Pandora’s Box
James Ward Kirk
Loving the blush of fame glowing from her merry clitoris and hard nipples, without thought of the dark haired man laying sleeping in the tangled sheets on the bed, or her man at home with the gold wedding band, Pandora slipped into her silk pink thong.
Pandora loved her body, her blond hair, her face. She loved her name. She loved everything about herself.
Pandora decided the memory to keep from this encounter came on the way to the hotel, the way the raindrops slapped the windshield, sounding like an infant’s first breath.
No condom meant too much to drink but she didn’t feel drunk. Pandora drank champagne as politicians shake hands—fast and easy.
She didn’t feel drugged or confused. In fact, she firmly believed she just experienced the best fuck of her life. She just wished she remembered it, rather than feeling it.
Pandora did remember sitting in . . . now what was his name . . . Peter, yes that’s his name . . . Peter’s black Suburban and singing “Dear Mr. Fantasy” while waiting for the rain to let up a bit. She applied pink lip-gloss. She remembered running barefoot into the hotel, keeping her three-inch fuck me heels from danger.
Pandora slipped her pale yellow sequined dress over her braless body. She didn’t need a bra and bras just got in the way. Pandora loved it when a man went straight for her breasts. Sometimes she thought it possible she hid a clitoris in each nipple; she loved such suckling.
She headed for the hotel door, then made a detour toward the bathroom, an urgent need to urinate overwhelming her. She took the longest piss of her young life.
Back at the hotel door, Pandora stopped again, itching like crazy—down there. I hope the bastard didn’t give me crabs, but if he did I can explain that away to John with a story about using a public bathroom. A minor inconvenience, just a hill of beans is all
Pandora returned to the hotel bathroom, lifted her dress, peeled off her pink thongs, sat down on the toilet lid and examined her happy trail. She thought a big bush unappealing, especially if the guy enjoyed giving oral sex–nothing like picking hair off your tongue—she knew from experience. Brazilian was out of the question. She thought it rude.
Sure enough, tiny little black bugs moved up and down her happy trail like ants at an anthill, some even taking up shop in the vulva. The bugs didn’t look like crabs, more like slugs, but they were so small it was difficult to say unless she had access to a microscope. Pandora pulled her panties up. She considered disturbing the man on the bed and checking him for bugs, but deciding against it, to avoid a scene. She did take his cash from his wallet. Pandora only carried plastic, never cash.
Standing at the hotel door for the third time, she stopped to scratch. She stepped into the hallway and saw no one, so she scratched all the way to the elevator. By the time it reached the first floor, she’d drawn blood.
Pandora practically ran from the hotel to the nearest pharmacy. She didn’t want to ask the pharmacist where she might find the medicine she needed, but did so anyway, certain her panties had caught fire. The pharmacist, an old fat man with a huge nose, pointed toward the store’s restroom with his eyes. She ran towards it, slamming the door and locking it.
She ripped the medicine box open and threw it into the trashcan along with the instructions and her pink thong She didn’t want to see the crabs again, or the damage she’d done scratching—she had some explaining to do for John; maybe they’d do it in the dark, because she couldn’t let him see down there. Fortunately, her period was due and she could stretch 10 days out of it; with oral sex, she might even get fourteen days. Everything’s going to be fine.
Pandora sat down on the toilet, spread her legs wide, and emptied the tube of cream, again without looking, all over her pubic region, even moving past the vulva into the vagina, spreading the ointment all around.
Instantaneous relief. Pandora released one long sigh and a single tear. I didn’t deserve this. Taking a quick look down at her pubic region, she saw blisters the size of dimes.
Greg, Pandora’s brother, told her the first symptoms of genital herpes takes at least three days. For him, ten days passed before the first symptom.
Upon closer inspection, the blisters stretched from the top of her happy trail, continued downward, spreading to inside both thighs and it looked like one crab floated inside each blister. At least the pain is gone.
Pandora stood outside the hotel room, hesitated for a moment and then knocked. The door opened almost immediately.
“Welcome back, lover,” Peter said, still naked and still as beautiful as the first time she saw him. “Come in.”
Pandora walked in, hearing the door lock behind her. She quickly turned. “What did you give me?”
“Take off your dress,” he said. “I’ll explain.”
Pandora complied. Why not? He’s seen me.
She looked down. The blisters were now the size of half-dollar coins. The crab within each blister grew in proportion with the blister.
Peter said, “I’ve given you the gift of life.” He walked over and caressed a blister. “Grow strong, my son, we have a planet to colonize.”
Peter split his exoskeleton, exposing his true habitus corpus.