In the Dark of Night

My Aunt had died a few months back and had been kind enough to leave me sixty thousand dollars. It was a decent clip of money, and it had been wholly unexpected. Combined with the money I'd been tucking away over the past few years, it bought my bank account balance to a hundred and forty thousand dollars.

It wasn't a fabulous sum by any stretch, especially when you consider that I had no assets to speak of. Well, not unless you count a collection of shitty furniture and a ten year old station wagon 'assets', but by the age of thirty-two, it's generally expected that a bloke has a bit more up his sleeve financially than a thirsty Subaru and a chipboard Queen size bed.

I had a middling white collar job that paid ok money but nothing great, and offered not much in the way of career advancement. That was fine by me, because I wasn't an overly ambitious person. My whole aim in life was to figure out how to retire early and spend my days fishing and writing. I would have liked to add 'with a woman', but my success with them had been pretty limited.

Physically, I wasn't of much interest. I had a mixed Mediterranean heritage and the olive skin and body hair to prove it. A lot of people commented on my eyes, which were an almost colourless shade of green, but that was my only distinguishing physical feature. What name had my parents bestowed upon this mixture of Italian, Greek and Turkish ancestry? Darren. Darren Sahin. If you thinks this means I spend a lot of my life spelling my surname, you think right.

With all of this on my mind, I decided to take stock of my life and start putting some plans in place for the future. A hundred and forty grand wouldn't go near to buying a decent house in Logan, which was where I was living. It was a deposit, not a purchase price, and quite honestly the idea of a mortgage was terrifying.

You might think I'm stupid. Plenty of people take out mortgages. I can't tell you why I dreaded the thought of one, except to say 'I did'. Therefore, I really only had the choice of either continuing to save or buying a weekender in a rural area, somewhere I could move to when I was finally done with my working life. A regional area would still likely be too expensive, but rural was definitely doable. I knew my parameters. I didn't want outback. I didn't want to buy a place amongst bogans or hippies. And I wanted to be able to drive there in less than three hours on a Friday afternoon.

I won't bore you with the details of my search. Suffice to say that within five weeks I found a suitable property. It wasn't much; just a few hectares of scrub with a rundown besser block house perched in the middle of it, but the price was excellent and the Friday afternoon peak-hour commute just under two hours from where I was working. I could have lived there had I wanted to - though I didn't, not yet. For now, I wanted and needed to stay in Logan.

I'm not a particularly handy person so I didn't want to chance any major repairs myself. I presumed the local tradesmen would screw me over, but they were actually quite good about charging me only slightly more than they should have, and the work they did was second to none. Within another month the roof on the house had been repaired, the septic system recommissioned, and the wiring replaced.

All of the tradies made the same comment about the house 'it looks like a fucking council dunny, but it's not going anywhere, that thing would withstand a cyclone'. And they were right, because it looked uncannily similar to public toilet facilities, particularly because it had never been painted. I figured a coat of paint and some minor landscaping and it would look significantly better, but I wasn't in any rush. I wasn't out to impress anyone. I had my home, I didn't have a mortgage, and I was happy.

Not being social by nature, I wasn't in any rush to integrate myself with the community and make friends. I was visiting for peace and quiet, not a cracking social life, but nonetheless, I did meet some pretty decent blokes thanks to the work I had done on my house. There's not much to do in rural areas. Hunting, fishing, football, fucking and drinking seemed to be the extent of it.

The builder who fixed my roof was a mad keen home brewer. Beer, wine, spirits, he had them all bubbling and fermenting in one of his sheds. He and some mates would meet up at a local farmer's house for a drink every Friday night and sample each other's finest efforts in moonshine. He - Sam - was actually pretty interested in where it was I was working, because there was a home brew store that sold a particular product he was interested in and if I was going to be in the area that week... You can see where this is heading, can't you?

So there I was one Friday night, out in the middle of fucking nowhere with a beer in my hand.

'How was your week?' Carver asked. 'Quiet?'

It was my third Friday night with the Brewer's Club. That wasn't their name, they weren't an official group or anything, but it was how I referred to them. We were six men aged between eighteen and sixty-four, some single, most married, one widowed, standing in a shed drinking terrible, terrible beer, but it was Jim's beer and Jim was the widowed one and there was a certain leniency offered to a man whose wife had passed two months ago.

