Uncle Ray

Ray sat in his recliner and failed repeatedly to read and retain a single sentence of the trade paperback he held in one hand. The book was unimpressive and he would quickly forget its details, but its primary purpose that night was a pretense of nonchalance. He had fidgeted with his leg placements, experimenting with one leg crossed over the other knee, then reverse, then both legs planted, and then fully reclined. At last he had settled on slouching deep into the back of the chair, extending his legs to near full length, and crossing his ankles. This position would – he reasoned – give him the opportunity to display physical surprise as they entered the condo and he adjusted to a more alert posture.

His eyes moved along a paragraph while his consciousness ran mental drills. He imagined shaking the man’s hand too effeminately or appearing too deferential, too timid. He imagined the man saying something disrespectful and the anger that would follow. He imagined the man and the woman entering, sparing him only brief pleasantries, then going upstairs to loudly fuck above his head. This last option seemed the most likely and a profound, futile sadness enveloped him as a chill slid down his chest.

Obsession swelled as he envisioned the grotesque savagery of her pleasure and his humiliation. The stark, hideous truth of his sexual inadequacy would be wrested from its hiding spot within his shame to be thrust into the unforgiving sunlight for detailed examination. She would probably tell the man about their brief sexual relationship, if for no other reason than to set a low bar and tempt the man with an easy victory. The man would know how Ray had failed to please her and would rightly count himself as superior upon hearing her screams of delight. The woman Ray had convinced of her own worth on top of that parking garage, the same one whose fist chipped his tooth while she was detoxing, would shrug apologetically as she chose immediate pleasure over his loyalty. He made to start the paragraph over again, but instead closed the book with a frustrated sigh, placed it on the end table, and gripped his erection through his jeans.

He heard the tell-tale scraping of the door over the weather stripping. A single fluid movement tucked his erection into the waistband of his sweatpants as he shot up from the recliner. The old chair let out a stunned metallic cry at the sudden shifting of his sizable mass. She had entered backward, turning the knob with her left hand while pushing the door open with her ass. He was glad for the certainty that she had not seen his adjustment.

“I mean I know she means well, but she needs to relax or she’s going to end up doing more harm than good.” Charlotte’s familiar drawl filled the room with its typical vivaciousness and…volume. She swung with the door to face the room and Ray. “You still up? You ok?” She must’ve heard the damned chair.

“Yes.” He motioned stiffly behind himself. “Just got surprised. Napping. I can go to my room.”

The man Charlotte had been out with entered immediately behind her and he was a doomsday scenario for Ray. Thick black hair in a crew cut expertly faded into tasteful stubble along his square, muscular jawline. Unnaturally blue eyes met his. Those have to be contact lenses. His arms were bulky and loosely toned, deeply tanned. Large pecs were visible under his black t-shirt, but thankfully so was a slight paunch. It was nothing compared to Ray’s achingly heavy stomach, but he was grateful for any sign of imperfection. The man’s T-shirt had a design printed on it of a green, anthropomorphic cartoon duck being chased by a humanoid digital clock brandishing a switchblade. Weird.

“No, go ahead and sit, buddy! We’ll be going upstairs anyway.” Ow. “Ray this is Griffin, Griffin this is Ray.”

Griffin, a broad, bright smile across his face, lunged forward for the handshake. His teeth, while pristinely white, were not entirely straight. He had to walk across the hardwood floor of the living room to reach Ray. Ray had noticed that he did not remove his shoes before doing so.

“Ray! Man, she’s been talking you up all night!” Seriously? I hate him.

Ray put his hands on his hips and made a show of following Charlotte with his eyes as she walked toward the kitchen. He feigned blindness to Griffin’s gesture as Charlotte’s platform heels clicked around the kitchen.

“Hi, Griffin. So Charlotte, how was the crowd at The Belfry? Typical Friday?”

She shouted something back from the kitchen, but Ray wasn’t listening. He was watching Griffin’s hand lingering in the air. “Oh, well that’s good,” he ventured a response based on the pitch of her voice. The hand still lingered. He stared into the kitchen as though awaiting another response. The hand did not fall. A myriad of clatters, crashes, scrapes, and thuds spilled from the kitchen.

