was. He was an editor for a medium sized newspaper in Brisbane, but it sure beat working for the local Derry publications. He had jumped shipped to the ‘big’ city as soon as he was offered the opportunity. Jake had secretly hoped he would never be back, but it’s tough when your family decides to stay in the city you grew up in. Even tougher when your mother passes away and you have to come back for the funeral. He had tried for so long to forget this place. It had seemed to be working too, the memories slowly fading as he threw himself into his work as a newspaper editor in Brisbane. However, when that fateful call comes, letting you know your last remaining living relative has passed away, then you’re obligation bound to traipse back to your hometown one last time. Hopefully this would be the last time.

Jake was laying on the hotel double bed, flicking through local TV stations when he heard the knock at the door. He could have stayed in the family house, the creepy old Queenslander that sat on the outskirts of town, but he preferred the modernity of a hotel room, even if this particular hotel wasn’t all that modern compared to other places Jake had stayed at. At least it was located centrally, in the middle of town. Derry sure had grown in the seven years since he had been away. Enough to warrant more than one local hotel, but not enough for a higher class chain to open a branch. Jake was left with a middle tier hotel as his best option.

Jake opened the hotel room door and audibly gasped. He was at a loss for words.

Kathryn Larsen had been the one that got away. Ten years previously, they had met through a mutual friend. For the three years of their relationship, Jake and Kathryn had seemed inseparable. There was no fighting, no jealousy, they seemed to be in a perfect relationship, if only taking their time to get married. Then one day, they had a brief loud argument about him accepting a job in Brisbane without consulting her. She had walked out the door of his bedroom and had just disappeared. No goodbye note, no farewell text. She had stopped responding to Jake’s messages and emails. She had ghosted him.

Now she was standing in front of him, as beautiful as he remembered. God, she looked almost exactly like she did the last time that Jake had seen her, 7 years previously. They had both been in their 20’s, she early and he late. He didn’t know what he had done to push her away, and he had never had a chance to ask her. He had moved to the big city shortly after, and had spent two years of his new role secretly pining after her in the evenings. Then he had finally accepted that she didn’t want to see him anymore, and he had gotten on with his life.

The weird thing was, if you had asked Jake about Kathryn just before he opened the door, it would have taken him a few minutes to recall the look of her face. The details of their relationship would have taken longer. It was not as if he had completely forgotten her, but he no longer thought about her every day like he had when she had so strangely disappeared from his life all that time ago. Jake didn’t realise it, but sometimes his subconscious would bring up her image, processing his repressed feelings in the middle of the night while he slumbered. On more than one occasion, he had woken up covered in sweat after his brain spent the night whirring and clicking like an overclocked hard drive with thoughts of what they had had. The constant feeling of longing, however, was always there, hanging over him like the lingering smell of cigarette smoke no matter how much deodorant you spray around. Asked point blank, he wouldn’t have attributed the longing to Kathryn. It was just something he had lived with, like a birthmark.

Before he opened that door on that fateful night, he hadn’t consciously thought of her for at least 5 years.

“Hello Jake.” The sound of her voice washed over him, and it unlocked something deep inside of him, all the memories of them were opened up. He suddenly realised he had been looking for her since she had disappeared from his life, even after he had thought he was over her. In every woman he had dated since, he had been looking for that same girl that had looked at him with such desire from those cute green eyes. His hands had longed to run through her soft brown hair and he’d been looking for that same smell in every partner he’d had. He measured the smile of every woman against hers, the face of pleasure and lust of every woman he had been with had been overlayed in his mind with the look she had experienced when they were together. How had this been happening for so long without him realising it?

The wave of emotion engulfed him. He wanted her so badly, more than anyone he had ever met. But there had been almost a decade since he had seen her last. He couldn’t be sure she felt the same. He had to play this normal.

“How did you know I would be here?” He hoped he sounded normal. It was normal to think about how normal you sounded, right?

“I heard about your mum. I checked at her house, but there was no-one there. So I figured you’d be at the most expensive hotel in town.” He had expressed his hatred of camping to her many times during their relationship. She wasn’t a fan of camping either, but it delighted her how it infuriated him so much. The best hotel that he could afford, that was his preference when traveling. In Derry, the best hotel he could afford was also the best the town had to offer.

“Please, come in”. She waltzed passed him, as if floating on air. She was wearing a deep blue dress, 50’s inspired, that stopped at her knees and had separate flaps that covered her shoulders. He noticed that it zipped up at the back but managed to control himself. She sat down on the bed and looked to him. Jake closed the door and awkwardly moved closer, but (hopefully) not too close.

“What happened? Where have you been?” He hoped that by asking the obvious questions, he could subside his feelings toward her, at least for a moment while he remained civil.

