(Or, What Happens When I Write a Quicksand Story and Cast Myself as the Hero)
by Jason Sample
August 2017-November 2018
(If you haven't already read Part 8, it's at viewtopic.php?f=14&t=19623#p126065.)
In this concluding chapter of my story, Jason, having resisted the Kid's sensual temptation to give himself to the miry pit that had nearly claimed his and Angela's lives earlier that day, prepares to return home after his unexpected adventure rescuing a damsel in distress from quicksand. He believes that he now knows all that he needs to know about his youthful doppelganger, the embodiment of his combined sex drive and quicksand fetish, only to find that the Kid has a few surprises yet to reveal to Jason about himself... and himself.
Standard disclaimer: As always, this story is "semi-autobiographical"; in the course of it I touch on certain aspects of my own quicksand fetish, both positive and negative, that pertain solely to myself. I do not presume or pretend to speak to or about others' experiences of their quicksand fetishes, nor about quicksand fetishism in general. Your mileage may vary... especially since the majority of the "action" in this final chapter takes place inside Jason's car.
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The Kid (Part 9): Reconciliation
The sky was already darkening in the east as Jason lifted the rear gate of his car and tossed his muddy shirt into the cargo area, relieved that his hike back up to the parking lot had been uneventful. He had encountered no one on the return trip, nor had he wanted to; after all that he had gone through that afternoon to rescue Angela from the quicksand, coupled with his unexpected interaction with her mother and sister afterward and his subsequent, ill-advised flirtation with the mire, he had had little desire to engage in conversation with any random, inquisitive stranger on the trail who might have been curious as to why Jason and his pants were soaking wet and the shirt in his hands was smeared with mud. He also wouldn’t have to explain it to anyone other than his cats once he arrived at home, he thought with a sigh of relief as he unhooked the damp rope from his belt and tossed it into the back of the car; his wife wouldn’t return home from her conference for a couple more days and their adult children were all out of the house, living in other towns either at college or out on their own as they settled into jobs in their chosen fields. He moved some things around in the cargo area until he finally spotted a ratty old tee-shirt that he thought that he had remembered seeing earlier that day. He pulled the clean shirt on over his head and shoulders and then gathered up a folded tarp to place on the driver’s seat to try to keep it dry, along with a stray towel that had been living in the back of the car ever since the last move that one of his kids had made, before finally closing the rear gate and proceeding to walk around the side of the car in preparation to make his way home in the increasing darkness.
Jason opened the driver’s side door and placed the towel and tarp on the seat, hoping that it would form a mostly protective barrier between his still wet short pants and the upholstery beneath him, before easing in behind the steering wheel, the muscles of his arms and upper back still complaining painfully about the stress that they had endured while he had been freeing Angela and himself from their miry peril earlier that day. He then reached over his left shoulder and pulled the seatbelt around his torso, clicking its tongue into the buckle at his right hip as he closed the door and started the engine. The local National Public Radio station came on through the speakers as his car shuddered to life, a male announcer’s voice reading the evening news for his listening audience, while Jason plugged a charger cable into his dead cell phone to restore its power for the return trip home. I really could have used you earlier when I was helping Angela, he thought as his phone began flickering back to life. Amy had clearly had a connection while she had been tweeting and posting by the river, he remembered, and he imagined that if he had been able to call for help with his own phone Angela might have been spared going under in the quicksand. He checked his mirrors and rear windows as he shifted into reverse and started backing out of the parking spot to begin the ninety-minute trip back to his house, while the announcer’s voice on the radio continued its summary of the day’s headlines.
“…And as expected, the FED raised interest rates today to a range of two to two-and-a-quarter percent, signaling an end to its accommodative money policy of the last decade, with an additional raise expected in December and three more next year,” the radio reported as Jason pulled out of the parking lot onto the byway that would carry him the several miles to the interstate. He glanced down and checked his fuel gauge to confirm that he had enough gas to make his way home without stopping while the newscast went on. “That’s a look at the latest national news from NPR,” the disembodied voice said matter-of-factly. “In local news, you, Jason Sample, have got to be the stupidest quicksand fetishist on the Internet.”
