Her home base looks ready for my baseball bat. Its solid, sheened thickness is aching to pound her diamond plate. Itching to slip into her glove. I grip my pole and get ready for the pitch. The bang comes and there’s another fantasy.

A man stands in the window of a tall steeple. I see only the steeple, not the man inside, and imagine how I could fuck the sky with the tower, if I had a big enough hand. Or perhaps I’d launch my red rocket and part the skies with friction and a sonic boom, churning my stomach from the acceleration. “Slow down.” Someone shouts, but I can’t. Not in my dreams.

Never get in the way of a man and the shaking of his stick. Never get in the way of the hungry beaver who wants that stick. Dam these thoughts. Everything is dripping wet. Everything looks like a hole. Everything makes my mind hard with wood, gnawing at my insides.

There’s a monster living in me. All I can see, feel, and breathe are sexual innuendos. Why do we have to think about it so much? I eat in sexual innuendo. Sleep in its waking warmth. A warmth that washes me asunder like a flood. Under these waves I see an infinity of dreams, both real, imagined, and hidden. That’s what I would say to her. But I can’t let it out. Not with the condition that I’ve had since puberty.

“What is it called again?” Said the woman sitting next to me. The bus’s shrill brakes reminded me of a squeaking bed.

“Ithyphallophobia.” I had said the word so many times before. An awkward word for an awkward truth during awkward conversations.

“And that prevents you from getting hard?”

“Not exactly.” I was starting to regret meeting her at all, preferring to meet on a bus rather than a seedy night club, side street restaurant, back alley or my apartment. If things went awry, I could easily get off at the next stop with little embarrassment. At this time of night, the crazies were still in bed, at least until midnight, and the busses were relatively empty. She seemed eager enough, more understanding than the other women I tried to meet. And pretty with a thin, soft face with long flowing brown hair. I was lucky she had agreed to this. “It’s a fear of getting an erection, seeing it, feeling it. Like being unclean.”

“And you brought the sleeping pills with you?”

“I took one already. Takes a few minutes to kick in.”

The bus’s lights flickered when it lurched to a stop. From the angle near the back, I couldn’t see who was at the bus stop. My groin tingled and I grew flush. When I was young, I would get hard on the bus to school. If left me feeling exposed, my masculinity throbbing for everyone to see. The girls would laugh and the boys would bully me, insinuating that I was gay for being so close to them when I had one. Her hand reached over. I pulled away from caution and shook my head.

Everything else I tried never seemed to work out and at least if I was asleep, I would have to experience the awkwardness silence. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Give a complete stranger my unconscious body, access to my clothes, and request that they have sex with my sleep-laden mind, preventing my consciousness to be aware that I even had an erection. Yeah, that sounded like a good idea…

“It must be very lonely, to not know intimacy.” Her lips were red with lipstick as she bit them. I couldn’t understand why she had dolled herself up in makeup and a purple flower dress and leather jacket that suggested she had a sense of style when we both knew the results wouldn’t matter since I would be asleep. It had been lonely but that didn’t matter either. “It’s fine. Humans can adapt to anything, I guess.” I wasn’t about to tell her about the thoughts in my head, stabbing at my brain like a pitchfork.

Two women stepped on, similar in clothing and age to the woman sitting to my right. They were striking in their delicate fashion, one in a red skirt and the other, with darker skin, wearing a revealing tank top and jeans. The two barely made eye contact with the driver and walked down the aisle with a sensual canter, almost like they wanted me to pay attention to them. One sat a few rows down from us, mechanically made eye contact with me, did not smile, and looked back at her friend, who sat in the seat adjacent to her. How odd…

“Should we give our names?” Said the woman next to me.

“Uh, we don’t have to.” I said, distracted. “Call me Everett. You can make up a name if you want.”

She didn’t respond. The lights flickered again, dimming the city bus with shadows. The woman didn’t show any apprehension and simply stared off into space. I showed her the condom that I said I’d bring. I wondered if she would use it and hope that she would. There was no telling how many she’d been with before but imagined it was more than a few. A sense of excitement was flooding my body, anticipation mostly like a child with a toy that happened to have flesh, blood, and the same relentless itch that consumed me. Focusing on that childlike wonder was the only thing keeping me focused, distracting me from other than the woman in the red skirt who turned toward me again. It was almost as if she knew what I was there for. Shame overcame me, exposed me, despite still being fully clothed.

