Archive-name: jessica

From: potbelly@ix.netcom.com (Pot Belly)

Subject: Jessica (a bizarre story, fetishes, violence. But perhaps appealing to some)

Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories

Wise women say that true beauty has more in common with ugliness than it does with being cute or pretty. Jessica proved this: she was truly ugly, and the effect was much like beauty. Her features were striking: Her nose was a long, slim beak, much too big for her head. Her chin faded back from her lower lip, and her watery grey-green eyes bulged from pale sockets. At 33, Jessica wore her ugliness with a shrug. She spared it from make-up and distractions of coiffure; her light brown hair fell straight and unteased to her shoulders. When she reached up to pull a lick of it from her eyes, there was no glamour in the gesture, just big hands and close-cropped, unvarnished fingernails.
And she gladly dispensed with sweetness, too. She gave off a Dorothy Parker perfume. She had a sarcastic tongue and a sardonic wit, and she let them play, especially before her periods, which were wretched and crampy, or during illness, and she was always fighting off one cold or another.

When a man meets a beautiful woman, she takes his breath away. At subsequent meetings he noticed her flaws. With Jessica, a mans first impression was of a tall, gawky girl, stunningly unattractive. But subtle second glances revealed fine shapely calves, say, or pleasant plump little breasts (one a bit lower than the other), or a long curve of white throat that invited a test of its erotic sensitivity to fingertip or tongue. When Jessica laughed, it usually came out a droll "tsssch." But on the rare occasions when something really hit her funny bone, she threw her head back for a husky belly-laugh that turned men's heads. But they were the sensitive thoughtful type of men. She knew she could shred them at a swipe. She needed someone strong and simple to lose herself against, but she had never found him.

In the insurance office, Jessica shared a cubicle with Laura and the two women had become fast friends. Laura was a small, voluptuous woman with shapely hips and small breasts and startling hair that cascaded down her back, thick as wheat, in every color from blond to red to white. Together they created an energy that each lacked alone. Laura could be flighty and Jessica moody, but their positive and negative shot sparks when they met. Laura was immune to Jess's needling, and if you got beyond that, Jessica was a good, reliable friend. She defended Laura from the office gossips. And Laura needed defending; she was happily married, but she was an outrageous flirt. She wanted to match Jessica up with a man so they could do things as couples. And, though she didn't admit this, guiding Jess into romances offered Laura a vicarious taste of a serious game of flirt and allure, a blood-sport she had not played since she met her husband.

Though they were technically equals, Jessica moved through the office with an authority that Laura never would have. Jessica was working in the town she had grown up in, while Laura was a farm girl out of Kentucky who had come east for college and stayed. In fact, that was their first point of contact: they had gone to the same college. They werefive years apart, so their paths has not crossed there, but their reunions would. Jess's 10th and Laura's fifth would fall on the third weekend of the coming June. Laura's husband would be away on business.
Jessica hadn't planned to attend, but Laura pleaded with her to go.

Laura made it sound like a wonderful adventure: There would be parties and dances and maybe a second chance at some of the boys who had passed Jessica by in her college years. They'd be older and wiser now, more sensitive to her charms. Maybe they'd snub her again Jessica thought. But she agreed to drive up with Laura. The younger woman's bright glow stirred the pale seeds of hope that lingered in Jessica's heart.

Of course, even after she agreed to attend, Jessica still drummed up reasons why she shouldn't go. Finally she hit on a good one: Nothing in Jessica's wardrobe of peasant dresses and flats, jeans skirts, sweat pants and turtlenecks was posh enough for the round of parties that would take place over the weekend.

"Thats OK," Laura said. "Its an excuse to hit the mall together."

One store had racks of dresses. They came out of that one with two in the bag, both picked by Laura over Jessica's objection: a very short black sheath and a tight red party dress embroidered with scrolling lines of silk. "I look like Suzy Wong," Jessica whined when she saw herself in it. "I look like the receptionist at a Chinese whorehouse. Can't I just wear sweats and sneakers?"

"No, you can't," Laura scolded.