“What’re you doing in there?” Ray asked as he used the convenient excuse to move away from Griffin. As he round the corner he saw her on her tiptoes reaching into the pantry. She had placed several items on the counter beside her: a two-handled bottle of maple syrup, several boxes of crackers, a few cans of olives/beans, and a plastic grocery bag filled with soda cans. Her shirt rode up and exposed her midriff and belly button.

“Do you know what I did with that fifth of whiskey?”

“Hidden. Remember?”

She paused and recoiled.

“Ray...” she sighed.

“A special event. That’s what you said.”

“I like him. I think this qualifies.”

“I disagree.”

They locked eyes for a moment. Sweat was accumulating on Ray’s forehead, and his lower back was urging him to sit back down. The grating pain in his left need concurred with the proposal. He felt the steady progress of a sweat droplet journeying from the back of his head to the middle of his back.

“It’s always so hot in here.”

“Give me the damned bottle, Ray.”

“No.”

She moved in closer and dropped to a playful, sultry tone. “I’ll suck your fucking dick.”

“You’re already drunk.”

Charlotte laughed. “You’re so jealous!”

“It’s not…it’s not that.”

She smiled and stared him down, incredulous. She was beautiful, even more so than when they first met. She was growing, overcoming, elevating beyond Ray’s reach. It was a natural and near-effortless beauty. She had straight, brown hair that never showed signs of greasiness or unkemptness. Her makeup was always understated and tasteful. She’d apply a thin bit of eyeliner and smoothed targeted areas of her skin with a near-invisible layer of foundation, but any other beautification efforts were stealthy enough to escape Ray’s notice. The face that had seemed prematurely sunken and aged a few short years ago now possessed a cherubic plumpness with rounded cheeks accentuating the brown-eyed sparkle of her smile. It took exactly one time of him mentioning her weight gain in a positive light (she did, in fact, look much healthier and more attractive to Ray) for Ray to understand he must never mention it again. Her sulking had lasted several days and he wasn’t entirely sure that her self-esteem had yet recovered.

Ray winced as a spasm shot through his lower back. Charlotte’s expression turned to concern.

“You ok?”

“Yeah. My back.”

“You ok with…” Charlotte gestured vaguely toward the living room where they had left Griffin.

For a moment Ray believed he could end the nightmare. He imagined that he need only tell her of his great pain and she’d send Griffin back to whatever upper middle class, healthy suburbia he came from, somewhere the children all played sports and socialized normally and progressed from promising child to promising student to promising young professional to successful recipient of nepotism. Against his will, tears blurred his vision.

“No.” He exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding and fought a lip quiver as those big brown eyes studied him.

“Well Ray I can’t just-“

“I know, I know.” His voice broke. “You’re fine. You need…I want you to be happy.

“Give him a chance, Ray. I think you’ll like him.”

Ray wiped his eyes and regained his composure. “Nah. I think you’ll come around eventually.”

“I told you, you’re breaking your own heart. I’m not made to be loved. He’ll be gone before you know it.”

Her grey, woolen, double breasted overcoat brushed his arm as she walked past him. She had mentioned before how she could no longer button it, but it still looked classy and elegant on her. He followed her back into the living room and saw her take the first few steps up the stairs to the second floor near the front door. She poked her head down between the railing and ceiling.

“You boys will have to entertain each other for a minute. I wasn’t expecting to bring anyone home tonight.” She then disappeared up the stairs.

Sweat had accumulated in various crevasses on Ray’s body and the pain in his knees and back had reached a fever pitch. He collapsed into his chair. A sigh escaped him as the familiar curvatures embraced his frame and he pinched the bridge of his nose, feigning a headache, to delay any attempts at conversation. Eventually he broke from the position and Griffin needed no further invitation.

