Fluff, by Paul Attmere

Below the hotel window, traffic bruises the streets with yellows and other hurting colours. Human grunts and shouts, and distant horns complain. I close my eyes, soothed by the first silver bars of a Christmas song, carried on a swirling current of cold air, drying the sweat and the spurts of Keith’s cock blood on my face. 

When I met Keith, I’d been sweating a lot. It was essential to my plan. I’d found out where he worked from Lizzie, and with figure-hugging lycra clinging to my skin, ran the three miles to his offices.  

I drop my chin to my chest, look down to those man-made, shatter-bone streets. One way out of this mess would be to jump. That would be the problem, with the deed done, what then? Donna turns up, I explain the mess in room 1301, and then we run off into the sunset with Keith’s sprog?  

With my free hand, I check the right pocket. No, not that one. Left pocket. Ah, there it is. Us.  

Belly button. Belly button. Belly button fluff. 

I would recite this to Donna as if it were the chorus in some nursery rhyme; she’d giggle, roll over to her side of the bed, and tell me to, ‘Stop, Lizzie, you silly.’ 

She knew what was coming. ‘Hold still,’ I’d say, and she would stifle laughter as I cleaned her belly button of the day’s debris like a hoover sucking it loudly from her; then she’d suck out mine before lying, her finger in my belly button, mine in hers. Only when she turned from me, in the bed we often shared—her tanned shoulder rising and falling with her sleeping breath—would I roll our fluff between my palms and whisper, ‘I love you.’  

After she announced she was marrying Keith, and having his baby, I began collecting more than just fluff from our bellies. I combined spirals of blonde hair from her hairbrush with my straight, red, shoulder-length split ends. I added detritus we had shed, peeled and cut from our bodies. From nail clippings and emery board dust to shaved hair gathered under the razor blade. Like my mother, Donna shaved her legs—something I’ve never done. I would lie next to her, staring at our love ball of hair and fluff, and other body stuff, and wonder why Donna had betrayed me. 

A rat-a-tat-tat on the hotel door.  

Before doing it, I’d made dear Keith phone Donna to tell her he was waiting for her in room 1301 with champagne on ice and his cock hard. After he ended the call, he turned his brown eyes to me and asked me to put the knife away.  

I didn’t.  

Leg out the hotel window, holding tight to a metal rail attached to the windowsill, I haul myself onto the ledge and look up into the blue sky. I press my back to the wall of the building. How did I ever imagine this would end well? The porous sandstone absorbs the sweat from my palms and butt. The Christmas music stops, replaced by an excited, gabbling voice advertising aftershave for men.   

I’ve left the hotel room window open, and from the ledge, I hear Donna whispering Keith’s name on the other side of the door. 

Up till now, the plan had come together: Keith standing before me, Y-fronts around his ankles, playing along, following my instructions, on the verge of getting hard, but as it was, a pretty pathetic-looking cock, like an old sock on the washing line after a hot wash. Would cutting through that shrivelled thing be an awkward operation, even with my father’s fishing knife? This was my only concern.   

When I produced the knife, he turned as if to skedaddle—forgetting he had a pair of Y-fronts wrapped around his ankles—and crashed to the red-carpeted floor, hitting his head on the bedside table. He was out for a few precious seconds. I pinched his cock between my finger and thumb and remembered Dad absent-mindedly gutting trout.  Keith came round screaming like a starving baby.  

I hear the hotel door open. Donna’s gonna see him spread-eagled next to his penis. Then, I hear her voice moaning, ‘Baby,’ and repeating it over and over like a record stuck on the most sentimental part of an otherwise great song. ‘Don’t do it to yourself, Donna,’ I murmur.  

One step away from ending up as Christmas lunch for the city pigeons, I inch my way back along the ledge, slip one foot back through the window. My trembly voice exits my mouth. Similar to my father’s voice after the strychnine took effect, in the last stages when all he could do was moan my name. That’s what he got for crawling into my bed and doing what he did. Mum, if you had survived beyond the ten years they gave you for murdering him, you’d be proud of me.  

Donna looks up at me, face all made up and dolled up in a red dress. I put my hand into my pocket and roll our fluff and other ‘us’ stuff between my fingers. So soft, our love. If only she could understand. Merry Christmas, I want to say. I smile. If she would smile back, then we could start again. Clean up this mess together like Saturday mornings at the flat. Her wearing yellow marigolds gloves, mopping the bathroom floor, and me in the kitchen scrubbing pans singing louder whenever she tells me to ‘shut up you tuneless wench’. 

‘You?’ Donna’s hands are bloody from touching the bedsheets, and she’s backing away from the bed. When she sees my father’s knife, she grabs it. 

‘I did it for you. For us,’ I say. ‘He was going to screw me, Donna, behind your back. I’ve done you a—’ 

‘Screw? You?’  