“I’m sorry. Something happened that day. I couldn’t return. I wanted to so much. I wanted you to come and find me. But I couldn’t return. And then you left town.”

Jake and Kathryn had only ever had one major fight in their relationship, and it was the day that she walked out of his life. Jake had heard through a professional contact that a Brisbane newspaper was interested in his writing, and he had sent some of his best pieces through. They got back to him within a week and offered him a position. The word from his contact was that the editor of this particular newspaper was due for retirement in the new few years, and an eager young applicant from a small country town hungry to make a name for himself could probably find a way to entrench himself in the old editor’s heart. Jake had said yes without even thinking about it. In Derry, local news included covering fetes and market stalls, with the peak of excitement being a missing kid every few months. Amongst the young people of Derry, the consensus was that kids would just get so bored of their lives that they would run into the stretch of mangroves known as the Wasteland due to the local rubbish tip being nearby. Rubbish had a habit of floating out into the mangroves, and kids could find all sorts of crazy stuff. Jake’s biggest piece was a speculative article about the disappearing kids, which asked if there was a link between their disappearances. It had never been published, because kids had been disappearing for about as long as Derry had been a town, but the Brisbane paper had loved the sensationalist tone and country boy familiarity in his words. He had assumed that Kathryn would come with him, but when he told her, she was furious. She called Derry her home, and her parents were buried there. She had assumed she would stick around and be buried there too. Jake was sure that he could eventually convince her to come with him, but she had stormed out and that was the end of that. Surely she remembered all of that? Or had her memories been clouded by time, the way his had right up until the moment he had seen her standing outside his room.

“I had to move to Brisbane for the job.” He said, imploring her to remember. “You didn’t respond to my messages so I figured it was over. I’ve lived half a life since I saw you last.”

“Tell me about it”. She got off the bed and came close to him then, far too close for someone just visiting a friend. He went to say something but she rested her head against his chest, and he could smell her hair. The smell of her, the smell of shampoo, but also something new. A hint of mildew, undercutting the smell he remembered so well. It must be muggy outside, he thought. How had he not remembered the smell of her until this moment? On impulse, he wrapped his arms around her, holding her close. Her body moved into his. They stood like this for a moment, and it felt like old times. She pulled back slightly and raised her head, looking up at him, forlorn. He felt the same.

Suddenly they were kissing, passionately. No love bites or small kisses working up in intensity – one second they were looking at each other and the next their mouths were mashed together as if they were trying to devour each other, to explore each other from the inside out with their tongues. They moved as one back to the bed. Their kissing stopped as Kathryn fell back onto the soft red duvet. She kicked her shoes off as Jake brought himself up on the bed, over her. She pulled him down and they were kissing again. No, not just kissing. Hardcore making out. It was almost as if they had travelled back in time to when they were together, as if the years between seemed to disappear. Almost, except that the longing that had spanned those years was being fulfilled in a way that most people have never experienced. How often do people really get to be with the object of their desire? Or get back with the person they can’t stop thinking about? The desire made their movements frantic, furtive. The time to really enjoy each other’s company would come later. For now, there was just a release of wild sexual tension.

As they kissed, their tongues writhed and enmeshed in each other’s mouths. Their eyes closed as they kissed passionately, and Jake’s hand reached up to touch her neck. He caressed her before his hand made its way down her collar bone and over the fabric of the dress covering her chest. His fingers traced over her breasts before pressing against them. Her breasts were the perfect size and he had judged all over breasts he had touched and seen ever since against them. He moved his hand down over her stomach, feeling like a horny teenager. Jake moved his hand down over the fabric of the dress, feeling the slight pattern with his fingers as they moved lower down her body. His hand crossed over the fabric at the bottom of her skirt and was suddenly touching her skin, soft and warm to the touch. He stopped when he reached her knee, and then he started to move his hand in the opposite direction, up her inner thigh.  Kathryn kiss broke slightly so that she could let out a slight moan, and then they were devouring each other again. Jake’s hand slid up under the dress, higher up her inner thigh until he could feel the fabric of her underwear. It felt lacy, different to the fabric of her dress. His desire increased exponentially as he ran his hand over her underwear, to the band at the top. Between breaths, Kathryn was moaning before pulling his face back to hers. He slid his fingers into the band of the underwear and started pulling them down. At first they wouldn’t come, he had to manoeuvre to the other hip to slide down that end too, but eventually he had slowly slid the underwear down to her knees. It was at this point that Jake realised he would have to break the kiss if he wanted to continue removing her underwear. He paused slightly and pulled back, and she looked up at him again. He swore that he had never seen something so beautiful as Kathryn laying there, her brown hair circling her face, her upper teeth biting her lower lip. Then she shyly smiled and he snapped back to reality. He wanted her so deeply, and unless she decided that it wasn’t to happen, he would have her. She hadn’t shown any signs less than enthusiastic consent so far, so Jake moved to the end of the bed and removed her underwear. They were black and lacy, and slid off her legs. She hadn’t worn much like it when they were together, favouring the simple cotton underwear the same way he had favoured cotton boxers. However, these were not the underwear of day to day activities. This black lacy garment was something you wore when you want to impress someone.

