Stephanie Cross (Dina)

It’s 9 am at Barnes and Noble, and humiliation is, as usual, my constant companion. I make enough money between my books and the constant article writing I do to live in Boston. That’s not nothing, but it’s not fame. I’ve talked to three people since this signing started at 5 pm. But bookstores are a nice place to sit in and consider the failures of your life. I’ve come a long way since I was in braces with the thickest southie accent in the world, and knees so knobby that my tights looked like a snake that swallowed a billiard ball. I’m still too thin. People always whisper about my eating disorder. I don’t have one. I’m just… this way. Always have been, and I’m okay with it. The less of me there is, in general, the more comfortable I am. it’s a weird thing to want to be rich and famous, and to never have anyone look at you. Thanks society, you’ve made a mess of me.

I’m in a conservative black skirt and tights with a red silk shirt. I’m presentable, authorly, Not a sexpot. I’ve never been a sexpot. I’m honestly awkward. In the offices where I’ve worked I’m known for being the weird funny girl. That’s my niche. That’s where I’m comfortable. Likeable and not actually known.

I am about to give it up when he walks in. Tall, with reddish brown hair and piercing blue gray eyes that don’t seem to belong in his face. They’re keen, strong eyes. He comes to the table and tells me he loved my book, would I sign it. His name’s Austin.

It’s two hours later and he’s in my apartment. My clothes are in a trail, torn off me rather than removed from the door to my bedroom. I am biting his shoulder hard, nails raking his back as he presses into and into and into me. I see the ring, and I don’t care. I can’t care. I’ve never felt this kind of need. I’ve never gone from hello to animal rutting like this. Not ever, it’s not my nature. I scream like a wounded animal as we tear at each other like hungry wolves, making each other come, almost violently.

It’s a month later, and I’m having an affair with a married man. I’m that woman. He’s not going to leave Danny. I know that. Im under no illusions. I’ve never had a man this hungry for me…never been this hungry for a man. I’ll take our stolen moments. My life is so fucking busy.

It’s a year later, and I love him, and I hate myself. He might have liked my book, or it might have been a pretence. God knows he never wants to hear about my writing. I get the strong sense he thinks I’m frivolous, that any woman’s writing would be. it’s a diversion, but it’s not….literature.

He’s kind, in a distanced way until we get into bed and then it’s…just madness and for those moments it’s fine. I don’t care. it’s the shame after that eats me.

And how do writers cope? We write. We write a short story with perhaps TOO MUCH detail about him that climaxes in the wife confronting me, and a very savage and erotically written catfight which I win bloodily, fatally. It ends with me waiting for the police to arrest me, sirens in the distance already.

I write the story that makes me short term famous, the story that Twitter cant stop talking about. It’s so raw, so honest, and so violent. Some people think it’s the most misogynistic story a woman has ever written, others say it’s about empowerment and taking what you want…that it’s feminist. Some have said that it’s about hunger and guilt. Some have called it a cautionary tale about choices we make in who we love.

Nobody understands that it’s about hating yourself, about getting what you think you deserve.

Certainly not him. I doubt he’s read it. If he had.. dear god ,I’m sure he’d be furious. If you knew him, knew him well, it would be harder not to recognize him than to recognize him.

But the money is nice.. and maybe my next book will get fans to the signing that aren’t there just to fuck me.

Anyhing could happen.

To my shame, my utter shame, I’ve never once thought about what would happen if you read it. Not….a….single….time.

Danny – (Amber)

He had a copper-hued mustache, uneven sideburns, and a smile that spoke more to fights he’d been in than trips to the dentist. He’d cut the sleeves off his own shirt, to get that dirty, Natural Ice and Nascar look. He didn’t have a rat-tail, but when I first saw him behind that gas station checkout counter, I was almost certain he would.

But that was more than a decade ago. When he – when *we* were young. But since then, Austin’s grown his mustache out into a beard. Washed it. Got the dental work he needed. And, after we both got jobs to put him through school, become a different man. I know he’d want me to tell you a “better” man, and I wish I could use that word.

Better, however, he is not. At least to me, even as the world around us seems to fall in love with this new, cleaned up, boy of mind. He’s educated now. *Clever, quick, and discerning.*

The tattoos he once has removed with lasers, just as my memory of the young man behind that counter fades. He was just like me, and now … I feel like I barely know him. His time spent writing books that entertain the world, teaching seminars that teach it, and growing his social circle, while I sit at home and stagnate.

Searching for something – ANYTHING – to take my mind off how Austin has changed. At first, I let myself slip into the bright colors of one image after another on Instagram. Then the Vineish creativity of Tik Tok. But when even that ABCDE-F-U joy has lost its spark, I turned desperately to trying to understand my husband.Wandering into his office, and just looking. At his desk, and the well-framed images of … himself. At his expensive, red-leather chair. At his wall of books, each of them showing signs of age and use. Corners bent, spines revealing a history of splaying with long running white lines. But then I find the one book there, buried under a pile, that seems to have never been opened. It’s every page fresh and untouched. Its dust jacket unsmudged, and pristine.

Why would he even have a book, and then never read it? He reads everhing! It was a mystery. A puzzle. And so I tore into it, figuratively.

Curling up into Austin’s reading chair, and letting myself drift away into the first story in the bound collection. A story of a woman with whom I shared so very little and yet everhing. Her wants. Her dreams. Her fears. All of them spoke to me. Her wish to be coveted and loved – needed and thirsted after. Every page turned bringing to mind what Austin and I were, and what we have tragically become.

And though such a counterbalance of fond memory and pain should harden a place in my heart, and show me that I am finished with him and his literary obsession, instead it did the opposite. My mind taking me to a place of commitment, love, and a desire to cling to Austin, just as you do to the man who you’d found in the book. Yes, I may be the outgrown wife, and you the hopeless mistress, but these are the men we love, and so we shall keep them.

Today. Tomorrow. And as long as we can hold on.

Your side mine from the first unforgettable words on. Cheering for you, even as you and your lover’s wife met and then spiraled into a fight. A desperate, intimate, vicious affair that ended – just as I imagine my life will, in pain, despair, and disharmony.

But in that last paragraph, when you say goodbye to all that you have fought for, describing the cock you had so zealously defended, that suddenly our disparate world become one. I the wife who I rooted against, and you – as my own emotions take hold – the reason Austin and I have grown apart.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

Eventually, the story is the lead story in my first collection of short fiction. Austin has me sign it for him, absently, like a collector, and then we go to dinner, and talk about him. Increasingly I am wondering about you. When it was just the story of the moment, the odds of you running across it were kind of high, and I never thought about it. Now that the buzz has died down, and it’s just one more medium selling collection of literary short fiction on the bookshelves and it would be a small miracle for you to find it, paradoxically that’s when I start to wonder about you. Does he treat you better than he treats me? Is he happy with you? Am I source of shame? Is his misogyny something you deal with, or….is it just me.. his whore…that he disrespects.

Does he make you feel as loved as he does me in those moments when he stops talking, stops justifying himself and just experiences the world like an animal? Or does he make you feel that way all the time. Do you get that love every day? If you do, then I really do hate you as much as I did in the story. If, on the other hand, you live in this liminal space of almost finding warmth every day? How horrible that must be… and what a favor I’d be doing you if….

You even look like me. Long brown hair, a prominent nose, but you have curves where I don’t. You seem so soft and kind and womanly, and so much less like the rat-faced mean animal time and need have made me.

And yes, I imagine us fighting. I do. And i don’t know why, for he’s no prize.. but it’s worse in some ways to have so little from him, and STILL share that fragment. And my relationship with the idea of a catfight is also complex. Something so….goddamned gloriously freeing in it. Life presents a complication? Slap and bite it until it goes away.

The world does not work this way except in fiction and in fantasies. but it’s a glorious fantasy. That I tear you up, and it makes him reassess me.. to see what I am… what I’d do to have all of him.. that it somehow wins me respect. and sometimes that I lose… that you just… end my suffering. you put an end to this and just have what’s yours. There’s some kind of solace there as well.

Danny – (Amber)

Anger and jealousy rewrite the past few years of my life, and the minutes spent reading your short and yet incredible story. All of it suddenly taking on a new light, tone, and angle, as I realize that your tale of tussle and tangle is about my husband. That we have been sharing, and at least without my knowledge fighting for his time and attention these last few years.

He gives me almost nothing, and yet even that you try to steal from me. He barely looks at me, never touches me, and yet you have your mind set on robbing me of what little I have left. A truth I now hear in my head again and again, as your passionate words resonate and rebound in my head.

Your poison injected so deep into my bloodstream, that I feel like we now share one mind. Your thoughts, desires, and fears, now that I have read your masterpiece, sitting just next to mine. No less bright. No less real.

I would be stewing in impotence now, if it weren’t for what I find tucked behind the last page. Desperately calling your publisher, or Austin’s friends to find you, if you hadn’t placed a handwritten invitation to your hotel room in town. The address and room number placed just above a kiss of lipstick left in effigy.

