Work in Progress: Part One

Pixie Dust

There was a time you could have convinced me that all there is to life is exactly what we see in front of us.  “As Seen on T.V.,” and advertised to us through the myopic lens of mass media. But if you had even caught a glimpse of what I had seen, well, people might also try to throw you into the psych ward and fast track you to “Level 4” with a “No Return” policy stapled to your forehead. 

Fuck no. You wouldn’t stand a chance. If I had told you this would be the end of the world, I have no doubts you would label me a conspiracy theorist at best and filed me away accordingly. And honestly, that would be the best case scenario.

The visions started after I lost my friend and roommate, Ayanna. They would appear at times just as I was drifting into sleep, other times they would follow me from intense night terrors to taunt me just before the alarm would go off. But that was only the beginning. 

As a matter of fact, let’s just start there shall we? 

In the very beginning, and I mean before the Book of Genesis, before the dinosaurs, hell probably even before the first splat of primordial ooze started collecting itself at the bottom of the ocean, there was definitely something else here. Something that would send your eyeballs exploding right from your skull for fear of having to see such terrors a second time. 

Despite all of that, my story is about a girl. A girl so caring and genuine, who showed me kindness when everyone else on this wet fucking rock would have left me for dead. I know she was only trying to help, but god damn it if I didn’t wish she had just let us all fucking die. 

Anyways, back to the beginning…

I had moved to Harrisonburg six years prior in order to seek a geographical cure for my addiction and other “isms.” And while recovery didn’t exactly stick the first time, or the second or third, I did find the closest thing to stability that I could get. My ability to retain a job drastically improved when I secured a remote position in tech support during the start of the pandemic. Plus, it came with real benefits. 

I would consider myself lucky my last relapse only lasted about a week, and even luckier that it didn’t take me out altogether. Ayanna and I had been roommates for about two years, and while we sometimes hooked up, she was definitely female-preferential. I had noticed she’d been acting strange for a while. She was having severe mood swings, hiding in her room for days on end. Sometimes I could have even sworn she was in there talking to herself. 

Assuming that she had relapsed, I decided to confront her about it. She became extremely defensive and we had a huge fight. She attacked me with a kitchen knife, and I had to restrain her before she finally chilled out. The fight was enough to fuck me up pretty bad, and I’d never put my hands on a woman before. The worst part was the way I found her the next day

Pushing her bedroom door open, I found myself staring at a scene that would haunt me forever. Ayanna hung in the closet, lifeless and still. Her eyes, once full of life, were empty. That damn rope around her neck, it just looked cruel, like it was mocking her pain.

Tears blurred my vision as I fell to my knees next to her. “No, no, no,” I sputtered between sobs. I reached out to touch her, hoping against hope that this was some kind of sick mistake.

I held her in my arms as I cried, and it felt like the world was crumbling around me. Her absence weighed on me, and I couldn’t help but wonder if our fight had been the final straw that sent her over the edge. I blamed myself relentlessly. My sponsor, Phil couldn’t talk me down from a cliff at that point, let alone a relapse.  

I made it all of two weeks inside that apartment, grappling with the haunting image of Ayanna’s lifeless form just across the hall from my bedroom, before I went back out. 

I started at a bar, where I met an eccentric couple, Tiffany and Robert. With my tongue loosened up by the booze, I trauma-dumped everything that had just happened. They seemed to really empathize with my situation, and made it their mission to show me a good time and try to take the shit off of my mind. That night they took me back to their place where we continued to party. It wasn’t long before Robert pulled out a massive bag of what I assumed to be cocaine at first. He busted out a long, fat line on the coffee table. 

The rules of the game were simple, and the goal was to get completely fucked up in a matter of seconds. We each had a tall glass of beer and a shot of whiskey. Whoever finished both first, got the first shot at snorting the whole line. The runner up got what was left, and the last one got what was left from there, and so on. We all took our drinks at once, and Tiffany was the first to finish. She bent over in front of me, and her asshole was only a few inches from my nose behind a bright red g-string. She knelt in front of the table and managed to sniff about a quarter of the line with a straw before it was my turn. 

She plopped down on the couch beside me and passed the straw to my hand. I leaned forward and was able to get about as much as she had before it put me on my ass as well. It was like an out of body experience, something almost spiritual. When I opened my eyes, every detail in the room seemed to take a life of its own as it swirled and danced around like a Van Gogh painting. Every hair stood on end and I could have swore I became aware of every cell in my body. 

