Sardonic Retribution

Natalie lay tucked between Trev’s loosely wrapped fingers in his lap while, high above, his other hand clenched tightly around the steering wheel and, even higher, he glowered out at the road. “What a spoiled fucking cunt,” he burst out savagely. “I barely touch her and she falls to fucking pieces. Obviously never been hit once in her precious little life.”

“You shouldn’t hit your girlfriend, dick,” Natalie grumbled from his palm, just loud enough for him to hear over the car engine, and he laughed coldly.

“I know that, asshole. Never hit you, did I?”

“You have hit me many times.”

“Well, okay, when we were kids and you were being a little fuckass. I quit hitting you long before we started dating. But if I had, you wouldn’t have been such a little bitch about it. You’d have fucking stabbed me. Repeatedly.”

“Please. We both know you’d have hit me eventually and I wouldn’t have done shit about it. Circle of fucking life.”

He scowled out at the road. “No. I wouldn’t have.”

She huffed. “Right, you're such a gentleman. Are you taking me to the hospital now?”

“I told you I would, didn’t I? Thought you might wanna wash off, first.”

“Naw, I’m good. Kindly direct your route to the hospital immediately.”

“You smell like a sex toy.”

“Well, Trev, that is likely the pungent aroma of your girlfriend who used me as a sex toy.”

“Yeah, sorry, that was my bad. She’s normally much better at following directions. Major daddy complex.”

“And the make-out session? Who’s complex was that, you fucking psycho? Was this all some sorta sardonic retribution because I called you Brit’s bad-boy-toy?”

He grinned down at her with his cocky grin. “You really think I’m that spiteful?”

“I know you are, asshole.”

“And yet you also called me a fucking idiot when I was so nicely going outta my way to try and help you. Not to mention you called me pathetic, knowing full well how much that hurts my feelings.”

“Awe, poor Trevy with his abusive daddy complex.”

“Awe, poor Natty with her big fucking mouth and tiny fucking body in the clutches of a spiteful fucking psychopath with abusive daddy complex. What was that you were saying about sardonic retribution?”

Natalie faltered.

“Oops,” he said dryly.

“Come on, Trevor,” she groaned. “You played your sick, demented fucking game–”

Trev laughed. “I’d really stop talking if I were you.”

“Haven’t I suffered enough! Do you have any idea what your girlfriend did to me just now!”

“I do. And I legitimately feel bad about that. Which is why I'm giving you a break from my… what’d you call it? Sick… demented…” 

“You said you’d take me to the hospital!”

“And I will. I never said when I’d take you.”

She groaned, covering her sticky face with her sticky palms. “Why are you fucking with me, Trevor?” 

“You tell me. You’re always so spot on with your psycho-analysis.”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay?”

“Awe, I’m sure you are.” He bonked his thumb atop her head, giving it a couple of pats. “If only you’d said that when I gave you the chance to apologize, and you told me to go fuck myself.”

She shoved his thumb off, yelling, “You are not seriously fucking abducting me because I hurt your fragile fucking feelings!”

“Oh Nat,” Trev laughed. “So small, yet still such a colossal fucking bitch.”

He parked Brittany's car on the street in front of their apartment complex. He gently closed his fingers around her, lowering her into his jeans pocket as he got out. He held her in his pocket as he walked through the courtyard, up the patio stairs to the third floor, and with every step he took she rose up and down and up and down with nauseating speed until he stopped at the back door of the apartment next to her’s. 

His apartment was the mirror of her own, with the kitchen opening up to the living room, separated by a long kitchen island. Where the Jordan’s apartment was sunny and colorful and loud and constantly a mess, the Dalton’s was minimal and pristine, like a museum, tastefully decorated with plants and artwork and furniture far too nice for such a cheap ass apartment complex.

Trev pulled her from his pocket as he entered through the back door into the kitchen, holding her level with his navel as his free hand pulled a bowl from the cupboard. He turned on the tap in the sink, running his hand under the water. “You still like it scalding?” 

She scowled in his hand with her arms crossed, refusing to answer, so he poured an inch of water into the bottom of the bowl at a temperature he thought she’d like, then stopped into the bathroom to stir in a bit of his Old Spice body wash. He grabbed a bottle of shampoo and a washcloth, then brought the bowl into his bedroom and locked the door, although his dad would not be home for days. 