Fuck you, bitch. I think to myself, as I pull off the soft pink robe I had lounged in as I read. First I shower, then I dress, then I meet you. The SLUT who has been sleeping with my husband. So that there, we can reenact those last few moments of your short story. Woman to woman. Wife to mistress. And see which of us the cops come for. Not caring about anhing or anyone else in that moment – only you.

My rival.

The woman who I can now blame for how painful my life has become.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

He’s not coming. Of course he’s not. Why would he? I’ve already signed it, and his only interest is that of a collector. He’s barely able to acknowledge that I’ve sold a collection and he…hasn’t in a while And it’s proof to me he’s not read it, for his jealousy would have exploded if he had. He’d have been furious with me for appropriating his life for my fiction…as if writers do anhing else. His ego is so frail. No wonder he likes to have two women in his harem.

My moment of internet fame has subsided, but it has lingered enough that I’m not bored at this signing. I’m not non-stop busy, but I don’t have time to steep in my feelings of failure and brood. About half of the people just want a look at the freak who wrote that violent story. The other half are a complicated admixture of sad and supportive or….prurient. I do my best to greet them all with a warm smile. Just fiction, folks. That’s it, that’s all.

I’m in a short, but modest black dress my hair and makeup on point, because they have to be at this new next level of success or you’ll get eaten alive for it. I feel like the southie high school girl playing dressup. But I’ve learned to sell myself okay.

And as an unassuming, harmless young man hands me his book, my whole world contracts to a pinpoint of absolute, and horrified focus. Danny is here. She’s holding my book. And she is gorgeous in a way no photos have ever shown me. She’s everhing I wished I could be, and I feel like a troll fucking a goddesses husband. I feel like the gum scraped off a shoe.

And then I control my face, and try to take the recognition off of it. I don’t know you. You don’t know me. I live and die by that story. I sign his book like a zombie and hand it back to him with a thank you….trying to see if I can sneak off for a break.. but there’s no escape. No exit.

Danny – (Amber)

I step through the glass doors and into the hotel’s lobby, my freshly applied mascara already streaked and stained down my cheek. Unable to control the emotions that I feel inside. Emotions that boil over in screams, tears, strikes at my steering wheel, and finally, narrowed eyes.

Eyes that scan the large room, just above the flat, blinding-by-design flat surface carpet of the place. Not wanting to miss you in some passing of ships in the night. Me through, past, and up, just as you slip by me and into the city we share for the night.

But rather than happening into such an off chance occurrence, I see a standing white sign with your name on it. Your picture on it, even. In an instant I see our resemblance, though as pride dictates, I try ever so hard to find your flaws. As silly as that endeavor is when you’ve already drawn my husband’s eyes, hands, and manhood from its marital slumber.

It is fortune, that I might find you here. Unable to leave or get away from me. Not with all these people here. Not when the entire world has their eyes on you. With that luck on my side, I slip into the ballroom where you sit greeting. Signing. And basking in the glory my pain and shame have given you.

In that moment I feel my soul wrench, heart twist, and mind set itself to malice. The book of collected works, the first of which yours – ours, even, in my right hand as finally our gazes meet. A connection of surprise and certainty that tells me that you know who I am. Your lover’s wife. The woman who you wrote about killing. And now, an enemy present and danger undeniable.

As you react to me and what my presence means, I examine the room. Smiling with menace when I find that there is only one exit. One I plant myself next to waiting. For the moment when all these people leave, and you are mine to deal with.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You do not approach my table. Oh no. You are just floating around the room, making small talk with strangers. You’re sharing the space with me…virtually never looking at me. But when you do, your eyes find mine, and I can’t keep up the mask effectively. You know. I know that you know. What I don’t know is why. Why are you here if not to confront or shame me. Is it idle curiosity, but not enough to speak to me. Is it cowardice or planning. And the fifth or sixth time our eyes meet, there’s…malice in mine.. and increasingly in yours.

Im surprised I can manage to hate you just a little bit more than I hate myself. Just a tiny little bit. And for the pettiest reasons. You’re prettier. You’re a little taller. Your breasts are fuller.

But despite all of this he sports with me. Why on earth if not to just hurt you? And fuck it all, I know he cares for me, deep below his stupid male ego, he does. I feel it when he’s inside of me…the tenderness of him…the kindness. He never….ever….lies to me. I’ll say that much. Never tells me he’ll leave you. never claims to respect my work, though he sometimes enjoys it. As, I imagine, one enjoys a sandwich. Briefly, without much thought after.

Not you though. I can see the story has stayed with you. And little wonder.

It’s a game of chicken. Will the crowd thin out enough that I can sneak out of here before meeting you? Will you leave without a word? No. You’re waiting me out, and then, at nearly 10 as things are winding down, you approach the table.

“Hi Danny,” I say, the words so mundane, my tone so neutral that it’s almost surreal.

Danny – (Amber)

You say my name like we’ve known each other forever. Like you’ve spent the night at my house. The pictures of me that adorn my walls your companions as you drift off to sleep. A tone that at first seems false and flabbergasting, only to, as the horror of what you have done to me settles deep in my heart – reveal itself to be true and appropriate.

You have known me. You’ve seen me. Heard me. You’ve no doubt slept in my marital bed, and ate food from my fridge when I was away. The newness of you, and US, is a sensation that I only I feel.

That thought makes my eyes narrow into a glare, and my grip on the book containing your revelatory short story tighter with digging digits.

“Stephanie….” Where as you spoke my name with calmness, certainty, and poise. I speak yours like it is a poison I must extricate from my system. The sound of it leaping from my tongue into the stilling air around us, just as the last person apart from we two leaves and shuts the door to the room behind them.

“I read your story … and I’d … like to TALK with you about it….” I begin with a shaking voice, trying to keep myself from diving over the table and on top of you. “Should we speak here? Or in your room…?” I add, just before placing the card-back invitation you wrote to my husband in front of you. Revealing what we both already know, that I am more than just another fan.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I hear your voice, and my thighs clench unconsciously at your tone. My hand shakes as you set the card down in front of me. It’s no shock, but there’s something in it that makes this all concrete, absolutely inescapable. And your fury is so palpable that I find it honestly terrifying and arousing.

“Obviously,” I say, “I understand why you’d want to. I worked this out on the page. You have a right to find your peace with it. I…do have a room upstairs that’s like a green room, but we could also speak at my home, if you’d prefer.”

All I can think is “She’s so pretty and she hates me so much, and she’s right to hate me. I’m her enemy. I dream of her death. Of course she hates me. I’ve stolen half her life. I want it all. But she deserved to speak with me. She deserves to scream at me, to spit her hate. And I’ll take it. I’ll take it all on me.. because it’s what I deserve.

“It’s up to you. You know what you deserve. I’ll give it to you.”

Danny – (Amber)

It swells in the air around us. Sparking off of our every layered interaction. My voice and yours so near. Your eyes on me. My body. My breasts. Just as mine examine the svelte, fit frame of the woman who has stolen my husband. There could not be a more tense moment, I imagine. Not a more perfect escalation of fate and betrayal.

And yet, when you offer to meet me upstairs or even at your home, I shudder. Goosebumps raising on my arms, as hairs next to them stand on end.

This is it. This is the moment where I choose where it ends. Where the second and yet final chapter of our intertwined lives plays out. The “green room” or your home. The space made for your luxury, or in the deepest corner of your lair.

The choice should be simple. Quickly made, and then even more swiftly uttered. And yet, it makes me pause. My mind hanging on your last sentence. “You know what you deserve. I’ll give it to you.”

It is a threat. A promise that I will face the same fate with you, that I did in your story. The madness of it – the malice of it should make me back down. Turn my back on you, Austin, and all of this sordid affair.

Instead, however, I double down. Triple down. And within a blink, reach for the keys in my little red purse. Lift them free of its confines, and then in my tight, black A-line dress, toss them away, into the large, trim-needing potted plant in the corner.

“Your place. You drive. But first….” I let my sentence end on a pause that hangs in the air between us. The chasm of sound and cresting catastrophe only ending when I place the book with your short story down in front of you, and pull open the front cover. “Write me something else to read when I’m done with you….”

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You toss your keys into the potted plant. Why? My eyes linger on the plant. What does that mean? Why would she do it? Does she intend to kill me and vanish. Does she think I’ll kill her and this will be how they catch me? I take the book in my hand, write a brief inscription, and close it and slide it back across the table to you. I get up and I fetch your keys. “Won’t you need these to drive home?” I say. It’s an honest question. My hands are shaking as they brush your hand, and for the first time i feel your touch…your skin on mine. it’s warm, and soft. Unlike your eyes, which are drilling into my flesh like steel needles. “And you can be done with me now,” I add…”There’s no rule you have to scream at me at all. but if it’s what you want. I owe it to you. For what I’ve done.”

Danny – (Amber)

We are both women of passion, even if mine have been dulled by Austin’s apathy, and the decision to stick with a man who finds me no more exciting than the potted plant in which I tossed my keys.

