top of page

Excerpt

Writer's picture: Ken  CiccoliKen Ciccoli

Updated: Jul 29, 2020

They walked down the hall a few steps and could hear music coming from behind one of the doors. Room 314. Michael knocked. The noise stopped. Josh cautiously opened the door.

“MIKE! LILY! JESSICA! Come in! Come in! We were JUST starting a game King’s Cup! Come in! Take a seat, take a seat. Here’s some PBR; we do things classy here.”

        Josh, Scumbag Tom, Brandon, Tony, Chris, and a few other people that Michael had never met before were sitting around the kitchen table of this upperclassmen dorm room. A Natty Daddy was set in the middle of the table with a few cards tucked under the can’s tab. “Alright Michael, go on, get in there and pull a card.” Josh told him. Michael took a seat and pulled one of the cards surrounding the Natty Daddy “Five’s Guys” he said. All the men at the table took a drink from their red solo cup. Lily asked about the pizza box on the stove and Tom handed the whole thing over to her. Michael grabbed himself a slice and tucked the five-card underneath the tab. It was Jessica’s turn to pull a card now. She did.

“Okay…Ten of Clubs, okay…never have I ever…Umm…Never have I ever slept with a girl before.”

         Everyone but Lily and Scumbag Tom put a finger down.

“Never have I ever done anal.”

Only some people put down a finger.

“Never have I ever had a threesome.”

        One guy, a friend of Tom’s, put his last finger down. Everyone stared at the guy as if he was suggesting he had done something unimaginable.

“Wait! Just wait a fuckin second now! You’re lying! Was it with two girls? A guy and a girl? What happened here?” Josh asked.

“Ha! I don’t really talk about it. It was nothing, really.”

“Come on, pussy, tell us.” Tom said to him.

“Okay, well I had a threesome, but it wasn’t like with people.”

“Yo! You fucked your cats you fucking freak!” Josh screamed out. Everyone around the table laughed.

“HA! No, it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t like that. I had a threesome with God and the Devil.”

“Oh, you’re a religo-nut. Your talking in bible-thump metaphor, I get it—put your finger back up, pussy.”

“Haha—no, no, it’s true. It really happened; I’ll tell the story if you want.”

“Okay then, let’s hear it.”

“So yeah…it really happened. It was weird. I’ve never felt like I amounted to so little as I did in that moment—but, at the same time, somehow, I understood how immensely valuable I was, you know? My role wasn’t large, but somehow, I was the keystone of that interaction.

        It wasn’t like I was expecting it or anything, I’ll be honest. Maybe I’m asexual—I don’t care much for intercourse aside from trying to understand it, really. I know that sounds pompous but I think it’s true, I mean I like it and all, don’t get me wrong, I have urges and what not, but it’s like, I like it for different reasons, too. More so, probably. So, there was God, right? She—”

“Whattin the fuck crazy shit are you talking about, dude?”

“No, just listen, listen, I’m telling you, it was wild. God, she was sensitive—not like that, I mean—she was in-tune. She was utterly comforting. Flesh and everything. She was beautiful, maybe 5’6”, Slim but not too slim, you know? She wore blonde hair and glasses with thin frames. Curved, but I could almost wrap my hands around her waist. She had scars, though. And when I say scars, I mean I’m surprised she was there, you know? But I’m telling you, I was in the presence of Jesus reborn—back from the dead. The father, son, holy spirit—all right in front of me as a human female. Shadows cast down from the scar tissue raised above her forearms. I could see it. I could see the pain she’s absorbed, you know? But I knew it wasn’t her pain—it wasn’t. The pain belonged to everyone else. I could see it on her skin, that pain she’d taken from others. But it didn’t affect her. She smiled so intensely. She was so cheerful. So accepting and loving. There wasn’t passion in her act, her passion was for involvement. In sharing love…She kissed me, but I wouldn’t let her touch me. I couldn’t. I wasn’t worthy of her. I was scared, honestly.”

“Sounds like you’re full of shit.”

        By now everyone in the room was just staring at this guy, confused, and listening to him drunkenly tell this story.