Jason’s eyebrows went into “Spock” mode for the second time that day as he glanced askance toward the illuminated display of his car’s radio, and for a moment he considered pressing the audio control panel’s “rewind” button to make sure that he had heard the announcer say what he thought he had heard him say before remembering that that only worked with his TV’s digital video recorder at home. “And yes,” the voice continued, this time coming from the passenger seat next to him, “you did spell ‘fetishist’ correctly.” It was a familiar voice… too familiar.
“There you are,” Jason sighed in mild annoyance as he switched off the radio and looked over at the Kid, who was sitting with a miffed look on his face in the car’s right front seat. “I was wondering when you were finally going to show your face again.”
“And I’m still wondering when you’re finally going to grow a brain!” the Kid retorted huffily, crossing his arms over his chest and sulking grumpily.
“For your information, I have a brain,” Jason quipped back to him, “and not only that, but it’s normal sized and fully functional,” he added, channeling his inner Spongebob.
“You know what I mean,” the Kid muttered sullenly as he ignored the cultural reference. “After more than forty years of fantasizing about it, in the space of one afternoon you finally had the perfect chance to indulge your two deepest, lifelong fetishes,” he grumbled, gesturing emphatically with his left hand, “one, saving a beautiful damsel in distress from quicksand and then making passionate love to her afterward, and two, sinking all the way under in quicksand yourself, and you blew them both!”
“I didn’t blow the ‘saving a beautiful damsel in distress from quicksand’ part,” Jason reminded his young twin while keeping his eye on the road in the increasing twilight, “and I like to think that I successfully maintained my honor, character, and integrity with her while also respecting hers.” Jason flipped on his high beams as he continued along the unlit roadway. “And not only that,” he added, “but I also resisted a powerful temptation that could have cost me my life. Remember, after I had revived Angela, you yourself said that if I’d gone under with her, it would’ve been the end of both me and you, and that worst of all it would’ve been the end of you!” The Kid hmphed grouchily as Jason put a positive spin on what his fetish-driven doppelganger could only see as squandered opportunities.
“And then later when I almost gave in to your prodding to step into the quicksand by myself,” Jason continued, “the rope popped loose from the rocks right as I was standing at the edge of the deep spot! Did you really want me to risk dying in quicksand twice in one day just so I could indulge a lifelong fantasy? ‘Cause I’d have taken you with me!”
“Nah, I guess not,” the Kid exhaled wistfully as he stared out the window at the gathering darkness, “but still, what a way to go!”
“I’m not ready to ‘go’ quite yet,” Jason replied to his younger self, “nor do I think you are, either.”
“Yeah, but what about Angela?” the Kid challenged him again as he turned back toward Jason. “Even though it turned out that quicksand was her thing too, she wasn’t ready to ‘go’ either, so much so that after you risked your life to save her, she was so grateful and turned on that she was ready to fuck you right there in the mud!”
“Yes,” Jason responded, nodding his head, “she probably would have.”
“She would’ve done anything you asked her to do,” the Kid continued complainingly, “and she would’ve let you do anything you wanted to do to her!”
“Yes, she probably would have,” Jason repeated himself in reply.
“And it would’ve been so… fucking… good!” the Kid griped unhappily.
“Yes,” Jason admitted, “it probably would have.”
“And to top it all off,” the Kid added insistently, “it would’ve been your ultimate revenge on Angela’s snooty ol’ holier-than-thou mother, your old college crush who couldn’t be bothered to give you the time of day!”
“Yes, it…” Jason started to respond before catching himself; the idea of his making love to Angela in the mud being “revenge” on her mother hadn’t occurred to him.
“So why didn’t you go ahead and fuck her?” the Kid protested testily to him. “Why didn’t you go ahead and do with Angela what she was clearly ready and willing to do with you after you saved her from the quicksand? It’s what you’ve dreamed of all your life, and I know you heard me yelling at you to do it when you had the chance!”
“Because,” Jason replied a bit more firmly this time to his young twin, “she probably would have.”
The Kid collapsed back into his seat, facepalming himself in frustration over Jason’s repetitive responses.