And just as you are someone I am still trying to decipher, I confuse you when I throw away the item necessary for my escape. A confusion that leads you to stand, to turn, and then move to recover my keys.

Upon your return, you try to hand them to me, and yet as soon as our hands meet, fingers overlapping and holding their place together, they drop to the ground. Don’t I need them, you ask me? Playing innocent and coy. Testing to see what kind of woman “Danny” really is.

There, in that closeness, I lean in. Lean closer. Pressing upper chest into and down against yours, as my neck bends and brings my lips to your ear.

“You know what you deserve. I’ll give it to you….” I repeat what you said to me in a hushed, wavering whisper. Your sly reminder of what happened to me in your story sending exactly the message I mean to. The truth of it and intensity of it affecting us both deeply, as our emotion-warmed cheeks meet. Our faces hidden under our dark and well-did hair.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I realize that you took what I meant as a threat, and my heart climbs to my throat. I see how. i see why. And I see how you mean it. I just meant you deserved her opportunity to vent your anger at me. You took it as my promise to kill you.

And it didn’t back you down. You are leaning in close to me, your face in my hair and mine in yours. I feel your chest rising and falling next to mine. I move my right leg forward, hose hissing against yours. “Is THAT how you want it, you sad specimen? Is that the lesson you took from my story? That it would be DESIRABLE for us to tear at each other like that? That it’s what I would WANT?”

I feel my hot breath bounce back onto my lips off your skin, the heat of you is making me woozy.

“Y….you might be right.”

Danny – (Amber)

Every word you speak, as we stand so everclose next to the table at which you sat and signed, makes my heart race and pulse pump. Harder. Faster. No moment in my life, without exception, equivalent to this moment. Not my wedding day. Not my prom night. Not the day I met Austin.

And because of that, though I never expected it until this very moment, in that sharing in our chasing Austin’s attention, we share a need. A Desperation to be desired. To be hungered for.

And right now, no one in this world is hungrier for you than I. Even as your comment shatters my momentary calm. “What I took…? WHAT I TOOK?!” I growl, until suddenly I go silent.

You took my husband. My happiness. MY EVERYTHING! YOUR WHOLE STORY WAS TAKEN FROM MY LIFE! I want to shout it. To carve it into your flesh. To chew your flesh into the shape of each letter, one. By. One.

I know you can tell that your question affected me – shivering in absolute loathing. but , somehow I keep it stifled. Keep it buried beneath the surface. Only saying. “You’ve already torn at me, Stephanie. Now give me what I deserve….”

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I pull back.. you’re past hearing me. I can’t blame you. I can’t. And I’m done trying to explain myself. I don’t have any excuses. I put my left hand on your right wrist and grab up my coat and purse from the table. “Let’s talk this through someplace quiet, Until I’m sure we understand each other. I lead you to the back doors, the ones that lead to the catering kitchens, and down the back stairs to the parking garage. I lead you, our heels clicking and echoing in the concrete box, and use my fob to unlock the doors, and I get in the drivers side, sitting behind the wheel with an almost total lack of modesty. My skirt it high on my thighs and my hands grip the wheel. “You shouldn’t have come, Danny. You really REALLY shouldn’t have come.”

I start the engine, and we pull out into the street. My apartment isn’t far from here, but it’s going to feel like a long drive as I try not to look at the shape of your legs….

Danny – (Amber)

From our intimate discussion in the hotel’s converted ballroom, we move. Your hand first on my wrist, until you try to release me, and my hand grabs for yours. Not sweetly, nor harshly. But instead a continuation of a touching, I am not yet willing to abandon.

Not until we reach your car and my necessity pull from each others grasp. Each of us getting in opposing doors and sitting. A certain speed and impatience carrying us through everhing we do.

Your warning about what I should or should not have done, making me bristle, yes, but then laugh.

“You fucking, bitch. Do I really know you better than you know yourself? Are you really that trapped? I read your story. I felt it. I feel like I have every word of it seared into my fucking brain. This is what you want. Me. Here. With you….” As I speak, I notice your skirt riding up your thigh, and your eyes stealing glances at my legs.

“Don’t you see?” I ask, as I reach for the bottom of my dress, and when I know your eyes are on me, I pull it up just as far as your skirt has ridden.

“Your life is shit, just like mine. You aren’t happy. You aren’t satisfied. And just the thought of my legs and yours, so close and so bare, make you desperate.” I still hate. Still thirst to hurt you. But for these few moments together, I try to put what afflicts me – what afflicts us into words.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

“I hate my life, yes.. but it’s MINE. It’s what I have, and I’d be a fucking fool and a monster to think I’m hard done by. I fell in love with a married man, and was dumb enough to keep going. I am trapped, but I’m not going to just give him up. And neither are you. What else do you have? You married him. YOU MARRIED him? I always hoped he was nicer to you than he is to me….that he hated me for what we were doing to you. I didn’t KNOW that I wasn’t stealing anhing of VALUE from you. I really didn’t.”

I slap the wheel and shake my head. “If you want to fight me, I’ll fight you. Just like I did in the story, because, having next to nothing, the little I have means so much more to me. In bed, when he’s….when he’s with me? Really with me? That’s the joy I get in this life, and I won’t give him up. SO if we have to roll on a floor before you agree to keep sharing, so be it. And if you’re insistent that I get out of your life? You’ll have to finish me. I might beg. I might promise never to see him, but it will be a lie. Just like everhing else I do and say.”

I sigh. “Look at you. I’m like the Dollar store version of you. Why don’t you just….find someone else now that you know? Why do you care about a man who values you so little he’d fuck ME?”

My self loathing is enormous, and this might be the first time you see it. And I am half in love with you as you sit next to me. The smell of you the softness and strength of you..

Danny – (Amber)

I had it all figured out. What I was going to say. What I was going to do. How we were going to finish this. All of which fell apart when we first spoke. When you greeted me like a friend or a sister.

Still, as we spoke I found it. The spark. The fire. The rage building inside of me once again. And yet now, as you speak, I feel all of it fading. Ebbing with every word you offer. “We can’t do this….” I interject, after I stare off into the distance, trying to process your words.

“We can’t talk. I…. That’s not how this is supposed to happen. You wrote about it. You imagined it for us. You threw it in my face within the first few seconds of me approaching you….” I close my eyes, and shake my head as I speak. Completely unsure what is happening, or why your words have such an effect on me.

“And now….” I begin, before finding myself unable to speak, until suddenly that inability fades. “Is that what you want? Is that what actually happens here? I come find you, we talk things out, we hug, and make up? I leave my shitbag of a husband, and you make the mistake of taking my place in a loveless marriage?” Even as I say the words I hate them. I hate the idea of just giving, of falling so short of the mark you set for me in your tale, and the thought of someone who’s every conflicted emotion I have eternalized, suffering the same fate as I.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You say your piece and, for a moment, I’m caught up in the tragedy of human communication. How can you and I be this close to the same person and keep talking past each other. I shake my head. “No. There’s nothing to discuss at all, Danny. That’s the worst of it. What’s to say? I know you won’t leave him. I have two best cases here, and neither is great. I keep sharing here and enjoy half a loaf rather than none at all. Or I murder you with my nails and teeth, and suffer the torments of hell as you try to do the same to me, spend some time in jail, and see if he’s around when I’m out. No, there’s no talk. The smartest thing you could do for you is walk away. because….if we fight…I don’t know how it ends any way but as it did in my story. The story’s a tragedy, you stupid bitch. It’s such an empty victory…aside from that one brief moment of knowing, for sure, that I’m the better girl.”

I clear my throat. “And I want it more. I do.”

Danny – (Amber)

You keep giving it to me. Offering me the out. The chance to get away from this. To escape the range of your claws, and scent of your perfume. This time, just as we turn onto a quiet, dark, empty road, that no doubt leads to your home.

It is there, that as soon as you finish speaking, that I reach for your automatic shift and jam the car into park. Your car lurching forward and then throwing us each back into our seats. The slight raise of your skirt and my dress tripled as suddenly, we are at a deadstop, beneath the single street lamp.

“Bitch….” I begin as I clamber over the center console, and into your lap. My thighs spreading, and legs slipping to either side of your hips. “From the moment I grabbed your gear knob and slammed it forward your eyes have been wide. And yet now, as I look down into them, and you look back at me, they are filled with something else. A mix of emotions that I do not know you well enough to decipher. Still, however, as you rhands from the wheel to my body, I continue. “I’m not getting out. I am not backing down. Fuck what’s smart. I’ve decided. I’m leaving him. And so are you…. We’re still going to fight. We’re still going to roll around on your carpet. But I will NOT let you take my place in hell. Even if it means I need to be the “better girl”. Even if I have to kill you to keep you from living the life I’ve suffered in.”

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You lower your weight onto my lap, and I feel the heat of your skin weighing on me. You call me bitch, and it feels like a kiss…the intimacy of it. I feel your thighs on my hips. and my skirt slides up, my panties on display through my tights.. and the smell of you is omnipresent. “You…don’t get to tell me what to do,” I say softly. “If you beat me, I’ll come back for him…because I deserve it. I deserve him.”

