The Living Scar
Room in New York
Edward Hopper (American, 1882–1967)
Rebecca smelled the manure coming from his hand as he touched her silk scarf. She could see the dirt under his nails and the crinkled bark that had become of his hands. In the forest shadows, he wasn’t her father’s dim worker — he was just another boy enfeebled by desire. Here on the damp earth, no one had to conform. She let him feel the soft cold silk and gazed at his shaky attempts to undo the scarf. Her red scarf shook him with the same intimidation he felt towards the heavy machines in the field. He tried again, the fabric slippery on his dry, crooked fingers.
As though too many puppeteers were pulling his strings at once, he flicked his hand at her nose from an uncontrollable twitch. She flinched, yet moved toward him as though on cue. When their arms met, her cloying scent brought on a hunger he had forgotten. He wanted to devour her, but the broken connection in his mind terminated his motion, rendered him crumpled and stranded at her touch.
“Becca...please…”
She smiled, pleased at the only words he had been able to utter the entire day, fully aware of the effort it took him to produce those words. He was her Price after all. And she loved seeing him all worked up.
“Have you changed your mind? I get it. I only want what you want and I had thought you desired me the way I desired you,” she teased, deliberately looking away as she carefully spoke the line.
“Want..please. It hurts.”
Trapped inside his muddy jeans, his swollen bulge was suffocating. With a smirk, she glanced at his distorted expression and in slow-motion, bent down and positioned her upper body where the shadows teased the sunlight. Out here, nothing was off-limits on her playground. When she leaned in and lazily unzipped him, he could see her pale bare breasts swaying in the diffused light of dusk from under her sheer blouse. Coated in golden light, she reminded him of the great metal clock outside their old high school — one of the last things he remembered from the accident.
She stared at him without a word as her icy hand stroked his erection through his boxers again and again. Suddenly, the fabric became more irritating and rough at the sensation he never forgot and longed for. And just like that, he came.
At the sound of her gasp, he tried to turn away, but was unable to make his body listen. With what little control he had, he held himself and rocked and avoided her gaze as she amused herself with his fluids, dabbing them on his face and her nipples.
Rebecca would never forget the expression he had as she removed her blouse and sat on him with a smile. She held on with force and slid him into her in a single, fluid motion. She enveloped him first with her wet and warm mouth, then with her whole body, her scarf, her skirt, her moans. With the ferocity in her movement, the more she rode him, the more he sunk into the earth beneath them.
He looked at the only woman who still thought of him as a man, shed his deformed body, and the two coalesced into one, into Rebecca. This would be the happiest moment of his short life.
Words flooded into his mind with the flood and jolt of his desperate release, but he could not choose which to say. Instead, he made a combination of varying sounds, each louder and more unintelligible than the rest.
With one hand pulling his hair and another at the back of his head, she shut out his mind with a violent kiss. She shoved her tongue into his mouth and swiveled it around every corner, calculating the most efficient way to maximize arousal. Her golden breasts in his sight, her erect nipples against his cheek, and her burning tongue in his mouth — the taste of her was the final push.
Rebecca watched Price painfully release the pressure once again, his hips hit her unevenly as he pulsated. His shudders undulated within her, again and again, ripple after ripple. She felt him grow weak inside her, yet did not let go. She sat on him until his cum slid down his limp member and onto the ground. The air permeated with the robust, almost putrid, smell that rose from the heat and moisture of their body. As long as Rebecca loved him, he could forget the dusty red bricks and how their dull edges dug into his scalp. It was windy that day, they said. The bricks weren’t balanced at the site, they said. An unfortunate incident the school took full responsibility of, they said. In this brief moment, he was willing to forget even the odd silhouette he saw before he passed out.
He smiled his lopsided smile and hugged her stiffly, suddenly remembering the master of his body. For a second she wondered what he would have been. He probably would still be chewing gum after practice in that awful jersey of his. She hated their uniforms. So much was lost to that school, to the rules.
She was the one to make those decisions.
The silk scarf fluttered with the breeze that developed from the dimming day. He reached for it once more — this crimson reminder of his past had to be removed from his woman, from his memories. She spotted the attempt and brushed him away without turning from the fading light.
“Why, it’s a lovely scarf. A gift to myself,” she whispered.
“It… like b-brick!”
As she removed herself from him, she ruffled his hair and felt for the large patches of jagged scars. The red scarf seemed to have a mind of its own in the evening breeze, like spirits murmuring in the forest shadows.
“This is the colour that gave me you, my little Price,” she recited.
“In time, you will learn to love it.”
FIN