When I looked down, they were both kneeling in front of me, passing my cock between both of their mouths. It was so much all at once. I had never done anything remotely sexual with another guy, but it wasn’t something I was completely against either. It was hot as fuck watching them kiss each other while they shared me between themselves. The dopamine that was released in my brain was so intense, I was spinning. 

In the following days that I stayed with them, things started to get really weird. I started to have terrible visions of Ayanna, she would visit me in the quiet when nobody else was around. Sometimes she would be hanging from the ceiling in the corner, taunting me and blaming me for her death. Other nights she would appear in wisps of smoke, as a horrifying specter that would hold me down and force her grotesque body onto me. She took on a perverse, undead version of herself with rotted flesh and gruesome rope burn around her throat. After three nights of that, I couldn’t cope. With each visit, her body became more mutilated, her words more cruel, her voice a crescendo that allowed me no rest. 

The room began to spin, and I found myself in the bathroom, screaming at my own reflection. Ayanna’s twisted form stood behind me in the mirror. 

“Look at me!” She screamed. “You did this to me, Chase!”

“Ayanna, I never meant for any of this to happen,” I pleaded, my voice raw. “I never wanted to lose you. I’m so sorry.” 

“I didn’t deserve to die, Chase! I’m not the one who deserves to be trapped down here. You killed me!” Her shrill voice pierced my eardrums as she continued to taunt me. I couldn’t take any more of her vile words, her cruel grin. 

Her accusations tore at my fucking sanity, and I couldn’t take any more. In a fit of rage, I slammed my fist into the mirror, shattering the glass where her face had been. I could still hear her voice echoing in my mind, and in a moment of desperation I grabbed a shard of the glass, determined to silence her for good. I made my decision, and it was swift and brutal.

Robert was the one who found me in a pool of blood on his bathroom floor. I had made a pretty deep gash from the bottom of my wrist up the inside of my forearm. I bled into the sink before I lost the ability to stand. My arms spread the crimson mess down the front of the cabinets as I collapsed onto the floor. I became lethargic, and I knew my end was near. I had lost nearly all feeling in my body other than that of my slowing pulse pushing the rest of any life out of me. 

Time became a blur as I drifted in and out of consciousness. Sirens wailed in the distance, growing slightly louder with the passing moments. When we arrived at the emergency room, doctors and nurses worked frantically to save me as the fluorescent lights faded to black, and I drifted into nothingness. When I woke up in the hospital, Phil was the only one there. I never saw Tiffany or Robert again, and really didn’t want to. 

Phil took me in, gave me a place to stay for a couple of months. I threw myself into an Intensive Outpatient Program, where my new meds began to bring some sense of stability to my turbulent emotions. Phil only required me to go with him to the Men's NA Group on Sundays. My meds started to help me feel somewhat normal, and through honest stepwork with Phil, I actually started to heal. Once I completed the IOP, he helped me get into a halfway house and back to the rooms. And so, I found myself in recovery once again, taking life one day at a time.

I sat rigid in a faded green, lumpy loveseat at the back of the “Clubhouse,” a community sponsored gathering place for recovering addicts to have our Twelve-Step meetings. It was a small building that was once the fellowship hall of a local church that had burned down nearly two decades prior. 

The room was filled with old couches, loveseats, and other various seating donated from religious groups and local charities. It was a place of sorrow, but also of healing. Cops came through frequently enough, mainly just to say ‘hi’ and grab a free cup of burnt, off-brand coffee. While it did take some getting used to in the beginning, after some time of not carrying drugs or suffering withdrawals, their presence slowly became more tolerable.

The Clubhouse was home to Narcotics Anonymous as well as Alcoholics Anonymous, with each group alternating hours for their meetings. On that particular night, it was a Speaker Meeting for the former. This basically means that the bulk of the hour is dedicated to one person who stands at a podium to tell us their life’s story. How desperation finally dragged them into “the rooms,” and that even though their lives are still miserable, at least they no longer have to use their drug of choice. Then they would just preach for the last fifteen minutes about finding a sponsor to help you work the twelve steps.

