Problems Clarity. Part 2

Steph was silent during the taxi ride to the restaurant, but once they were seated and ordered she barely paused for breath. She moved from how violated she felt by Aaron’s advances to how it was so difficult to be a woman in the work force. ‘Try living in Saudi Arabia you bint’ Problem sent with irritation while she was mid flow. Levi struggled to suppress a smirk. ‘Tracy called me today on my break and invited us up to stay with her so I was thinking we could go up to London for a couple days. She really wants to meet you and I know you’d get on. There’s a feminist march on in two weeks and we can go along to protest the President’s visit to the UK. We’re also hoping to raise awareness around the wage gap issue in America.’ Levi took this in. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back for a couple days next week but I’m more than happy to come up for the march and meet you in London you if ya like?’ Steph downed the dregs of her glass and looked away pensively as if she hadn’t even heard what he’d said. ‘There’s something else……. Daddy called today and invited us down to the Isle of Wight for a meal. Apparently, he’s getting it in the neck from mum as they haven’t seen me in months. Mum is really keen on meeting you as well.’

At this statement Problem surged forward in his mind swelling and almost splitting Levi’s control of his own rush of excitement, he struggled to control the heat surging to his face and the shakiness his hands were demanding to enact, adrenaline threatened to make him shake in his speech, his scalp tingled and he felt sweat on his palms and around his tightening sphincter. ‘You don’t have to if you don’t want to baby, we can go up to London instead. Probably be more fun for you.’ Problem was doing the equivalent of pacing , screaming, and clawing inside Levi’s head. He had watched a starving mange ridden fox one night eating the abdomen out of a dead roe deer that had been hit by a car, and the frantic bloody snouted plunges into the organs and fierce ripping away of tissue was all he could compare Problems current uncontrolled sending to. ‘Calm the fuck down’ Levi sent, as he felt the migraine begin to form that always accompanied Problem when he hit a high octane of frenzy.

Levi looked down at his almost empty plate pretending to contemplate uneasily while effectively concealing his enthusiasm and the utter savage ripping’s happening in his mind simultaneously. When he looked back at her she was staring intensely, Gaelic pixie features perfectly caught in the flickering tea light candle between the. Dark beautiful straight hair perfectly framing her face, delicate neck descending to the sensual cross of collar bones; with perfect distance to firm small breasts that could be seen where her V-neck pulled down slightly, demanding observation. Cosmetically she was a perfect woman, and it was an image that would have stupefied most men but Levi felt nothing. Just cold loathing. ‘Of course we can go down. I’d love to meet them.’ He said in a perfect tone of willingness tinged with anxiety.

She lit up in an amazing smile that would have easily have won Paris’s golden apple feeling the sense of elation that had come with his yielding. ‘Thank you so much baby. When Daddy worked for Merkel & P Pharmaceuticals he traveled all over Africa. You guys will have loads to talk about. And Mum is a die hard Corbynite, she almost makes you look moderate. They’ll probably adopt you.’ She was babbling excitedly now to the point that Levi wondered if she’d developed some undiscovered form of circular breathing. He let her babble on and sought refuge in the church of smile and nod, only popping his head out from time to time when she needed more than the simplest response fired forward. Problem normally would have been interjecting with his normal quips but instead was pacing in his mind secreting intent that was so malevolent it threatened to drown out all focus. This was way earlier than the time line he had planned and he couldn’t tell if that was a good or bad thing yet. Uncertainty was a rare experience and its presence worried him.

Their love making that night was gentle and slow. Though Steph was drunk when they got back to the flat he could sense her feeling wrongness in the awkward ritual of undressing while they tried to maintain contact. When she sat up to remove her shirt Levi saw the self loathing hidden in her expression. He avoided eye contact while taking off her jeans and instead pretended to be in a moment of enjoyment taking in her naked form before lowering himself down to take her into his mouth, firmly building rhythm as he stimulated the area just above her clitoris before she demanded more jamming her full self into his face with a slow but hard pelvic thrust. As she climaxed she turned her head in a faux look of ecstasy, when the tremor in her hit crescendo shaking her thighs but not her efforts as she endeavored to win the life long battle of self hatred that would never end for her. As Levi entered her he began using the lower part of his abdomen to stimulate the top of her clitoris pushing for hyper sensitivity while rhythmically and gently moving in long deep strokes.

While he moved through the well practiced ritual he thought this would always be it for her. Control, lie, fuck, narcissistically self loath, deny, repeat cycle. Her woman hood now the size of a fig would one day dilate and out of that primordial yawn would come a purplish reddish pinkish screaming form. A new part of her to fill with her exasperation and loathing for the fact that adoration and life were not things of perpetuity, but rather constant fleeting sources of dissatisfaction. The age of forty would find her joining the congregation of the holy church of kept house wife that could be found in any midday midweek yoga class or chain brand wine bar. Crows feet, blood type antidepressants, children she detests, husband whose belly conceals his penis but whose wallet pays for the teeth whitening and Botox. The contemplation of these inevitabilities aided him in staving off the unwanted arrival of premature orgasm.

After they had both gone through the motions of intensity in mutual climax she curled up feotally pulling his arm over her body, moving herself into the curve created by laying on his side and slept. Levi lay awake feeling the twitches of her dropping off accompanied by the changing of her heart rate and breathing. Problem was absent during their coupling but as Levi lay there he could sense the pacing of the thing in his mind.

He tentatively sent to Problem and the response was the images of a house interior. The streetlight glow highlighting the chest of drawers and sleeping female form were instantly gone from Levi’s field of vision, replaced with the images of floating through hallways and rooms. Rococo furnishings, 19th century hard wood flooring and Persian rugs, a huge fire place, then a large granite tile floored kitchen. Problem brought him directly to a cupboard then as if he had shrunk through it, to a Tupperware container containing breakfast cereal. Over and over as if Problem was there pacing, dragging Levi behind him like some small dinghy attached to a larger vessel.

Levi began to disengage and seek that separate part of his mind where Problem’s obsessing couldn’t overwhelm him. Let him pace and obsess Levi thought. As problem continued Levi began to move the blocks of his planned actions forward examining what would need adjustment. He thought he had at least another two months but the change in time frame shouldn’t make a difference. This was exactly what he had wanted and worked towards. Proximity to her parents was the entire point of him being here. The stolen identity, fake back story, the whole step by step of becoming Danny, the seduction of their daughter was all for just getting in range of her Father. Either way Levi and Problem would kill him and the fact that all of this was slotting neatly into place so soon comforted Levi. The earlier uncertainty was gone and he let sleep invade consciousness and overtake him.

End Part 2