Contrary to the rest of the apartment, Trev’s room was warm and festive, though still kept immaculately clean. His twin bed, covered by many pillows and a royal blue duvet beneath a brightly colored Mexican blanket, was jammed against the wall in a cozy little nook beneath a couple of overcrowded bookshelves and a string of lights. The walls were a gallery of band posters and artwork; paintings and sketches and decorative masks and things, made either by Trev or Natalie, herself. His desk was perpendicular to the bed, under the window, where there had once hung a string clipped with photos, mostly of the two of them over the years—proudly decked in homemade Avengers costumes with Nick, Diego, and Danno when they were nine or posing inappropriately at the middle school’s Spring Fling dance when they were thirteen and one very cute selfie from the beach trip over the summer that had also been the background of his phone, where she was flailing over his shoulder from his back, shrieking with laughter as he pinched her waist and grinned his crooked, cocky grin—but all the photos had been taken down, and most likely burned.

Trev set the bowl down on his desk and gently lowered Natalie into the water at the bottom; as deep as a bathtub’s. She flinched, sucking in breath, as the gash on her side was stung by the hot, soapy water. Trev’s torso rose up beyond the rim of the bowl, his face looking down at her from high above with furrowed brows. “Does that hurt?” he asked softly, lowering his hand into the bowl to run the tip of his finger along the long, shallow gash.

“Don’t touch it!” she wailed, jerking away from him with a soapy splash. “Yes it hurts!”

“Sorry.” His hand lowered beyond the rim of the bowl, then returned with a washcloth that he dunked into the water beside her, sending a rippling of waves. 

“I can wash myself,” she snarled.

“I doubt that,” he said, gesturing towards the towering monolith that was his shampoo bottle.

“Let me rephrase. I do not want you to fucking touch me.”

He smiled warmly. “Okay.” He flopped the wet washcloth on top of her, knocking her to her back beneath the water. She lay flattened on the floor of the bowl, punching and kicking against the heavy weight of the washcloth for a moment before it lifted off of her again and she bolted upright, breaking through the surface of the water and gasping for breath. “Sure you don’t want some help?” he asked nonchalantly, ringing out the washcloth as she panted, swatting her soaking hair from her face. 

She huffed, hugging herself into a tight ball, burying her face against her knees. The tip of his index finger pressed into the crook of her neck and she flinched, hunching her shoulders, but he was only holding her in place as the tip of the washcloth pressed softly against her back. He scrubbed the washcloth in gentle circles around her back, not unlike how he had when they were children. The two of them, and little Nicky, had taken baths together from the ages of two to six. She vividly remembered how they used to pile bubbles atop each others’ heads and run their fingernails down each others’ backs, making shapes and trying to guess what they were. 

Natalie’s parents used to dump her and Nick off at the Dalton’s most days, and practically every other night, either for work or to go out with friends on their nights off. In those days, Trev had been a timid, sweet little boy, while Natalie had been an energetic little maniac of chaos and destruction; bossing him and her little brother around and hoarding all their toys like a dragon. Trev’s mom had been the only one able to keep her tame. She seemed like much more of a grownup than her own parents, who’d had Natalie their sophomore year of highschool. She remembered Trev’s mom as a kind, pretty woman with a pretty accent and pretty green eyes like his, who spoke to them in Spanish more often than not and told funny stories and made up the best games. She was strict about cleanliness and routines, and every night they’d have a home-cooked meal, followed by a couple of games, a bath, and then Nick and Natalie would both pile into bed with Trev for a bedtime story and would all sleep tangled around each other like a pack of puppies.

And then, one day when they were six, Trev’s mom had just up and left, abandoning him with his father; who was an international commercial pilot and only ever came home one or two days a week. And everything flipped upside down. Trev started spending most days at the Jordans, sleeping most nights in Natalie’s bed. 

Tommy had just been born, so Natalie’s mom was stuck at home anyway and more than willing to accept the payment offered by Trev’s dad to look after his son on the days he was away for work. But she was still so young, barely twenty-two, and had never really figured out how to care for one child, let alone four, and their small apartment was in a constant state of mayhem. Her mom spent more and more time vegged out on the couch, smoking a bowl and bouncing a perpetually crying baby while the kids were always screaming and breaking things and chasing each other around and, when Frank was home, he was usually fun and loud and goofing around with them as if he was one of them, but every so often he was hurling them into their bedrooms and shouting at them to shut the fuck up for five minutes before he knocked their fucking lights out. 