“Seriously, her name was even Emmanuelle, it was insane.”

“So, what you’re saying is you were in a threesome with two ladies and didn’t even fuck? Just sounds like you’re gay to me.”

“No, no, no—that’s not how it went at all. I’ll keep explaining if you want.”

        Someone standing behind the table told everyone in the room to shut up and asked this kid to keep telling his story.

“Okay…so, the Devil…okay, her hair was brown, and it was long—really long. She had these large brown eyes, and claws, really, I mean it, she had claws. My back was all marked up the next day. And she was cunning, too. Real cunning. But okay, let me start from the beginning. We’d been hanging out all that day. Actually, I met God first, earlier in the day, around noon. I was sitting cliffside down at the bay, by Morris Point, just thinking about shit, you know? It wasn’t particularly dramatic or anything—just sitting there thinking. All of a sudden Emma comes up in a white summer dress, no one else around. I didn’t see a car or hear anything. I asked her how she got there and she told me she walked. If any of you guys have been to Morris, you’d know it’s like seven miles away from anything, right? There’s nothing there. But there was this woman, untouched by sweat or dirt or anything in this beautiful white dress. We sat there talking a few hours. You know something, though. I have to be honest with you guys, something tells me I should be honest…maybe it was a actually little dramatic, you know? I feel like I can share this with you because I’ll probably never see any of you again. I’d actually gone there to kill myself. I know I sound silly, but it’s true. Things weren’t really going so well at that point, you know? Break ups, family stuff, whatever. Anyway, I’d been sitting there with my legs danglingly over the edge of that cliff for twenty minutes, just going back over memories best I could, trying to find a reason, you know? I don’t know if any of you’ve ever been there, but all I kept thinking the whole time is ‘what’s the reason?,’ you know? Like really, that’s what I’m thinking in that moment, I’m thinking ‘why shouldn’t I just put an end to it,’ you know? ‘Why shouldn’t I just escape it?’ And really, to be honest I was drawing a blank on the whole finding answers thing, just about ready to stop my search when all of a sudden I hear ‘Hey!’ Scared the shit outta me, too—I almost fell just on accounta of her startling me. Ha! I look back on it now, you know, I don’t think she would’ve let me fall. I really think she was in control, somehow. Anyway, we get to talking and all and she pulls out a bowl and fills it and offers me a hit and I’m thinking ‘hmm, I don’t really want to go out of this thing stoned, you know? I wanna be there for my last moment. I wanna be all the way there.’ So I tell her ‘I’m okay’ and she says ‘okay’ and proceeds to hit the thing and we just sit there, silent for a while. Eventually, though, I’m wondering about when in the hell this woman is going to get up and leave so I can just do this thing without scarring her, you know? Then she makes this comment about how she’s not all that religious but that when she sees the sun sparkling over water like it was in that very moment right there at the cliffside, that that sort of beauty makes her wonder a little harder about life’s purpose and all that. They call it ‘sun glitter’, I looked it up. But anyway, I don’t say anything, just sit there when all of a sudden I just say it to her, I say, ‘I came here to kill myself today. Beautiful day for it, ya think?’ And you know what she does? She laughs! Ha! I couldn’t believe it. What a punch! Right in the gut! So, she puts a hand to my shoulder and says ‘look at this’, and she shows me a bunch of scars that run along her forearm and I’m thinking like, ‘damn’, you know? Wrists to elbows. Vertical, horizontal, all that. They weren’t fresh, either, these we pretty old scars, but you could tell they were bad. Real thick. ‘We’re hanging out today’, she tells me ‘Do whatever you want tomorrow, but today, let’s just hang out.’ So I think about it a second and I say ‘okay’ and we just sit there, talking about just about everything and I smoke from the bowl a bit and she tells me she wants to go grab a cup of coffee, and since she didn’t have a car I drive us. You know, I just thought about it now, but when we got up from sitting on that rocky cliffside there was not even a spec of dirt on the butt of that woman’s dress. Not a spec, it’s unbelievable. So anyway, that’s where we met Eve. At the coffee shop. Now that I think of it, it was pretty ironic. Must’ve been 4P.M. or something like that. Emma and I are sitting down for coffee and Eve comes up to us looking like she’d just finished a work shift and just hands us both a couple of muffins and sits down and says ‘I just got these day-olds from work so they wouldn’t go to waste getting thrown out, but I don’t know that I want all this food for myself. Please, have some muffins. Can I sit with you guys?’ She asks us. So now I’m thinking about what sort of turn around this is, you know? First, I’m planning to end my life and now I’m sitting with these two drop-dead gorgeous women eating muffins. Ha! Fascinating…” The guy stops and takes a sip from the red solo cup in his hand.