I deserve to have nothing. What nobody understands is that the story does not have a happy ending for the whore….for me. A happy ending would be you winning. And as I realize this about myself, I blush in shame. Do I really….really hate myself so much?

I guess I do.

My hands come up to the front of your blouse. “I hate you,” I say to you, like you’re some kind of funhouse mirror that shows me every flaw in my nature. “I hate you, and you can’t make me give up the only joy I have. Just….share…..just let’s keep what we have. But also, yes….let’s fight. We have to do that now. I have to know.”

A tear runs from my eye like a traitor and I pull my hand from your blouse to wipe it quickly, to erase it. Hide it.

I look into your eyes and see you doing the one thing I can’t let you do…I can’t let you FEEL for me. I can’t let you….pity me.

“How dare you? How dare you….pity me? HOW FUCKING DARE YOU?”

I shake you by the blouse.

Danny – (Amber)

It took your story, your mind, your creativity to free me. To break me of my desire to stay with a man who only barely looks at me, let alone shares with me his affections.

The tale you told and meeting the woman who wrote it, fixing something in me that is broken. Correcting something in me that was wrong. And though that was accomplished with a humiliating affair that I stumbled upon years after it began, still do I feel closer.

Closer to freedom.

Closer to understanding.

Closer to you, my rival and my husband’s mistress, than he.

Especially now that I am in your lap, looking down into your sorrow filled eyes and wipe your tears away in shame.

And as you shout at me about daring, I lean in, down, and then bring our lips so very near to meeting. Your desire to share Austin with me sparking a sudden spark of heat between my thighs.

“I don’t hate you…. I should. I wanted to…. But I can’t….” My words drip with a growing certainty and unmistakable honesty.

“I want to fight you…. I want to let you find out which of us is better…. And then I want to share with you, but not Austin….” As my thought progresses, my words slow, lips move closer, and then when finally I have finished speaking, I kiss you gently, softly, timidly, before pulling back up, over, and with a sudden drop, back into the passenger seat.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You slump back down into the passenger seat, and the car is full of silence and complicated feelings. I… don’t know how to do this. The rules were simple. I pull your hair, and I slap you and I scratch and bite you until I feel better….until I have earned my place in his bed. So that at least I’m not still STEALING this bowl of ashes and sweet strawberry that is the only thing i have keeping me going through life right now. I know myself for what I am. I should be pleased that my writing is starting to do better than it ever has, that I should love myself for my talent and my limited success. I know this, but I feel as undesirable as I always have….and to have him want me…this cold distant, but undeniably acceptable and handsome man…it’s all I had for self esteem.

And now….this. She, my enemy, the woman I wanted to ruin, is trying to SAVE me. and I wonder if this is some kind of game or ploy…or if she has genuinely decided she wants me. But that’s impossible. Who would? Who could? No, it’s a trick. She’s trying to make me weak. She’s distracting me. And besides, I’m straight. Straight as a board and always have been….but if that’s so, why did it feel so…good.

I throw the car into drive and we resume driving.

“You’re not going to trick me, bitch. I know what this is. You are trying to confuse me1 You’re just as manipulative as he is. Little wonder!”

Danny – (Amber)

There, when I was in your lap, I wanted your eyes on mine. To feel your body pressed against me. To let my intensity and yours wrap together in a coil of self-loathing, jealousy, and desperation. Why? Because I am a wreck. A shell of the person I once was, just like my husband. And so feeling something – ANYTHING feels like living. Your cruel entrance into my life, and the causal relationship you have to my pain doing little to lessen the impact of feeling the warmth of your presence between my legs. The words you speak sounding exactly like the characters in the short story that have affected me so.

But now…. Now that I am back in the passenger seat. And that you have once again disregarded my words, warnings, and wayward claims to freedom, I can’t even look at you.

Your voice, as you deny all that I express, sounding like nails on a chalkboard – no longer a callback to a tale that may have forever changed me.

“Fuck, you, Stephanie. Fuck. You…. You aren’t going to listen to me? Not gonna trust me when I say that he is a fucking ASSHOLE? Then I’m gonna have to make you listen….” My voice trails off into a mutter, and at its passing we both fall into silence. Both of us avoiding any form of contact, be it touch, glance, speech, or any other, until finally our trip comes to an end. The car in which we sit shifting into park, leaving us both frozen. Both of us too caught up in the moment, each other, and fate to exit the vehicle or do what we have both agreed to do – at least not yet.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

“I know he’s an asshole! And YOU MARRIED HIM!” I say, right as we lapse into silence for the rest of the drive. The silence is deep and endless and awkward. My eyes flick in your direction and then back.. seeing you looking out the window so you don’t have to look at me. And that’s fine. I don’t want your eyes on me…judging me.

We pull up outside and I put the car in park. We sit there again, and I can hear the sound of crickets, crying out in loneliness. Two rules in all of nature: Everybody hungry, and everybody horny. I feel you little bugs I think to myself and then my hand grips the cool handle of the car door and I open it. and get out…still not looking at you. I close the car door and lean against it, feeling the night press in. I close my eyes. This is insane. I shouldn’t be here. I shouldn’t want this.

But i do. I want to roll on the floor with you, legs tangled… hands in your hair. screaming and showing you that as worthless as I am, I’m better than you. I have THAT going for me.

Danny – (Amber)

No sense in it. No logic. What we’ve been doing, or what we’re about to do. The scenario in your short story playing out in my mind, again and again. Wife and mistress meeting to fight. To struggle with one another until one is bested, broken, and battered into submission or … or … worse.

And though in the story, the wife … the character I played unknowingly, wanted her husband. I want one thing. What is *better for you*. Why? Fuck me, I don’t know. Maybe it’s because your story changed me. Affected me. Cured me of my hesitance to right my life. Or maybe it’s that I see me in you. A woman, made desperate by the dullness of life, doing whatever she can to have someone. Something.

Regardless, after we exit the car, and take a moment to breathe the chilled air around us, you started towards your door and I follow you. Step for step. Watching you move, until finally, we are at your front door. A door you unlock. A door you go to push open. But as soon as you do, I reach out and stop you with a gentle hand.

Our eyes meeting once more in a questioning gaze before I speak. “This….” I say softly, as my hands raise on either side of your face and then take two handfuls of your hair without force or fire. “We go in like this….” My words are a suggestion in the form of a question. A request, in the style of a plea.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You take my hands in your hair without pulling.. yet. And I bring mine to yours, feeling a skip in my heartbeat. She has…imagined this as fully as I have….and I’m not sure what I feel about this, but it’s…exciting on some deep level.

I take in a deep breath, as I toss my purse into the room and stare at you, nose to nose. “Yes…like this. And don’t let go.” I press my body into yours, and then I drag you painfully over the threshold, pulling you like some kind of bride and flinging you into my messy living room.. the living room of a person who lives in her head rather than the world. I’d be embarrassed, honestly…if you didn’t already have deeper dirt on me than this.

I kick the door shut with a foot behind me… and feel your grip tighten on my hair. Whatever this is…however it ends…it’s happening….

Danny – (Amber)

The moment is so intense that my breathing stops. My pulse racing and then leaping over a canyon of tension in a long, drawn out pause while we take grips of each others hair. And though we do savor that moment, eye-to-eye, nose-to-nose, and chest-to-chest, still does the moment come.

Where you suddenly grip tightly, and then wrench hard at my hair. My own hands, arms, and upper body doing the same to you as we spill into your house. Your gloriously messy house, that speaks to a freedom I haven’t had in so very long. Our still-shoed legs stepping over dirty clothes, scattered trash, and loose makeup before, after three long, gap-heavy steps, we slam hip-first into the back of your couch, and then together spill over it.

Growling at each other – on our sides and buried in the furniture’s cushions. Our excitement changing and churning into anger and rage – while pain goes from imagined to real – fantasy to a ferocious and fiery present. My hands in alternating intervals, after one bout of pulling or another, dropping down and then slapping at your face, even with our lack of room to extend, angle, or aim.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

It’s my body and yours in a sudden startling burst of struggle and without fully knowing how it’s happened, I am on my back on my couch, feeling your body press down on mine. Your hands tug at my hair, the pain so much…more than in my fantasies. I feel your palm on my face, stinging, slapping, and a heat grows in my belly. I heave my hips up, and crash my belly into yours, reefing on your hair and trying to toss you over onto the floor..but you are strong enough, heavy enough to press down into me and hold on. I gasp in frustration and surprise. My left hand leaves your hair and I PUSH at your cheek, nails digging into your cheekbone, the orbit of your eyes as I try to unseat you.

” Bitch,” I moan, ” GET OFF!” And part of me means it, but part is in denial. My right foot kicks out and my black heel clatters to the uncarpeted floor near the door.