They would need one more outfit. "I know just the thing," Laura said. "I saw it in Canadians." Jessica rolled her eyes but followed her friend across the mall. A few minutes later, Jessica emerged from the dressing room of Canadians, a little red in the face, and moved cautiously toward a full-length mirror. She stood in front of it and gagged back a laugh.

"Tsssch. Yeah, right," she exhaled.

The skin-tight brown velvet slacks snuggled down low on her hip bones, lashed to her pelvis by a thick black belt. A tiny cropped T-shirt floated high above, just below her breasts, like a little sail seeking a high wind. Her red, oblong navel blinked in her pale belly, unused to the exposure. Jess reached up and flipped her hair back off her shoulders.
She spun sideways and touched her hand to her bare belly, keeping both eyes on the mirror.

"Its fabulous; you're getting it," Laura said. "Its a hot look. Look at everyone working here."

"Yeah, and they're all about 17," Jessica said. "Are you going to dress this way, too?"

"I don't know. I'm getting a little soft for the belly-button thing," Laura replied.

"Oh, no you don't. I'm not doing this unless you do, too."

"Well, I could .... Theres this one outfit I've been lusting after."

"You've been lusting after everything you made me buy today," Jessica replied. Laura tried on her outfit while Jessica changed back into her street clothes. Laura had chosen a soft, white skirt, long, loose linen that shifted and billowed with the roll of her hips. She added a mohair top, tan, long-sleeved but cropped beneath her breasts. They rang up their purchases and walked out into the mall, toting big paper bags full of clothing.

"As long as you stay close to me with a baseball bat to beat off the horny married bastards," Jessica sighed. "I still cant believe I'm letting you talk me into this." They passed the Piercing Pagoda, a white shack in the middle of a mall aisle.

"Hey, Jess; why dont we get our belly-buttons pierced while were here?" Laura said.

"Laura!"

"Just kidding," the blond laughed.

On the hour-long drive up to the old school on Friday afternoon, Laura drove and Jess paid the tolls. They talked of their college days, which were identical in only one detail: neither woman had been socially active. Laura's excuse was a hometown boyfriend. Jessica had no excuse.

"I've never done anything," Jessica said. "Never even been close to engaged and my middle sister is married and my youngest has a steady guy. Where was that line that I crossed without knowing it? That spinster line, the point of no return. Or am I going to cross it tomorrow, or next week."

"There's no such thing," Laura said. "You just haven't met the right guy yet. You'll see. You'll meet somebody great and be glad you waited. Maybe this weekend."

"But I won't," Jess lamented. "Im fighting statistics and chances and numbers and they're all stacked against me. It's in every newspaper and women's mag that I pick up. You can't fight the numbers. All I can do is deny them. I have enough money to buy a house, but you know why I don't do it? Because it would commit me to being single. And when you get right down to it, my life is pretty darn comfortable right now. I wonder if I could make room for a guy unless I was totally head-over-heels. And thats just not going to happen. Otherwise, where would I put a guy? I'd have to throw stuff out. It's like extra furniture."

"Oh, you make me laugh," Laura said. "Youre not that pathtic."

"I had one fling my semester abroad in Florence. I had an unrequited crush on my first boss that was a disaster. I had one dull sap of a high school boyfriend who now works landscape. And one frustrating courtship with the jerk in claims who went with me to all my friends weddings after college and got drunk off his ass at every one and ranted about how much he hated marriage and ho, boy, you'd never catch him up at the altar, etcetera, etcetera."

They pulled off the Turnpike and drove through the little college town, calling out the names of landmarks they hadn't seen or thought of for years. They picked up keys at the student union and checked into their dorm room. Jessica felt 19 again. The sense of inadequacy that she had managed to carefully silt over during the past 10 years of professional life stood up and stretched and brushed off the sand. She felt awkwardness in her throat. Her muscles seemed to constrict, her shoulders to narrow. It didn't help that Laura met three old friends on the walk to the dorm and Jessica saw no one she knew.