He was incredibly ‘impressed’ in this moment.

Kathryn pushed herself up on her elbows.

“I’ve missed you” she said as she stood off the bed. She pushed him down so that it was Jake’s turn to lay sprawled on the bed. She was still facing away from him as she partly unzipped her dress at the back. Maybe she was going to do a strip tease for him? She hiked up her skirt, and he saw a thin string fall out, the end touching the floor as it snaked up underneath her skirt. Jake had no idea what was going on, but he wondered if she was preparing herself for sex. Or maybe sex was off the table for tonight. He would understand. He would be disappointed, as his engorged desire tented in his pants, but they could chat. They could catch up. And yes, if they still wanted each other when both were ready, they could get sexual then instead.

However, Kathryn let her skirt go and it fell back into place. She turned around and looked at him with a look that could only be described as pure desire. The same way a jungle cat looks at its prey, the same way a starving person looks at a steak. He briefly thought how strange it was that the look of sexual desire so closely mimicked the look of a creature about to devour their prey. Then Kathryn bent over and his thoughts were back on her. She reached underneath her dress, which Jake found strange considering he was holding her underwear. There was a soft squeaking noise, like a plastic balloon being rubbed against skin. Kathryn started to moan. Her moaning became louder as did the squeaking. Jake had no idea what the hell was going on, and he almost wanted to make sure she was okay. That or run away. There was a tinge of fear to his emotions. Kathryn let out a loud, guttural noise as she stood up. She was holding a bright red balloon on a string. It bobbed in the air as Kathryn held the string, smiling. She seemed to be waiting for his reaction, as if she had performed some magic trick and was waiting for the other person to be amazed. Surely it was a magic trick, right? Jake had seen some weird things in his life, but never a woman pulling a balloon from underneath her dress. She couldn’t possibly have pulled that fully inflated balloon from out of where he think she’d pulled it from. Right?

“I’ve learnt some new tricks since I saw you last. What do you think?”

Jake was a bit thrown back. “Um, interesting to say the least. I hope I’m not supposed to reciprocate and pull something out of my ass.”

Kathryn laughed at that, and it was this deep, booming laugh that surrounded his thoughts. He had made her laugh. She let go of the string and the balloon floated to the roof of the room. It bounced once and Jake thought he saw a smear of red in its wake, but his focus was on watching Kathryn laughing. He couldn’t remember her laugh being this loud or this deep before. He remembered Kathryn being a timid girl. But it was good to see the happiness on her face. He hoped she wasn’t laughing at the idea of having sex with him. Kathryn stopped laughing and looked at him in a coquettish way. It was as if she had heard his thoughts.

“I’ve been thinking about you so much. I’ve missed you. I’ve wanted you to come back and see me.”

“You could have visited me in Brisbane.”

“I didn’t know how to get you back until recently. I didn’t know how to contact you.” She moved closer to him lying on the bed, and placed her hand on his left knee.

“You certainly found me this time.” He said in what he hoped was a sexy manner. She jumped up onto the bed and leaned forward to kiss him. He pulled her close and ran his fingers through her hair. She smelt the same, like the beautiful young woman he had fell in love with. However, the years had caught up with them both, and he could smell them getting older. It was almost like a suggestion of decay mingling up in the sweat of their sexual desire.

He flipped her over so that he was on top. He manoeuvred himself on one arm so that he could run his hand down her body.

“Now you’re back here with me.” She whispered in his ear. In this moment, this heated moment as his hand rested on her knee and he raised it up her inner thigh, reaching under her dress, he would agree. The small part of his brain that replied that he had to return after the funeral, that if she didn’t want to leave Derry then they wouldn’t see each other for very long was quietened by the loud pounding in his head. Jake was thinking it was the pounding of his heart at being with Kathryn again, however it could have been the sound of blood being pumped to another organ.

His hand reached higher, and he could feel her wetness. She wanted him just as much as he wanted her. He slid a finger inside… and jumped back at the sharp pain in his finger. Her eyes became concerned as she looked at him. He pulled his hand to his face and could see blood on his fingers.

“What is it?” she asked, looking up at him in concern with those big green eyes that he could get lost in.

“It felt like something bit me. When I was…”

“Are you saying that I bite? I bite down there?”

“No, of course not. That would be crazy.”