Danny – (Amber)

Calm. Resolute. Certain of nothing, save for that we wanted this. To fight. To reenact that moment in your incredible story. And yet now, with the reality of it pressing, present, and as powerful as anhing we have ever experienced we boil.

Cursing. Striking. Slapping! All in the whirlwind of pain and emotion that swirls around us, as on your old, dingy couch, we war. And though for moment I have you pinned – without any attention paid to that endeavor, you fight to escape me. Your legs and mine kicking, and shifting to both get us closer, but also to allow us each to more easily hurt, hate, and harry.

Our footwear flying off into the distance with varying degrees of crashes dulled by our distraction. Your left hand shoving into my soft, effort-warmed cheek, and then with its nails digging in. I cry out in pain, and then arch back and away from you. The daggers on your digits far too close to my eyes to remain and endure. But in trying to lessen your ability to blind me, I pull back too far. My upper body hanging off the couch, and then a second later, crashing down onto your hard floor.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I hear you cry out, and there is a response from me, of pleasure and relief as you crash to the floor. I peer over the edge of the couch and see three small red marks where my nails bit into you. Then, with no more thought or art in it than I would have pushing an errant lock out of my face, I roll off the couch and onto you, my heated body landing on yours, feeling you take my weight. My black dress rides up on my bare legs and my hip press down into you, unconsciously grinding. “I HATE YOU!” say urgently, not shouting…gasping as my hands grab at your long dark hair. I feel your resisting body against mine.. and I know that whatever you want from me….part of it is this.. part of it is war.

Danny – (Amber)

The moment our bodies separate, I feel a sudden dread. One so animal and primal that it is not spoken in thought, but is instead felt. A satisfied yearning that has been stolen away. A desperate wish given and then pulled from my hands.

I despise it. Loath it. The feeling that I have lost you. Lost what fate had gifted.

But as the air that had been knocked from my lungs returns, and I ready myself to move, you peek over the lip of the couch and then come for me. Landing atop me in a sloppy splat of fabric covered beauty.

A beauty who tells me she hates me, while without conscious intention, our hips shift, realign, and then come down together in a mound to mound press. Our flesh separated by dueling panties alone, as in our struggle, out dresses have slid up over our thighs, past our hips, and then to rolled bunches by our waists.

That contact comes with a grinding. A slow, arhhmic drag of womanhoods that we are only barely aware of, and yet unable to battle without. Passions demanding it as toll. The cost of this much needed war.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I feel the heat of you on me again. Satin hisses on satin as our hips slowly grind, and I snarl in your face . Your face is a mask of complex emotion and and I feel a shudder through me as I slap your cheek, and drag my nails from your cheek and down the side of your neck, gritting my teeth as I try to make you scream. I want you to scream for owning the thing I’ve been stealing….for pitying me for it… for the need I feel to grind into you. I want you to be sorry…sorry you ever met me.

My nipples are like aching heavy stones, that throb and pulse and my breathing is in shallow gasps as I mark you. Our dresses, bunched at our midriff feel like an unacceptable lump that keeps me from the feel of you struggling next to me as we start to roll.

Danny – (Amber)

Hands in hair, we wrench each others head left and right – right and left. Roots snapping. Each of us fighting off whimpers, cries, and groans of pain. Not wanting to be weak. To look weak. To give in to each other, when this battle is so centered on our own worth. Strength. And value as women. Even though our goals are different. Even though our intentions at the end differ. It is still me vs. you. Woman against woman. Fighting because we have fallen for the same man. Both of us having slept with him. Fucked him. Kissed him and tasted each others spit, though I did not know it at the time.

And so as we grind and writhe. Pulling hair and growling, we begin to roll. Up and over in full rolls, half turns, and quarter counters.

The tops of our dresses pulling down in our struggle, exposing our more and more of our breasts. Our rock hard nipple slipping free and stabbing into each others chests.

“Fuck you, Steph! Hate me! Fight me! GGgrrrrr!!!” As I speak, my spittal flies and splashes onto your face, just as yours lands on mine. Gravity, frustration, and jealousy dragging our liquids, both above and below, down and onto one another. Inner thighs and cheeks forming a thin sheen of transparent liquid leavings.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I feel your nipple in my breast and it’s almost obscenely intrusive and intense, and you are screaming in my face.. taunting me. “CUNT! You DIRTY FUCKING CUNT! No WONDER you BORED him!” I snarl back and I can smell the faint odor of the whisky on your breath from the drink at the signing. We pull hair and litter my floor with dark hair, knocking books from their piles and rolling across them in a slow tangle. My dress pulls at me uncomfortably on my shoulders, digs in in bunches across my belly… and as we take a series of particularly exciting tumblles I bring a foot up to your sleek thigh and as I turn you off me, I press, trying to kick you free and away from me….panting.. getting to my knees and pulling it over my head.. leaving me in just black panties. My hair dangles into my face moving with my panting breath as I try to get my bearings.. as I see you sprawling….every bit the sexy woman who deserves him.. and my jealousy is burning.. my shame likewise.

” GET UP! ” I say, rising to my feet.. “GET UP SO I CAN KNOCK YOU DOWN AGAIN!”

Danny – (Amber)

Pressed together and clinging. Pulling with all of our might, both together and at hair. Rolling together, trying to mount the other. A placement I took for granted on the couch, but now seek desperately. But in our equality and quality, we reach an impasse. Not catching and crawling on top of our sprawled out rival, but instead resisting each others attempts, until finally. After what feels like tens of minutes, you start to kick. To push. To shove each other away, and then in a newly sweat-shined clump of matted hair, we pull ourselves to a on-hip, and propped up lay.

Glaring, with mascara run. Chests heaving, as we huff and puff, trying to catch our breath. It is only then that your cruel comment registers and enters my mind to respond to. “Don’t you do that. Don’t you SAY that. Don’t make me hate you….” I warn, with tears in my eyes. Not wanting you to drag me into the hate you feel for me. The hate you cling to.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I toss my dress aside, panting.. trying to wipe tears and mascara from my cheeks as I look down at you, standing up and enjoying, far too much, this moment of power. “Oh I know. How horrible it must be for you!? How HORRIBLE to think your husband would prefer a ruined…needy…desperate BITCH like me…over you!” I say the words with a cruel half crazed laugh at the end.. a self-hating laugh. “If you hated me…that would be BETTER. I can smell your pity… and I’m going to beat it out of you until you just want me gone!!” I am sobbing and snarling at the same time, looking like a ragged animal…vulnerable and all but naked. For my prettiness, I look like nothing so much as a rat pushed into a corner.

Danny – (Amber)

We are not friends, family, lovers, or even friends. And yet your words shatter my soul, and shred my heart into slivered chunks. The tears that welled, shedding and then rolling down my cheeks. You reaching your feet, even as I remain on the ground. Uncertain. Unsure. Wounded. And for the moment, frozen in offense.

“It’s about you. Everhing. How HURT you are!” I growl while grabbing my dress and pulling it up and over my head. “You think you’re unique!? That you’re ruined. That you’re dark and twisty – unwanted and unloved….” My words continue as I fight my way back to my feet, and then lock together with you in a glare.

“But you’re not. You’re a basic. Normal. Tasteless little CUNT, who thinks herself an artist…. Yes, your words touched me. Yes, they made me care for you and your plight. But now that I’ve met you, you’re not the writer, the woman, or the creator I thought you were. You’re just the woman sleeping with my husband. Just a middle-aged, target-shopping, live laugh loving adulterer, whose ass I need to kick….” I pick my words carefully, and throw them at you like javelins. Wanting now, to hurt you. To wound you, just as you did me. And without waiting to see if I did, when my harsh rebukes stop, I begin to circle you. My red panties all that keeps my naked body from your eyes.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You fountain loathing on me and my face goes slack with each new phrase…ripping at the last shreds of self esteem. if I can’t be a good person…at least I can market myself as an interesting one, right? but no. you take even that from me as you rise to your feet, bristling and furious. And for a moment I stand there as you start to move on me. hurt beyond my ability to keep going.. but you are coming for me physically as well as verbally now. And I come to live, moving with you in a slow…deliberate circling. My eyes meet yours and you see the pain there. “Better basic, I suppose than simply NOT GOOD ENOUGH even for a PRICK like HIM!” I say and my right hand lashes out, slapping at your breast.. wanting to see the pain in your eyes.

I brace for your reply, physical and verbal as I taunt you.. wanting to make you hurt me…hate me… stop FEELING SORRY FOR ME! MAKE IT SIMPLE GODDAMN YOU! STOP STARING AT ME WITH THOSE PRETTY, JUDGING EYES

Danny – (Amber)

So many emotions. Conflicted and confusions emotions filled me when I looked at you. When we spoke. But now…. Now that you pushed me over the edge. Refusing the empathy your very words created in me. Denying the care that your story willed into my soul.

All to have me play the role you want.

To be the aggrieved wife seeking revenge.

I should rebel against that desire. Chafe at your attempts to make me an actor in your play.

But instead, hurt so intensely by your words, I slip into it, like my silken robe.