Carver, like me, worked in some mindless white collar job. He was a bit older than me, somewhere near forty, and had a wife and two kids. He said his wife hated him and I had no reason not to believe that.

'Yeah nah, it ended up pretty busy hey,' I replied. 'Yours?'

'Same shit, different bucket,' he said. He took a sip of beer. 'Fuck this is bad.'

'Shithouse,' I agreed.

We were hanging out for the whiskey made by the only member of the club with any sort of skill. It tasted better than any whiskey I'd actually paid money for, and was made by a farmer who counted ten percent of his income from primary production, and ninety percent from his various alcoholic, herbicide and pesticide concoctions. He was an odd duck, but Carver and I had agreed that geniuses were rarely normal. They operated on different planes of existence from us mere mortals.

'Speaking of shithouses, how is yours coming along?' he inquired.

The shithouse was how they referred to my house. I'd have been offended, except that I'm not an easily offended person.

'Yeah, all good,' I replied. 'I was going to start rendering it tomorrow.'

'Rendering it?'

'Yeah.'

'Need a hand?'

'Only if you're bored,' I replied.

He nodded faintly. 'Might come around late arvo. Take the kids with me, if that's alright.'

'Sure. I'll pay them if you want them to actually do some work.'

'Reckon they might be up for that.'

Carver's kids were ten and twelve years old respectively, one girl, one boy.

'Does five bucks an hour each sound alright?' I asked.

'Sounds pretty fucking generous to me. I'll make sure they work for it.'

I went home an hour or so later with a bottle of whiskey I'd bought from the mad farmer sitting in the passenger seat footwell of my Subaru. I thought I'd go home, have a few drinks, then get myself off to sleep.

It would be another night in my besser block getaway. I was expecting nothing to happen, and no one to drop by. I wasn't expecting anything other than a full night's sleep.