Her mouth moved from across the aisles and I swear I saw her lips mouth the words, “Oh, you poor little creature.” My eyes opened wide. She couldn’t…How could she know? Calming myself I tried desperately to rationalize what was happening. The woman next to me, despite her pleasant scent, had set me up. But why and who were these women?

The lights flickered again. The bus driver turned his head with slight confusion. I tried to make conversation, “I’ve never had such kindness given to me so easily. You really didn’t have to do this for me and I appreciate it. It is a strange request.” It was at this point that the thought occurred to me that I was overzealous in taking the sleeping pill.

“Not stranger than some of my other clients. It’s funny and terrible to think that man sees a beautiful, healthy woman and will want to destroy it with seminal fluid.”

“No, it’s not like that–” my head became fuzzy from the narcotics. “I just –the thoughts–” my eyes became heavy. “‘–to go away.” Every movement, every motion started to slow and blur. The woman in the red skirt, her face…there was something odd…The lights went out and I saw the shadows wash over her frame. And then I saw…or thought I saw, red. Red over her skin, her skirt still red, and –no, it couldn’t have been– horns? It was a flash, fast enough to make me question whether I was being affected by the sleeping pill. A waking dream. A hallucination.

Refusing to believe what I saw, that inhuman image leaving me frigid in an open-mouth stare and fearing for my own safety, I turned, “I have money. I was willing to pay…”

“Do not be afraid. You have washed ashore to a new world of pain and pleasure. Relax and let the waves take you. It is too late to go back.”

Dark clouds passed in my mind as I stared blankly, an internal rumbling that told me something was very wrong. She was smiling, seemingly aware of some truth that I couldn’t comprehend. It was that smile, that wicked smile that consumed me with dread. That smile clutched my heart and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t escape it and as the sleeping warmth took over my body, I was afraid that I didn’t want to. Her eyes furled in focused attention and she licked her lips like she wanted to suck me but also wanted to devour me whole. A shadow passed over her face and there were lines there that I didn’t notice, across her forehead and cheeks. For that split second there was an unnatural texture like ripples or ancient pockmarks. Those eyes…her eyes were burning like matchsticks with an aching thirst for blood, passionately vile with sinister intent.

“What…are you?” My throat tightened.

“You know me. You know us. When you wander too long in the dark you’ll eventually find yourself prey to the starving creatures of the night. Mortal minds could never understand the primordial urge that drives them towards misuse and abuse of beautiful creatures. Sexual desire can take you to dark places.”

“I’m sorry…I don’t want to do this anymore.” Fumbling out of my seat I grabbed the rail in front of me to steady my legs, which turned to jelly as I stood.

She continued talking, the words more like echoes in my mind. “Fantasies of rape, racism, mutilation, suffocation, bruising, beating, stretching, ripping, tearing. Every dark emotion swims around their heads until they find release. But you can’t find release, can you, Everett?”

My head swirled; the sleeping pills were working faster than they should. With my eyes fading I called out to the bus driver and suddenly everything went black, but not from unconsciousness. The lights on the bus went out and the figures standing in front of me, and the one behind, became phantom blurs, oddly glowing, one red and one blue. Under the mask of night, I was blind, my mind now fully impaired. It was only when I grabbed the hanging hand grip that I realized the bus wasn’t moving.

Before I could scream out a hand, glowing red but oddly cool, held onto the hanging grip and placed my other hand in another grip, leaving me strung up and helpless, too weak to fight back. “All those thoughts, all those desires and nowhere to go. When you dream it must be glorious.” The red woman spoke with a slippery tone, like a snake licking the air. “How tasty. We must get those lovely, little dreams out of you.”

Squirming and struggling against the rough hands I let out a frail cry, “W-why…Don’t kill…” Without even a hesitation the red woman stuck her pointed, black finger in my head, through my skin, my skull, and into my brain. My stomach and groin were in my throat but there was no pain, only a numbing tingling that pushed me further into paralysis, and then, as the finger sank deeper, into oblivion. Her words, slow and sensual, took me under. “All those primal instincts, those obsessions, urges. Some call it spiritual. What do you call it, Everett? Show me.”