“Weren’t you listening to anything that you and I talked about on our way down to the river after we heard her cries for help?” Jason inquired of his youthful doppelganger. “A woman is good for infinitely more than just ‘fucking,’ you know; she exists as a worthwhile person in her own right and for her own sake, not as a sexual object for me or you to use for our own pleasure and then toss aside like a piece of trash when we’re done with her. That’s what I told Angela after I pulled her out of the quicksand, when she wanted to make love to me in the mud.” Jason swerved slightly to his right to make room for an approaching vehicle traveling in the opposite direction. “And because I treated her with respect instead of taking advantage of her when I could have, when she would have let me,” he added, “she can now live her life respecting both herself and me, and she can know for certain that, regardless of all those jerks who just wanted her for her body, there really are decent men out there who will treat her right. After all, before she left she thanked me both for what I did and what I didn’t do. She says ‘hi,’ by the way.” The Kid rolled his eyes and shook his head in exasperation at Jason’s “good boy” persona.
“Oh, and just so you know,” Jason added emphatically, pointing his finger at his pouty passenger, “sex isn’t about power or revenge, no matter how much Angela’s mother ignored me when she and I were in college. It’s about tenderness and intimacy and affection between two people who love, trust, and respect each other.” Jason’s younger self responded by turning toward his right without answering while facing out the window as the first stars began twinkling in the sky.
“Besides all that, I’m married, remember?” Jason insisted to his still disappointed double. “If Angela and I had made love to each other after I’d saved her, it would have been a betrayal of my wife and family!”
“But no one would’ve had to know!” the Kid objected petulantly.
“I would’ve known,” Jason asserted, “and it would’ve put the lie to everything I’ve ever said to my wife and kids about living with integrity and honoring other people’s trust and respect.” He braked slightly to ease his car into a slight curve as he continued toward the main highway. “Not only that,” he went on, “but you would’ve known, too, Kid, and I know you well enough to know that you’d have never let me forget it.” The Kid turned away again and continued sulking against the window.
“And finally,” Jason said quietly, “Angela would have known as well. And as I said to her, if she and I had gone ahead and had sex before going our separate ways, she would spend the rest of her life wondering if that had been my real motivation for saving her, wondering if her ‘hero’ were actually just as much a monster as were all those other guys who wanted her only for sex, wondering if I were really just as much a monster as you insist that I be.”
“Hey, no fair!” the Kid responded resentfully. “You yourself said I’m the personification of your sex drive combined with your quicksand fetish, a mental projection of your deepest desires! If I was pushing you to fuck her in the mud, it’s because that’s what you really wanted on a deep level! Don’t blame me for being what I have no choice but to be!”
“I know, I know,” Jason conceded to his young twin. “I just keep hoping that maybe someday you’ll mature at least a bit beyond the hormone-driven-teenager stage.”
“Aww, you’re no fun,” the Kid complained, shaking his head glumly. “And you’re probably also gonna do your ‘dad’ thing tomorrow and call the Park Service to tell them to put up a warning sign about the quicksand!”
“Well, yes,” Jason replied, nodding his head. “You don’t want someone else falling in there, do you? They could go under and die like Angela almost did!”
The Kid hmphed again and tuned his head toward the window. “Stick in the mud,” he muttered under his breath while Jason quietly shook his head as he kept his eye on the road before him.
Jason drove along in silence, mulling over the events of the afternoon and his ongoing dispute with his younger self, who continued staring unhappily out the window at the now completely dark sky, while in the distance car headlights moved along the interstate roadway toward which they were traveling. At fifty-five years of age Jason was in fact old enough to be his doppelganger's father, and like many fathers he didn’t really know what he could or should say or do to get through to the frustrated teenager, who as a projection of himself at nineteen seemed to be both so very close to adulthood while still so very much… a kid.
“A teenager,” Jason said quietly after a few minutes and miles had passed. “That’s why you’re so upset with me, Kid.”
“Hmm?” the Kid responded uncertainly, as if he’d been momentarily dozing. “What’s why I’m so upset with you?”
“You’re still a teenager,” Jason replied. “Nineteen years old. You’re still a virgin, and you had hoped that today would finally be your day. That’s why you’re so upset with me that I didn’t have sex with Angela.” The Kid raised his head and looked toward Jason, his dour face dimly illuminated in the soft glow of the lights on the dashboard and control panels.
