Her cascading hair disappeared behind her shoulders, flames of red that rendered my beating heart small and insignificant to the hotshot businessmen seated at the bar. But from far across the room, she held her gaze steady, focused on my puny figure that failed not to stare back.
“Mindy, that’s a beautiful name,” rolled off my tongue.
A pathetic handshake made my body go limp when the warmth from her palm caused a sudden loss of balance. Or maybe it was the tall suit behind me who elbowed me. No. It was Mindy. She owned me. Every inch of my body belonged to her. Or so I thought.
After a quick chat, we were out of the bar and back at my apartment, but nothing steamy transpired, only stilted, awkward conversation. Could not get a good read on her, but I gathered the sense that she knew everything she needed to know about me.
“I’m interested in you, but I have to leave now” she said.
An abrupt ending to our night conversing on the couch. She jumped up, grabbed her coat, and ran for the door without glancing back at me. Foolishly forgetting to get her phone number, I sulked away at the bar night after night, hoping to catch a glimpse of her. Where I found her three weeks later made me vomit. A hot clothing iron to the face. A kick in the groin.
There she was speaking with a potential customer at their driver-side window. In the dimly lit deserted street, one sleazy man convinced her to hop inside his vehicle for a little business and pleasure transaction. She did this every night, climbing inside a new car, as I watched from a distance behind a bush.
My obsession grew. I had to meet with her again. I pulled my beat-up car to the end of the block. Combed my strands of greasy, blue-collar hair to the right. She approached my window.
“Brett, what are you doing here? You don’t want to be here,” she said.
“Mindy, it’s okay. You don’t have to do this. I thought you liked me, but you took off so quickly that night at my place.”
“Brett, you don’t want any part of me. You should get out of here.”
Her voice drew my face closer to hers. I went for it. Jumped off the ledge and plummeted to the unknown. As our lips touched, my head danced with bliss. A raw moment of passion. She opened the door and climbed inside, sat atop my lap, as the region below my jean zipper stirred.
When I entered her, my skin stretched against my bones. She dug her nails into my arms and clawed away like chalk to a chalkboard. Loud moans and grunts commenced. And then she growled, and the pleasure turned to an unbearable pain.
“Brett, I told you not to stay here. I need… you.”
Cindy’s shoulder skin flapped open as two bristle-haired wings took form, scratching against the interior ceiling of the car. Her mouth widened, revealing an abundance of sharp teeth that grew in size the louder she got. She reached for my head and shook it violently, as any strength I once held vanished.
The windshield exploded, as Cindy wrapped her arms around me and drew me into the air. I passed out immediately but woke up again as she gently placed me on my apartment bed.
“It’s only a matter of time now, Brett. You will soon cease to be you,” she said, before soaring into the night sky.
And she’s right. Since that night, I’ve felt off. I feel like I’m slowly dying. I don’t know what’s going to happen to me. Don’t know what she did to me. What she did to those other men. I sit here and wait for the end.