One of the old-timers, Elise, was celebrating her twentieth year of sobriety. I had seen her around over the years between relapses when I would venture into the rooms. She introduced her speaker, Raven, who she had apparently been sponsoring for the last two years. A young woman in her mid twenties, she couldn’t have been more than five-foot-three with a small frame and snappy sense of humor. 

Her story was heartbreaking, but in her eyes I could see her passion for life. At three years clean herself, she had turned her life around. She talked about her childhood, growing up with a schizophrenic mother. Her recollection of her mom playing in her own shit as a euphemism for her own insanity in her battle with addiction made me laugh so hard I choked on my coffee. These were the moments that kept me coming back. 

After the meeting everyone slowly made their way outside. I leaned against the side of the building, waiting for the guys from the halfway house to come pick me up and be home by curfew. 

“Hey you. I haven’t seen you around before, this your first time?”

I looked up from my phone to see a petite brunette with piercing black eyes peering up at me. Raven the Addict. “Not exactly,” I chuckled. “Just my first time in a while. I’m Chase by the way.”

“Well it’s great to have you. Keep coming back.” 

“It works if you work it, right?” I laughed nervously, taking a long draw off of my cigarette, but her smile put me at ease almost immediately. 

“So they say. Well I have to get going, Chase. I really hope to see you around.”

“You too,” I responded as I watched her bounce her way across the parking lot to a silver Acura. If nothing else I had to come back, if only to see her again. 

Our connection really started as just quick glances that we snuck from across the room at various groups. Gradually these looks evolved into conversations after the meetings, where we discovered we had more in common than our addictions. Our traumatic pasts translated into a profound understanding of each other, teaching us how to speak with compassion and live with a shared purpose. 

Late-night coffee sessions turned into long walks where we unraveled the layers of our equally unhinged minds. We became pillars of support for each other, navigating the imperfect road to recovery. 

We spent countless nights talking about everything for hours. And I mean everything, from the phone cord my dad strangled me with when I was five, to the puppies her mom drowned, all the way to the poison in our Taco Bell. No topic was off limits, from spirituality to politics. 

“So what do you believe in?” She asked me on a particularly chilly night. Even though she was right next to me on that park bench, I shifted to close the last two inches of distance between us.

“I mean, I’m not sure what I fully believe. Like, a part of me knows there’s something else out there. But in the traditional sense? I can’t really say for sure.” I took a gulp of my chai latte. “What about you?”

“Well for me, it’s like ‘God’ is just this invisible Energy that surrounds us all. It’s a power that we tap into when we experience unconditional love, unbridled joy or a spark of creativity. It’s an impersonal force that gives life meaning, the unbound potential to love fiercely and selflessly.”

My belief until that point was that if a “Higher Power” existed, it did a bang-up job of remaining stoutly indifferent to us. Her philosophies not only made perfect sense to me, but resonated with something deep inside of me. It was like her soul was revealing forgotten truths to my own. 

As our bond deepened over the next several months, so did our physical intimacy. The warmth of her embrace, the scent of her hair, and the fire within her voice– her very essence was a soothing balm to my tortured soul. The first thing I fell in love with was the way her eyes lit up when she got passionate about something.

“All right you two! You ain’t gotta go home, but you gotta get the heck outta here!” The raspy voice of my sponsor cut across the parking lot to where we were standing, finishing our last coffee and laughing about who even knows what. 

“We’re right behind you, Phil!” Raven called back to him. With a nod, he locked up the fellowship hall and proceeded to his car. He pulled out of the parking lot, and with a subtle squeal of his tires he was gone. Raven and I exchanged awkward glances before erupting into thunderous laughter. 

“Alrighty yew two,” Raven mocked his middle-aged, ultra-southern twang.

“That there’s enough foolin’ around!” I followed suit, “Don’t you’uns know there’s drug addicts out here?”

The way she chortled sent me reeling. I never thought I could fall in love with so many things in just one person. She was my favorite person. Her laughter echoed throughout the empty lot as she fell into my arms, snorting and cackling. 

“Woah there!” I teased, pulling her closer to my chest. I breathed her in, and for a moment everything seemed right. 

Her hand fumbled behind her until she found the handle to the back passenger door. She took a seat and gazed up at me; her dark eyes ignited a fire within me. I leaned forward, resting my hand on the roof of the car. 

“Hmm, now which step are we working?” I smirked. 