During the rest of the day they visited old dorm rooms and mailboxes. Jessica's palms were moist and every word that came to her lips when greeting former friends seemed all wrong. Embarrassing incidents that Jess had forgotten flared again like malaria. The social rooms made her think of the crush parties her floor had thrown, and how the boys she had written anonymous invitations to had never showed, or had left with other girls or left alone after they figured out who had invited them. The sororities she had rushed and been rejected by were out in force at the reunion, dressed in their colors and singing their songs. At night, Jess and Laura cruised the parties, where people picked up right where they had left off when the lights came up on the last bash before graduation. Jessica found the men as insufferable as they had been 10 years before, only fatter and balder now. The guys in Laura's class still looked like kids to her.

They wore their midriff outfits on the last night. Jessica kept tugging her clothes, unconsciously trying to make the shirt meet the pants. It was hopeless. In the ladies' room Laura kept adjusting them the other way. "Show it off," she said. "It looks great. All those moms with their baby bellies under those sorority shirts are jealous."

"It's not me," Jessica sighed, leaning on the sink and staring a her big eyes in the mirror. Her belly breathed over the basin. "Why did I wear this thing? Why did I come back here? As soon as I smelled the student union I wanted to gag and I've felt sick ever since."

"You're getting looks from guys."

"Only when I'm standing next to you," Jessica said. "The only guys who talk to me are either married or losers. Or both. Lets go for a walk."

They walked slowly over to the academic halls, old limestone buildings clustered around a green lawn. Here at last Jessica didnt feel haunted - no dorms, no frat houses, no sorority social halls. She had done well in classes and been liked by her professors. The buildings were on the town-side of campus. Laura and Jessica talked and walked in the hot night until they reached the campus gate. Laura looked back to the distant lights where the party was still going on.

"Come uptown with me," Jessica said. "Just a few blocks. I feel like we're back in time and I want to find the present again. I want to see if anything has changed."

Not much, it turned out. Jessica laughed and said the clothing store had the same outfits on the window mannequins. Though the college was on the outskirts of town, five blocks brought them to the fountain in the center square.

Jessica felt better. She realized that she had resented Laura all weekend, but now they seemed to be themselves again. They sat down on a bench and listened to the fountain.

"It's good to be out of that time warp," Jessica sighed. "I'm not sure I like sharing my college with you." Out here, though, Jessica felt herself nestling back into her friendship with Laura, like comforting, soft furniture. She felt herself venting some of the acid that was eating her belly. And Laura's confidence and sense of adventure was better than Zanex at easing her nerves.

"Well, this was all a big bust," Jessica said at last. "But thanks for dragging me up here. At least I got to see the place again."

"I'm sorry, Jess," Laura said, touching her friends arm.

"Hey," Jessica said, "I want to see Jitters."

"I've never been inside," Laura said.

"What? You never went to Jitters? Everyone went to Jitters. God, are you sure you went to this school? Its a block from here, on the alley behind the bank. C'mon, I'll show you."

But it wasn't Jitters anymore. The gingerbread trim was gone. The windows were painted black, as was the facade. Silver art deco letters over the door read "BYZANTIUM" and pulse throbs of music leaked out onto the pavement.

"I can't believe it," Jessica shreiked, slapping a parking meter. "I can't believe they changed Jitters. The one place I want to go is the one place that's not here anymore. They turned it into ... I don't know what."

"It looks like the kind of club you find in Greenwich Village," Laura said. "You know, the kind that advertises in the Village Voice? Byzantium. What's that music? I can only hear the beat."

A dark man strode past them, tall, with long loose curls of dark hair. His leather jacket hung to his boots, much too thick for this heat. He nodded at the two women and said, "evening."

"Hi," Laura replied brightly as he walked up to the club. The door swung open and a surge of sound poured out. But there was no music. Just that beat, only loud, full-blast. The door slammed shut and the dark man was gone.

"Now I've got to go in there," Laura said. Her eyes glittered. Before Jessica could say anything Laura grabbed her by the arm and plunged inside.

As soon as the door closed behind them they pulled up with a gasp and looked at each other.