“So…like…what happened next? You never said why the devil was so cunning?”

“Oh, haha…yeah, sorry. Just thinking…”

“Well…?’

“Well, I mean we were all just hanging out and it was nice. Eve wanted to drive and I was reluctant being that at the time I was more or less living from my car. It was my life line, you know? But Eve was persistent so I left my car at the coffee shop because I couldn’t say no but I was nervous on account of having just met these ladies. Really, I guess this part doesn’t matter. We smoked a bunch. We got pizza with olives. We drove around town and then Eve, she was being incredibly touchy Eve was, on both of us. Really had me feeling kind of nervous—intimidated, really. And by now it’s getting late and Eve asks us if we drink and I say I haven’t been wanting to drink lately but Emma says she’s all for it and I don’t want to seem like the wimp so I say ‘okay’ and we get these bottles of wine and drive around to all the different views around town and then Eve says she’s got this park she knows about that no one ever goes to and really before anyone says anything we’re heading that way. Mind you, it’s mid-July but this is an exceptionally cold night for July and Eve is blasting down these back roads blaring EDM with the widows down and Emma is just laughing away in the front seat and she yells for everyone to take their shirt off and they both take their shirts off and I’m just thinking ‘what the hell is up with these girls’ and I’m feeling really self-conscious but Emma tells me to cut the shit and just about rips the shirt from my back. But so then, we come to this small parking lot on the side of the road, we get out the car and walk down a short trail up to this lake and we’re just dancing shirtless in the sand underneath stars, passing these bottles of wine between us. Felt like I was in a different world, you know?  Nothing mattered. I mean for me it did a little, I was playing along with it all and all but I couldn’t get outta my own mind—couldn’t relax. But Emma kept coming up to me, you know, kissing my shoulder and smiling wider than I might’ve seen anyone smile ever and one of the times she looks me square in the face, her smile stretched ear-to-ear, and she says ‘I’m glad you’re still here.’ And…shit…ha…” He takes another sip.

“So…? So then what happend…?

“Ha! We’ll this is the weirdest part, I’d say. So Eve, she starts running back to the car and Emma and I follow. Eve, man. Okay, Eve is thin. Real thin. Fit. You can see her abs, she’s got strong arms, but she’s real slender. Maybe 5’8 or something, just a little taller than Emmanuelle was. Eve’s got small breasts, tight under the skin, you could see all the stress she carried, you know?. You could see it everywhere on her…her butt, I know I’m being maybe too descriptive here, it was taunt, you know, it was there for sure, but really firm. Her skin was like a cage she didn’t quite fit in. Nothing like Emma. Anyway, we get in the car and Eve is driving us somewhere and I really didn’t have my head on the time but finally, for once in a very long time I was just in the moment, you know? I was living. So, anyway we get to Eve’s place which I shit-you-not was the DMV. She was living in an apartment underneath the DMV. So we get there—"

“Wait, what’s an apartment at the DMV even look like?”

“Normal, I guess, except she didn’t have any furniture. None. And the walls were completely white, only things in there was an electric piano and a queen-sized mattress on the floor with a couple of blankets. Oh, and one of those Tempur-Pedic pillows; the devil likes her beauty sleep. And the place was seriously clean. Spotless this place was. So everyone’s got their shirt back on now and we’re just standing twenty feet outside the door of this place and Emma stops us on our way in and tells us to take notice of the way the moonlight is touching the windows and the shutters—tells us these are things we need to appreciate. It was weird. The whole thing was weird to me at the time, but I don’t know. I think I really get it now. Anyway, we head inside and Eve, like I said, I think she had this in her mind from the moment we first met her in the coffee shop; the muffins, getting us drunk and what not, and then we get in the apartment and Eve gets us to keep drinking and this is when it gets kinda weird. Ev—”

“This has been weird, man.”