“Well Phil will probably tell everyone it’s the thirteenth. If I’m not mistaken.” Her cheeks flushed as she quickly unfastened the top three buttons of her blouse. She leaned back onto her elbows. Her legs spread before me, revealing a massive thigh tattoo of some kind of aquatic alien-looking monster thing underneath her floral, knee-length skirt. 

I quickly scanned our surroundings one last time before leaning in close, positioning myself between her thighs. I pulled her left leg up around my waist and couldn’t keep my lips from exploring her. Our tongues wrestled between our mouths, dancing and swirling about. The world around us seemed to do the same. 

I left a trail of kisses from her lips to her cheek, down her neck and to her exposed chest. I had been fucking dying for that moment since we first met. To feel her, to taste her, to have her entirely. I unbuttoned the rest of her shirt, and snatched her lacy bralette down below her tits. I traced the pattern of the mandala sternum tattoo that rested just beneath them.

“Fuck yes, Chase,” she whispered in my ear between gasps. She reached a gentle hand into my pants. “Are you gonna keep this thing all to yourself, or are you gonna fuck me?”

Her words sent a wave of electricity through my body. I had definitely never seen that side of her, but I couldn’t resist the allure. Her eyes bore into me, begging me to ravage her whole body. I could have wrecked her right then and there, but I needed to savor every second. 

And the rest is history. I know you pervs wanted to hear that I destroyed every hole, rammed her head into the car door so many times she was at real risk of concussion, and about the claw marks she left down my back. But I’ll let your imaginations take flight. Nobody got hurt or arrested, and that’s the most important part really. 

On the night that I received my One Year chip of sobriety, I asked Raven to speak. Her story was so similar to mine in so many ways, and through her words and ability to convey her journey in recovery, I knew she would enrapture the room. 

“My name is Raven, and I’m an addict.” She began as we all did, by stating just our first name for anonymity and reducing ourselves to our addiction as some fucked up form of autonomy. It may seem backwards, but somehow it worked. 

“Hi Raven,” the room responded. 

“First and foremost, I want to express my gratitude to this program, the support of my sponsor and network, and the unwavering strength that emanates from every person here. Each one of you, whether you’re a Newcomer or an Old Timer, help me stay clean. As the Literature teaches and I’ve found to be true, ‘we only keep what we have, by giving it away.’ And that’s why I’m here tonight. To give you my honest account of where addiction took me, the lowest of the low. And how this path to recovery may be messy, and it really sucks at times, but it has given me hope and a future. Not to mention, all the free coffee a person could possibly stand.” 

The group chuckled as she led seamlessly into her story. She was able to navigate the dark memories of her childhood with finesse, how her pain translated to addiction. How her addiction translated through toxic relationships. Everything in her life had conspired to create the perfectly flawed creature of beauty that stood up at that podium. 

We left the meeting together that night. At that point I had long secured a sponsor, had worked through all twelve steps and was sponsoring a young man myself. He was a 19 year old kid named Dustin, and a huge fucking pain in my ass. But he kept coming back, and that’s sometimes the best any of us could do. 

“So Chase. I’ve been thinking and I wanted to ask you something.”

“What’s up?” I answered, suddenly feeling extremely anxious.

“What do you think about moving in together? I mean, you’re able to graduate from the home now, and my house has more than enough room as you know. And there’s no pressure, and I’m sure you’d want to run it by Phil first, if it's even something you’d wanna do.”

Raven and I were about 15 minutes from her house when I got a text from Dustin. The words flashed across the top of the screen: “Hey man, I fucked up really bad.” 

“Shit.”

“Oh no. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot. You don’t have to make a decision right away!” Raven said. 

“No it’s not that. Dustin just sent me this message. I think he might have relapsed.”

“Do you want to call your sponsor before you try to handle this? Or what do you want to do?”

I went silent for a moment, but decided to just call Dustin. It rang all the way through and went to voicemail. I tried again. Straight to voicemail. So I tried one last time, and the phone rang twice before going to voicemail again. I could feel my anxiety mounting and Raven could sense it too. 

“Just call Phil. See what he thinks you should do.” 

