It came from my notebook: Harold Tan from Flesh Trap
There was a girl on the closed-circuit television behind the counter of the Grab-N-Go, wrapped in white bandages and electrical tape beneath her tattered gown. Behind the counter Harold Tan didn't see her, leafing instead through the pages of his magazine and waiting for his shift to end. There were beautiful women there, lying across sterile floors and black bed sheets. They had faces smudged by heavy makeup and bruising, swollen eye sockets and cut lips, bandaged at their joints in braces or cupped by steel pegs to replace amputated legs. Harold squirmed in his plastic folding chair, trying to ignore the erection swelling against his button-fly. He licked his dry lips and turned a page.
…
On his way to the restroom to replace the bag in the trash can Harold was stopped by the sound of the door chime tinkling softly, followed by the gentle patter of feet. Harold rolled his eyes.
"Can I help you?" he sighed, walking back to the front counter. There was no one at the door or between aisles. "Hello?"
Leaning over the counter on the tips of his sneakers Harold looked around the store for the tops of heads peeking above shelves, and received no answer. The closed circuit monitor fuzzed into nothing and Harold shrugged. He set about his closing duties, placing trash bags in all the cans and cleaning the employee bathroom. A sudden low groaning noise stole Harold's attention, leaving behind the sink cleaner and wool pad on the counter. Careful steps led him to the rack of potato chips by the beer cooler, peering around the other side and finding nothing unusual or out of place.
"You know what?" Harold said to no one. "Fuck it."
Abandoning the restroom he dragged the three bags of garbage from the store room and out the back door to the alley behind the Grab-N-Go. The pavement was slick beneath his hi-tops as Harold hauled the trash behind him to the sliver of light coming between the building and the dumpster at the mouth of the alley. The girl on the closed circuit television was there, a stripe of shadow against a gray burst of street light. She was skinny in the hips like a boy, one of his porno models in a cheap white party dress and plunging neckline, strips of gauze and electric tape crisscrossed to cover bruises on her arms and thighs, pressing her breasts together under her blouse. Beneath the elbow her arms were amputated and healed in thick scars and a wrapping of hospital bandages crowned her head, obscuring one eye and part of her nose in blood-and-dirt smeared bindings, the other eye blackened with bruises. The sight brought Harold up short like a blow.
She opened her mouth and let out a sound like television static and for it Harold gasped with a step backward. He dropped the bags and his feet skittered across the greasy concrete, unsure of his footing when she took a step toward him, bare foot and silent. Hot panic worked through Harold's arms and stomach, working in his groin in sick thrill. She came to him, mouth open to drool, her dress transparent around her hips and breasts as to outline the pink of her nipples and slit between her thighs, both wet in invitation. It made Harold's heart thump greedily, throat dry as the girl got down to her knees on the dirty ground, mouth damp like her good eye when she blinked in a lazy flutter of lashes. Harold reached down with cautious fingers, combing through the hair sticking from her halo of bandages. She leaned into the touch like a cat and he stroked her for it, enjoying the way she rubbed her stubby elbows against the front of his pants, kneading at his groin like a content house pet.
"Did somebody leave you like this?" he rasped. He let his fingers slip into her sweaty hair, between the bandages to rub circles into her scalp. Spit ran from her mouth in a thick string as she drooled against his pant leg, eager like a panting dog. For it Harold sucked a breath between his teeth, hardening against his fly. "Okay. Okay, I'll give you what you want, Baby, no problem."
