|
The White Balloon of Death
On a certain summer night when the moon is full, Laura goes down the several sets of steps to the old canal where first she kissed Rodrigo. Then his kisses, soft as moonlight on strands of innocent silk, sent shivers skimming her skin, and the full hot haze of him settled slow and sure, shifting and guiding her into swollen wantonness, until helplessly she opened everywhere, and he swallowed her whole.
On that long ago morning after, groggy with love, they’d strolled arm in arm across the sunny footbridge which spanned the canal. Beneath an array of brightly colored balloons, a small man dressed all in green sat on the arm of an abandoned iron dumpster.
“Oh, look, Rodrigo,” Laura whispered, leaning closer to her man, “Do you suppose he’s goat-footed?”
Rodrigo snorted. His muscles tightened. “That’s Doc Riley. I think he lives here. You need anything, they say he’s the man. X, blow, condoms…”
Laura lowered her eyes. “Maybe a balloon?”
Rodrigo had her pick one out. For some minutes she mulled the choice. Red, pink, blue, yellow, white. “Oh, I’m so greedy, Rodrigo, I want them all.” Momentarily Laura’s eyes lit up in girlish delight, but sensing Rodrigo’s disapproval, she said, “Would red be okay?”
Rodrigo and Laura spent the rest of the day walking, talking, kissing. Tugging its string, the red balloon bobbed above them. Rodrigo amused Laura with tales of insipid matrons and unruly children. Laura told Rodrigo about the antics of her kitten, the way its claws stuck to the carpet and the way its tongue tickled when she fed it tomato juice from her finger tips. “You should feed it Bloody Marys,” Rodrigo suggested. “You’re so cruel,” Laura said, laughing. By this time they’d reached a meadow of soft grass in a secluded corner of the park.
“Do you love my balloon,” Laura asked.
“I love all of you,” Rodrigo answered.
“Make love to me,” Laura asked.
“I would love to, my sweetness,” Rodrigo said, “but we’ve run out of condoms.”
A sinking feeling tugged at Laura’s tummy. “Why didn’t we get some from that goat-footed balloon man?”
“I got you your balloon instead,” Rodrigo replied. He and Laura looked up at it, round and red against the endlessly blue sky.
“Maybe if we let the air out of your balloon, we could use that,” Rodrigo suggested.
Laura giggled. “Oh, no, we’re not using my balloon.”
“Well,” said Rodrigo, “what if I went into your bottom?”
Laura scrunched up her nose. “Oh, no, we’re not doing that, either.”
“It can be very pleasant, very exciting.”
“For you, maybe.”
Rodrigo was silent for a moment. “What this about goat-footed?”
Laura explained that it was a poem they’d read in grade school. “It was about spring, by a poet named e e cummings, who didn’t use capital letters, and all I remember is the goat-footed balloon man whistling far and wee. And, oh, and that it didn’t have any punctuation.”
“No punctuation,” Rodrigo snorted. “Hey, that’s cool. But I’m glad you have punctuation.”
“Me? Punctuation?”
“Sure,” Rodrigo professed. “You’re breasts and hips are parentheses. Your nipples and belly button are periods. Your clitoris is a comma.”
“And your prick is an exclamation point,” Laura put it.
“You’re so naughty,” Rodrigo said.
“'He exclaimed,'” said Laura. “You show me your punctuation, I’ll show you mine.”
A glance at the skyline, and Rodrigo drew down his pants. His exclamation mark was long and lean like the rest of him. Laura couldn’t resist handling it. She wrapped the string of her balloon around and around the stem, and then she bestowed a small kiss on the bejeweled crown, and then they lay down in the soft grass and, with the red balloon tugging toward the sun, Rodrigo traced love poems on Laura’s secret skin.
“Shall I see you this evening?” Laura asked Rodrigo, as they neared her flat.
“Sadly, no,” Rodrigo said. “I must work. For me, life is not all fun and games, my darling. But tomorrow for sure!”
Too tired to hang her dress or store her boots in the closet, Laura managed to tie the red balloon to the post of her little bed before turning in.
She dreamt of Rodrigo: his gentle kisses, his knowing hands, his strong back and thrusting buttocks. Feverish and thrashing in her sleep, she was startled awake by a loud noise. A gunshot, she thought at first. A moment later she discovered it was her dear balloon. Burst. The shriveled skin of it lay clammy upon her breast. An omen, Laura feared, a very bad omen. Something must have happened to Rodrigo!