So that’s precisely what I did. I called him and told him what was going on, or what I knew of the situation anyways. Phil told me that if I really thought it was safe to do so, I should just swing by Dustin’s place and check up on him. Phil gave me explicit instructions to check in with him at least once every thirty minutes, as he would be on standby if anything got out of hand or if authorities needed to be contacted. 

“I’m really sorry. Do you want to go home and wait while I check it out?” 

“What? No way. Dustin’s is on the way to my house, I’ll just take you there and I’ll wait in the car just in case.”

The next 10 minutes of the ride went by in silence until we arrived at his house. It was a mobile home situated in the back of a very questionable trailer park. Even the energy seemed to shift once you entered the desolate gravel road. From the living room window I could see lights flashing, like a giant T.V. was turned on. I took it as a sign that he was home. 

We pulled into his driveway. Raven gave my hand a confident squeeze before I headed towards his door. I had to maneuver around mountains of garbage and old furniture that seemed to be every bit as old as the rundown home they belonged to. I knocked on the door, which apparently wasn’t latched as it opened just a smidge enough for me to peek inside. 

“Ay Dustin! You home man? It’s me, Chase.” I waited a moment to see if he would answer. “If you’re home dude, just say so! I just wanna make sure you’re alright.” I paused again. “Your door is open, I’m coming in okay?”

And this is where shit got really fucking weird. I should have ran from that trailer. I should have barricaded the goddamn door, and made Raven leave. Lock the doors and windows, and just leave! Fuck, I really should have just let my last bender take me the fuck out the year before and spared us all.

The sight before me was unlike anything I had ever seen, and I had done some pretty hard shit in my time. Suspended in the air was a woman, couldn’t have been too far into her forties. The air was a miasma of pungent vapor that assaulted my olfactory receptors, and the stench of rotted meat latched itself to all of my senses. 

The way her red curls and mangled limbs floated around her was unnatural, like wisps of weightless silk. Her eyes shot forth these beams of white light that seemed to possess a life and a will of their own. The lights shone into a gaping portal that swirled on the ceiling above her. 

My entire body froze. I couldn’t believe my eyes and I cursed them for having the audacity to see. From the heart of the portal, inky black tentacles emerged and coiled around her body. Slimy limbs tightened around her and pulsated with energy. 

“I’m so fucking sorry,” a shaky voice broke through the eerie silence. “I didn’t mean to.” The voice pulled me from my trance as I noticed Dustin crouched in the corner of the living room, shaking and crying. 

My body began to tremble uncontrollably. “What the fuck is going on dude?” I screamed. “We need to get out of here!” 

I started for the door when suddenly one of the tendrils reached out with uncanny speed, seizing me by the ankle. “Dustin! Help me!” I yelled as more appendages slithered around me, suffocating me.

“It’s fine Chase,” Dustin spoke, his voice suddenly devoid of any emotion. “They only fuck with chicks dude. Once the Dealer comes to collect, they’ll let us both go, you’ll see.”

The harder I fought to break free, the tighter the appendages gripped me. My vision blurred as I became faintly aware of other figures emerging from the vortex. They may have resembled humans, I’m not too sure, but all I could think about was Raven. And I prayed to fucking God that she was smart enough to stay her ass in the car. 

“It’s fine Chase,” his lethargic voice droned on. “Once we get the Pixie Dust, it’ll all be fine.”

And then everything went black. 

When I opened my eyes, I was blinded by searing light and became acutely aware of the voices of several strangers around me. But there was only one person I desperately needed to hear.

“Oh my God! Chase?” her shrill voice found me over the cacophony of beeping and chattering. “Hey, guys! Chase is up!” 

Raven’s hands cupped my face as she covered me in kisses. I actually started to wonder that maybe I had died and gone to heaven, were it not for the sharp pain that shot through my skull. 

“Babe,” I started. My vision wasn’t completely restored, but she was still as radiant as ever. Even with her hair matted across her sweaty forehead. Even in her favorite, albeit tattered all to shit, green sweater that was easily three sizes too big for her. And even with tears washing mascara down her flushed cheeks. Yeah, I didn’t need eyes to see what was right in front of me. My salvation.

“Damn Raven, let the man breathe!” Phil’s voice cut in as his face slowly came into my scope of focus. “Listen, man, I’m glad you’re alright. Raven’s been keeping a good eye on ya.” His voice deepened as he leaned in a little closer. “But you know and I know there’s some things that you can really only talk about with another fella.” The smell of his chewing tobacco was nauseating and I had to fight the urge to gag. 

