Page 22 of The Ripper

I hoped his balls still hurt.

Boy, I knew how to pick them.

I dragged my ass out of bed at five in the morning, even though I’d only slept for four hours, thinking I should have smoked more weed before calling it quits. Maybe that would have kept me sedated longer and I could have actually had a nice six hours of shuteye.

As I dragged my legs across the floor to the bathroom, I felt the wetness sliding down my thighs and groaned in frustration as I remembered my dream.

It was the same every night: I got on the plane to Chicago and met a scary tattooed guy again. I only called him that because I didn’t know his name. We would talk, or rather, I would talk, and he would listen. Then, the dream always ended with me pinned against the airplane’s bathroom sink and his massive body between my legs.

To add frustration to the mix, I always woke up in the middle of the night just before I could fall over the edge, wet and craving more or the rush his imaginary touch gave me.

Then, to make matters worse, when I would fall back asleep, I would dream of the guy in the Grim Reaper costume from that one Halloween party I attended, and while his dream wasn’t sexual in nature, it still aroused me.

I was obsessed with two unknown men. One with a mask and his words tattooed on my skin, and one with a face, whom I had clung to when I thought that stupid plane was going to fall out of the sky, whom I had dreamed about ever since I saw him nine years ago.

There weren’t any words to describe what it felt like to see him on that plane, because ever since I stepped foot in the United States, the guy I saw across from me at luggage pick-up had been a constant thought in my head. An itch I couldn’t scratch, he’d become a growing obsession ever since he had comforted me when I had been scared of turbulence.

Standing naked in front of the mirror, I rubbed my thighs together to try and release some of the frustrating pressure in my womb, and I brushed my teeth as my eyes fell on the vibrator on the counter.

I plugged it in last night, having drained the battery a few days before my twenty-four-hour shift.

Yes, still a virgin, and not a fun one, but not for lack of actively trying to get rid of it.

During high school, I had been the girl that everyone avoided due to my family, and in college I only cared about my classes. The only moment when I didn’t think about studies was when I’d danced with him.

I promised myself that I would start dating as soon as I got a job, and I did. In the last three years of my life, I dated countless men, but somehow, they all had unforgivable flaws. Flaws I wouldn’t have known about if I didn’t have a shadow to open my eyes.

Sometimes I wished I was one of those girls who could just go to a club and pick up a guy, fall into bed with him, let him take my virginity and then leave without any feelings of guilt or shame involved.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t one of those girls.

I fell into the other category, of the girls who dated to marry, of the ones who wanted their first time to be with a man they loved and who loved them.

The Grim Reaper and scary tattooed guy both had the potential to be a man I would have fallen in love with, but I left one of them behind to tend to my roommate and never saw him again, and the other disappeared after the plane landed without even saying goodbye.

Two chances, blown to pieces.

I unplugged the vibrator and got in the shower, allowing the water to engulf me as I turned the toy on. It was a wand, because I was afraid of putting anything inside me, including my own fingers.

I wondered how I would get over that when an actual penis would be involved. But then again, I would probably die a virgin cat lady.

Even scarier than my irrational fear of penetration was the fact that I couldn’t have an orgasm without imagining one of the mysterious men in my dreams, or sometimes even both of them. I would visualize their hands touching me, those tattooed fingers digging into my hair, their impressive bodies pinning me to the bed.

It almost felt like I missed my chance at love because I was too shy to ask for their numbers.

After coming with both of them in mind for the millionth time, I washed up and got out of the shower, then went into the kitchen and put the coffee on, leaning against the island as I waited, and closed my eyes, seeing scary tattooed guy’s face again.

He had black hair that was short on the sides and slightly longer on top, reminiscent of a crew cut, making me wonder if he had a military background. I remembered his thick, dark eyebrows, drawn together in a scowl, which had caused a few wrinkles to form between them. Light blue eyes, the color of globe thistles. A straight nose stained with a linear scar that hadn’t healed properly. Those full, slightly chapped light pink lips that I imagined everywhere on me. And that prominent jawline that I wanted to bite.

He was wearing black suit pants and a black polo T-shirt that day, complemented by a pair of black leather shoes. He wore no jewelry, not even a watch, because his tattoos were accessory enough, crawling up his neck, all the way to his chin.

I could still remember how his skin felt when I sank my nails into it.

Hot, soft… alive.

I could still remember the rasp in his thick, almost commanding voice as he told me to breathe, and most of all, I could still remember the laugh that escaped him when I told him the story of how I spilled red wine all over my white graduation dress, how clear and honest it was, almost as if he hadn’t laughed like that in years.

When the smell of coffee started filling the air, I snapped out of my trance and sighed, thinking that I would never see him again, anyway.

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