Boy, was I about to be surprised.

~~~~~~~~

I'm not ordinarily much of a drinker but I still do enjoy the odd few beers or whiskeys, particularly on a winter's night. It was with a reasonable level of enjoyment that I made a coffee, poured in a generous amount of booze, and took it outside to drink.

I sat in my camp chair, stared at the stars, and thought about the current state of my life. Most people were appalled that I'd bought a house so far from home, but perhaps it was difficult for them to see it from my point of view. My mates were all married and either had kids or were trying to have some. I didn't feel as if I were ever going to have a wife or family, so I needed to find my own happiness. This was my happiness. This was precisely what I wanted.

Fuck it was cold, though. I was in jeans, boots, shirt, jumper and jacket and it was still fucking frigidly cold. I pulled out my phone and checked the temperature. Two degrees Celsius. Jesus Christ. And here I was, outside, drinking coffee and whiskey.

I took a gulp of coffee. Neither the heat nor the alcohol burned my mouth. The coffee had been cooled by the cold air, and the farmer was too good at his craft to produce anything with a harsh taste.

Maybe my outfit was all wrong. I didn't dress like the blokes in the Brewer's Club, but nor did I dress like my peers at home. I didn't think I looked bad, my style was actually pretty conservative, but I often got asked 'where I was from'. I didn't really fit in anywhere, so I suppose in turn it was ridiculous to expect I'd fit into anyone's vision of an ideal man.

I took another mouthful of coffee. It was nearly cold. Blech. I skulled the last of it, stood up, and went inside.

I'll say this for my little house, it had a fireplace that did the trick, and the interior was toasty warm. I peeled off my boots, socks and jacket, and five minutes later, my jumper followed. I turned out my lights, undressed, went to my bed, had a wank, then rolled over and went to sleep. A week at work, a drive out to the weekender, a few drinks and an orgasm all put in a near coma almost immediately. I was out cold.

In normal circumstances I probably wouldn't have been so sleepy and therefore wouldn't have been so confused when I was woken by a knocking at the door. I stumbled out of bed completely naked and stood by the door, in complete darkness, reeling with tiredness. The knocking continued.

'Who is it?' I asked. My voice was soft croaky, so I cleared my throat and tried again. 'Who is it?'

'Um, me,' a woman's voice replied.

I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to figure out what was going on. 'Are you okay?'

'Yes. I just want to speak to you. But don't turn on the light. I don't want you to see me.'

'You... wait... I need to get dressed.'

'Okay, no worries.'

If a strange woman had knocked on my door in the middle of the night in Logan and told me to answer the door without turning the lights on, I would have called the cops. I learned my lesson about opening doors when I was twenty-one and living in a sketchy suburb and opened the door to someone randomly knocking at eight o'clock on a Tuesday night. I was confronted with a huge Islander holding a golf club who took one look at me, said 'oh, you're white, you can't be him', and walked off.

Fuck knows what was going through my mind, but I seemed to have forgotten about that incident as I pulled on my jeans and shirt and walked back to the door. I instinctively turned on the light.

'Don't,' she called out. 'I don't want you to see me.'

I flicked the light off. 'Are you sure everything is alright?'

'Yes, but I don't want you to see me,' she said, her voice tinged with panic. 'I... I really need to speak to you about something.'

That was the moment where my brain actually kicked into gear. My heart started thumping. This didn't sound very good. Something was obviously up and whatever it was, I doubted it was going to be good.

I opened the door and tried to identify the mystery woman. She was tall-ish, only a few centimetres shorter than me, plump and dressed in jeans and a hoodie. The hood of her jumper was pulled over her head, rendering her near non-identifiable. She'd sounded young, though. She must've been somewhere in her mid twenties.

'What do you want?' I asked.

'I...' She faltered. 'I've seen you around town over the past few weeks.'

'Yeah, I bought this place. Couldn't afford anything back home, but I could afford this. It's just a weekender for the time being. Maybe I'll move here when I retire.'

That might sound like a lot of information to divulge, but if you move to a country town expect to be questioned. What are you doing in my town? Will you cause trouble? Do you like steak? I'd become so accustomed to it that I now gave a quick run down to everyone I met.

'You don't have a girlfriend, do you?' The woman inquired.

'No.' I was now not so much worried as I was confused. 'Have I done something wrong?'

'No, no, not at all. I was... look, I'll be blunt. I just want to know if you want some anonymous sex.'

I nearly choked. I was now a hundred percent awake. I tried to get a good look at her, while at the same time, figure out what in fuck's name was going on.

'Sorry,' she apologised suddenly. 'This was stupid.'

She turned around to leave but before she could take a step, I grabbed her arm.

'It's not stupid,' I said. 'Come in.'

I released my grip on her arm and waited.

'Are you sure?' she asked.

'Very,' I replied. As they say, a stiff dick has no conscience, and mine had neither conscience nor sensibility.

The inside of my house was basic, very basic. I'd paid a hundred and twenty grand for it, so let's face it, it was never going to be special. The floors were concrete. The walls were bare cinder block. The kitchen was functional and the bathroom consisted simply of a shower, handbasin and toilet. Ordinarily, I would have been a touch embarrassed about letting a woman inside, but this woman couldn't see anything, not in the dark.

'You might want to hold my hand,' I offered. 'There's not much furniture, but I don't want you running into a wall. They're all core filled block, and you'd get a decent bruise.'