“Ha, yeah. So Eve, she pulls out her phone and starts showing us all these nude photos of herself—not just mirror shots, though, you know? Like these were professional…boudoir, maybe, I think is what she called them? I can’t remember, really. But now she’s running her fingers all along Emma’s arm and is really starting to be sorta rude to me. I don’t really know how to explain it. But it was weird, you know, all of a sudden Eve’s attention is solely on Emma and it’s like she’s trying to push me outta the whole scenario somehow to which I’m thinking ‘I would gladly leave if I knew where in the fuck I was.’ But then, for every affectionate stroke Eve lays onto Emma, Emma is pulling ME closer and closer. So Eve takes God by the hand and says ‘I’m tired’ and pulls her toward the bedroom where this mattress on the floor is and God takes me by the hand and says all cheerful like ‘Come on, now, let’s go to bed!’ with a smile that must’ve wrapped her whole head. So we’re all just laying there. The devil on the left, Me on the right, and God in the middle. We’re there not even two minutes before I hear the Devil landing kisses onto God’s neck and so I’m thinking ‘we’ll, okay, I better not just sit here being all awkward’ and so I start kissing God along the shoulder blades and I run my finger’s softly down God’s side and then, you know, I take a handful of God’s ass. And Emma, she just laughs saying ‘HA! This is happening! I can’t believe this is happening! I love you guys! I love you guys…” And me being me I’m thinking ‘Okay, so I guess this really is happening’ and I slowly wrap my fingers around God’s throat and slide my other hand between her legs and the devil moves up from kissing on God’s lips to situating her teeth right over the flesh of God’s holy ear and while she’s doing that, I tell you, she stares me dead in the eyes. Cold. Like ice I’m telling you. Those eyes weren’t human. You know that face Bilbo makes when Frodo suggests he hold onto the ring—that face? Eve’s face was sorta like that. I tell you what though, having just looked death straight through the iris not even twelve-hours earlier, I wasn’t scared of Eve. I just smiled at her. I think I even laughed if I remember. I was a little buzzed off the top so maybe there was some additional sense of courage I was feeling, I don’t know. So I’m kissing and touching on God and the Devil’s kissing and touching on God and there is no mixing anything up about the structure of this triangle until Emma jumps up and says to me, she says; ‘Kiss Eve. Give her everything she asks for. I’ll be back in a second.’ And so all of a sudden it’s just me and the Devil now, and for a full minute we sit there, eyes locked not saying a single word and she’s completely naked and I am nearly completely naked and I just say to her ‘Can I kiss you?’ because like what the fuck else am I supposed to do, you know? And the Devil, she slowly nods her head yes and so I start, like any good gentleman should, down at her feet. Because this is a powerful woman I’m sitting in front of, you know? I can feel it. I sense the danger, the intensity, and to be honest, I’m terrified—honestly. Anyway, I kiss her on her ankles; on her shins; on her knees; on the top of her thighs—which are completely sealed shut, by the way; I kiss on her pelvic bone…her pelvic bone…jutting from the side of that slender waist…I’ve never seen anything like it; I kiss on her stomach; on her chest; her neck…she was hesitant, you know? Sort of stiff in her movements. She kissed me back, but it wasn’t like when she was kissing God. She was slow to it, you know? I stopped everything and put a kiss on her forehead and said to her soft as I could ‘let’s wait for Emma. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.’ But then she says ‘No!,’ looking at me with those eyes, you know? Eyes like I’d never seen anywhere before in my life. ‘No! I want you to fuck me!’ she says, and then she bites my neck… I really think Eve didn’t care about anything other than just making this whole improbable situation happen in the first place. She didn’t care about the sex; she just wanted to know that she could do it, I think. And I really believe that. She wanted to know her reach, her strength. She was so calculated. And just unconcerned for any emotional or physical results—her only goal was to make it happen. God came back into the room and we gave Eve everything.

