45 Seconds and Gone


That teacher with her smiling face, she’s always, how was your weekend? My fist in her fucking mouth, that’s how it was. I ought to tell her, just to watch her eyes, all caring and shit, get real hard and cold. Those soft eyes, that would be too fucking funny.

So this is what I’d tell her. D picked me up on Saturday night, and he was already wasted. We were gonna go up Lukachukai Mountain, just hang out. There were these guys with him. I’d seen them around school. They had the shit, I don’t know what it was, something clear like vodka mixed up in one of those two liter Dr. Pepper bottles. Whatever it was, it got all of us off quick.

Me and D, we go off a little way in the woods, have some privacy. We’d talked before about how we’re gonna do it when we’ve been going together a year, we talked some shit about getting a hotel in town with a nice, soft bed and room service, cause I was a virgin, but it wasn’t like that. It was right there on the ground, those Aspen leaves brown and wet underneath me, stinking wet earth, and D pulling at me and then he’s inside. It was fast, forty-five seconds and gone, and it’s burning down there, and wet, I don’t know, blood or something.

The sky was cold, man, so black, and the stars up there just staring down at me like all these eyes, like all these grandmothers’ eyes. They were looking down at me laying there in the dirt and the leaves with my pants off and I could hear what they was calling me.

D rolled off and I was getting ready to heave so I crawled away next to a tree. I’m throwing up and somebody grabbed me by the waist and shoved inside me from behind. It wasn’t D because I could see him passed out and whoever it was, he had big hands, all rough, and I could feel something tearing, like I was on fire down there and I squeezed my eyes shut so I don’t have to see. Those big hands on me.

When he was done I just stayed there with vomit and wet leaves all under my knees and hands until I don’t hear them no more, but they don’t go. They was just waiting for me.

I put on my underwear and jeans and sat down next to D. He was still passed out, his face half in the muck. There were three of them. They tried to make a little fire, but it just kept smoking, so they sat there and drank out of the bottle and the one in the middle, he passed it over to me again. He had big hands. They just sat there and watched me with their yellow eyes, like wolves.

I ought to tell that bitch, with her soft face and her eyes all caring like she really gives a shit. I’m gonna do it, I’m gonna watch her eyes turn cold like those stars. I’m gonna tell her, that would be so fucking funny. She asks me one more time, I’m gonna tell her…



• Sarah Black has published short fiction at Word Riot, Flashquake, Slow Trains, The Angler, Rio Grande Review; novels with Loose ID, MLR Press; erotica at Clean Sheets and Ruthie's Club.