"Woah," Jessica said. "Did we go in the wrong door?" It didn't look like a Byzantium or a Village Voice ad or anything but a hick bar, with country music from a jukebox, a thumping up- tempo number that just might have been the heartthrob beat they had heard from the sidwalk. A bar was to their left, cheap tables and chairs in front of them, a row of booths against the wall to their right and a big parquet dance floor taking up most of the room. There was no sign of the dark man.

"What do you think?" Laura asked. Jessica shrugged.

"We're here. We might as well stay and have a drink. It can't be worse than that overgrown frat party back on campus."

They sat at the bar. Laura, who usually didn't drink, ordered a white wine. The barmaid, a tall young girl with curly hair and tight beady blue eyes, looked at her like she'd never heard of white wine, but she brought a glass. Jessica had a beer, then three more, while Laura sipped her wine. And they talked. Laura began talking of more schemes for fixing Jessica up with one guy or another; they'd start working on it Monday, as soon as they got home. Jess cleverly shot them down and punctured them. She steered the talk around to sex, as she always did when she was horny herself. She had gotten used to the idea of living vicariously, through other women's orgasms.

"I have so many erogenous zones," Laura prattled. "I'm, like, one big turn-on. Breasts, ass, ears, neck. Belly-button - thats a big one. Did I ever tell you?"

"Uh-huh. About how you can climax just by poking yourself there."

"Yes, if I push my finger in my belly-button very hard, especially if I have long nails."

"I even tried it," Jessica said quietly. "Didn't work."

"Maybe your fingernails werent long enough. Thats how I used to give myself orgasms when I was a girl, 7, 8, 9 years old. I remember I discovered it one day when I was poking Magik Markers into my navel."

"Why were you doing that?"

"To color it."

Laura seemed satisfied with that answer, so Jessica didn't pursue it.

"You know I'm half-Lebanese, right? And, like all my aunts were belly-dancers. I used to watch them all the time at parties and weddings and I thought it was so cool.
Thats probably where I got my belly thing. Its like a fetish. Then my mom remarried and we lost touch with that side of the family, but I can still remember the dance moves."

Jessica had shreded two napkins by this time and was working on a third. She occasionally glanced away from her beer glass or Laura's face. The only other people in the bar were a burly redheaded guy who was talking to the barmaid down at the other end and a dim booth that seemed to be full of sullen women about Jessica's age. The last time she looked up, she noticed the room begin to spin a little. And she noticed Laura's story of her family tree was beginning to ramble and unravel.

Suddenly, from nowhere, the hunk reappeared. Or had he been there all the time? In the booth with the redneck women, maybe? His coat was gone and he wore a red flannel lumberjack shirt, tight over firm muscles. He sat down beside the burly guy. They nodded to each other. Laura turned to follow Jessica's suddenly alert stare, and she gasped and clutched Jessica's forearm.

"There he is," she hissed.

"I know, I know. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Go ask him to dance."

"No way! You're nuts."

"Then I'm going to," Laura said, and slid off her stool and walked down the bar.

She held her breath. "She's drunk," she thought. "Only one glass, but she's not used to it." She saw them talk, but the jukebox was charging into another tune, so she couldn't hear. Then the hunk rose from his barstool, and led Laura by the hand out onto the bright dance floor. Her heart jumped. But then she was instantly angry with herself. "So what? So they're dancing. Big deal."

She spun round in her stool and leaned back to watch. The beer had bloated her belly and the belt buckle pressed against it. She watched Laura slip into belly-dance moves, one hand on her hip, the other above her head, fingers curled upward. Jessica laughed and clapped. The hunk hung back a bit, looking like he didn't know what to make of this blonde spitfire. Laura's bare brown belly was curved and soft, and she flourished it in smooth rolling undulations. Jessica thought she had never seen her friend do anything so vulgar and funny.

Jessica was so delighted that she didn't notice the burly bearded man approach her, and so drunk she said "sure" when he asked her for a dance. They joined Laura and the hunk on the parquet, the only couples out there. Jess and Laura ended up more or less dancing with each other. Laura putting on the moves and Jess immitating them and laughing at herself. The barmaid watched, intently.

