Chapter Eleven: Waking Up
Esmerelda's finally awake, and she's in for a world of surprises
Last Time in Lake Nipples…
Delores hoisted her daughter up off the floor, hooking her arm around her waist to help keep her steady, and guided her down the silent hospital hallway. When they reached the end Esmerelda looked behind her one last time, hoping that maybe it had all been an elaborate practical joke — that her father would jump out from behind a door and they’d all have a good laugh. But there was no joke — no horrible mistake, no surprising plot twist. There was nothing but a janitor mopping the drips of Burt Poppingcorn’s blood from off the floor; a conspicuous bleach stain on the back of his dark blue jumpsuit, a pair of bulky headphones strapped across his unusually large head.
And now… back to our story!
It was nearly three o’ clock in the afternoon when Esmerelda was roused from her sleep by the sound of two pigeons doin’ it outside the window of her childhood bedroom. The last time she’d woken up in this bed she was 18 years old, ready to run away from her problems forever. Now here she was, an emotionally maladjusted woman of 33, and all the ghosts she’d left behind were roaring back to life.
It had been an eventful 48 hours. Her best friend was married. Her father was dead. She’d eaten a doughnut off a stranger’s dick. She’d made violent, spiteful, passionate love to the boy she’d sworn to hate til the day she died.
Oh fuck, Randall.
I forgot about Randall.
Esmerelda blindly grasped about the nightstand, knocking over her Garfield telephone, and a lamp that was also shaped like Garfield. She grabbed her glasses and winced as she put them on, her face still sore and puffy from crying herself to sleep the night before. For a split second she wondered why she was so anxious about finding her phone — she despised Randall Burningham with every fiber of her being, and had only responded to his lurid, unsolicited text messages in a fit of sexual desperation. However, Esmerelda’s trauma-driven sense of guilt reminded her that Randall had pulled himself out of bed at 3am and drove alllllll the way to the hospital because she’d promised him sex, and she had broken that promise.
Her stomach burned and twisted like a hot German pretzel — she had inconvenienced a man whose existence made her miserable, and she felt simply awful about it. She knew there was only one thing to do, and that was to suck up her feelings and apologize.
A shiver ran up Esmerelda’s spine and straight back down into the depths of her buttcrack, making her feel at once exhilarated and uncomfortable. She was doing everything she could to shut off the sex juice for Randall — remembering the pain he’d caused her, the indifference he’d shown after she’d fucked him senseless as a sort of perverse revenge — but she couldn’t. She’d used his body to absorb her rage, but had grossly underestimated exactly how much rage she’d bottled up inside her over the course of her life. Esmerelda’s body was a wine cellar full of grievances.
Esmerelda quickly realized she had never sexted a man before in her life and had no idea what she was doing. As one of the top five OSHA inspectors in the country she was no stranger to writing about breasts and anuses, but almost always in the context of meat processing. Now she had to figure out something sexy to say, and fast.
Once again, Esmerelda was nailing it.
Esmerelda covered her face with a pillow, screamed at the top of her lungs for eight minutes, then hopped in the shower where she continued screaming for another ten. She rummaged through the dresser drawers that had been virtually untouched for 15 years, squeezed into a pair of frayed flannel sweatpants that were a size too small, pulled a threadbare high school gym shirt over her colossal cans, and sat back down onto her childhood bed.
Like every other woman on earth, Esemerlda was no stranger to plastering a fake smile across her face and pretending everything was fine whenever the world around her chose to burn. This time, though, the smile did not come easily, and when it did, it lasted only seconds before melting into a sad, vacant stare. She couldn’t understand any of her feelings, much less her complicated ones about Randall, but she knew one thing for sure: if there was anything that would be able to take her mind off the pain and anguish that were ravaging her innards, it was banging. And bang, she would.
Esmerelda hitched up her too-tight pants and headed downstairs to rejoin the living, taking deep breaths and reminding herself there was no reason to panic. Even though she had a difficult relationship with her mother, there was enough love there to keep things civil.
“Well good morning, sleepyhead,” chirped Delores as she heard her daughter’s feet marching down the creaky wooden steps. “I hope you’re dressed, because we have company.”
Esmerelda nervously followed the sound of her voice to the kitchen, where she found Delores sitting at the table across from a man with kind eyes, a rugged beard, shaggy hair, and tattoos peeking out from beneath the cuffs of his rumpled flannel shirt. A man she had never expected to see again.
“I know you and everybody else told me that I needed to let this go, but I couldn’t,” said Delores. “I finally found someone who agrees with me that your grandmother’s death was suspicious, and thinks your dad going crazy and falling out of a helicopter might be connected.”
The stranger stood up, held out his hand, and offered a wry, knowing smile.
“The name’s Clams. Bill Clams. Lake Nipples Bugle. It’s nice to see you again, Esmerelda Poppingcorn.”
Will Esmerelda get another taste of hot, steamy Clams? Or will something outstandingly dumb happen? Find out in the next scintillating installment of The Edible Erotic Adventures of Esmerelda Poppingcorn!
wb!
Welcome back. Now get to boning!