One Dirty Night

A car drove past.

Two parents and two children, probably returning from a normal family dinner with normal acceptable activities. I watched their taillights turn the corner, offering me no encouragement or judgment.

My knees locked.

My breath came shallow.

Two lanes of bare road were the only thing barring me from doing the raunchiest thing in my life.

Perhaps I read the brochure wrong? Surely a deviant circus where singles were implored and couples encouraged didn’t mean sex?

It couldn’t exist, could it?

Wouldn’t something like that be banned by all the uptight neighbours ringing the huge park where the circus had set up?

Maybe that’s why it’s a circus?

So it could seduce the residents for one night, corrupt souls, wring out pleasure from those lacking such joy, and then pack up and leave…never to be seen again.

Why did they want my medical report?

I flinched as images unfurled once again in my overactive imagination.

Unprotected sex, that’s why.

If I did this, I’d be agreeing to have unprotected sex with strangers.

I ought to be repulsed.

I ought to march back home and bury myself under a blanket.

So why, oh why, did a trickle of moisture soak into my underwear and the click of my heels echo condemningly as I stepped off the curb?

My throat squeezed as a tall woman clad in a red sparkly leotard waved at me. I stepped into the road as she blew me a kiss, cocking her hip suggestively. “That’s it. Don’t be shy, gorgeous.”

My cheeks threatened to spontaneously combust.

I stepped dazedly toward her and into oncoming traffic.

An angry horn had me prancing back to the safety of the footpath.

Jesus, Ella.

You’re here to live, not die an untimely death.

The woman giggled as the hatchback tore past me, whipping my little black dress around my knees. I winced in her direction, shyness cloaking me, but then full embarrassment settled as the richest, deepest, most annoying masculine laughter rippled through the dark.

I froze.

Him.

The man who’d started my insane obsession with this place.

He morphed from the shadows with a lazy stroll, his teeth white, eyes dark, his hand possessive as he placed it on the woman’s bare shoulder and whispered something to her.

His lips might speak to her, but his eyes never left mine.

Burning, ensnaring, eating me alive.