Both Jessica and Laura knew they were in no condition to trust themselves in conversations with strange men, so they quickly begged off another dance and said they really had to go. Really. Giggling, they spilled out into the street. Jessica looked at the sign again.

"Byzantium. I'll sure remember this place."

"Which way is back?" Laura asked, catching her breath.

"That alley goes back to the square, but this one is the straight line back to campus. We'd better get back." They started down the short-cut to the school.

Before they'd got to the circle of light under the next street lamp, a voice called, "hey!"

They turned and saw the barmaid walking toward them. Neither said anything. Jess felt uneasy. "Did we forget to tip her?"

"No, I left something," Laura said.

"I don't like this," Jessica said. But by then the tall barmaid was with them in the circle of light. As she stepped out of the night they noticed for the first time that she carried an aluminum baseball bat. The four redneck girls emerged into the light after her, all revealed as big-armed blondes. Jessica felt her throat get tight. She heard a little whimper from Laura.

"I don't know who you two are but I don't 'llow no college puke in here and no whores that mess with married guys," the barmaid said.

"Tell that to the guys, then. We dont know who's married," Jessica said. She had meant to be contrite in the face of whatever these women wanted, but this suggestion angered her. Still, when she spoke she heard more fear than defiance in her quivering voice. The rednecks had clustered around them now. Jessica's back was to a brick wall, Laura cowered beside her, and the barmaid stood in front of her, cradling the bat, legs planted wide.

"No, I don't think you unnerstand me." She smelled the sour mash beer on the barmaid's breath. And something told Jess it would be a mistake to try to walk away.

"OK, I'm sorry. Whatever I did that I wasn't supposed to do, I'm sorry."

"No, I don't think you unnerstand me," she said again.

Laura chimed in: "Why don't you just forget it?"

"Shut up, Laur," Jessica hissed.

"All she did was dance with a guy who asked her ..."

"He asked her, huh?" the barmaid turned on Laura. "HE asked HER?"

"Of course he asked her. You don't think she'd ..."

It was as if the barmaid knew the next words out of Laura's mouth and was determined not to hear them. With a hateful grunt she discreetly punched the butt end of the bat into Laura's bare belly.

The hard metal rod smacked the middle of Laura's gut. Her belly-flesh rippled, shaking her soft skirt. Laura uttered "UUUUHH!" and slipped to her knees, graceful as a curtsey, with eyes popping and hands pressed across her violated stomach.

Jessica reached for Laura, but the redneck girls surged in between them, and the barmaid grabbed Jessica and slammed her back against the brick wall. Jessica hit it hard, arms outstretched, felt sharp little jabs in her bare back, and pressed her palms flat against it for balance. She arched her back because it hurt. She uttered one word, "no," just as the barmaid stepped forward and slammed the bat square into Jessica's belly.

She heard a voice that must have been hers say "m-OOOPHHH!" She doubled up, stunned by the blow and the shock of being violated. She tasted hot, burning belly-juice in the back of her throat. She clutched and kneaded her soft flesh at her middle with panicked fingers. Hands grabbed her forearms and shoulders and pulled her roughly upright, shoved her back to the wall again. Her mind commanded her body to shake free and run, but her body was limp. A balloon of pain was quickly swelling in Jessica's belly, alarmingly large, and she couldn't make her frozen diaphragm draw a breath to replace the one the barmaid had punched out of her. She could only vent a long, throaty moan, then suck two or three quick shallow gasps, and moan again. Jessica's upper stomach muscles felt sucked up like knotted rope, her lower gut felt cold and heavy.

Time slowed to surreal in the shock, in the harsh vapor light of streetlamps. Her tormentors had half-lit inhuman faces: Light glared them above, shadowed them below, brows without eyes; noses but no chins. Jessica saw them in exquisite, scientific detail: pores and freckles, folicles and acne. Sweat beads and dark stains on white cotton T-shirts. Heat-frizzed hair. Over the shoulder of the barmaid she could see Laura take her beating. Three of the redneck girls ganged her and dragged her to her feet. One of them ripped her shirt open, exposing her brown breasts. Laura clapped her arms over her chest. The redneck girl, a fat blonde, laughed and whomped her hard in the belly, twice. Her fists pounded two quick dents into Laura. "OOUFF!" Laura coughed. The punches made Laura double up sharply and drop her hands to her gut. Her breasts dangled down like white ripe fruit. The redneck girl slapped and punched them, while her buddies laughed.

