Flash Fiction: “Caution”

Ray Stendon fell back against the headboard, breathing hard, and wiped sweat off his forehead. His engorged dick fell slack against his thigh.

“Goddamn, sweetheart, you sure know how to fuck,” he said.

He watched her walk naked across the room, a cheap pay-by-the-hour motel, no amenities, no questions asked. She sat down on the stool in front of the vanity, picked up a brush, and started running it through her dark hair.

“You’re a lot older than the girls I usually run around with,” he said. “I like those young, skinny things, with little titties. But, shit, you might just change my whole way of thinking, the way you made me come. I swear I saw stars there for a minute.”

He could see her face in the mirror, concentrating on the motions of her arm, the brushstrokes like the ticking of a clock.

“You probably can’t tell, but I just got out of the can. Eighteen months for assault and battery. I was seeing this girl, Cindy Marshall, cute little thing, really liked to fuck, but I tell you, that girl had some attitude on her. So I had to smack her around a few times. Wasn’t nothing big. I didn’t knock out any teeth or nothing, hardly left a bruise on her. Anyway, she took it like she ought to the first couple times, and then she called the cops on me when I did it again. I mean, she’s the one with the fucking attitude, and she set up a precedent by not squealing on me, so I blame it all on her, the little bitch.”

The woman shifted the brush to the other hand.

“Anyway, all this is my way of getting to the point that I ain’t had none in a while. Maybe that’s why it felt so good, and it wasn’t particularly you. It’s always the best ass you ever had when you go a long time without fucking, and then you get laid. I don’t mean you were bad or nothing, sweetheart, so don’t go getting offended.”

Ray grabbed the sheet and wiped the come and pussy juice off his dick.

“Shit, I know what the ex-cons around Philly are saying—Oh, you got to be careful, some crazy chick’s out there cutting the throats of guys just got out of the joint. Fucking pussies. I ain’t never been scared of a woman. First time I am, you can cut off my balls and hang them on your mantel. Any man’s frightened of a woman ain’t much of a man, you ask me.”

He grinned at her reflection. She stared straight ahead and hadn’t looked back at him. He heard her sniff.

“You know what’s funny? You kind of look like that woman, the crazy one, least the way they describe her. I seen them artist’s sketches. Anybody tell you that before? You know what’d be funny as shit? My old pal Stanley Bunt got out a few months ago. What if I set you up with him, and after you get done balling him, you pull out a razor, pretend like you’re going to slice him up? Wouldn’t that be funny as shit?”

He shifted on the bed and scratched his balls.

“I’m just fucking with you, though. I wouldn’t ask you to do nothing like that. Still it’s queer, ain’t it, you looking so much like her? And I guess it’s true, a guy’s got to be careful out there, with this crazy bitch taking guys out worse than the AIDS. But being careful’s different from being afraid. It was the same with my old daddy, when he’d go on a bender and come after me and Phyllis. I wasn’t never afraid of him, but I sure did learn to be cautious.”

The woman hopped up from the stool, turning it over, and came rushing at Ray with a knife. Ray pulled his pistol from under the pillow and shot her twice. She flopped onto the bed, smearing blood across the white sheet, then tumbled onto the floor.

Ray hunched up to look at her laying on the floor, her wild eyes staring back at him.

“I was just fucking around,” he said. “I knew it was you all along.”