By Monica Meneghetti
I unlace Rita’s twenty-eyelet boots. Carpet fibres embed themselves in my kneecaps. I imagine the carpet as orange shag because Lord Nelson Inn feels so old.
Rita sits on the end of the orange and-brown-clad bed, sits on the synthetic bedspread and pulls off her boots. Her dark hair draws a curtain over radiant skin. I move to kneel in front of her. With delicate fingers, she sweeps strands from her lips, still crimson after hours of dancing and kissing. She looks at me, hands resting on thighs. She looks at me sternly, not tenderly, and says, “Aren’t you a good little slut.”
I watch her legs straighten within fishnet tights, watch her stride over to the patio window and draw open the curtains, draw them open as wide as they will go, exposing a minuscule balcony and Calgary’s skyline glinting below our room like costume jewelry. I watch her legs getting closer. Her little diamonds of flesh move toward me.
Rita walks around me, around me, on the carpet that has compressed beneath a thousand strides and holds the shape of anonymous feet. In this moment, I know: though many bodies have slid together and called out in this room, this moment is new. This compliance in me. This servitude. This waiting. Are new.
This is the first time anyone has made me want to kneel.
My jaw drops slightly. My shoulders, too, as relief settles into my bones. When her legs get even closer, I tilt my head upward and her feline eyes hold my gaze. She moves closer still, rests her thigh against my cheek. Scent of sweat and leather against my cheek. I turn my head, open my mouth, bare my teeth and hook her fishnet in my incisors. I pull, pull and rip, rip and rip, until her skin is bare, until my teeth are flossed with black thread.
Visit www.monicameneghetti.com for more about this multi-genre writer based in Banff, Canada.