So it was that, in just one day, sweet, timid little Trevor lost not only his kind, pretty mom, but also the structure and routine and cleanliness he’d known his entire life. 

And he was never the same.

*                                                *                                                *

“You hungry?” Trev asked as he gently lathered a tiny amount of his viciously fragrant Old Spice shampoo into her hair between the tips of his thumb and index finger. “I can make you something after this.”

Natalie didn’t respond.

“Nat? Are you hungry?”

Her voice was flat as she muttered, “When are you gonna take me to the hospital, Trevor?”

He didn’t answer right away. He cupped water into his palm to pour over her, rinsing out the shampoo. “Thought you might need to eat something, first. Assuming you’ve had nothing but coffee today.”

She exhaled, closing her eyes. It didn’t sound like he was planning to take her to the hospital anytime soon.

“When was the last time you ate, Nat?”

“I dunno,” she grumbled, so quietly he could barely hear her. “Day before yesterday?”

“What’d you have?”

“A granola bar or something.”

He scowled. “No wonder you shrank. Glad to see your boyfriend takes such good care of you. He got a thing for skinny chicks?” 

“It is not his job to take care of me. I can take care of myself.”

“Yeah, only, you don’t. You take care of your brothers and let yourself starve.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Am I wrong?” 

“What’s your point?”

“Just that your boyfriend kinda sucks. You never went hungry when I was dating you.”

She glared up at him. “You’re right, Trev. You’re such a kind, caring individual and I am just so fucking lucky to have you as an incessant fucking presence in my life. Thank you so much for allowing your girlfriend to spread trash whore rumors about me that resulted in a multitude of vile and disturbing threats from our beloved peers. And for allowing her to stick me in her mouth. And for joining her in forcefully using my body to pleasure yourselves. Some people might call that assault, you know.” He glowered down at her and she glared back up at him. “Am. I. Wrong?” 

“Who is threatening you?”

“Ah-heh!” she laughed shrilly. “Well, let’s see...” She made a dramatic facial performance of thinking it over. “There was, you, on the car ride over here, with the whole, ‘Sardonic retribution,’ bit. Then, earlier, there was, you, with the ‘You’re not sorry, but you’re gonna be,’ thing. And, um, oh, right, there was that time you threatened to assault me with your girlfriend. And then proceeded to actually assault me with your girlfriend.”

“Yeah, assault, I got it,” he grumbled, rubbing his temples. “You’re driving me fucking crazy, Natalie.”

“Awe, Trevor,” she smiled coldly up at him. “You’ve been fucking crazy for years, now.”

He mimicked her cold smile. “Yeah? Ya think?” His hand whipped down and pinched her face between his thumb and index finger. “So, tell me, Natalie, what was it like? Being stuck inside the mouth of a crazy person, so much bigger than yourself? Were you afraid I might swallow you?”

Her face sank into a scowl and she tried to jerk away from him, splashing in the water, but he held her face firmly between his fingers.

“Because… I was,” he murmured, with the same cold smile. “I kept worrying I might swallow you by mistake, like a piece of gum. And I'd be completely unaware, still making out with my girlfriend as I gulped you down my throat, because you’re just so tiny and insignificant, I wouldn’t even notice. Not for a few minutes, anyway, when I’d remember you weren’t in my mouth anymore. And I’d check my girlfriend’s mouth and realize you weren’t in there, either. And I’d look around the bed, like, ‘Huh, where’d my little toy go?’ And then my stomach would rumble and I’d look down at my belly, like, ‘Oops…’”

“That is severely fucked up, Trev.”

“Oh, I know, and I’da felt so bad about being so careless as to swallow you alive. Realizing that those tiny little taps I’d been feeling from inside my stomach had been you, pounding your tiny little fists with all your strength to desperately try and get my attention. But, you know, I wouldn’t wanna be rude to my girlfriend, so I’d pat my belly, which, for you, would feel like a series of fucking earthquakes, hard enough to knock you over, and my whole stomach would rumble around you as I said, ‘Sorry ‘bout that, Nat,’ and then I’d go right back to fucking my girlfriend, and quickly forget all about you. 

