If you shouldn't be reading this, don't!

 

Second Hand Rose

by Vickie Tern

 

Well I can't figure out how I got stuck in this story as the main character, and I sure can't figure how to get out of it. I still don't remember a lot of what happened. It was just supposed to be an ordinary party, and we were getting dressed to go there and my wife said to me "Now this time you do your drinking in moderation, the Andersons are cultured people and Max Anderson is my boss, and I want to make a good impression, so there'll be none of your clowning around and boisterous behavior and telling off-color jokes, and absolutely no putting a lamp shade on your head and singing 'There's no business like show business,' like you did at the Kelly's party two weeks ago for God's sake! I was so embarrassed! You do that again this time and I'm warning you, I don't know what I'll do, but I'll think of something you will regret all of your days!"

Well she says things like that now and then. But my friends all like the way I get when I'm a little high, it livens things up. I like the old songs, and I sing them big, they way they were meant to be sung. But I said sure, because she always talks like that when we're going to some upscale house to party with the kind of people she wants us to get to know better. Not really fun people if you know what I mean like the ones who work with me down at the shop, but people from where she's a secretary at that publisher's editorial office, all tweed jackets and tight smiles and big words and jokes I don't understand that can't be very funny anyhow, because they just smirk at the punch line, and say "Hey!" and fake a poke at each other's arms. They never really bust their guts out laughing, the way my kinds of folks do.

We get there and it turns out it isn't much of a party at all, though the house sure could handle a big one, it's huge. Just a dozen other couples, maybe, sitting around and talking. Jan, she's my wife, she knows them all from the office and every one of them looks like anyone else to me, but I find where they keep the bar and plenty of ice in a bucket so I keep busy, and after a while whenever I say something they look at me amused, so I figure what the hell, I'm a hit, so I say more things and start to tell some jokes, a little louder for punctuation, and I wash it down with another drink or two, and by the end of the evening I'm really in my element. I keep away from the lampshades but I'm waving a small tablecloth around like a bullfighter and then I drape it on my head like a shawl and I sing that old song, you know, "He's just my Bill, An ordinary guy, You'd pass him on the street and never notice him." Just like me, a regular guy, only now I'm being Fanny Bryce who made it real popular, or I guess anyhow Barbara Streisand who played Fanny Bryce in the movie. I really belt it out. I remember Jan tries to stop me a couple times but I just push her away, so she gets her back up and goes off to another room on her own.

Well, after a while it's the end of the evening and everyone's leaving, but by this time Jan's sitting at the far end of the other room having this intense conversation with Max, he's her boss, a distinguished looking guy with gray hair, moves like he takes care of himself, in fact Jack the keypunch operator where I work he tells me this same Max works out at the same gym he goes to, a pretty fair middleweight with some great cross-body jabs. She's listening, and he's leaning toward her relaxed and talking with a half smile and gesturing with his hands, just twisting them in front of him like he was playing a piano, the way these cultured people do, never any real swinging of their arms or slapping you on the back like a real pal, not for them, no way.

So I go over to her and say "It's time, bride," that's what I call her every time I get a little drunk and, you know, horny, and I want her to know what's coming, because that's the way I felt when we first got married, only jeez, I got so pie eyed that I passed out and didn't wake up until the middle of the next day, and boy was Jan pissed then! I don't think she ever forgave me, she was expecting something a lot more romantic and all. I had a real good time at our wedding, and I figured I could take the rest of our lives to make it up to her for getting stinking on her wedding night. And don't think I haven't been trying, even though she's never satisfied I do enough. Anyhow, that's why she don't like me to call her "bride," because she didn't have such a good time, I guess, me down and out for the count when she wanted something more. But I don't care When I feel good and I'm thinking about, you know, a good quick fuck when I get her home, well, that's what I call her.

So Jan hears me all right and looks up at me a little annoyed and says not just yet dear, Max is telling me the most delightful story about one of our authors and how she writes her stories, and he wants to show me a new manuscript from her just come in, he wants my opinion about the ending, is it too hot, or will it turn off some of our women readers, so be a good boy and just go over there to that chair and maybe try to doze or sleep off some of what you've been drinking, we'll be a while and I didn't bring my purse so you'll have to drive us home when you're a little more sober.

Well, OK, I lost my audience by now but I get me another drink and Mrs. Max, whatsername, Lydia, Lydia gets back from the door saying goodbye to the last of the party guests and sits down next to me and says to me "Well, aren't you the talented one," and she puts her hand on my leg and looks into my eyes like she's hoping I'll give her my autograph. And she tells me she once met Barbara Streisand, and do I do any more of those marvelous imitations. I tell her I can do Ted William's roundhouse swing, you know, it finishes with his legs crossed way apart from each other, you'd think he'd fall over. She says "Marvelous, but I don't think in the living room just now," and she asks do I want another drink. So I kill the one in my hand and she brings me a single malt Scotch, she calls it, hard liquor filled right to the top of the tumbler with no ice because she says it shouldn't ever be watered down.

