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Dr Hendrick J. Easterman, a man whose ambitions were much greater than himself, for better or worse. This is what he had took to telling himself, to cope with the myriad of sleepless nights spent in a fetal position in bed, hoping for the seemingly incurable ache in his spine to just disappear.
He’d admitted, in a thoughtful letter to his dear wife, Irene, just how much he missed the luxury of her massages, how she would aid his back pain with skillful chops and kneads of his skin. Even thinking of it brought a cleansing sense of relief over him. Truth be told, he only emphasised his back ache so heavily in the letter to cloud over his dubious work he had been doing at Sinyala. Perhaps, in some dark, sleep-deprived crevice of his brain, he knew that it was truly wrong, but it was beneifical for his sanity to not dwell on ethics, he had learnt that long ago.
He found himself later that week driving over the terribly bumpy roads, littered in potholes like stars in a sky, away from the Kafkaesque warehouse that housed the sick program and dwarfed the nearby towns in its sheer size. Eventually, far away enough from the facility to let his shoulders droop, he arrived at the massage parlor, signalled only with a glowing sign outside. He entered, and was hit with a smell so sweet that he had to suppress a gag.
At the receptionist’s desk was an old woman, a cigarette between her chapped lips, the sleeve of her shirt sliding down her shoulder. She had little care for herself or her image, and Easterman detested it - how someone could allow themselves to publicly stoop so indecently was beyond him.
He cleared his throat and simultaneously his mind, walking towards her, “Hey, Ma’am, how much will it cost me for an hour?”
Her head did not move as her eyes slowly looked up, meeting his face, she was completely unenthusiastic and dull, taking a long drag of her cigarette, blowing it out of the corner of her mouth as to not directly hit Henrick, “Depends,” She responded bluntly after exhaling all her smoke.
“Right,” He sighed, looking away for a moment, “I just want an hour. A massage. A warm room. A pretty girl. I- I’m not asking for too much, am I?” He asked, several exasperated breaths leaving his lips in shock at her nerve.
The woman sat up a bit, not any shift in her attentiveness, but to adjust her body to a more comfortable position in the seat, “Julie is on her lunch break, it’ll be 10 dollars.”
Hendrick nodded and drew his wallet from his suit pocket, taking out two dollar bills, placing them on her desk. He daren’t make physical contact with her hand for fear of catching her malady.
She took a notable time to count the two bills, before sliding them into a draw and nodding, “You can sit there,” She pointed to a stool by a wall, which he sat on, waiting for his massage with a newfound excitement.
His back seemed to swell worse on that wooden stool. He knew it was only temporary suffering for a much higher payoff off relief, but it did not stop him shuffling uncomfortably to ease to pain. Mid-shuffle, a young woman walked in, brown hair drooping effortlessly from her scalp to her small shoulders. She turned to Hendrick then, with a voice as soft as raindrops against a window, “Hello, Sir, if you’d like to follow me through here.”
He leapt up in a second and followed her to a room behind the reception. It was very sanitary, almost to the standards back at Sinyala, albeit the singular dirty towel in the sink.
“If you’d just… take your jacket off, Mr…” Julie waited, looking up at him as he slid his suit jacket from either side of him.
“Easterman. But, please, call me Hendrick,” He said swiftly, handing her his jacket.
She rushed off to store it on a hanger then, with the timidity of a doe, she spoke again, each word falling so pleasingly upon Hendrick’s ears, he could listen to her speaking for decades and would never tire of her voice, “If you’d just get comfortable here,” She requested, pointing him to a table in the centre of the room.
He faltered for a long moment, his grin fading into an uneasy frown. He had seen many contraptions like this in his brief time with Murkoff, used to detain Reagents and Ex-Pops alike to make them vulnerable.
Julie noticed his expression, “Or we could sit there, what- whatever’s most comfortable for you, Hendrick.”
He nodded and walked over to a much safer looking couch. She followed behind, walking to the back of the sofa as he got himself seated. She reached her arms down to begin the massage, grabbing and fondling preciously with the skin at his neck, slowly reaching down to his shoulders.
“I must say,” She uttered quietly, lips right beside his ear, “You’re not anything like our usual clientele, Hendrick.”
He groaned slightly in pleasure as her slender, skilled hands began to knead his pain into immense satisfaction. If he thought his wife’s massages were good, this was ethereal.
