Lot's Wife - MSA Women’s & POC Edition Five

Lot’s Wife • Edition Five
When Charlie Met Her Maker
Words by Milly Downing
Milly is on the Lot’s Wife editorial board and was subject to the same impartial
editing procedures as any other author.
Exactly three months before her mother’s fiftieth birthday Charlie got
an itch. It was in her ‘Unmentionables’ as her mother would call it,
her ‘Special Lady Parts.’ Despite this, she kept a straight face browsing
the dinner-for-one aisle at the supermarket. Her crotch stung, oozing
something hot. Most would’ve applauded her composure as she stood
between the Chicken Noodle Soup and the 99% Fat-Free Lima Bean. She
stuck a hand down there, scratching and pulling. A young man scuttled
out of the isle, basket empty, blushing. Her finger came out burning and
topped with goo, a plump and sickly worm.
Her mother justified this behaviour by saying things like she was just an
extrovert, so full of confidence! Just like her father, takes after his side. She
struggled to prove this the older Charlie got, and now at twenty, she was
well beyond her mother’s capabilities to lie.
Charlie inspected her hot finger topped with sharp, sour slime. It wasn’t
until she got home, heavy with tin cans and discount shampoo, that she
was grinding her thighs together, totally incapable of satisfying it.
Three days before her mother’s fiftieth birthday Charlie’s doctor
explained: it’s chronic. Charlie waited suspended, legs spread and hot
between, drying out under the white lights. There’s nothing I can do,
he said. Get an ice pack. Take a bath. Avoid tight clothes and don’t put
anything inside you. He spoke between her legs, addressing her crotch.
Charlie shoved her baggy pants back up, pushing his head away.
Back at home she continued burning. She got on her bed: legs locked,
head in pillows, breathing hard, not daring to touch. This became her
morning routine. Her roommates, all male, all bloated from excessive
video games and beers, began their days with quick showers and group
breakfasts. Charlie, unable to sit down long enough to eat a meal, accepted
beers only to go to her room and slither them down into her undies. She
could hear it searing against her hot flesh way down there, like it was
crying. Charlie cried too - not that her roommates heard, not that she’d
let them hear.
It was on the day of her mother’s fiftieth birthday that Charlie saw her
again, the first time in a number of years. Charlie had conveniently
forgotten to buy a present, and her mother predicting this, secured
Charlie’s attendance to her girls-only birthday brunch. By design the cafe
was deep in her mother’s territory. Charlie had rocked up in her usual
manner: late, braless and itching. Her mother clapped her hands together
at Charlie’s arrival, wound up in a tight, borderline age-appropriate shirt,
surrounded by a gaggle of shaved legs and whitened teeth. Charlie gave a
pained smile. At least she didn’t look like that.
She sat. Her crotch sizzled on contact. Charlie inhaled briskly. She leant
on the table, her mother simultaneously leaning in too.
“Charlie,” her mother whispered. She smelt like a clown: make-up,
powdered sugar, and something fakely floral.
“Mum,” Charlie seethed and clenched her hole.
“I thought you’d wear a dress? Your tiny waist…”
“What about it?”
“Well, it’s just I remember when I had a waist like yours,” she said
rationally. “Right, ladies?” Her mother called across the table; the girls
cackled, a chorus of breathless agreement. Charlie’s hole quivered as if
squealing.
The waiter approached, and a woman in Lycra and dangly earrings
ordered the smashed avocado, extra buttery mushrooms. The woman
after, with long, whip-like lashes ordered an egg white omelette, no butter.
She was on a diet. Eyes darted between orders. Oh, you’re getting that?
Lycra blushed. The next ordered corn fritters, and hold the toast. Tart
with salad. When it got to Charlie something sharp and deep burst inside
her hole, deeper than she knew it could go.
“So, I hear you’re living with a boy?” Cooed Lycra. Her cheeks were still
bloated and blotchy. Charlie smiled resentfully, twisting in her seat.
“No,” she swallowed, clenching her jaw and clamping her hands between
her thighs. “Boys. I live with three of them.”
“Oh?” Lycra frowned, earrings drooping with her drawn-on eyebrows.
“How do you live with so many men? Must be exhausting!”
The ladies laughed. Charlie grunted, shivering at her thighs, unable to
answer. Where was the food? She poked a finger inside her pants under the
table. She was shaking. Should she go to the bathroom? Her mother was
laughing; tossing what little hair she had left, exposing some missed greys.
Who was she even trying to impress? Charlie wriggled her pinkie over the
fabric of her undies. It was sweaty. She thrust a little deeper. Just an itch.
Just a little itch. Lycra was smiling again at Charlie, an excruciating smear
of lipstick on her teeth. She stared at her. She shoved her finger further.
Past the fabric. Was she saying something? She was bloated. Hot. She
smeared her finger across her hole, and screamed. She whipped her hands
out of her pants. The ladies squawked, cutlery clattering.
“What’s wrong?” Her mother demanded, staring her up and down.
“Charlie? What are you trying to do?”
Charlie held up her pinkie finger, wet and red. A deep bite mark was sunk
into the tip.
“She bit me!” Charlie hissed towards her crotch.
“Oh please, don’t be so dramatic.”
“Dramatic?” Charlie spluttered.
“I told you I wanted a girls-only brunch, and it’s only fair that I asked
her along.”
“Yeah, Charlie,” her pussy chimed in, smoothing down her labia as she
settled on the seat opposite. “She invited me months ago, I kept trying to
tell you. I swear you’re just like a man, never listening.”
The girls all laughed in unison. Charlie stared in disbelief. Her pussy rolled
her eyes, flesh rising and falling. She smelt tangy and warm; it felt familiar
to Charlie, but too distant to really recall how. Charlie continued to stare.
She’d stopped itching.
“Why are you all laughing? Why did you even invite me if you were just
going to ask her instead?”
“Charlie, honey,” her mother began.
“We all thought it would just be easier,” her pussy interrupted. “Now you
can go home, you don’t need to hang out with us.”
Charlie opened her mouth, and then closed it. She looked at Lycra, who
looked away, and then to her mother, staring off to the side of the table.
Finally she stared at her pussy, comfortably rearranging her cutlery on the
napkin. Charlie stood and left without protest, finally not like other girls.
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