m_lobdell1 | Unsettling Stories

Memoir of a Cam Girl

He’s making me write about what he’s done. Maybe it’s a form of entertainment. Maybe it’s to force me to relive the terrible things I’ve been through. No matter the reason, if you’re reading this, you need to know I am not in control. I’m just his puppet. His slave. He is wearing me.

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I’ve been a camgirl since January 5th, 2016. The first year was lovely, and I say that without sarcasm. I made decent money and developed connections. I networked with other girls and guys and we got to learn the business together. There was little competition among us; it was all very supportive. Sometimes we even collaborated and put on a couples show for our regulars. Clients were happy to pay extra for that kinda stuff.

I learned pretty quickly how to avoid the creeps. The abusers. The ones who’d spam the chat room with requests for dangerous insertions or disgusting, illegal pairings. They could be blocked. Most of the time, they’d move on. Continue reading “Memoir of a Cam Girl”

We Share The Empty Roads

“You never know what’s sharing the road with you after dark,” Dad said as he gave me my first driving lesson. “Whenever you’re driving alone on an empty road, pay attention to what you pass — even if it’s just something you notice for half a second out of the corner of your eye or just out of the range of your headlights. Because even if you’re not looking at it, you can be damn sure it’s looking at you.”

He died in a car accident a number of years later. It happened just after midnight, on an empty road, in the middle of nowhere. The software in the truck notified his dispatcher that there’d been a crash. By the time the sheriff and paramedics arrived, he was long dead. Continue reading “We Share The Empty Roads”

Of Malevolence; Of Misanthropy

“Mankind is the true God,” I’d proclaim. “The universe is our laboratory. Our playground. If something exists, we will learn of it. We will study it. And, through our strength and resolve, we will dominate it.”

My voice, at the time still young and powerful, echoed, day after day, throughout the lecture hall: “We are the third of the three paradigms. The early cosmos was the first; shapeless, protostellar dust, which, through the hardcoded mechanisms of this universe’s physics, yielded pattern coalescence. Stars. Galaxies. Planets.”

“Patterns increased in complexity over billions of years. Physics begat chemistry. Chemistry begat biology. And so began the second paradigm: biological evolution. The complexity seen in evolution dwarfed that of the previous paradigm. Eukaryotes. Fish. Mammals.”

“And finally, hundreds of millions of years later, as all the interwoven complexities reached a critical point, a singularity formed. It was the birth of the third paradigm: human intelligence. A force powerful enough to allow the willful direction of aspects of the other two paradigms, as well as its own destiny. It is a force seen nowhere else in the universe. It commands nature. It imposes its will on nature.”

Continue reading “Of Malevolence; Of Misanthropy”

Mr. Puddles

I’m a teacher’s aide in a first-grade class outside Tacoma, WA. I brought the kids out for recess on Friday afternoon. It had just rained; the old blacktop was covered in puddles. The kids loved it. They jumped from puddle to puddle, splashing around in their cheery yellow galoshes and rain slickers.

Two minutes in, Lily Yamagata tripped over Sophia David’s backpack and skinned her knee. She was crying. I headed over to comfort her. I picked her up and brushed off the sand and grit. There was a hole in her tights and a little blood seeping from underneath. Nothing bad. Nothing she wouldn’t forget about in five minutes.

“You’re okay, Lily!” I announced, smiling. “Don’t worry, the nurse will get you a nice band-aid. What’s your favorite one?”

Lily sniffled. “Steven Universe.”

“Perfect,” I replied. “Hey Sophia, why don’t you hold Lily’s hand and bring her to the nurse, okay?” Continue reading “Mr. Puddles”

A Pathetic Wretch

After her husband left, all she did was cry. Cry, cry cry. Noon: cry. 10:00pm: cry. 3:00am: cry. Her pitiful bleating would pour through the thin wall between our apartments and drive me out of my mind.

I couldn’t sleep. My work suffered. I stared, eyes wide with restless hatred, at the ceiling in my uncomfortable bed as night after night was stolen from me.

Pounding on the wall did nothing but cause her to cry harder. Calls to the obese building superintendent brought castigation; not to my neighbor, but to me.

“How dare you be so heartless,” the super chided. In the rare cases she wasn’t speaking around a mouthful of food, it still sounded as if she were. “Her husband abandoned her!”

“I can’t sleep. I can’t even think!” I protested.

The thing on the other end of the line huffed. “Get some earplugs,” she suggested, and hung up.

This went on for months. Like any man in my situation, I reached the end of my rope. And, in a way, so did my neighbor.

Continue reading “A Pathetic Wretch”

Caroline’s New Teeth

Caroline came into the kitchen the while I was making dinner.

“Mommy, my tooth feels funny.”

I had her open her mouth and I told her to point to the one that felt different. She did. It was one of the bottom incisors. I touched it with the tip of my finger. It wiggled.

“That’s normal, honey. Remember when I told you you’d get big girl teeth? You’re gonna lose your baby teeth and the Tooth Fairy will give you a dollar!”

Caroline smiled. “I’m a big girl!” she announced.

“You can wiggle it with your tongue if you want,” I suggested. I’d read that helps the process along.

Caroline worked her tongue around inside her closed mouth, then scampered back into the living room.

A couple days later, as she munched away on a chunk of apple, she dropped the piece and gasped. I glanced over. There were a few drops of blood on the plate.

“Was that your tooth, honey?” I asked.

Caroline nodded, then drooled a teaspoon of blood and saliva onto her snack, followed by the tooth.

“Congratulations!” I said. “The Tooth Fairy is going to visit tonight!”

Continue reading “Caroline’s New Teeth”

A Most Welcome Visitor

I was nineteen when he visited for the first time. It was very late and the bedroom was pitch black.

“Miles,” he whispered. “Miles. Can you hear me?”

My eyes were wide but only darkness met them. I couldn’t see who was talking.

“Yes,” I whispered back.

“A few more years,” he cooed into my left ear. “Just wait another few years and you’ll learn who I am.”

I reached out, trying to touch the producer of the voice. My hands grabbed the air. I turned over and groped for the bedside lamp and flipped the switch. Pale light poured into the bedroom. I was alone.

I didn’t realize at the time that that would be a constant. A theme.

It’s now been eighteen years since I was visited that night. I’ve spent it by myself.

I wish I could call those years happy and productive. They were, in fact, the opposite. I am depressed. Unemployable. “Mentally ill,” is the official term that lets me collect money for doing nothing but sit at home all day.

Well, not quite nothing.

I daydream. I fantasize about the man who spoke to me that night. I picture him swooping in and knocking on my door, bringing riches and surprises that would heal my ruined psyche. He’d be my guardian angel; a heavenly respite from my day-to-day misery.

For nearly two decades, those dreams went unrealized.

Until last night. Continue reading “A Most Welcome Visitor”