Trembling with worry, she slipped into a fresh dress and hurried to the café where Rodrigo worked. But it was closed. On a whim, she made her way to the canal. If she could get a replacement for the burst balloon, then everything would be all right. And even if the balloon man was out of balloons, he might have some condoms for tomorrow. The thought of tomorrow, and being in Rodrigo’s arms again, made Laura feel a touch better.
Almost down the final flight of cement stairs, she stopped short. Strange noises drifted around the corner. Grunts, growls, and then a voice that had to be Rodrigo’s. “Oh, yeah, baby. That’s it. That’s it. Oh, man!”
Laura dared peek around the corner.
Silently, she made her way back up the stairs and across the bridge. Back in her little bed, she cried herself to sleep. The next day, when Rodrigo tapped at her door, she refused to answer. Eventually he went away. Laura tried to think, but thinking was impossible. In the kitchen, fixing some lemon tea, she happened to spy an ice pick in the drawer. She fished it out. “I’ll pop all his balloons, see if I don’t” she said aloud, and a short time later she was striding across the footbridge and down the stairs to the balloon man’s dumpster. But what if Rodrigo, that perfidious ogre, were there? What if he and the balloon man were…? Unable to rid herself of the image of the balloon man’s stumpy fingers pushing into Rodrigo’s backside as Rodrigo’s seed jetted into the balloon man’s maw, she said, “Well, then I’ll pop the both of them! Blat! Blat! Blat, blat, blat!”
The idea and the sound effects made Laura happy.
Rodrigo, it turned out, was not there, but the balloon man was. He smiled at Laura until he saw the ice pick gleaming in the late afternoon sun.
“A balloon today, Miss?” he managed. “A pink to go with your red?”
“Not right now, thanks. Maybe later. But first, maybe you could tell me something.”
The balloon man shrugged.
“If you wanted to paralyze someone…” Laura waggled the ice pick. “Where would you poke him?”
The balloon man scrunched his round face and tugged the furl of his goatee as he considered the question. “There is spot at the base of the spine…”
“Could you show me, please?”
The balloon man tugged up his shirt and indicated the spot.
“You’re sure?” Laura asked.
Looking uneasily over his shoulder, the balloon man nodded.
The ice pick sank in easily. The balloon man stiffened, then crumpled.
Laura frowned. “Are you still alive?”
No answer from the balloon man.
Laura thought about hoisting the body into the dumpster. For a short man, he was surprisingly heavy. She settled for dragging him behind the dumpster. She cleaned the ice pick on the balloon man’s shirt, sheathed it in her boot, went to the stairway, and sat down to wait for Rodrigo.
It was just after midnight when he showed up. For only a brief moment did he seem surprised to see her. “Why, there you are, my darling,” he said. “I’ve been worried about you.”
“I need you,” she said. “Right here. Right now. In the dumpster. Hurry.” She handed him the condom packet.
Rodrigo raised his eyebrows, but he helped Laura climb into the empty iron box, and a moment later he mounted her. Soon he was murmuring endearments while thrusting heartily. Laura was surprised to discover how aroused she was. With the mix of her own churning excitement and the grind of Rodrigo’s perpetual motion, it was all she could do to unsheathe the ice pick; hitting the right spot would be no easy matter. In an effort to keep Rodrigo still, Laura locked her legs about him. Involuntarily, her sex completed the clench.
This had the desired effect. Rodrigo reared up while pressing deep, stilled in the stretched out instant before his explosion. This was the moment, Laura knew. She rammed the pick deep into Rodrigo’s spine just as he ejaculated. The force of his pulse and push triggered in Laura a series of sharp contractions such as she’d never before experienced—an orgasm of startling power and duration.
When at last Laura was able to squirm out from under Rodrigo, she discovered that the condom had burst. She unraveled what was left of the shriveled prophylactic from Rodrigo’s still sizeable penis and inserted it as deeply as she could into his anal cavity. Then, using all her strength, she pushed him up the side of the dumpster and flopped him over the edge. After that, it was comparatively easy to roll him into the old canal.
Now, some years later, as if to mark the anniversary, that treacherous, condom-colored moon sinks like a tombstone into the black stink and sludge of Rodrigo’s well-deserved grave.
A wry smile crosses Laura’s lips. One good thing did come of it all. More than one good thing, really.
story by Mat Twassel |