So I'm still talking to her and I begin to see double, you know how that happens, your eyes get screwed up even though you're OK, but she's delighted with whatever I'm telling her, I don't even remember what now. She's laughing and I'm grinning and I remember she can't keep her hands off me, she's slapping my chest at my punch lines, and pushing a lick of hair off my forehead and then running her fingers around my head and down the back of my neck. Feeling me up, only its all bone there. Should have been on my boner, if I'd had one. I tell her that, and she laughs and slaps me again. Then she asks can I do any Ethel Merman, or any of the other oldies, and I stand up right then and there to try "There's no business like show business" only without the lampshade, but I sit right down again because I can't stand up any more, and she says that's all right dear here isn't the place anyhow. There's a better place downstairs, the game room.

So she takes me down to the game room, half carries me I guess. We go past Jan and Max and they're still talking, with the couch and her lap all covered with typed pages, that hot book I guess, and Jan is reading some of it and her face is all flushed and she's looking up at Max with her eyes half closed and he's leaning in looking down at her, still talking amused, like, with his hands still making those small gestures. I don't think she notices when we go by. "Have fun," I say, no special reason. I got Lydia here who appreciates my act, and wants to see more of it. So I figure Jan should enjoy herself too with her book.

Down in the game room I'm half lying and half leaning on a couch and Lydia she's loosened my tie and has taken off my jacket and the tie too so I can get more comfortable, and then my shirt and all the time she's saying do I know what a "soubrette" is and I say I don't know something you smoke? and she grins wickedly and says "You can try" but it turns out that's the old name for the little girls with big tits and short skirts and great legs who sing the real golden oldies like "She was only a bird in a gilded cage," and "Goodbye, little yellow bird," sad songs about lost innocence she says, because once they were pure and now they're whores.

They are? I say, not able to follow what she's telling me exactly, and she says sure, let me show you, do I know any of the words to any of those songs, and I say sure, and I think a minute and out from nowhere comes "I've come to this great city To find my brother dear, And you wouldn't dare insult me sir, If Jack were only here," so I stand up and I belt that out, and she holds me up and she presses her tits on my back and rubs them on me and rubs her hands all over my chest while she holds me up. I get the feeling that she's rubbing my cock too, but I'm pretty far gone and I can't be sure. And she says that's just beautiful only what you need mainly to sing that song and be a soubrette is great legs, just like Ted Williams I'm thinking, and her hands are all over me and I'm sitting and standing and lifting my butt while she undresses me and she's setting me up to be a soubrette so I can sing my songs.

Like a whore with a pure heart remember she says and she's pulling on black stockings real filmy stuff, a tear or two in them is OK she says because you're just off the streets remember, and I see she's pulling them on me, not her, and some tight black elastic clamped around my middle laced too tight to breathe and straps to hold up the stockings and there's fluffy stuff coming down over my head and she tells me stick your arms through here, dear, that's it, and your head through here. It's red. No panties this time because we may want to get in there later, she says, and she buttons it up my back, your dress she calls it, and jeez she straps some stilts on my feet, on my heels anyhow, and then she paints my face with something, different colors. She puts some kind of curly mop thing on top of my head, too, a wig, and she says just gorgeous, just like a whore who has been defiled repeatedly, that's perfect.

"Now stand up and start to sing," she says, and I hang on to the railing while she half-hauls me up back upstairs and through the living room, there are typed pages of that book all over the couch and the floor, a lot of them are crushed it looks like, but no Jan and no Max. I'm waving my arms and really delivering it, "They call me second hand Rose, I'm wearing second hand clothes, Even the piano in the parlor, Poppa bought for ten cents on the dollar," I'm a soubrette, see. My fluffy and shiny red dress or whatever she says it is sticks out all around me like a ballerina's, and it doesn't even come down far enough to cover my ass, which is naked, but the top red layer is smooth as silk. And she's saying that's right dear, not silk but satin, close enough, sing some more.

Up another flight of stairs and into a dark room and she sits me down in a chair and says don't go away, Rose. I doze off I guess.