“Yeah I hear you, Phil,” I said, finally turning my head to take a gulp of air.

“I’m serious. A man don’t take a beatin’ like that and walk away with just the bruises you can see. You just give me a call when you get home, alright?”

I nodded as my eyes drifted back to Raven.

“I need to just slide in here and get his vitals.” I tore my eyes from Raven to address the scrawny CMA with a blood pressure cuff in his hand. “Chase, buddy, how ya feeling?” 

“I mean, I’m here.”

“Date of birth?”

“09-05-1984,” I responded before he placed the pressure cuff around my arm.

“Looking good,” he said, shining a little flashlight at each of my eyes. “I’m going to let the doctor know you’re awake, and the police will be in sometime today to talk to you about the incident as well.” He patted me a little too firmly on the shoulder before darting off. And then it was just Raven and me. 

“Cops? Babe, I don’t know what cops think they’re gonna be able to do.” I started to ramble as the memories came rushing back in fragments. I lowered my voice, but my words became no less frantic. “That wasn’t a cop situation, Raven. They need to burn that fucking house to the ground. I don’t even know where to fucking begin to tell you what the fuck that was. That was like some full-scale wormhole, alternate dimensions, goddamn glitch in the matrix type of shit.”

“Chase. Slow down, you’re concussed. Dustin attacked you, don’t you remember?” 

“What? No. It wasn’t Dustin. It was,” I paused for a moment, trying to find my words. “Well I don’t know what it was. But that little prick was there, hiding in the goddamn corner the whole time.”

“Well, then who did this to you?”

“That's what I’m trying to tell you! It’s not a who, it was a what.”

“You’re not making any sense. What, you mean like an animal?” I could see the panic rising in her eyes. I couldn’t explain it any better than she could understand it. 

“I mean, maybe?” My words began to catch in my throat. “Yeah, it had to have been. I’m having a hard time making sense of it myself. Where’s Dustin?”

“He’s been detained in County pending trial. They’re going after him on felony charges. If you say it was an animal, you need to tell the police before they put him away.”

“I don’t know what the hell it was, or if Dustin was involved. I don’t fucking KNOW!” I gripped the sheets at my sides and tried to steady my breathing. 

“It’s okay, Chase. If you can’t remember, then you just can’t. Nobody is forcing you to remember everything right now.” Her tone became calm and soothing, easing me into a peaceful state. 

Sure enough, two cops arrived within just a couple of hours. One stood tall, with dark hair and chiseled features. The other couldn’t have been more than five-foot-eight, with a bad attitude and a thick Freddie Mercury mustache where his upper lip should have been. 

After going in circles about whether it was Dustin or an animal that attacked me, the conversation got me no closer to figuring out what the hell I saw, or what happened to me. One of the officers, an older Indigenous American with long black hair braided down his back, stepped forward with a picture. 

“Do you recognize this woman?” He extended a photo of a woman with curly, shoulder-length red hair. I barely recognized her alive, let alone smiling. 

“Um,” I said, wincing. “I’m not sure.” My chest tightened as everything in me fought the urge to tell them that, YES! She was fucking there, are you kidding me? The broad liked to have opened a goddamn gateway to Hell, now didn’t she?

“Well her blood was found at the scene of whatever happened. This here is Ashlynn Holder, Dustin Holder’s mother.”

No fucking shit. “I’ve never met her. I only really know Dustin through–”

“Yeah, Narcotics Anonymous. You’ve said.” Officer Mustache chimed in from the back.

“Well, you just rest up. Give us a call if you think of anything else. Otherwise, I’m sure we will be in touch.” The first officer dropped Ashlynn’s photo on the table next to me before they both left the room. 

Once again, the room fell silent. I took a moment to just merge with the stillness. Beyond the faint beeping of the monitor to my right, I could hear Raven approaching my side. 

She looked at me with concern as she spoke, “I want to help in any way I can, baby,” she said, grazing her lips across my forehead. “But this situation is getting crazier by the minute. I mean his mom’s blood? What the hell is Dustin into?”

“I need to talk to him. Something about the other night has got to start making some sense.”

My voice started to trail off as she climbed into the cramped hospital bed with me. That was what I really needed. She snuggled comfortably in my arms, her head nuzzling my chest. 