“How so, dear?” He asked, eyes now firmly closed, letting the bliss remove his most primary senses. He could sense some form of refinery in her tone, like the words she spoke had been rehearsed, too fluent and quick to be a spur-of-the-moment thought.
Julie waited a beat, considering his question, perhaps debating the most light-hearted way to put her response, “The usuals are…” She exhaled from her nose, a sound that Hendrick instantly identified as a giggle, “Well, they’re rude and greedy - they’re here every week as part of their little routines. They need their backs scratching.”
Now it was his turn to let out a small chuckle, lips curving into a smile, “What makes me different?”
She did not hesitate this time, hands now working their way down his waist, pressing at his skin through his shirt, “You’re so polite and respectful, not barking demands at me.”
This time, an audible laugh left his open mouth, he was the antithesis of that really. At work, he would command his coworkers with a sense of superiority. He would overlook the torture of many Reagents to supposedly reform them. He was - in all terms of the words - impolite and disrespectful. He didn’t explain himself though, and the room went quiet, the only noise being the rustle of his shirt, the buzz of the lights overhead and very occasionally a groan from Hendrick.
Eventually, she finished the massage, and he already dearly missed the feeling of her hands against his feeble skin.
“Hey Julie, I’ve got another 50 dollars here. I’d like to keep you a bit longer,” He requested, but it was with desperation that hinted it was not simply a request. He adjusted himself around on the couch to retrieve his wallet, where he took 50 dollars out and held it in front of her.
She eyed the money with a sense of distrust, but eventually decided that she had nothing to lose. She took it and walked to the little drawer in the corner of the room, “Do you want another back massage, Hendrick?”
His lustful eyes followed her as she walked around the room to deposit the money. When she turned to him for an answer, he shook his head, “No, no, just… I’d like for you to sit with me,” he moved aside, making sure there was definitely enough room on the couch beside him.
She seated herself beside him, face flushing a rosy shade of red that Hendrick wished he could tattoo on the inside of his eyelids. Every one of her features was so much more beautiful in proximity.
“You’re stunning, girl,” He uttered to her, reaching a hand out to her face.
She turned to him, now shuffling closer, reddening even more. For a moment, her eyes caught the ring on his hand, his promise to another woman, and her stomach twisted, but they had already got this far. She simply giggled for lack of response and put a hand on his thigh.
He felt restrainted by otherwordly forces then, utilising all his strength to not buck his hips into her touch. It had been months without his wife, and his fist was only as good as his imagination would let it be. He let out a long groan and eyed her, mind racing with incomprehensible words that did not make sense, ramblings of his most primitive needs.
He began to order her, making sure the roles did not change, no matter how desperate he was to chase his pleasure, “Come on, girl, on my lap.”
Julie was more than happy to oblige, grinding down against him as she climbed into his lap, his bulge pressing against her mound in a mutually beneficial move. She let out a breathy moan for the first time that evening. By this point, Hendrick was a shell of who he normally was, all the overanalysing and narcissism left his body more and more with every thrust up against her.
He whimpered into her neck, a mix of his wife’s name and pet names that he had grown fond of using. However, Julie could not hear him over her own moans, which were surely loud enough to alert anyone in a 2 mile radius.
Both kept chasing their highs, cloth against cloth, friction creating even more overpowering pleasure. Julie was the first to orgasm, which Hendrick was definitely made aware of. She practically yelped, and began bouncing, hands wrapping tight around the back of his neck, pleads merged with deep breaths. Shortly after, Hendrick came with one final thrust up against her. He sunk into the couch, letting her ride out both their orgasms.
It had been so long since someone other than himself had brought him to completion, but it had never been that nice before. In the afterglow of it, Julie leant down to kiss him, a much-needed calm after the storm. He held her there, hoping that if he could grasp tight enough that he could expel all the shame from himself. Swiftly, she stood up off him, adjusting her hair that was now pressed against her sweaty forehead, leaving him breathless on the sofa, his now wet boxers taunting him for his adulterous disloyalty to his good wife.
After a swift and uncharacteristic goodbye, he stood up and rushed to his car, foot on the gas to go back to his innovative Murkoff-owned apartment, back to Sinyala, back to the trouble he had so desperately tried to forget.
As he threw his stained underwear into the washing machine, his back began to ache again. He collapsed against the wall with a deflated sigh, mind flashing with images of both Julie and Irene.