fiction #6

            He calculated the figures in his head in the most crude mathematics, nineteen dollars and ninety-five cents a month, almost two hundred and forty dollars a year, this subscription had better be worth it.  He could think of countless other ways of spending his parents’ credit limit, but in some fit of boredom and 3 a.m. libido he had purchased a year’s subscription of Internet pornography. This one seemed to promise a good time; amateurs, just-turned-eighteens, streaming video, but none of this was new to him now, just the magic words used by businessmen selling sex instead of toothpaste or hamburgers. Nevertheless, the fees had been charged and he intended to get his money’s worth. A Webcam strip-show sounded enticing.

            As he sat up in bed waiting for the connection to load, he wondered if these shows were indeed real. The girls on the other side of this glowing window, removing their clothes and doing God-knows-what as countless men masturbated furiously on the other side. He wondered where they were, if they really were from Russia or Brazil or wherever they claimed to be from. He wondered if they were having fun. What they needed the money for.  The connection loaded, and his eyes returned to the screen. It was in a bedroom, much smaller than his own and lit brighter than any normal bedroom should. What might have been deep purple walls in the background looked brown and dull on screen, like a bruise.

            He recognized her right away, as if she were familiar smell. A generic kind of pretty, the way she’d always been, and the way she’d been delicately made up only seemed to emphasize that. She was also much older than was advertised. He watched as she shifted on the bed, flashing coquettish smiles, waiting for commands. He remembered how she’d been only a few years ago, how she used to walk so confidently, how she carried her all her books in just one hand. They had never spoken, and though he’d tried to catch her gaze before, she always seemed elsewhere. Now, in this small window, she stared at him. Someone had asked her to remove her top, and he watched as she fumbled it loose. He contemplated writing something, her name, maybe his, maybe she’d remember. But he didn’t. She removed her pants. He watched.

Guy sitting in bed,  laptop glow under, yellow kicker light above/behind, dark all around