I tell Donna how I’d waited thirty minutes before he turned up, late for work, sipping a Frappuccino as the lift doors shut. How he took a slow sip of coffee, undressing me with his eyes. 

‘Do you mind if I—?’ I said. 

‘I’ll have to press the alarm between floors if you strip.’  

It went from there, flirting as the lift smoothly ascended the thirteen floors to his offices.  

‘I offered to fuck your future husband—father of your child, Donna. After work, in the hotel across the road. This hotel.’ I drop my gaze from her to Keith. Blood has stopped oozing from his groin.   

‘You’ll not get away with this, Lizzie.’ Donna sits down on the corner of the bed. 

I lift my head, but keep my gaze fixed on Keith. Finish with a slow roll of the eyes to her. ‘I love you.’ 

‘Me?’ 

‘Yes.’ 

I told her I loved her, once before. A long silence followed then as now. She rolled off the bed, put her nightdress back on, and asked if I’d go back to my room.  

‘My heart is yours,’ I say.  

‘Why were you out the window?’ 

I wanted the warm, rushing wind as I plummeted through the fume choked, freezing London air, I thought. ‘Got scared, didn’t I.’ Eyes fixed on Donna, I dig into my pocket and bring out the ball of fluff.  

She’s got that face on her, that one she uses when she’s disgusted.  

When I pull it apart, the ball is a little bigger than a tennis ball. ‘This is us—our—fluff and hair and—’ I toss it in the air, but before letting it go, I imagine it hanging in the air, defying the laws of gravity, until it drops and lands on the bed next to Keith’s bare foot.  

Donna rolls Keith’s grey penis between her bloodied fingers as if it were the butt end of a smouldering cigar. She picks up the ball of fluff made up of moments of laughter and shared stories about our day, gathered as we mucked about between sips of wine and drags on a shared cigarette.  

‘Donna?’ More a groan of her name. Keith reaches out with a shaky hand. 

She withdraws before he can grab any part of her, and stands up from the bed. Our fluff ball in one hand and his penis in the other.  

‘How’d you know he’d fall for your strip in the lift,’ she says. ‘You’d never even met him.’ 

I remember Dad’s warm body next to me, a little sweaty. I liked that because it was Daddy’s smell. Then his hands slipped between my legs, and my world ended. ‘Men like me.’ 

‘Dearest Keith.’ Donna’s teary voice has gone all girlie. He probably liked that submissive voice. ‘I did love you, Keith. But you flicked the switch and now I’m off you.’  

His lips spasm and his hands blindly search the bed perhaps searching for his severed manhood. Her voice deepens, ‘Lizzie, where’s the knife?’  

‘You’re holding it?’ I say. 

She squeezes her lips together, just like she’d do before I playfully put my mouth to her belly button to suck the fluff. I copy her, but then Keith gasps for air—a pitiful, weepy sound—pulling her from laughter, back to the job at hand.  

‘Looking for this?’ She holds the woeful-looking penis above Keith and then, as if throwing out a ball of paper, tosses his cock out the window. 

I’ve heard if you drop a pea from a skyscraper, you could kill someone. We’re only thirteen floors up, but I wonder what would happen if his penis hit someone. Could a lifeless cock still fuck someone up? 

 ‘I never thought you could be—’ 

‘Such a bitch,’ Donna finished. ‘Nor me.’ 

I hand the knife to Donna and take our little fluff planet in the palm of my left hand.  

‘Did anyone see you come up?’ she says. 

‘Room’s in his name,’ I say. ‘I slipped through reception. Used the stairs.’ 

‘Camera’s would have—’ 

‘Hat, dark glasses. They’ll never identify me.’ 

‘Sure about that?’ 

‘I don’t know. What about you?’  

‘Shit, shouldn’t have chucked that cock—’ 

‘It’s fine just—I’m sorry, Donna. I’ll never get away with this.’  

‘You will… We will. I’ll stay. Pretend I found him.’ 

‘We?’ 

‘I’ll say I was horrified. Panicked when I saw his hacked off willy—’ 

‘Threw it out the window,’ I add. 

Donna takes my hand. ‘That’s the truth, isn’t it?’ 

Keith has stopped reaching for Donna. He’s staring at us as my father stared at my mother and me in those final agonising moments. I remember all I wanted back was the man who’d patiently taught me how to fish and hugged and kissed me every opportunity he got. I loved him so much. Just like then, there was no going back. Ever. 

Outside, the sun escapes a cloud and sends a sunbeam into the centre of the tangle of fluff and hair. Our united particles twinkle.  

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Paul Attmere is an actor and writer. Originally from the UK, he now lives with his family in Krakes, a small town in Lithuania. He’s been published in Spread the Word – Flight Journal, Running Wild Press Short Story Anthology, The Disappointed Housewife, Sixfold Anthology, and Litro Magazine.