“It’s not enough for you that I have a fulfilling sexual relationship with my wife,” Jason continued. “It’s not real for you unless it happens in terms of my fetish, in the context of my saving a damsel in distress from quicksand. No matter how many times or how frequently my wife and I make love, you won’t be satisfied until and unless it involves mud or quicksand.”
“Well, don’t blame me for that,” the Kid responded with a sigh. “It’s not my fault you have a quicksand fetish, or that your rawest sexual urges center on women in mud and quicksand. I’m the personification and mental projection of what’s really true about you, you know, whether you want to admit it or not.”
“I know,” Jason replied apologetically. “I know it’s not your fault.” He shifted slightly in his seat as he continued driving, his soaked underwear clinging rather uncomfortably to some rather sensitive parts of his anatomy. The two of them continued in silence down the road as the onboard GPS ticked off the passing miles until they would reach the interstate, the only outside light being provided by the car’s high beams shining before them.
“By the way,” Jason finally spoke up again, hoping to ease the tension between himself and his passenger, “that was a pretty neat trick you pulled with the announcer’s voice on the radio earlier.”
“Oh, you liked that?” the Kid replied to the unexpected compliment, a note of enthusiasm in his voice. “I thought you might be mad about it.”
“Nah, I can take a joke,” Jason answered with a chuckle. “Just because I don’t like the way you think about women, that doesn’t mean I think you’re all bad.”
“Well, sometimes I just like to mess with your mind,” his doppelganger responded, snickering lightly, “like when you looked over to where the end of the rope had snagged after you’d saved Angela and you saw me kneeling behind the rocks. The look on your face was priceless!” The Kid clapped his hands and chortled at the memory of the dumbfounded expression in Jason’s eyes in that moment.
“Huh… yeah,” Jason responded, his mind wandering back to his younger self’s odd behavior after Angela had regained consciousness, “and speaking of the rope and the rocks, you didn’t have… anything… to do with that… did you?”
“You mean, did I make the rope catch on the rocks?” the Kid inquired.
“Well…” Jason replied uncertainty, “yeah.”
“Huh, not unless you’ve gone psychokinetic since you started writing this story more than a year ago!” the Kid replied chucklingly as he turned his body in his seat to face Jason more directly. “No, Jay-man, that was pure dumb luck that the rope hung up like that, dumb luck and nothing else. If it had gone just to the right or the left of those rocks, you would’ve pulled it into the mudflat with you, and you and Angela would’ve sunk together to your doom… locked in each other’s arms… for eternity… in the clutching depths of the quicksand...” The Kid’s voice tapered off dreamily at the thought of what was for him a beguiling image.
“Huh… dumb luck,” Jason mumbled quietly, reflecting soberly on just how badly his last-minute heroics to save Angela earlier that day could have gone. “It’s amazing how sometimes the smallest thing can make all the difference between life and death, even though you could never have anticipated it.”
“Well,” the Kid offered offhandedly, “like Charlie Daniels said: ‘There’s some things in this world you just can’t explain.’”
“Huh… ‘Some things in this world you just can’t explain,’” Jason repeated jokingly in a deep, “serious” voice. “Good one, Kid,” he continued, laughing lightly, “I remember that ‘quicksand’ song from my high school days working in radio. And speaking of ‘unexplainable’ things,” he added, “I suppose we could say that my ‘prayer,’ such as it was, for the rope to snag on something, was ‘answered.’”
“I… guess so,” the Kid replied uneasily, having learned from experience to be wary of any intrusion of religion into matters of Jason’s quicksand fetish.
“First time I’d ‘prayed’ in a long time,” Jason said with a chuckle, “and the first time any prayer of mine had ever been ‘answered’ in such a clear and immediate sense. Shall we make up a new religion out of it?”
“I suppose we could,” the Kid replied, warming to Jason’s wry sense of humor, “although the knotted end of a rope might make for an odd object of worship and devotion.”
“We could call it ‘praying the rope-ary,’” Jason quipped as they both snickered lightly at the wordplay. After a few seconds their muted laughter faded into quiet in the darkness as the remaining few miles to the interstate continued to roll beneath the tires of the car.
“Speaking of religious imagery,” Jason spoke up after a couple more minutes of silence, “it was a good thing that my ‘better angel’ showed up when it did and asserted itself before it was too late to save Angela.”