“But you wouldn’t forget me anytime soon, now would you? Oh no, I would be your entire fucking world. You’d be deep inside me, feeling every little vibration of my titanic body all around you, feeling my every movement, going with me wherever I went. You’d try to lift yourself upright, just to be hurled back down to slosh around in my partially digested breakfast as I fucked my girlfriend, getting thrown back and forth and up and down. All you’d hear would be me; the gurgling of my digestive system, my rapid heartbeat pounding against you, my deafening moans of pleasure rattling your little ear drums. All you’d see would be the inside of my stomach, and the partially digested egg sandwich I had for breakfast. ‘Cause that’s all you are to me, Nat. You’re less significant than the egg sandwich I had for breakfast—that I actually had to chew to swallow.”

Natalie eyed him with loathing. “Is that how you felt when I dumped you, Trev?” she asked cooly. “Tiny? Insignificant? Forgotten and all alone in the belly of a beast that doesn’t give a fuck about you?”

His grip around her face tightened, lifting her slightly from the water as he leaned closer. “Is that how you felt when my girlfriend fucked you like a cheap sex toy?”

She snarled up at him.

“I wish I’d been there to see it,” he murmured coldly. “Did you fight back, Nat? I bet you did, you’d never have taken that shit without a fight. But it didn’t matter, did it? Because you are so fucking small. And weak. Just like you always fucking have been. I’ve always been the one looking out for you, and just look what’s happened to you without me. You’ve been beaten. And humiliated. And you’ve wasted away to nothing.”

“And yet,” said Natalie. “Your crippling abandonment issues still have you fetishizing my annihilation. So, tell me, Trevor, who’s really the insignificant one?”

Trev laughed and so did Natalie. 

“Let’s find out.” 

He released his grip on her face to pinch her ankle, yanking it forward, and she flopped backwards into the water. He pressed his middle finger against her chest, holding her under for a moment while she thrashed and writhed against him before he wrenched her up, coughing and sputtering and dangling upside down as the water cascaded off of her in droplets the size of cantaloupes. He lifted her up by the ankle to dangle before his face as he leaned casually into his free hand, propped up on his elbow. 

“Now, let’s see…” he said lazily. “How will we ever decide which of us is less significant?” 

She glared up at him, clenching her teeth to keep them from chattering, as she was naked and soaking wet and freezing cold in the huge, drafty room.

“You’ve already been in my mouth today; where else could I stick you…” He furrowed his brows, pattering his fingers against his cheek and making a dramatic facial performance of thinking it over. “I could stick you… In my shoe? Or down my pants? How ‘bout you, Nat? What are you gonna do to me?”

“Fuck you,” she panted, her teeth chattering. 

He smirked. “You should really choose your words more wisely. ‘Cause you say things like that and I get the impression you’re just tryna get in my pants.” His free hand lowered beneath the desk to unbuckle his belt and her eyes narrowed. 

“That where you wanna go, Nat?” He unbuttoned his jeans, yanking down the zipper. 

Her brows twitched as she struggled to keep the apprehension from her face, her heart rate picking up speed.

“Okay, then, have fun down there.” He brought her towards him, and the surface of the desk disappeared from beneath her as she hovered over his lap. Far below, his jeans were unzipped, revealing the rim of his blue checkered boxers, and, pressing up beneath the denim, she could see he had an erection. 

“Don’t!” Natalie squealed and the bulge in his jeans convulsed with the sound of her voice.

Trev grinned. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t,” she squeaked.

He lifted her up to right between his eyes. “Say please.”

His words triggered a torrent of memories from their childhood. Trev holding her paint set out of reach above her head—Say please. Trev straddling her on the ground, a thick loogie dangling from his mouth, an inch above her face—Thay pweath. Trev sitting atop the lid of a washing machine, hammering his fist loudly against the metal while she sat crunched up inside, scowling with her hands clamped over her ears—Say please!

Her age-old response slipped out automatically, “Get bent, Trevor.”

He snickered. “Awe, you remembered. You know what happens next, right?” He slowly lowered her down his torso, his free hand pulling open the waistband of his boxers.

She screamed.

He jolted, muttering, “Jeez-us,” and swung her back up, fumbling his palms around her to keep her quiet as she continued screeching at the top of her lungs. “Shut up, Nat.” 

She screamed even louder, fighting against his hand and he yelled over her, “Shut up, Nat!” He clenched his hand forcefully around her, flattening her limbs against her body and muffling her screams within his fist. 

