Jack’s Devil #1: !

By Benji Bright

For more of my work find me at the following places: Website (The Erotic Ledger), Email: Benjibright at gmail dot com, Twitter (benji_bright)

I work at the Sandwich Collective on Brewer and State. I’m sure you’ve passed it: all organic, a penchant for local sourcing, full of comfortably androgynous indie band members. Maybe you’ve seen me behind the counter: brown hair, full sleeve of colorful tattoos spaced just enough to let a little skin peek through, nice smile if I can throw myself a bone. I used to work weekday mornings so that I had time to write music and do open mics, then I realized that landlords expect to be paid every month and so I started working weekends too.

Melanie, my boss, says I’m “a poet’s soul with a sheep’s constitution” and somehow it’s not an insult. Not entirely. I’m what you might call a sensitive sort, if you were playing Taboo and couldn’t say pushover. Melanie’s not the only one with big opinions, Sid has a lot to say as well.

“You should cut her tongue out of her head and put tassels on it.” Sid remarks while I put the finishing touches on a Triple Satan Special: Habaneros, poblanos, and cubanelles over pepper-cured ham, chicken breast, and turkey. It’s a little gratuitous as sandwiches go, but it’s a top seller. And Sid? He’s my devil.

“I’d rather not,” I say under my breath, and put the spicy mayo on the sandwich then wrap it up. Melanie doesn’t even look at me as she cashes out the customer and hands him the finished sandwich. She’s used to me talking to myself while I work. She calls me a “maniac in dire need of diagnosis.” She’s just full of dazzling bon mots.

I can feel Sid kind of shrug at my reply, and follows with, “Your loss, loser.”

Twenty minutes pass uneventfully. Twenty blissful minutes of mind-numbing work. Twenty minutes of relative freedom. Then the first pang goes through my stomach. Like a warning shot.

“No.” I don’t even say the word, I just make the shape of it with my mouth.

“Yes,” Sid says. “Sorry, J. I know sandwich making is very stimulating for you, but I require a little more.”

“Wait,” I whisper. Melanie doesn’t look over, maybe she didn’t hear. Another pang, not painful, but not pleasurable either. Not yet.

“No.” Another pang. Pleasurable this time.

My forehead pushes out some sweat and my t-shirt starts sticking to my underarms. I don’t know how long I have, but I know that it’s not long.

“Mel, I’m gonna’ hit the bathroom before the lunch rush.” I try to keep my voice even.

“Go then, peon! Don’t plague me with your petty urinary concerns!” she orates. Melanie used to be a theatre geek before she became a business owner and single mom, there are still some obvious flourishes there. Sid says something nasty about her that I miss. He hates her for some reason, but she’s a great boss and I’ve seen her finish a bottle of tequila single-handed. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a goddess in ballet flats.

I hang up my apron and head back through the kitchen to one of the two staff bathrooms. The first one is occupied. I swear aloud. Another pang, more sweat, and now I’m a little hunched over. “You ok?” someone asks. “Just fine.” I’m not. The other bathroom is open, thank god, so I go in and lock myself inside.

I switch the light and when it flickers on I see my face. Pale, sweaty, and my eyes are bloodshot behind my glasses. I carefully unzip my jeans and reach into them. As soon as my fingers brush my cock, I start to feel better. The urgency of my heartbeat turns into a soothing thrum. I look back into the mirror and my eyes are normal. The pangs in my stomach start racing through my dick. It’s like a steady current running just under the skin of my uncircumcised cock. Somewhere, Sid is smiling, having successfully corralled me into bad behavior yet again. I should be working, not beating my meat, but I don’t have much of a say in the matter, I learned that a while ago.

The first time I’d ever felt it, before I’d even heard Sid’s voice was during a French class in high school. Our awful instructor had us copy vocabulary words from a dictionary while he played Edith Piaf records. Super educational.

I felt the pang, not painful exactly, but attention-getting. I thought it was hunger so I tried to wait it out. But it just kept coming and slowly, slowly, it started changing, moving from my stomach to…lower. I asked to go to the bathroom and the instructor waved me to the door without even looking up from his crossword. I got up and went out to the hall, already hard as fuck under my khaki uniform pants. I was almost to the bathroom, just a few feet away, when my dick figured it’d had enough. I started cumming right there in the hallway; huge shots of jizz splashed through my underwear and down the leg of my khakis. I had to lean against a wall to prop myself up while the orgasm battered me. I’d been jerking off for years, but I’d never had one so strong or so sudden or even as long. I made it into the bathroom with my cock still pulsing. Though the stream had fallen to a dribble, my pants were very obviously ruined. I had to take off my collared shirt and wrap it around my waist then flee out of the back exit of the school. I got chewed out by my principal for delinquency and my French instructor never let me go to the bathroom again, but I learned a valuable lesson about those pangs: don’t fucking ignore them.

So now here I am in the bathroom during the middle of my shift, stroking my dick and watching my eyes flutter half-closed in the mirror. I can feel Sid in my blood, his whispers are half-there, but I can almost taste his hunger in the way my mouth goes dry. My hand feels like someone else’s hand pulling back the skin, smoothing a fat droplet into the head. I shiver slightly and run my hand down to the base of it. I thought I was fully hard before, but its still growing, longer than usual. I thought it was an illusion at first how it seemed to get bigger when the pangs arrive, but I’ve measured it since (in the name of scientific observation) and it definitely does get longer and fatter. It’s like it’s possessed, which, I guess, it is.

There’s a heaviness in my head like I’ve just done a fuckload of poppers and my heart is beating loudly in my ears. Every time I look down at my dick I get a weird sort of vertigo, like I’m falling toward something that I might not get back from, so instead I just stare into the mirror into my own half-focused eyes. It’s carrying me, the feeling going through my cock. It’s carrying me toward something my heart recognizes because it speeds up until I’m scared I’ll faint. I try to get a handle on my breathing and fail.

It’s like being on a rollercoaster right before the drop when your body realizes it’s been tricked. But it’s too late to back away. You’re already falling.

The first shot hits the side of the sink. The second hits the ceiling. The third arcs up to my shirt and the fourth gets me in the chin. It keeps going and I feel…imagine the best orgasm you’ve ever had occurring simultaneously with the second best orgasm you’ve ever had and the third and the fourth. Every shot leaves me feeling satisfied and wrung out all over again. My mind isn’t even conscious enough to want it to end. I feel like I’m drowning, but I don’t even mind.

When its over it’s not over at once. There’s a significant come down as my brain systems come back online one by one. First up is breathing, then I stand up straight from the semi-staggered posture I’ve taken, then my thoughts start to kick in: the first of which is—fuck, I have to clean this up now. The next thought is that Sid is conspicuously silent. He’s left me, once again, holding a bag full of fuck.

It takes about seven minutes to get all of the traces of jizz off of me and out of the bathroom, but I manage to clean everything up and head back to work. Melanie doesn’t comment on my longer-than-usual bathroom break and I’m grateful for it. She probably does notice that the next time someone orders the Triple Satan, I wince and mutter something uncivil under my breath.

The End (Until Next Time)