Circling you, with my larger breasts swaying with every move. They are bigger than yours. More shapely than yours. And though normally I would hate to ever make another woman feel lesser because of their body. It bring smirk to my face, just before you swipe at them. Once then twice. Your claws catching and dragging across them, making me yelp before I step in and grab. Not your hair, but your wrists. Trying to pull them up above your head. Wanting to get them out of the way and then lunge forward slamming my own perfect tits in your smaller, less ample chest.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You lift my wrists up over my head with a lunge, and a smirk, and I whimper as you slam your breasts forward into mine. It’s a multi-prong attack. The pain is blinding and it’s also a statement. It’s a very direct statement, and I blush as I realize why they were the targets I chose. My whimper turns to a growl as we stand there, breast to breast…belly to belly. My arms are up over my head and I SPIT between them for your face. It’s all I have to express my thorough loathing for you in this instant, to express my hurt. “Bitch…I’m going to claw your eyes out. you BETTER hold my wrists.” The threat makes me throb between the legs, it’s so intense….so….basic. But we’ll see how your insightful critique responds when I actually…fucking…do it….

Danny – (Amber)

I want you to feel their weight. Their size. Their soft and yet still youth-buoyant balance. You’ve never mentioned your breasts to me, nor written about them in your book as a point of shame. But I already know. Know that you wish you had mine. Why? Because that’s how I would feel if I were you.

That’s what would make me jealous, if our bodies and psyches were switched.

And so I use them, not so much to hurt you physically, after their initial impact. But to wound you mentally. To show you that all those nights you spent looking at my pictures on social media, your jealousy – your self-loathing was justified.

But even with that attack launched and landed, you hiss a threat at me. That I better hold your hands. To keep them from latching on to me, so that my eyes can be torn out. Rather than abiding your comment by keeping your wrists raised, or letting them go in a dare. I do the latter, but then instantly reach for your own eyes. Looking to dig my nails into yours, before you can get your daggers into mine. The ferocity, and panic-created by the attack sending you stumbling back, and me forward. Once again towards the couch.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You claw for my eyes… and I shriek in actual terror and stagger back, caught off guard by your willingness to go there… to call my bluff. I am instantly HORRIFIED at my show of fear and I HISS at you from the back of my throat. My hands are low at my sides as I beckon you closer, my feet at shoulder width.. my knees slightly bent, just in front of the couch. “Oh… oh you little.. CUNT! Come on then bitch.. you want to get nasty.. COME ON! COME GET ME! You want to play storime with me? DO YOU WANT TO PLAY STORY TIME!?” The words sound hollow and inane as they leave my lips.. not cool or threatening, but the emotion is real.. and as you come closer… my hands are ready to grab and snatch and as you close the distance I grab those breasts in ten red painted nails and I dig and twist.. wanting to hear the pain.. to see blood …to drive you crazy. But below that there’s something else I can’t…. I can’t explain and don’t understand. I’m hungry for touch….Do I have to tear at you to be held?

Danny – (Amber)

I have suddenly abandoned my humanity. Shed my ability to reason or see you as someone worth dignity, respect, and protection. My fingers instead curling and then driving sharp nails into the lid just below your eyes. Wanting to do what you threatened me with. To show you that I am no less a monster than you, though such an intention would have been unfathomable yesterday.

To my maddened attack you shriek and back peddle. I try to chase you, to keep my fucking claws sunk deep in your face, but you duck, dodge, and then spin. Escaping me and my naked press against your body.

Doing so only to then come back at me, to claw at my breasts painfully. Making me yelp, cry out, and then shove you away from me.

A necessary retreat that makes me so mad. So angry. So frustrated. That as you recover, I reach down to my panties, and push them down my toneless creamy thighs. Letting them fall to my ankles, before I reach down, grab them, and then throw them in your face.

“Bitch! You’re the one…. You’re the one who wants this to be like your story. I tried to…. Save you. To protect you…. To set you free of the HELL I am living in!” Neither of us are calm, collected,or even sane. Still, however, somewhere on the periphery of our minds, we try to communicate. Wild cat to wild cat.

“Now … take your panties off and fight me….”

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You strip and toss your…dripping panties at me. In a fury I push down my panties, revealing a shaved, glistening mons.. with a little tattoo of a cat on it, licking it’s paw. “I’ll set you free instead,” I say, still beckoning with my hands. “I’ll save you, how about. I’ll save you from the HORROR of having what I WANT! What I DESERVE! How about THAT!”

I stare you dead in your furious, hurt eyes and feel a shaking sense of smug satisfaction at turning you back into the angry, jealous bitch I expected. It makes it easier to BITE you.

I see you inching closer. My heart is pounding and I can feel my pulse in my arms and throat as I prepare myself for what’s coming….what you’ll bring to me.

Danny – (Amber)

I can see your pussy glistening in the moonlight pouring through the gap between curtains. The wet splatter of my fluids and your own. And yet somehow, even seen, the sights do not register. Instead, my mind is focused on getting to you. To shutting you up. To squeezing that voice box of yours closed. And so as you stand and wait, each of us finally nude, I lunge. Crashing into you, body to body and then with each of us then collapsing onto the couch cushions. Shoving those that we shifted and loosened earlier back in their proper place, just as I take to mine.

My curvy, and yet muscleless frame once more falling ontop of yours. Almost a mirror of what happened in the car, but this time. And once again, without meaning to, our legs shift, angle, and then adjust on a single side. Keeping both me from being in your lap again completely, but also letting our exposed and leaking kittens together while I look down into your eyes. My hands moving to your throat and slowly surrounding it. Tightening with a menacing calm and terrifying certainty.

Our glares fused together. Our tummies pressed, and hips shifting forward to steal a few ounces of unnoticed pleasure in all of this pain.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You clamp your hands on my throat as you press into me, legs shifting and struggling, as much for…access to each other…as to any tactical advantage. And I moan soundlessly, as my face starts to change color under you. My hips move in an insistent rhhm that is not designed to escape…and then a smile crosses my lips and my hands, hooked and dangerous grab at your face. My thumbnails dig into either side of your nose as the rest of my nails claw at your eyes. It’s horrible…savage…unspeakably violent… and so fucking hot. as you crane your head back, trying to avoid the reach of them as I desperately go for something that will make you give me back my air….I want to breathe. I need air, not so much so that I can go on living.

I need air so that I can use it to hurt you with words.. to call you names. To tell you how disappointing it is to me that you’re not prettier than I am….just….my fucking equal.

Danny – (Amber)

I am choking you. Strangling you. And for a moment you let me. Suffering in my grasp and beneath me, as I pour all the hate you have built inside of me into the pressure I apply to your neck. But then, just as your inability to breathe becomes visible, you reach up for my eyes.

To do what you threatened and what I tried to do to you.

I feel your nails slice into my skin, working to get deeper and further as my neck bends and head pulls away from you. I could let go, and get off of you. But instead I lessen the pressure of my choke. Letting you breathe. Hoping, in perhaps a folly brought on by a sexual dilerium brought on by our background grinding, that you will do the same.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You are strangling me, and I’m clawing at your face in panic, and then I feel your hands…give way. You don’t release me….you just let me breathe and my hands slide down your cheeks and I grip your neck, loosely. “Let…go…” I sputter, looking up at you atop me, your breasts dangling down, lovely and inviting… and so much fucking nicer than mine. I grit my teeth and lift my hips, as my leg presses to your inner thigh, straining. “Get…off my neck…”

Danny – (Amber)

It is an olive branch. An offer of not yet. Of make this laaaaaaaaast. Oddly though, my attempt to elongate out battle might end it, if as I release you push forward. Gouging out my eyes, at a moment where my own attack is receding.

But to my relief and excitement you accept. Not only lessening the pressure of your digging digits, but instead retracting them completely. Your hands instead moving down to my throat and then catching hold. Each of us strangling each other. Not fully. Not viciously. But enough to steal one another’s breath, and worsen our mutual plight.

The sweat from our bodies starting to pool between us and on top of our pressing flesh. Your womanhood pressing hard against my soft inner thigh, while we growl at each other.

“You don’t want that…. You want THIS!” My volume increases on a single word, as for a moment I increase my squeeze, before letting it loosen once more.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You clutch my throat again, stopping my air, and my eyes widen. I squeeze in turn, knowing full well that you have the leverage, that if it’s a strangulation match, you hold all the cards. I also know that’s not what you want. You want to hurt me… not kill me. And that’s fine. I can work with that. I can make you want to kill me.

I feel your breath catch in your throat as I close off your throat. “I want you….gone…” I sputter, wasting precious air as I grease your thigh with my juices…

Danny – (Amber)

As you grind on my inner thigh, I grind on yours. Not with a comment and a sneer. An accusation and a smirk. No, we are barely aware of it, or even in control of it. All of our focus spent on each others throat. On this game of strangulation and chicken. Glaring into each others eyes. Sharing breathless words. Some spit pit and others croaked.

“Liar….” I respond when you say you want me gone.