“Your ‘better angel’?” the Kid asked, a note of confusion in his voice. “What do you mean?”
“You know, my ‘higher self,’ the ‘better’ part of me that forced me to see myself in your face after Angela went under,” Jason replied. “That was the reality check, the kick in the pants, I needed to get myself moving again to save her.”
The Kid chortled momentarily and then began guffawing uproariously in the passenger seat, pounding his left fist and forearm repeatedly on the car’s center armrest as Jason wondered what on earth could have so utterly amused his younger twin. “What’s so funny?” he asked in bewilderment after several seconds of ongoing hilarity from his mental doppelganger.
The Kid continued laughing heavily for several more seconds before recovering himself sufficiently so that he could answer. “Your… ‘higher self,’” he snickered, teetering on the verge of renewed convulsions of merriment, “must be pretty ‘high’ if you think that’s what got you going again!”
“Of… course it did,” Jason hesitantly countered his annoyingly overwrought doppelganger, glancing briefly toward him while keeping one eye on the road. “My ‘better self’… my super-ego, if you will… blurred the lines between you and me and forced me to choose between being a monster or a man, to choose whether selfishness or selflessness, lust or love, would decide Angela’s fate.”
“You keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better,” the Kid replied, still reveling in his laughter, “but here’s your ‘reality check,’ Jay-man.” He leaned over toward Jason and pointed toward himself emphatically with his right thumb. “I’m the one who kicked you in the pants!”
“You? Yeah, right,” Jason responded dismissively, rolling his eyes at the Kid’s braggadocio.
“Yes, right!” the Kid repeated assertively. “I may be only nineteen years old,” he insisted to his older self, “but I know you well enough to know that with your sexual fetish for damsels in distress sinking in quicksand, it would’ve absolutely destroyed you if Angela had died in the stuff, and that you would’ve been so remorseful and guilt-ridden afterward that you would’ve never recovered from it!”
“Wait… that was… you?” Jason replied uncertainly, jerking the wheel to the left to keep from driving off the side of the road. “But you’re the one who wanted to watch her sink to her doom! You delayed me from getting to her before she went under!”
“You keep telling yourself that, too, if it makes you feel better!” The Kid retorted indignantly. “I know you think I was just mocking your attempts to save her before she went under, but I really did mean it when I said to take off your shirt and hold it out to her.” He sat back in his seat and faced forward through the windshield toward the roadway before them. “Like I said,” he continued, “I knew it would’ve destroyed you if she had died in the quicksand, that it would’ve screwed you over so much that you would’ve locked your fetish away inside your brain forever, quit the forum, deleted all your quicksand videos and photosets, and never let me see the light of day again!” The Kid turned again to face toward Jason. “So while you were still trying to reach her, I decided to forego watching her go under so you could save her.”
“Wait,” Jason said doubtfully, “you were willing to… forego… your own fetish pleasure for her sake?”
“And for yours, too!” the Kid insisted forcefully. “Believe it or not, I was listening to what you were talking about regarding the difference between mere lust and real love while we were going back down the trail to the river to help her,” he added, “and my idea about holding your shirt out to her could’ve worked, except that she went into a full-blown panic after she tried to lift her hands out of the muck and went under briefly that first time. And even after that it still might have worked, except that someone got angry at me for no good reason and stupidly threw his shirt away, ensuring that he wouldn’t be able to reach her before she went under for real. That’s why I had to ‘blur the lines’ between you and me with my ‘man in the mirror’ stunt to get you moving again.” The Kid sat back in his seat and crossed his arms smugly over his chest. “There, how’s that for a kick in the pants… JASON?”
Jason continued driving down the dark roadway, his eyes wide in disbelief, mulling over the Kid’s words incredulously as he reflected on the day’s events. He had been so quick to blame the Kid when Angela had gone under, he remembered, and had reacted furiously at what had seemed to be his doppelganger's callous disregard for her. Now Jason was having to wrap his brain around the idea that it hadn’t been any “higher self” of his at all that had spurred him to risk his life for Angela but rather his fetish-level “monster,” that very same part of himself that had found the sight of her sinking in the quicksand so arousing in the first place, that had done so… and selflessly, it seemed, at that.
