Mangled Meat by Edward Lee Page B

half his beer in one slug, trying to think of small-talk, but a sudden encroacher saved him:
    “Hi, guys!”
    An unseen arm was around him, and what felt like a very firm and very large breast pressed against his back.
    “Hi, Therese,” Carol said.
    Flood turned to face a stunning, bright-eyed girl with ember-red hair cut like a flyer’s cap. Breasts even larger and more gravity-defying than Carol’s gaped back at Flood, jutting from a spritey, lissome pixie. A see-through white sarong and veil flowed off her hips and shoulders—a sun-ghost. Her skin, eyes, and smile radiated a cast of perfect health and vitality. Sure as hell doesn’t look like the prescription-dope junkie Leon was talking about, Flood surmised. She leaned over and gave Carol a peck on the cheek.
    “Therese, this is my friend, Jake. He saved me from the grossest scumbag earlier—yeck! You should’ve seen this guy. But Jake whipped his ass.”
    “Defender of Women!” Therese exclaimed, then it was Jake’s cheek that got pecked.
    This is fucking killing me, Flood thought.
    Therese was petite and short, and would’ve been shorter were it not for the heavily-soled beach sandals that elevated her. She lowered her face between the two of them, grinned impishly. “So are we doing a threeway, or what? I’m so horny I’m starting to show through my thong! Look, Jake—” and she squeezed next to him and pulled her thong down beneath the bartop. Flood’s eyes roved down the flat belly to see that what she revealed: an adorable little toy of a pussy, dusted by the lightest red fur. The meticulous cleft below glistened.
    “She’s such a bad girl, Jake—and I mean sometimes she’s really bad,” Carol giggled. Then, to Therese: “Put that away!”
    Both girls laughed; Therese repositioned the thong, then patted the adhesive triangle of fabric.
    Flood ordered another round of drinks, testicles tingly. Yes. This is definitely fucking killing me...
    “Jake and I just did some business,” Carol sort of lied. “Now we’re just talking.”
    “Oh. That’s cool. Sorry I missed the fun. Maybe next time?” She gave Flood’s tortured crotch a finger-tickling squeeze.
    “Sure,” Flood answered and drank more.
    He was grateful that the next few minutes of banter didn’t regard any manner of sex—just enlivened chit-chat. He wasn’t necessarily grateful for Carol’s hand on one thigh and Therese’s on the other. Flood slowly grew erect again, painstakingly so, and at this point—the futility of it all now burying him as if in a hole—he felt as though an abstract bullet had been put through his head. Flood was the diabetic working in the Godiva chocolate factory; the Olympic swimmer standing in the middle of the Sahara Desert. So he drank gluttonously, pretending to listen to the girls’ chat but hoping that enough alcohol would deaden his sexual nerves.
    “Well, I better get going now,” Carol said. “Thanks for everything, Jake. It was great hanging out with you.”
    Flood took a last useless look at the perfect breasts suspended in the big fishnet cups. “Likewise.”
    Therese gave his thigh another squeeze. “Where are you staying, Jake?”
    “The Rosamilia Hotel, just up the beach.”
    Her breasts jiggled flawlessly when she stood up. “Cool. That’s where I’m staying too.”
    “Maybe we’ll run into you before you leave,” Carol offered.
    Flood was done talking, done thinking, and very much done with seeing what he couldn’t have. “That’d be great,” he said for formality. “You girls have a great day.”
    “‘Bye.”
    “‘Bye!”
    Two more pecks on the cheek (and a final insufferable crotch-rub from Therese), and they were off. It was relief from the humiliation that overwhelmed Flood when they left. Their shadows lengthened to sultry jet-black threads as they departed back to the sand.
    His head droned with an arid silence, noise that wasn’t noise. The sound of his soul? Because that’s what his soul felt like