“This is what you wanted…. What you-COUGH-wrote about…. What–YYYOOOUUUU – Gggrrrrr – fantasized about….” Every word is a feat to deliver. A fight to get past your squeezing fingers and my trembling lips. Still, I get them out. And study your face, as I wait for a reply.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I press my thumbs into the notch of your windpipe, pressing as my face turns a deeper red, and I hook my right heel into the back of your smooth thigh. I have no air for words as you squeeze me. I see little flashing dark spots in the corners of my eyes…and the pressure of your skin on mine is painful.. and pleasurable at once. So I spit at you, getting as much on me as you, straining, and trying to tip us over on our side… I can’t bear.. can’t bear you on top.. grinding me down. I am almost ready to release your throat, just to do what it takes to move you…but we are in some kind of…challenge right now.. and to let go is to lose something i don’t fully understand.

Danny – (Amber)

At my words, you snarl. Your fingers increasing their angle, pressure, and aim. And just as you try to worsen my plight, I do the same! Trying to prove to you that I am…. That we are…. That you….

The intention and thought fizzles and fades in my mind, as less and less air gets through. Making me an easy target to your lean, your push, and your effort to throw me off to the side. But you do not let go. Instead, I fall, and you chase.

Strangling me, and me you, as we topple to our sides on the couch once more. You with your back facing the rear of the couch, and mine, once more angled out towards your messy living room. And though I wish I could say I am getting the better of this matched choke. But instead, I can feel my vision darkening, my lungs burning. And my hands, on instinct, suddenly releasing from your throat, and moving to your wrists to try, desperately to pull them away.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You pull my hands from your throat as I press my belly to yours, slick with sweat and I press my nose to yours. I can not just smell your perfume. I can taste it, we’re in so close and my legs move and grab, trying to keep you from rolling off the couch. I don’t want to let you get away as you control my wrists and my eyes stare into yours. I feel every inch of your body tangled with mine…like it belongs there and always had. It’s as though you are part of me….but I….don’t like myself.

“You… bitch….you almost strangled me….”

Danny – (Amber)

My thighs and mound are covered with your liquid lust. My cheeks, lips, and breasts are covered with your spit. And now, on my side, when I have finally free your hands from around my throat, I sputter, cough and weaz. And though I do, you coil our legs and keep me next to you.

Not pushing me, but instead keeping me from falling. Your accusation, and true as it is, delivered in a voice that sounds of more familiarity than we have earned or than makes sense given our place in each others live.

Still, as my legs flex and wrap back around yours, I release my grips on your wrists, and then reach for your hair. Not with a sudden tug, but instead just to take a handful on either side of your beautiful, tear-stained face.

I see you twitch, and ready yourself to defend yourself, but as you prepare to strike, I spit in your face, and then in the wake of the projectile’s splash, hiss. “I … hate you….” My ability to speak still affected by your devastating choke.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You take my hair in your long fingered hands, and spit in my face and the spittle feels like it should sizzle on my red burning cheeks. I throb deep between my legs. My nipples slide across yours, the pressure and release of it enough to make me gasp. I want to wipe the spit from my face, but instead my hands grip your face itself. My thumbs under your jawline on either side, and my fingers at your cheekbones, not clawing, but the tips of my nails causing six tiny indentations in your face. I am held there in your furious aroused eyes. “Just…..let me have him….HE’S ALL I HAVE!” I say, crying out in a mix of anger and resentment. To have so little….so very little, and to have to fight to keep even that….it’s…humiliating. Far more humiliating than this tangle of angry flesh.

Danny – (Amber)

As your nails dig in deep, my hands start to pull at your hair. Not in wild yanks, but in hard, sustained pulling that matches the methodical stabbing of your nails.

Two mutual attempts to hurt each other that playout as we shift, just enough to make our hard nipples meet, catch, bend for each other, and then snap past. Our hips making their own efforts, to stimulate and satisfy, even as we battle with our words.

“You don’t HAVE HIM…. HE’S MINE….” He is my husband. My lover since I was a teen. And though I hate him. Despise what he has done to me and you, you’ve flipped a switch in my brain that makes me forget about his weaknesses. His faults. And how I wanted to save you.

My primal primate brain dragging me to compete with you to compete a man that is not worth either of our hearts. “And so…. Are…. YOU!!!” My low growl turns into a shout, as in an instant I suddenly YANK at your hair, while also arching back and slamming my sex forward into yours.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I feel your hands in my hair–slow, insistent, agony that verges on pleasure with its extremity. It feels as though you are trying to pull my scalp clean off of my skull and my neck ACHES with the pressure. You taunt me, and I feel the crash of your cunt down into mine. as if you were planting your flag. I grunt, and my hands cease their petty digging and scraping. I need change. I moan, and bring my hands up to your wrists, pushing them outward in my attempt to lessen your grip. My thumbnails press into your wrists trying to make you open your hands.

My face, a red mask of tears and pain and anger cranes forward, open-mouthed, jaws woking as I push down, wanting to bite your breast, but restrained still by your grip on my hair. You are like Delilah, destroying me with my own hair.

Danny – (Amber)

There on the couch, we struggle. Our bodies leaning one direction and then the other. At one moment together, and then in the next, in opposite. Grunting at each other. Growling at each other. My hands in your hair, gripped so tight my fingers ache and knuckles burn. My intent not to take that hair form you, but to make you see. That I am not the wife you fought in your story. Not the victim in your dream. But your equal, until I am your conqueror. Your rival, until you lie beneath me out of steam.

I expect it. Your attacks to continue. Your clawing, digging digits to work my flesh until I bleed. But you release me. Reaching for my wrists to try and free them from your hair. But when those hands arrive, I have released your hair, loosing to clasp our hands together, and lace our fingers on both hands. All while leaning in, down, and trying to bite your lower jaw, lip, and teeth.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

Fingers clasp, nails digging into the backs of hands, and your mouth meets mine, lips pressing, catching in snapping teeth. My knuckles are white with strain as we push and pull with corded muscles in our forearms. I feel your teeth grip my upper lip and I rock my hips to yours, slow liquid motions of pleasure and struggle as a high pained gasp leave my lungs. I nip into your bottom lip and then shake my head, to try and make you release me. “Animal….cunt…” I murmur, tears still tracking sooty mascara trails down my cheek, emphasizing my misery to anyone who can see my face. Pain written in carbon and salt under my wide angry eyes.

Danny – (Amber)

Chest to chest, we rock and grind. Our soft inner thighs locked together, coated with a liquid excitement we pay not an blink’s worth of attention to. Crying for each other while we bite. Nibbling at each others lips as we loathe.

“I hate you….” I mumble through my clamped teeth. “Fight me….” I growl as we struggle and strain.

The flesh beneath our tightly applied fingers turning white, as palms press and unfit tummies rub.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

“Fuck….you….” I spit in your face as I try to get my teeth in your chin, wanting to leave your pretty fucking face in tatters. Sobbing from pain as I ARCH under you, trying to rock you OFF of me. The insistent press of your flesh on mine is exciting but it’s also…exhausting. Half my energy spent just trying to breathe… to not feel like Im suffocating in you. My hands try to bend your wrists like schoolgirls playing mercy. Oh mercy.. god mercy. “Get…..off….”

Danny – (Amber)

It grows and it builds. This moment. The intensity of it. Each of us spiraling further and further into anger, jealousy, and destruction. Marking each others faces. Maiming the one woman in the world who can truly understand our pain. But even as we seem to reach that incredible crescendo, you try to free yourself. Pushing into me, pulling me to one side, and then in a hiss, demanding I get off of you.

Which part does it? Which element moves me? I don’t know, but somewhere in the sum of it all, I release you and you me. And then in the wake of such a grueling grind, I fall off of you, to the side. Sinking into the couch. My bare thigh pressing against yours as I softly sob. Wiping tears and mascara away from my eyes, while I just try to breathe.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I roll off the couch to the floor, curling over my own legs, exhausted, sobbing, wailing. I feel as though I’ve already lost. You could have finished me, you could have finished me so easily, if you’d committed to it. Could have borne down on me, throttling me, bearing my clawing until it was over. Until I was over. You didn’t. You are insistent on teaching me how much less than you I am….a lesson I’d learned before we ever met. I plant my hands on the floor….and sit up, rear end on my own heels, and I wipe my raccoon eyes and glare at you. “You’re a coward, Danny.”

Danny – (Amber)

We gasp for air, and desperately fight back tears. Trying to erase the signs of as much, btrying to wipe streaks of black from our cheeks, but no matter how hard we try – we still bear the marks. The stains. The truth of our suffering.

Until finally you call me a coward. Hating me for what I was, what I am, and what you expect me to be.

You want that blind counterpart from your story. A cliche. A heartless, hateful creature seeking nothing but vengeance. And though I am not that, you’ve broken me. Shattered me. And in madness, I react to your words. Pulling myself from the couch and to a stand just before you.