He spoke in a hushed tone, “I appreciate you being so cool about all this. I understand it’s a really awkward and painful position to be in. Charlotte’s right though—we have too much in common not to be friends. “

Ray did not make eye contact. He stared at the staircase where Charlotte had been. He felt helpless, impotent rage rising from his belly. The anger swelled in his lungs, warmed his shoulders, tingled his sinuses like overly carbonated soda. I can’t even hate the man, but that doesn’t make us friends. Would a real man hate him? Punch him? Fight to the death for first dibs on mating rights? Had it been that easy, he would have done it. He would have lifted weights, put in the training hours. If it meant being worshipped the way Griffin would be worshipped that night, Ray would have dedicated himself to physical prowess and would either die or live with the spoils of combat.

But Ray had run through these scenarios already. He had gauged Griffin when he entered the townhome, decided perhaps too optimistically that the battle could be won if he managed to strike hard and strike first and prevent any headshots from landing. There were many scenarios Ray imagined wherein he lost the fight. Most of them did not matter because the outcome was always varying levels of bad. Knocked out and waking up in pain and shame was one of the better ones. Extreme pain and bloody tears as he begged was another potentiality. Losing some teeth, impaired vision for the rest of his life: the costs for failure would be high, but if he won…well, that wouldn’t turn out so well either. Ray imagined only one victory scenario. He would stand over his unconscious enemy feeling the sudden rush of endorphins. Charlotte would come down the stairs, see his handiwork and screech in horror and anger. She’d just hate me. I’d be the man who can’t satisfy her and won’t let anyone else try. There’d be no victory for Ray without changing who he was.

“Good talk.” Griffin broke the uncomfortable silence. It resumed immediately and persisted for several minutes. The cat’s drinking fountain commanded the room with its incessant gurgle punctuated with the tic toc of the Hello Kitty wall clock. Ray closed his eyes to escape the embarrassing tedium of it.

So they sat in silence for what was likely only five minutes but felt closer to ten or fifteen until Charlotte poked her head down again. She summoned Griffin and he shot up, thankful to be fleeing the awkward silence. As he jogged up the stairs she started the obligatory “it’s not normally this messy” spiel. Ray strained his ears to hear any sign of Griffin mentioning his rudeness. Banal niceties, exclamations of dubious excitement at various facets of her bedroom décor: the conversation did not stray from the rote ritual of first-time home hangout etiquette. The door closed and the voices became muffled. Ray cocked his head and strained, but could hear nothing but the muffled tones of their voices. It was a bad game to play in the state he was in. Every time she laughed it seemed to be at his expense. Every silence assumed to be sexually charged whispering. He thought he heard kissing. They were probably whispering about how he was so weird and how he wouldn’t even say anything. The floor groaned from movement and he knew she was prostrating herself before him, member in hand, prepared to insult him in his own home.

“It’s my body, Ray! I don’t care if he takes advantage of me! I’m sorry but his cock is just so good!” She breathes deep and dives in.

“Yeah, man. It’s her body and this is what she wants!” Griffin reaches past her bobbing head to slap her ass and pull her underwear up between the cheeks. She moans with her mouth full.

Ray grunted, pulled himself from his chair, and delicately sauntered back toward the kitchen and down the stairs to his bedroom. Zoobie (named after the pig demon Zhu Bajie) greeted him at the bottom of the stairs. He gave the cat a quick scratch at the base of its tail, sprinkled some kibble in his bowl, walked past the furnace and stepped through the sheets that divided his bedroom from the utility area. Sanctuary. He flung off his shirt and pants to disparate corners of his domicile and flopped onto the bed. It struck him in that moment how much he loved that basement bedroom, and how much it would sting if his knees gave out and he couldn’t take the stairs anymore.

It had already become burdensome to make the climb and he’d started planning trips to make more efficient use of the great effort, but it’d take more than his morbid obesity to dissuade him from his sanctuary. Even the fact that his basement bedroom was technically illegal due to a lack of emergency egress windows did little to diminish his enthusiasm. His favorite features? It was hard to say, but he certainly enjoyed how the furnace and AC unit covered any noises he might not want his roommate to hear. Furthermore it was a delight when, in the midst of a heat wave that would have otherwise caused him to sweat and sleep fitfully, he remained damp and cool and well-rested in the summer months. It was a place to escape and guard against the assaults of everyday life, a place to seek pleasure unrestrained; a place unnoticed enough for a person to thrive.