“You must have nicked your finger on the underwire of the dress.”

Yes, that must have been it, he thought. He grabbed a tissue from the bedside table and dabbed it at his hand until it stopped bleeding. She had gotten up while he was doing this, and unzipped her dress. It fell to the floor and she stepped out of it. The bra she was wearing was black, lacy, matched her underwear. Underneath were the pert breasts that he had dreamt about so intensely after they had dated. Her pubic hair was trimmed, something she had not done when they were together. The years had changed them both, but she still looked as beautiful as Jake remembered her. Kathryn reached behind her and removed her bra. She threw it at him and lay back on the bed, looking at him. He checked to make sure he had stopped bleeding and threw the tissue towards the rubbish bin. He jumped up on the bed, like an excitable dog, and their bodies fell into each other once again. He kissed her, passionately, feeling her body underneath his. He was still dressed but he wanted her so much that he couldn’t pull back to remove his clothing, and she had made no movement to get him undressed. He hungrily kissed down her neck, down the dress, kissed her knee and up her legs. He could hear her breathing growing faster as he kissed up her inner thigh. He could smell her sex, and it drove him wild. He wanted to taste her. He wanted her to writhe around in ecstasy, the way she had done many times before when they were dating. She had been so responsive to his touch, and he had been chasing a woman who acted like her ever since. Someone he could play with, watching their reaction as their desire grew, until finally he could hold it no longer and they become locked in copulation until pleasure washed over them both.

He moved his face so that he could see the lips of her vagina. It had been so long since he had done this with a partner, but he wanted to recreate the times that he and Kathryn had spent together. He used his fingers to part her vagina lips so that he could slide his tongue into her.

That’s when he stopped. He was looking inside of her, and yet all sexual desire had drained from his body. His face was pure white.

Jake was staring at a small clown lounging in Kathryn’s pussy.

“Hiya, Jakey!” the clown exclaimed, a giant painted smile on his face. The clown was also smiling wildly, and the makeup extended the glee all the way up his face, almost cutting his face in two. He had a tuft of orange hair that covered the back of his head and flowed out to the sides. The clown was dressed in a ruffled suit with orange pom-pom buttons. He was no bigger than Jake’s thumb, and seemed to stand quite comfortably in Kathryn’s vagina.

Jake tried to think but couldn’t. Multiple different emotions were flowing through his mind at once. He finally decided on terror, although he wasn’t entirely sure why. Surely he was hallucinating? Had Kathryn drugged him? Was this her idea of a sex game? If so, she had changed a lot since he had seen her last. He wanted to laugh at the absurdity, but the noise choked in his throat. He realised he really was afraid, afraid of the little clown he saw in his ex-girlfriend’s vagina. He couldn’t move a muscle, could only watch in terror as the clown extended one of his tiny arms and motioned him closer with his finger.

“Doncha wanna know how Kathryn can now do such wonderful tricks? The balloon, and the small dancing clown? Magic tricks! Wondrous magic tricks the likes of which you have never seen! I gave her those abilities. I showed her how they were done. And now you’re here, I can show you too. Just reach inside and I’ll show you everything.”

Jake’s mind was an explosion of terror. He only vaguely noticed that his hand, which had rested on the bed, was now moving towards the clown. His finger slid inside Kathryn’s vagina, and Jake tried to push away the thought that this was now the lair of the dancing clown. Jake suddenly wished this experience was all over, he wished that he had never remembered Kathryn in the first place. The clown was overwhelmed with glee and clapped his hands together as Jake’s finger moved deeper into her vagina to where he was.

“Did you like the balloon? A little something to get you worked up, keeerect? Did you see it float up to the ceiling of your hotel room, sorta like how your dick rises for a pretty girl. Oh yes, Jakey, it floats. And when you’re in here with me, you’ll float too!”

The clown’s mouth was suddenly filled with razor sharp teeth, more teeth than could possibly fill that tiny mouth. The clown lunged at Jake, and seemed to grow the further out he got. Jake pulled back, but it was too late. The clown had his teeth buried deep into Jake’s arm before any sound could leave Jake’s lips.

 

Hotel cleaning staff found Jake’s body the next morning. His arm had been ripped clean off his body, and he was dressed in a yellow rain coat. The police department who investigated were so confused – it hadn’t rained in Derry for months.

They figured it must have been a sex thing gone wrong. So they left it at that. In the bedroom.

Left IT at that. In the bedroom.

Left IT In the bedroom.

IT In the bedroom.

THE END

I feel that the absurdity of this story requires an explanation. The story was inspired by the writing prompt “Take the title of the last book you’ve read and add the words ‘in the bedroom’”. At the time, I had just finished Stephen King’s IT, and it seemed appropriate to do a parody of that horror story.

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