“Though I do have to be honest with you, Jay-man,” the Kid interrupted Jason’s brain wrapping. “The reason why I was willing to forego watching her go under before she actually did wasn’t just selflessness on my part but was also because I figured that after you had saved her life the two of you would’ve ended up fucking in the mud, and that would’ve been my consolation prize,” he admitted. “I just wasn’t expecting you to go all noble with her and say ‘no’ even when she wanted to. So then I thought that maybe I could salvage something of the afternoon by getting you to go into the quicksand on your own, but when even that didn’t work, well… that’s why I was so grouchy with you when we started driving back home.”
Okay, Jason thought with a chuckle, maybe the Kid wasn’t that selfless after all. Even so, his younger twin seemed to have willingly played a pivotal role in Jason’s being able to rescue Angela, he reflected, and what ultimately mattered was that, despite all the consternation that the Kid had caused him earlier that day and all the frightful moments that both she and he had endured before he was finally able to save her, no one had gotten hurt, much less died, in the quicksand, with the result that both Angela and Jason would be able to live another day, a bit happier and maybe a bit wiser as well.
Jason slowed and banked into a tight curve on the twisting byway, now only minutes away from the entrance to the interstate that would take him home. He hadn’t expected the road from the mountain hiking trails to be so very dark after sunset, and he was glad that the weather had been clear and dry all that day. The Kid rode quietly in the seat next to him, looking out the window into the night sky and seemingly in a much better mood than he had been in when Jason had driven out of the parking lot.
“So, Jay-man,” the Kid spoke up in the darkness of the car’s interior, “when does it finally happen?”
“When does what finally happen?” Jason asked.
“What we were talking about earlier,” the Kid answered. “You know: ‘it.’”
“Meaning…?” Jason inquired again.
“When do I finally lose my virginity?” the Kid clarified himself with an impatient sigh, suspecting that Jason already knew what he was talking about. “And you were right, by the way,” he added, “when you said that I thought today would be my day.”
“Oh… that,” Jason replied with a slight chuckle. “Well, first, you don’t lose your virginity, Kid; you freely give your virginity to another person. And second, while it doesn’t involve mud or quicksand, if you’re willing to look beyond that and appreciate your first time for the beautiful and special thing that it’ll be, it’ll happen in a few years with a sweet young woman a bit older than you. Older, wiser, better-traveled, and definitely more experienced.”
“Really?” the Kid piped up, intrigued at the prospect that his first intimate encounter would be with a woman of worldly sophistication. “What’s her name?”
“Uh-uh-uh,” Jason replied, wagging his right index finger and snickering at his younger doppelganger’s enthusiasm. “If you know too much about your own future you might screw things up for both of us, like Doc warned Marty. But I will tell you that it’ll happen after you graduate from college, once you go to seminary.”
“Seminary?” the Kid asked in sudden bewilderment. “Is that another play on words?”
“You mean like how student pastors are ‘artificial inseminarians’?” Jason replied jokingly.
“No…” his younger twin answered, “I was thinking more along the lines of ‘seminary’ and ‘semen.’”
“Of course you were,” Jason responded, chuckling as he rolled his eyes at the Kid’s one-track mind. “Nope, no wordplay here. You go to seminary after college, where you’ll meet a kind, loving, giving woman who’ll be a student there, and much to your surprise she’ll become your very first time,” he explained to his teenaged passenger as he reflected on the first intimate moment that he had ever shared with a woman more than thirty years before… on the wonder and magic of that first tender encounter… and on the needless heartache and sorrow that he had eventually caused her through his own immaturity, stupidity, and relational cluelessness. “Maybe you’ll figure out how to treat her better than I knew how to,” Jason muttered quietly with a twinge of regret to the younger version of himself, who was still busy trying to comprehend something that was just as mind-blowing to him as was the anticipation of his first sexual experience.
“I go to seminary?” he puzzled incredulously over this unexpected glimpse of his near future.