He leaned over to his nightstand and grabbed the VR headset, navigated to his favorites bar in the browser and selected “Dopple VR”. A notification flashed: Charlotte is live now. Would you like to access the livestream? No. Ray accessed the menu and tapped the option for “Lothario” reflexively agreeing to the 18+ agreement to view adult material. He began by creating a new custom character.

Accessing Charlotte’s eyelink archive. Would you like to use face and body of Griffin from Charlotte’s livelink from 2 hours ago? Creating similar amalgam. Is this suitable? Randomizing nose and skin tone. Are these changes acceptable? Please proceed to scenario generation. Would you like to use one of your preset scenarios? Applying characters to scenario “defeated and humiliated heroine”.

The video began like it normally did. An AI generated amalgamation made to appear similar to Charlotte was dressed as a super heroine and swooped down from the sky to walk into the lair of an evil overlord. Inside she’d fight random amalgamations dressed as henchmen, but would inevitably be defeated by force, or tranquilizer darts, or kryptonite, or some other device. She’d come to in the villains lair. This time it was an amalgamation of Griffin, dressed in a black cloak with gold trim, complete with hood. She started proud and threatening, telling him he’ll never get away with it. Then she started to beg. Finally she started enjoying it and offering to be his slave forever. He watched the whole scenario in voyeur mode using only hand stimulation. He did not reach climax or ejaculation, so he opened the drawer on his night stand and brought out the Reaction Sleeve.

The Reaction Sleeve was a sex toy for men. It stroked the penis to simulate vaginal, oral, or anal intercourse. There were many other similar toys on the market, but the Reaction Sleeve was unique in that it not only reacted to what was happening within the Lothario session (or any other VR sex simulation) to emulate the feeling of whatever was happening, but it also featured an onboard AI that would learn the best techniques to help its owner reach completion. This AI would communicate with the AI that generated the scenarios in Lothario and the results were frequently “game changing” as many reviews had claimed. With one AI watching where his eyes focused and recording his adjustments within scenarios, and another AI measuring blood flow and muscular twitches, the two were able to inform each other and create the ultimate sexual experience. If Lothario and the Reaction Sleeve couldn’t get him off, he might need to see a doctor.

Except, as he fast forwarded, adjusted the camera, called for a henchman to penetrate Amalgam Charlotte from behind, he still could not ejaculate. It normally wasn’t his thing, but he decided to try a POV camera from Griffin’s perspective. It was hot. Amalgam Charlotte had her lips wrapped around his shaft, eyes pleading as the henchman railed her from behind. Still nothing. He tried missionary style with light choking. Still nothing, but getting a bit closer each time, he thought. He tried taking her outfit off, putting it back on, doggy style with only the super heroine gloves and boots on. He seemed to inch closer, but he couldn’t reach the summit. Finally he decided to put the camera on random and let it run. He hoped he might get inspired by a random camera angle or position or something. After a minute he saw something he liked. She was riding him cowgirl style and pinching her nipples. She wore the gloves and boots, panties with a hole ripped in the crotch and a dog collar of glowing kryptonite.

“Yeah, not so tough now, huh? You’re my little super slut now, huh?” Amalgam Griffin shouted amongst other belittling teases. Ray neared completion as the Reaction Sleeve worked masterfully.

“Yes sir, I surrender to you. I’m your super slut slave.” This is it! This is it! Finally!

Then something happened that would set Ray on an uncomfortable path of self-discovery. The random camera change occurred and switched to Amalgam Charlotte’s POV. As Ray approached climax he was riding Amalgam Griffin and gyrating his hips. He looked down at his own soft, beautiful body and at Griffin’s muscular chest and rugged jawline. He was being looked at with a bestial, angry lust. He was well and truly defeated and at his mercy. Griffin grabbed him by the back of the neck, pulled their faces together while he fucked him.

“Cum for your master, worthless super slut. You’ll be my little fuck slave forever once you complete the spell by cumming on my cock!”

Ray did as he was told.