She kept screaming anyway, within the dark chamber of flesh encompassing her. It was like a flood gate had opened, images flashed vividly through her mind; the thrashing of tongues, the slick labia walls, bodily fluids gushing over her; gushing, and gushing. Her wails turned to sobs against his fingers.

“Stop crying,” Trev snapped, giving her a little jerk. “Stop crying! Damnit, Nat, chill the fuck out, I was just fucking with you! Here, look, you’re fine!”

He dropped her on the desk. She collapsed onto her knees, wrapping herself into a tight ball, squeezing her eyes shut, and screaming.

“Nat-alie,” he growled through clenched teeth. “Stop scream-ing, please.”

She went right on screaming and he pressed his palms over his temples, drawing in a raspy breath, digging his fingernails into his scalp. “Please stop screaming, Natalie,” he groaned. “Please stop, Natalie. Oh my GOD, NATALIE! SHUT THE FUCK UP!” 

His blaring voice pierced through her skull, blasting apart her eardrums and she squealed, throwing her hands over her ears and then his hand slapped down upon her, knocking her to her back. She struggled futilely against his huge fingers as they unfurled her from her ball, sprawling her out on the desk. He leaned over her, tight-jawed, pinning her squirming limbs beneath his hand and pressing the edge of his pinky finger over her mouth to smother her screams. “Jesus fucking christ!” he bellowed down at her, his thunderous voice sounding muffled and fuzzy beneath the agonizing ringing and throbbing in her ears. “It’s not like anyone would ever be able to hear you, stupidass! It’s just really fucking annoying!”

She whimpered against his finger, convulsing with sobs, gaping up at him with tears rolling down her cheeks.

“DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT!” he bellowed, hammering his fist onto the desk beside her with a BANG! and she flinched, squealing, her head ringing from the sound as if she’d been whacked with a baseball bat. 

“GOD, you are so fucking annoying! You started it! You, fucking, asked for it! I was trying to be fucking nice, but you just had to be a fucking bitch the entire fucking time! It’s not my fault she did that to you, okay! In hindsight, yeah, I probably shouldn’t have left you there, but you were bleeding, and tired, and sad, and I just wanted to give you a fucking minute to catch your fucking breath! And I told her not to fucking mess with you, and she said, ‘Okay!’ and then she did it anyway! It’s not my fault you can’t trust a fucking word anybody ever fucking says! And, you know, we wouldn’t have been over there in the fucking first place if you hadn’t been such an absolute fucking bitch! I was just fucking with you, I wasn’t actually going to hurt you! But you just, like, kept fucking pushing me, you wouldn’t shut the fuck up! So go on, Nat! Keep screaming! Cry all you fucking want! I don’t feel bad for you, I really fucking don’t!”

He yanked his hand off of her to cross his arms and she let out a sob, rolling over onto her stomach away from him, wrapping herself back into a fetal position with her shaking hands pressed against her throbbing ears. She felt something wet dripping down from them.

Trev panted, tight-jawed, glowering down at her. “I wasn’t even gonna do it, Nat,” he grumbled, in a pouty tone that Natalie couldn’t hear beneath the ringing, like he was very far away, and underwater. “I was just fucking with you.”

She lowered her hands from her ears to find them full of blood. She held them before her, gaping down at her shaking, scarlet palms.

He huffed. “Will you say something?” He pinched his fingers around her waist and pivoted her around to face him, again. “Will you just fucking–” He paused, frowning down at her, his head tilting. He slid her arm aside, running his thumb down her torso. “What happened to your cut?” For the huge gash left by Brittany’s teeth had healed completely, as had the unsightly, greenish purple bruise that had plagued her left eye for the past three days.

Natalie panted, raising her gaze from her bloody hands to glare up at him with bared teeth, tears running down her cheeks and blood from her ears. “I hate you,” she gasped through clenched teeth, unable to hear her own voice. “I fucking hate you.”

He swallowed, his brows twitching as he glared down at her. “Yeah? I fucking hate you, too.”

He yanked open his desk drawer with one hand while the other barreled into her from behind, shoving her forward and she plummeted off the desk into the organized drawer below, landing with a painful thud in a compartment full of pens and colored pencils. She glared up in time to see him glowering down at her before he slammed the drawer shut, throwing her down to roll amongst his rattling pens and pencils and casting her in darkness. 

He stormed across the room, wrenched the door open, and slammed it shut behind him with a thunderous BANG! that went unheard from within his closed desk drawer.