Anyhow, when I wake up it's because I hear some woman screaming not two, three feet away, loud, not the kind of scream you hear in the horror movies, some babe real scared and desperate, the kind of scream you like to hear broads scream now and then. Instead I hear just "Ahhhh! Ahhhh! Ahhhh!" like that, shrieking but sort of like breathing too, with a kind of "Ooof" now and then and then more "Ahhhh!" I open my eyes and there in the dim light I see a bed and some guy, its Max, stark naked, he's on top of some broad who's making all the noise, he's boinking her hard and her legs are way straight up in the air and while I watch she clenches them down onto him and wraps them around his back real tight and she goes "Ahhh!" and "Ooof" some more, and it gets pretty ferocious, and I can see his long prick sliding in and out of her, and in and out, and all of a sudden she grabs him tight on the neck with both arms and she shudders, they do that, Jan does anyhow, and then you can't breathe, but because of the booze I see two backs and two sets of arms clutching both of that poor bastard's necks, and tucking her chin over his shoulder I see two of Jan's faces, her eyes tight shut and her mouth wide open going "Ahhhh!" with her sounds slowing down now to just heavy breathing.

She opens her eyes and looks at me and then they get real narrow, and she says "Well look at our little whore, she's finally awake so she can finally do what she's here to do," and I guess she's talking to Max and not to me because Max says "That's good because there's a lot of it, in you and all over me and the bed, this last time we really overflowed everything," and she says to him, "Get it up again lover, all the way, and we'll find room for more, let's see if our whore here can help."

And that's my wife talking, so I try to stand up and say something to her but I don't remember the words and it's hopeless, and I swing my arms and I fall off the stilts and I'm on my knees and I barely catch myself on the edge of the bed, and she says "look how eager she is," and he says "Yeah, mustn't disappoint a lady," because by now he's sitting on the edge of the bed with his crotch and his cock soaking wet and sticky, and what I have done is fall face down smack into the middle of his lap, and he says "That's right Rose, lick it all off, and if you want to suck my cock too help yourself, no extra charge."

I'm so far gone I can't even lift my nose up and my wife says to me in that voice she knows I can't resist, low and sexy and mellow and real slow, "Just lick dear until he's nice and clean. Do it. That's it. Then you can sleep some more." So that's what she wants, I do it. Max asks her if she wants me to clean her up next, and she says "No, I don't want him—HER—to touch me ever!" Before I finish up with licking off all the glop, sort of creamy and salty too, you know, and Jan's juices on him smell a little I dunno ripe I guess, but I never tell her that, well, Max's cock is getting bigger and it's in my mouth and I can really get some good pulls on it now that my lips are wrapped tight all around it, like around a good thick cigar. I hear her say when he gets it hard again this time you lie on your back and l'll get on top, I want to ride you this time, and she says where's Lydia shouldn't she be in on this now like the book said?

"Here's Lydia" says a voice right behind me. "I didn't want to disturb this little love nest but I guess now it's time," and I feel her hands on both my shoulders where I'm still leaning over and licking and sucking on Max I guess it is and not a cigar and I hear Jan say just lift your ass a little higher for Lydia, Rose dear, that's it, see Lydia how he does what I tell him even when he's near unconscious, we won't have any problem, and WHAM I GET THIS BURNING IN MY ASS LIKE I'M SPLIT IN TWO AND IT STARTS MOVING AND PUSHING IN ME and I guess I pass out.

The next morning I open my eyes and I'm back in my own room in bed and the sun is shining into the room because no one pulled the shades last night when we went to bed. Jesus! Have I got a splitting headache? I have never had a hangover like this one! Jan was right, I shouldn't drink so much when I go to parties. Jan. She's there in the bed too, still fast asleep, looking very pleased with herself. She can look that way sometimes. So I try to get out of bed without disturbing her, and OH GOD my ASS is KILLING me, what did I sit on last night or what did I try to crap, a watermelon? And my face feels stiff and crusted, did I throw up? Jan'll kill me if I drank too much again. I better get into a shower or better soak my ass in a hot tub for a while, and get some aspirin fast for God's sake.

So I take two steps and my feet get tangled in this bright red dress, it has a big wide short skirt with white lace underskirts, petticoats, whatever they call them, quite a few, and there it all is lying in a mess on the floor, and I know it isn't Jan's because it's real sexy so I'd remember. She's left her stockings all over the floor too still clipped to a short girdle of some kind. Only that isn't hers either. And not those satin shoes with those I guess they call them stiletto heels, six inches if they're an inch, maybe eight, over there against the wall by the door. What is this? Who the hell has been here?

And it starts to come back. Not all of it, a little. I don't get to remember most of what I've been telling you for another couple of days, but now and then a little more comes to mind, something new I'm doing reminds me or I see or hear something that's like it, or I taste something a lot like it and like nothing else. Some of it I guess I never will remember. It's just as well.

I bend over to pick up the dress or push it out of the way, and I can feel there's a crust on my ass too, same as on my cheeks, and then this pain hits me right behind the eyes like you wouldn't believe! I better get to the medicine cabinet fast, and a bathtub too! But I better not step on that dress, Jan'll kill me if it's hers. So I squat down and OH BOY my ass catches fire, but I pick it up anyhow and smooth it out a little and I'm about to lay it across a chair and keep heading on into the bathroom when I hear Jan's voice behind me, she says, "The closet. Hang it in your closet."