She took my hand in her warm, soft one. 'Thanks.'

'You sure I shouldn't turn on a light? If you want anonymous sex, you don't need to worry about me telling anyone. The last thing I'd do is going telling a bunch of blokes I barely know that I'm fucking one of their women.'

'I'm not very attractive. It's probably best we keep the light off.'

'Do you know who I am?' I asked curiously.

'Yes. I've seen you around. I've... spoken to you. Briefly. You wouldn't remember me, and I don't think you'd be attracted to me and besides, I'd really prefer you don't know who I am.'

'No worries,' I replied. 'I'm Darren.'

'You can call me Alice.'

'Is that your real name?'

'No. And please stop asking me questions. I don't want you trying to find out who I am. I just want sex.'

Well, what could I do?

'Let's go to bed,' I offered. 'If this is one hundred percent, absolutely, positively, something you want...'

'... it is,' she said firmly. 'If you're worried about me claiming rape later, don't. That's the last thing I'd do.' She laughed nervously. 'I mean, I came here and knocked on your door and asked for a root, didn't I? It's pretty obvious what I want.'

You might think I was stupid. Foolish. Reckless. But I was horny, and there was something about her that struck me as genuine. She was obviously a lonely country girl who wanted sex but didn't want a reputation as a slut. I was the perfect solution to her problem because I was only here for a small portion of each week, I was single, and I was the last person who could go about boasting about screwing local girls without finding myself in some seriously hot water.

'Would you like a drink?' I asked. 'I have some moonshine.'

She laughed. 'Everyone has Simon's moonshine. God help him if the ATO ever decides to audit him. I heard he declared a taxable income of seventeen thousand dollars last year.'

'Good on him. If multinational corporations can avoid paying tax, so can someone who actually does something useful with his life.' I paused as we passed the kitchen. 'Drink?'

'No. Thanks. Just take me to bed.'

We went to my bedroom and I guided her to the bed. I thought she'd lie down or something, but from the sounds of it, she was going straight to getting her kit off.

I was slightly impressed. This woman had serious chutzpah. She might be a bit fucking odd, knocking on a near stranger's door to ask for a shag, but she knew what she wanted and she went out and got it. It was now up to me to deliver.

We undressed in the darkness. My cock was already half-hard. Fuck this was dirty. It was all sorts of wrong. What if she was someone's wife or girlfriend? What if, what if, whatever. That wasn't really my problem. My brain was now a hundred percent focussed on sex. It had been six months since I'd been laid, and I was keen to reacquaint myself with pussy.

'Get under the blankets,' I offered. 'You'll freeze your tits off otherwise.'

'Thanks,' she said. She reached out blindly, trying to make contact, and touched my chest. 'There you are.'

'Here I am,' I agreed, holding her hand against my body. 'You're going to need to excuse the lack of manscaping. It's been a while.'

'It's okay. I think hairy chests are pretty sexy.'

'It's not the chest I was referring to.'

She laughed nervously. 'Ah, shit. This is terrifying. I'm just as scared of you touching my body.'

'But you want it?'

'Yeah, fuck yeah I do. I'm just nervous.'

I shifted closer to her and took her in my arms. Fuck she felt good. She was chubby without being fat, and had decent size tits. Without really thinking, I reached down to cup one in my hands, and the flesh spilled out around my fingers. My thumb grazed across her hardened nipple as I leant in for a kiss.

Alice responded tentatively, her kisses gentle and her hands moving softly onto my shoulders. Now that push had come to shove, I wasn't entirely sure she had any idea what to do. It was as if all of her bravado and confidence had been expended by arriving at my property and offering me her body.

I was the opposite. I'd gone from zero to ninety in just a few minutes and I was hungry, eager, lustful. The scent of her skin, and the feel of her soft breasts had invoked a primal response. My cock was achingly hard and every sense I had was heightened. I laid her on her back, climbed on top and began to kiss her face and neck. I knelt over her, exploring every inch of her, kissing and sucking and nibbling. I wanted a response, or to feel her lift her body up to mine in anticipation, but she seemed muted. Scared, perhaps.

I was sorry about that. I wanted her to be as into it as I was. I thought maybe oral sex would awaken her desire, so I slipped between her legs and spread her thighs. Her twat was bereft of hair, but I could smell soap, and when I kissed her pussy lip I knew I was going to be tasting it, too. Sure enough, when I flicked my tongue against her clit all I could taste was whatever bodywash she'd used on herself.

Alice lay stock still and unmoving.

'Alice,' I whispered.

'Does it taste gross?'

'No, you don't taste bad, but your cunt tastes like soap.'

'Sorry about that. I wanted to be clean.'

'Just use some water next time. Cotton underwear and water and you'll always taste naturally good.' I paused. 'Not meaning to be patronising, but I've noticed a lot of women are paranoid about being 'clean' and you shouldn't be.'

'Okay. I'm sorry.' She leant down and tugged my arm. 'Come up and kiss me.'

'Nah,' I replied, shrugging off her arm. 'The taste will go soon.'

She arched her back and yelped as my tongue made contact with her clit for a second time. This time the taste didn't deter me. I just wanted her to be hot and wet and ready for my cock, because you'd want to believe that I wanted to put it inside her.

I'm no master at eating pussy, but Alice was soon twisting and crying out. The awful taste of soap disappeared and I began to taste her natural flavour, light and slightly tangy. There is something about the smell of cunt that always gets me going and my hard-on was stiffer than ever.

'Darren,' she whimpered. Her palm pressed against my forehead. 'Please don't. I can't control what I'm doing.'