There I do not linger, nor do you reach for me. My legs, tired, weary, and splattered with a shameful splattering of sexual consequence, carry me to deeper into you house. Into your bedroom, and out of your sight.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You walk past me. You can walk. I can barely stand. You head back into my hall….towards my bedroom. You are met with the sight of my room.. the one neat and meticulously tidy place in my home. It’s where I retreat from the chaos of papers that is the rest of this place. On the back of my dressing chair is one of his dress shirts, left there casually as anhing.

I struggle to my feet, taking in deep breaths as I can trying to slow my pulse…to drive the ache from my muscles and I cautiously make my way down the halls. “Danny…..Where are you?.”

Danny – (Amber)

I stumble and trip. Wobble and almost fall countless times, but I make it to your lair. Moving about your room to make real the image in my head.

My work, a pile of things on your bed, the first thing you see as you slowly, achingly enter the room. My husband’s dress shirt. Your vibrator. A letter from him I found on your dresser. And two pairs of cum-stained panties from your laundry. Each is there, tossed angrily.

But where am I…? The collector you came after.

That question is answered, when behind you, I come from your closet. Wearing the family heirloom necklace you described in your story. The one you keep in the same place you described therein. It’s beautiful, and yet age-tarnished gold lines laying between my scratched and gravity-affected breasts

“I’m here, Stephanie. I’m showing you….”

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

“What… what do you suppose… you’re showing me….What do you fucking WANT” I see you wearing my necklace and I sway slightly side to side on my feat. I’m feeling something new…something worse. Fear.

Danny – (Amber)

“This is what it feels like….” I answer you, while coming to a stop. Your necklace gleaming in the moonlight peering through the window.

“To have someone steal your life….” The context I give, while your weary eyes burn into me.

“Maybe I’ll write a short story about it, after I’m DONE WITH YOU!” As my words reach a loud, menacing pitch, I lunge at you. Trying to wrap my hands around your throat once again, and drive you back to the bed.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You come in for me and take my throat in your hands. For a moment I am tempted to just let you throttle me, just die in your arms, and let it end. And then, after that moment’s pause, my hands come up to your wrists. “You don’t have….the talent….cunt.” My left hand leaves your wrist and grabs my necklace and PULLS HARD. Either the necklace breaks, or you get hurt….and either way I’m fine with it. I press my forehead into yours, and press the tip of my nose to yours.

Danny – (Amber)

My blind rush brings you and I crashing onto the bed. You on your back, and me on top of you in a straddle. My hands wrapped around your throat, while yours grab for the necklace from your story and childhood.

You expect it to break. To snap off, and maybe cut me. But instead it holds strong. Tightening and pinching into my flesh, but it refuses to break. And so you turn it, wrap it around your hands, and then turn it into a garotte wire. Equaling our playing field, and locking us into a hard, hateful strangle as eye to eye we glare

Growling, until we drool. Straining to cut each other off from the air, until that very effort on the others part weakens us. Turning violent and vicious into a long, slow, just enough amount of pressure that if we do not release will end us.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

It’s like a horrible game of chicken. You are strangling me, and I am twisting the silver chain tighter around your neck. My hands are shaking, the chain nearly cutting into my fingers. Our eyes are locked in mutual dare. I see your pain and you see mine….and I am so tired.. so tired of fighting….so tired of sharing…so tired of being a parasite on the lives of other, better people. I’m pinned down in all the evidence of my wrongdoing. I close my eyes and let go of the chain. “Do it,” I whisper softly,”just…do it….you know you want to.”

Danny – (Amber)

I felt forgiveness. Understanding. Sympathy. And at one point, even love for you. But somewhere in the madness. Somewhere in our battle of words and bodies, you have scratched each of those emotions away – leaving me only hate, jealousy, and a wounded pride

And so when after what seems like an eternity, you release your grip on the necklace. Your chance at ending me before I do you. Asking me to do it. Telling me I want to.

Oh, in fiction this is where I would let go, and cry. Ball up into a corner and cry. Asking for your forgiveness. Telling you this was all a mistake. But not now. Not with me. Not with us.

My hands only loosening for a moment to then adjust and retighten. My lips coffing, sputtering, and hacking for air before those same lips press to yours in a kiss.

A kiss between rivals. Between enemies. First brought to life in your short story, and now ending here on your bed.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I touch my tongue to yours tasting your sweetness, as my hands come up to stroke your shoulderblades. I caress you softly, my leg bending and my inner thigh stroking your hip rocking into you even as you close my throat. I’m light in my body now, trembling and hungry. The smell of you is deep and earthy but there is sweetness from the perfume on your wrists, so much nearer to my face. I feel your silken skin bearing down on me….Im scared, but I feel safe in your grip. I can go from here. I don’t deserve more of this….pleasure.

Danny – (Amber)

It isn’t your returning of my kiss. The soft placement of your palms on my shoulders. Or even the look of desire in your flickering, tear-filled eyes. No, it is the animal in me. The primal calling of my more bestial intincts that makes me grind my pussy against your body as I choke you.

After all, how many times did you fuck my husband with my name hanging on your lips? How many times did you pleasure yourself thinking of meeting me and this fight.

Well it’s my turn. My turn to feel the excitement of the affair. My turn to get off on the rivary you have built for us. And so I grind on you as my fingers SQUEEZE. Fuck you as I strangle you.

Into the depths.

Into oblivion.

And finally, into a creeping stillness that does not stop my thrusts. My hips still firing in a thudding and heavy rhhm until finally I cum. Soaking your pussy with my liquid satisfaction while I tremble. Scream. And then when my rapture has passed, collapse on top of your lifeless body.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

You are still atop my lifeless body, weeping….drenched. But I am still here. I am just a few feet above you looking down. No. No this won’t do. You can’t tarry. I lower myself and reach my hand to touch the back of your neck. My hand is cold. “You can’t stay,” I whisper. “You’ll get caught. You can’t get caught.” I don’t know if you can hear me. I don’t know if anyone can. I feel so much bigger than I was, and so much less…like all the mass of me has spread out into a mist of equal weight but much less density. I try to focus myself, to literally pull myself together and lower myself into you….inside of you to see through your eyes. I want to make you move…make you dress in my clothes and leave. Anhing… anhing to save you from gift you’ve given me.

Danny – (Amber)

I can’t think. I can’t move. I can’t breathe. The full weight of our vicious cataclysm finally washing over me. My life and yours. My marriage and your affair. Your short story and my oblivious suffering in the center of my husband’s adultery.

It is a stake through the heart. A gunshot to the chest. A collapsing of defenses, guards, and walls I had built up to survive our struggle.

It would lead me to remain. Laying atop you, quivering and crying. Perhaps even dragging you with me beneath the sheets to lay together until justice comes.

Until I feel a sudden cold. A chill brush across my shoulder. I gasp, as the sensation spreads in a wave of calm and purpose.

It is incredible the feeling, and yet impossible to describe. Completely without analog, and yet in an instance understand it. What is happening and how. As if I can see the moments that’ll lead to it.

You looking down on me, entering me, and trying to take control. Just for a moment. Just long enough to make me escape. And though I do lift myself from despair and a resigned indifference, dress in your clothes, and even collect all those that I can in a piece of empty luggage hidden in the corner, it is not as you imagined.

Because when finally I have done what you desired, and begun my exit, when you try to leave me. I resist, collapsing to my knees just before the door to your home. Screaming in pain, with closed fists shaking just below my chin. Our wills at war once more. You trying to escape and me trying to keep you.

The moment is painful, soul-searing, and violent…. My tears flowing once again, as we argue with each other using just my voice.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

I don’t want to leave you tainted with me. I want not to be anymore. I want this to stop…but now I’m with you. I try to leave, but you hold onto me with everhing you have and Im not strong enough to escape, and I don’t truly want to. You drop to your knees, and refuse to move until I settle into you. Our voices babble from your mouth, and then I clamp your hand over your mouth and stand us up. I fall still inside of you feeling my entire self sink in into your flesh, your bones, until I can no more unsort them than i could in my own life…and I am scared, but I am a curious at what might happen next. Are we one person, or two? So many questions, but so tired. “Get out of here,” I whisper, low in the back of your mind. “You don’t deserve jail for that piece of trash.”

Danny – (Amber)

From conflicted and thrashing to soft, satisfying, and electric, the moment changes. Our souls fusing together in a rush of endorphins, excitement, and near euphoria.

Your drive pulling me to a stand and your thoughts telling me to leave. And though you meant that instruction to be just that, a thought without sound, it comes through in speech. As does my reply, each coming as palm and fingers pull away from their covering squelch.

“We do… But not yet…..” Jail. We’ll get there after we will him.You feel the thought. Smell it. Taste it. Can you stop me? Do you want to?

The questions hang around our neck like a scarf, as we leave your home.

Stephanie Cross (Dina)

Murder is so much easier after the first one. The same is true of living. I imagine us loading the gun together, you holding the gun in one hand, while I slide the bullets in with your other hand. “We don’t need jail,” I say, “If we’re smart. I write mysteries. I get away with murder for a living. We can be free.”

The End

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