I really feel like I was only there to record it, though, you know? These two powerful creatures entangled like that…to evaluate and wrap my head around it. Like I was only there to bridge a gap, per say, and maybe, in some odd way, so I could share the story someday, you know, for some reason. Or maybe it was a way for God to remind me that life’s purposes are shared—despite the immensity of any individual person. To remind me that you need it all, you know? Both sides. I am talking about deities, here, after-all. It’s so silly, sharing is. Ha…what a concept…”

        Everyone in the room, of which only a few knew this guy’s name (Michael not included) stared at this guy, his eyes hollowed from an overactive hippocampus. Living in the past.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He said, coming to. “I know that was all a bit much. I frequent the day in my mind—reliving the moments. Ha! At one point I put my tongue to God’s lips as the devil had hers on God’s asshole! Ha! And you know what God said, loosening her bite on my bottom lip? She turns to Eve and she says ‘Eve! You fucking Devil, you!’—Ha! Can you believe it? God calls the Devil by her name. I’ll never forget that...”

        The guy gulps down the last of bit of his beer, takes in a deep breath, and slowly exhales. The smell of alcohol and marina sauce fills Michael’s nostrils.

“I remember the smells more than anything. Musk? Maybe? I don’t know. It was warm. It was invigorating, inviting…safe, maybe? But it was also scary. I felt like I shouldn’t have been there, but also like I wasn’t supposed to leave. Forgive me for being so vulgar. I realize almost none of you know me…but yeah, that’s my threesome story.”

“I mean, that’s cool all, but did you make cheeks clap or nawh’ll? Cuz otherwise you gay.” Said Josh.

“What the fuck do you mean by God and the Devil? You mean you dreamed this shit up or something?” Asked, albeit in a rather rude and aggressive manner, a female student at the table.

“No, I mean what I said. I was with God and the Devil that night. I touched religion—I don’t mean that metaphorically. You know, there’s a little bit of that supernatural in all of us.  I’m not talking about magic; everything has its scientific explanation—religion and science, as the cliché goes, are not all that different from one another. Each come from observation, it’s just that most religions pre-date the scientific equipment we now use to measure and better understand those observations. Religion doesn’t grow, the main stream ones anyway, in the same sense as science does. Most of the religious texts were drafted to control, or are misconstrued as being law. But in earnest the two things are the same—at base level they are a way to explanation observations. Besides, religion makes the whole thing easier to consume, it gives this life thing a narrative. People, I think, are wrong when they say science doesn’t dabble in morals. These people ignore the reach of brain science and our understanding of empathy and purpose in the human mind…I’m getting off topic…But yeah, I meant what I said. Those two women held the forces of destiny, they have their paths, their aspirations, and their acute understanding of human condition. Each of them chose to utilize that understanding in their own, opposing way. But that night, those forces came together. And I think, maybe, I was placed there by some pre-destined, ridiculous cosmic and outwardly force only so that those two didn’t kill each other in their passion. Or maybe just so I didn’t kill myself. I woke up the next morning and Eve was gone. I asked Emma if she wanted to Uber with me back to my car so I could drop her off somewhere since I had to get going to work, but she told me she was fine. I visited that coffee shop about every day for the next two weeks but never saw Eve, or even Emma. I asked the baristas if Eve had gone on vacation or something and no one there had a clue who I was talking about. I never saw either of them again.”  

“You’re full of shit. I don’t believe a word of it.” Said the same woman who made the earlier comment.

“That next morning, after I got to my car, I stopped in at Safeway and bought a cookie and a diet Dr. Pepper on my way to work, you know, to celebrate having not killed myself. I keep the receipt here in my wallet.”

“Doesn’t prove anything.” She said.

“Okay,” Michael cut in, “whose turn is it to draw a card…”

33 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All

wee rabbit

Can you see me? Can you see me? Lately I’ve been feeling needy. Lately I’ve been feeling greedy. Lately I’ve been feeling dead. Nope...

Comments


bottom of page