Jason turned the steering wheel slightly as the road curved before him until it stretched out into the long straightaway that led to the tunnel through the mountain that would dump him out at the ramp leading to the interstate. As he drove along in quietude he reflected again on the afternoon’s events and the unexpected revelations that he had learned about himself and his deepest desires on a sunny day that had started out as nothing more than an opportunity for him to hike some mountain trails while getting some fresh air and much-needed exercise. I’ll say I got some exercise, he chuckled to himself as the muscles of his arms and back continued protesting about the strain that they had endured earlier while he was freeing Angela and himself from the quicksand. As she had suggested before she left with her mother and sister, he certainly would have quite a story to share on the forum, he mused, although he wasn’t quite sure how he would begin writing it, how long it might take him to do so, or whether anyone would believe it if they were to read it. Oh, well.
“Hey, listen, Jay-man,” the Kid interrupted Jason’s reflections as he slowed to a stop at the final intersection before the highway entrance ramp, “as much as I was upset with you earlier, I get why you didn’t want to risk going under in the quicksand by yourself, and I can also kind of understand why you said ‘no’ to having sex with Angela in the mud after you saved her life…”
“Bu-ut…” Jason replied, certain that there would be a ‘but’ at the beginning of the next thing that the Kid would say.
“But…” the Kid went on, confirming Jason’s suspicion, “well… you know… both you and Angela… got what you wanted today.”
“Meaning?...” Jason asked as he started pulling away from the stop sign after the last car had passed before him on the crossroad.
“I mean… well… Angela got to fantasize about being trapped in quicksand while she pleasured herself,” the Kid answered him, “and then of course she got to go on living after you saved her life. And you got to rescue her from dying in the quicksand and to become her noble hero in the end. Both you and she got what you wanted… while I…” the Kid’s voice trailed off dejectedly.
“You feel like you didn’t get what you really wanted,” Jason completed the Kid’s thought.
“Well… no,” the Kid replied glumly. “I figured that, what with you and Angela and the quicksand, I might have… but…”
“But you got to watch her go under, even after you had decided to forego that,” Jason responded as he finished crossing the intersection and entered the ramp. “What more do you want?”
“What do you think, Jay-man?” The Kid responded impatiently. “I’m the id-level personification of your sex drive combined with your quicksand fetish, and after everything that happened today… well… you just gotta toss me a boner of some kind!”
“The expression is, ‘toss you a bone,’” Jason replied dryly.
“Yeah, I know, but considering what I am, everything with me is eventually gonna come out as risqué wordplay and double entendre anyway. You know that.”
“Okay, okay,” Jason yielded laughingly to his younger twin’s single-minded persistence as he piloted the car down the entrance ramp. “What kind of a ‘boner’ do you want me to toss your way?”
“Well,” the Kid answered hesitantly, “in the coming days and weeks, when you remember and think about everything that happened today, do you think that maybe… you know… you might jerk off while you fantasize about you and Angela sinking together in the quicksand… the two of you making wet, messy, passionate love to each other while the muck draws you in deeper and deeper… until you each finally explode in orgasmic ecstasy just as the quicksand swallows you both?”
Jason chuckled at the Kid’s predictability even as he acknowledged that his “dirty” mind had a way of pushing his buttons, if the returning sense of growing arousal inside his shorts was any indication. The Kid wasn’t really “bad,” Jason admitted to himself; he simply was what he was, the personification of Jason’s sex drive intertwined with his quicksand fetish, and there was no one and nothing to blame or to fault for it.
“Probably,” Jason answered, nodding his head and smiling as he acceded to his younger twin’s request.
Jason banked left into the remaining stretch of the ramp before him as he accelerated to highway speed, waiting for his young doppelganger’s response. After several seconds of silence he looked briefly to his right, only to realize that that the passenger seat was now empty and he was once more alone in the car. He somehow sensed that the Kid, apparently satisfied with his reply, had finally vacated his consciousness and once again returned to his home inside Jason’s brain, and with a renewed sense of self-acceptance Jason reflected upon the lesson of the day.
“I’m a part of you and you’re a part of me,” he said quietly to himself, switching on his left-turn signal and checking his car’s blind spot as he prepared to merge onto the interstate. “Each of us needs the other in order to be who we… in order to be who I… really am.”
Jason eased into the right travel lane and flipped off the turn signal as he activated his car’s cruise control system before settling in for the remainder of the voyage home, a contented smile on his face.
“Warp speed, Mr. Sulu.”
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To be... no, just kidding. THE END.