Jessica lost Laura when the waitress resumed her attack. She could not see her own beating, only feel it. The young barmaid sank talons into Jessica's pure silky hair and pulled her head sharply back against the brick wall. Jessica stared at her with the helpless stare and lack of resistance born of shock, but it only seemed to enrage the barmaid. The two girls gripping her arms held them firmly back to the wall, out from her sides. The barmaid's fist struck quickly, in cold blood, and pounded Jessica's soft stomach so deeply Jessica thought she felt the knuckles touch her spine. She jerked and went limp. Gasping, slumping, she tried to drag free of the grip of her rivals, but they held her up. She couldn't slide down.

While Jessica was limp and vulnerable, the barmaid slipped another fist into her slouching belly. Jessica took it with an "OOFF!" and jumped upright and bent forward. Again she felt the knuckles in the core of her body. But the redneck girls held fast, and she could only lean her shoulders and breasts forward. Not nearly far enough to protect her stomach, as she learned when the barmaid launched a sharp uppercut into Jessicas solar plexus. Jessica coughed and gagged. The barmaid slung again and hit her low, in the dainty pillow below her navel. Jessica felt a cold jolt roll through her liquid lower belly, and she shuddered.

Finally one of the rednecks holding her said, "Hey, Sue, I think she's had enough. I think someone's coming." The barmaid stepped back. The fingers gripping her wrists released, and Jessica dropped heavily to the asphalt, dashing her knees and ripping her pants. She folded far forward, mouth agape and wet, nostrils flared to suck for air, and shoulders shuddering. The few mouthfuls of breath she had gulped between punches had kept her from passing out.

The girls holding Laura had her by the hair, pulling her head far back so that her throat was exposed. Her torso was stretched, her navel distended to a thin black slit. Her hands were trying to pry the fingers from her locks, which left her belly a wide-open target. The fat blonde who had been hitting Laura stepped back, and Sue turned and paused, then ran straight at Laura and gave her a powerful thump in the belly. Jessica wanted to shout a warning, but she had no breath for it. Fist his flesh with a sickening thud, and the redneck girls released Laura's hair, and the younger girl collapsed in a heap and joined Jessica on the ground. They must have been trying to mess up her face, because her nose was bleeding and she had a fat red bruise on the left side of her upper lip.

The redneck girls and Sue the barmaid headed back to Byzantium. Jessica heard the footsteps retreat, a cold snort of a laugh, and the door slam. Jessica's slowly loosening diaphragm worked for deeper draughts now, but she still seemed to feel the imprint of Sue's fist burrowing into her vulnerable belly. Laura must have felt it, too, for she suddenly flopped onto her back, threw her arms wide and distended her stomach like she was trying to push away the awful caved-in sensation. Jolts of cramping pain lanced through Jessica's innards like heat lightning after a summer storm, jerking her body with convulsive shivers.

A full minute later Laura was still breathing in harsh pants, though steadily now. The aftershocks of pain in Jessica had faded to a dull, deep belly-ache and she felt tears drying cold on her cheeks, though she had not been aware of crying. She had pulled herself up to a sitting position, slumped back against the wall, pot-bellied. Her entire body felt wasted and weak.

At last she stood up, moaning and grunting. She stumbled over to Laura, who lay flat on her back, sobbing silently with her hands pressed to her belly. Her torn shirt hung from one shoulder. Her breasts bubbed with the heave of her sobs. Jessica reached down and started arranging the shreds of fabric so they at least covered Laura's tits. It was hopeless. Laura was shivering and hyperventilating and babbling, "I never ... I couldn't ... she ..." and Jessica dropped to her knees beside her and lifted her by the shoulders and hugged her like a sister. She shushed her quiet and stroked her thick hot hair.

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