“Are you sure that’s a good idea? Maybe you should–“

“Call Phill, I know. And I will.”

Three days went by that I stayed at Raven’s house. When she wasn’t at her bartending job in the evenings, she was right by my side. Phil, of course, remained just a phone call away, but our conversations never seemed to go the way he thought they should. It was difficult for me to process a situation so mind-bendingly bizarre it made me question my own sanity. All I wanted was some answers.

“Listen, Phil. I’m not even sure it was Dustin that attacked me,” I argued on the phone that night.

“Now I know you say that, but you don’t know if that's just your mind’s way of copin’ with the traumatizin’ nature of such an experience.” He always tried to make himself sound smarter than he was whenever he was trying to get a point across.

“Either way, I have a right to know. You’re my sponsor, and you’re always welcome to offer your opinions and suggestions but at the end of the day I’m going to do whatever I gotta do to find out what the hell happened.” It was right around that time I heard Raven announce her arrival  from the front of the house. “Listen man, I can’t do anything tonight, so just for today, I’m taking your suggestion and I’m not reaching out to Dustin. Have a good night Phil.”

He tried to say something but I abruptly ended the call.

“How was work?” I asked Raven as she brushed her lips across mine. 

“It was alright, nothing particularly spectacular. I did pretty well on tips too,” she responded, dropping her bags and kicking her shoes off in the corner of the bedroom. “Was your night alright? Sounded like you and Phil were kinda getting into it.”

“Just the same old back and forth. I’m fed up with it though, and I’ve made up my mind anyway.” I finished my sentence as I watched her peel off her faux leather leggings and low-cut knitted top. I loved the way she dressed, so simple yet somehow so incredibly sexy. It’s what she always called, “comfy cute.”

She slipped into an oversized t-shirt of mine that she had commandeered and turned into a nightgown for herself. It was thin enough that her pierced nipples always poked through, and just barely long enough to cover the bottom of her ass.

She straddled my lap and placed her arms around my neck. “So you’re gonna talk to Dustin then?”

“Mhm,” I responded, resting my head on her chest as my arms tightened around her waist.

“So, in the spirit of decision-making,” she started, playfully tugging my head back with a loose fistful of hair. “Have you thought any more about what we were talking about in the car the other night? I know you’re going through a lot right now, but I wanted to just make sure you didn't forget. And I’m not rushing you, I just wanted to bring it up because–”

“I’d love to live together, Rav.” I interrupted her nervous chatter. 

“Really?” Her eyes seemed to sparkle. 

“I mean if you’re sure you want to, I’m sure too.”

She let go of my hair and leaned forward to kiss my forehead. 

“But there’s something I need to tell you, first. And I need you to try to be as understanding as you possibly can and please try not to get mad at me. This is super serious.”

Her expression hardened as she raised an eyebrow at me. “Okay?”

“Alright, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but,” I drew a deep breath before I continued. “You smell like a fraternity house after a little too much Friday night,” I laughed.

She slapped my chest and jumped off of my lap. “You fucking suck!” She giggled. “So that’s the super serious thing you needed to tell me? That I stink?” She made a comically dramatic display by ripping the t-shirt nightgown off and storming into the bathroom across the hallway. The squeak of the bathtub faucet made its way to my ears, followed by the spraying of the shower just before she popped her head back in. “Would you care to join me to make sure I meet the adequate standard for you, my love?” She asked sarcastically.

I was already up and removing my own shirt when I responded, “I mean I’m never above overseeing quality control of the goods.” 

I slapped her ass as we each stepped into the shower, and she shot me a sultry glance. The steam enveloped us as I cupped her face and pressed my lips tightly against hers. Droplets of hot water fought their way between our lips, my hand traced a line down her jaw. 

I took her hands, and gently raised them above her head and gave her a taunting look. She closed her eyes and smiled as I abruptly dropped them and grabbed my soap from the shower caddy just behind her. 

“I swear to God, I hate you,” she laughed, and turned to grab her shampoo. “Seriously though,” she continued as she lathered up her hair. “I guess first we need to talk to Phil about you moving in with me. I mean, we’ve been dating for almost a year now. You’ve been clean for over a year.”

“It won’t be a problem, babe. I’ll talk to him about it after I handle this crap with Dustin.”