“Satan? I've never worshipped Satan.”
“I have not worshipped in the church since a hack neo-nazi took it over, but I still practice the teachings of LaVey. I will help you,” he paused as if to say a name, his way of asking for hers. She lent it. “I will help you Shana, on the principal of Satanic virtue.”
Through her tears, a terror.
Mr. Clean gave a hearty laugh at this. “Satanic virtue, LaVey's interpretation o f lex talioni s , states 'do unto others as they do unto you.'” He paused to see if Shana caught his drift. Her face said that she barely had. “You guided me to save a man's life today. I will guide you to saving your nephew.”
Nothing made sense. Entrusting her nephew's well-being with a Satanist seemed like a bad move. But there was not much for anyone to lose in the proposition.
“Give me your telephone.” She did. Mr. Clean entered his information into it and texted himself. “Within 24 hours, you will receive a text message from me. I have not put my name in your phone, so you will have to trust a strange number. Likewise, I will not reveal myself when your nephew returns. This is a dangerous town for good samaritans and Satanists alike.”
Shana's eyes showed gratitude while her lip quivered in impending sobbing.
“Good day, Shana. Thank you for making me save that man today.”
When Mr. Clean left, Shana vomited. She went into that Lakewood 7-Eleven and purchased a Monster Energy drink, knowing it would be the only taste stronger than her own spew. In fact, that made her vomit again, as soon the caffeine and sugar rush proved too much for her frazzled psyche.
Chapter Two
Suze and Nate dug the vodka bottle out of the freezer hours ago, and by now there was only a shot or two left. They had made desperate love on any surface they found themselves near between anxious crying bouts.
There was a moment when Suze felt a peculiar swelling in her heart. It was when Nate was inside of her as she was sprawled on top of the dining room table. That swelling was one she remembered from when they were trying to conceive, that irrepressible feeling that their coital unity, their simple biological ecstasy, their mutual quest for climax, was for a future greater than either of them could actualize alone, one filled with hope, joy. It was a pregnancy of its own, a pregnancy of the soul.
Nate felt powerful, masculine for the first time in god knows how long, as he lifted her ankles up to his shoulder and put them together, exposing a new angle of attached between his belly and her thighs. The wonderful sensation of losing control of half of her body to her husband doubled the electric delight of the penis' head rubbing in circles around her g spot, tapping it directly whenever Nate would slip out a little bit. Their minds travelled to a plane of cosmic chaos as they lost themselves and all of their earthly worries in a singular, pure pursuit.
Shana walked into the house around sundown to find them in the middle of this scene. She yelped a small yelp and backed out of view of the dining room. They had not noticed her, or if they had they kept going without a care to give. Shana, out of curiosity, out of her own grief-induced unmooring, inched her head around the corner of the doorway to the dining room. It had been years since she wondered what the act looked like between her sister and brother-in-law, and frankly she figured they were more or less asexual at this point. Not the case.
She saw her sister's face covered in sweat as if she had been sitting in a parked car during a heatwave. Her breasts fell to either side of her ribs and moved at their own rhythm, one contrary to the shared gyration of the lovers's pelvises. Nate's ass was desiccated, a little hairy, but his legs and arms showed definition. She never knew that Nate had a tattoo on the back of his right shoulder. It