I turn and look at her, and I say, "What?" and she says "Hang it in your closet, that's what the husband in that novel I was reading last night will do with his dress, for when he'll next need it."

I just stood there with that bright red dress still in my hands, it was red satin like she said, Lydia, that was her name, she told me that. Satin. "What do you mean?" I ask her again.

"You're going to need that dress again, Rose." Some more came back to me, and she could see it on my face. "You remember some of it now? Some of it you're never going to remember, and some of it I'm never going to tell you. Last night you got drunk again, this time in my own boss's house, how could you? And you made an absolute ass of yourself, like you usually do, just like the husband in Lydia's novel, the one Max wanted me to read last night, you remember that much at least? So they asked me, since you were being an ass like the one in the novel anyhow, could they use your ass to try out a plot development? Well, Max was being respectful and attentive to me, he's a real gentleman, and you were being disgusting as usual, only worse than ever, and Lydia was eager to find out what would happen when the husband woke up the next day, she said, because she hasn't decided yet what's going to happen then in her novel. It isn't finished yet. Or it wasn't, maybe now it is."

"What do you mean?" I ask her for maybe the third time.

"I mean, hang that dress up in your closet, and when you get to the bathroom rinse out those stockings. You're going to need them. And some other things we'll buy for you this afternoon, if you can walk in the mall after those double dildos we shoved into you did their work. The parts inside us sure did what they were supposed to do, the parts Lydia and me stuck into our pussies. But the part we stuck into you was way bigger, huge, and you took it all in, I've got to give you credit for that! Be glad you don't feel worse down there! When Lydia began humping you the first time you passed out, maybe from the pain, maybe from the booze, we couldn't tell. But Max said we shouldn't be cruel, so he took that beautiful stiff erection of his that you sucked and slurped and made real hard for me, you remember?, and he stuck it into you instead of me. He pumped you until he came, so you'd be juicy and slippery for when we took our turns. Then Lydia really hammered your ass like in her novel, and then I did you too you son of a bitch, and for once fucking you brought me off just gloriously. Then Max drove us home and helped me get you into bed."

"That was my fuck you used up, and you better apologize to me and you better remember to thank Max when you see next him. That'll be tonight, I think. That's how I want this novel to end, back at his house again, with a new crowd of people there and you all dressed up this time to sing your songs, and other people getting in on the act. They said I could write the ending if I came up with something credible, and that's what I'm doing. Nothing's more credible than reality."

"Jan, enough is enough!"

"No it isn't. But that's the way this novel ends. That's what's credible. Lydia's says we can share her royalties as well as Max—she's a little weird but we think alike in lots of ways. We're partners. We still don't know whether to publish the book illustrated with the different photos they took of you last night, or use the pictures for publicity when the novel's published, or what. They'll make you famous, but for what I've got in mind for you that's a mixed blessing. We're planning a sequel, more than one. I think we should hang onto the pictures while the story's still spinning out, and then release them for a last boost in sales when the public stops buying and nobody cares any more, except maybe you."

"So hang up your dress and take your shower or your bath, and oil your bottom so it feels better, you'll want to keep it oiled anyhow from now on, and we'll go off to the mall and get you some more whore wear, vinyl short shorts maybe, and a leather bra, and lots of frilly stuff, and other kinds of dresses, I've got lots of ideas. You'll have to do more and more kinky things as time goes by to keep up reader interest, but that's no problem. Even surgery's no problem, later, if the focus groups like the idea. Max has promoted me to Associate Editor for Research. You're going to quit your job at the shop, it never did pay much, and I never did like the people you work with, they're boors. From now on you're on salary to me, and you'll earn your living on your ass and with your ass, along with your other openings, the way I tell you. If you want to see your old buddies again, we can send you back down there and call the story *Homecoming*."

I try to deal with first things first. "That's how it ends? We talk like this, then tonight back to his place?"

"This novel does," Jan says. "The others, lots of ways and places. Who knows?" And she just rolls over and goes back to sleep.

When I get to the bathroom and reach for the aspirin, I still can't think of another way to end the story that would satisfy her. Maybe there is no other way. Maybe I'll think of something when I get a better night's sleep. If I ever do.

 

END

© 1997 by Vickie Tern

  

  

  

*********************************************
© 1997 by Vickie Tern. All Rights Reserved. These documents (including, without limitation, all articles, text, images, logos, and compilation design) may be printed for personal use only. No portion of these documents may be stored electronically, distributed electronically, or otherwise made available without the express written consent of StorySite and the copyright holder.