Talented Failure: The Works of A.T. Prenger

"Do ya' think I'm weird?" she asked me. We were laying in her bed, covered in sweat, randomly tangled in the sheets. My head was propped up on a pillow. Beth was curled around me, using my right arm as a pillow. She had her right arm on my chest, alternating between playing with my chest hair to tracing her finger along the bruises left there from her bite marks like a connect-the-dots puzzle. I started to speak, then coughed. I grabbed the glass of water from the nightstand. I sipped slowly. I couldn't gulp. The cool was water was refreshing on my throat though it still hurt getting it down. I set the glass back down. Gingerly I touched my throat. It felt very sore. I was sure if I looked in the mirror there would be bruises shaped like Beth's small hands. During sex, while she bounced on top of me, she wrapped her hands around my throat and squeezed. I couldn't exactly tell her to top. She kept the pressure on while she rode me. I nearly passed o...

We set up a date for Friday. I was nervous for another week. Completely distracted, too. There were two days at work when my cash drawer didn't add up to what I was supposed to at the end of the day. I expected to be in deep trouble. Instead my manager, Helen, assumed I was still shaken up from the robbery. She pulled me into her office for a meeting. "Are you doing okay, Luke?" "I'm doing fine. Is it because of the money?" "No, it's not the money. Don't worry about that. I just want to make sure that everything is okay with you. You know, you didn't have to come back to work so soon," Helen said. I almost laughed in her face. She was concerned that I was absent minded because of the robbery; that I had been traumatized. Not only was I not traumatized, I was actually going on a date with the criminal herself. "No. I needed to get back to work. I think I would go insane if I had to stay at home." "I understan...

My heart pounded as the phone rang. I hoped I hadn't waited too long. She might have moved on, deciding I was too much of a coward. "Hello?" she answered in the sultry voice she had used when she had whispered to me. It was much more pleasant than the barking tone she used when threatening to blow my head off. "H...hey" My voice cracked when I spoke, like I was sixteen or something. I slapped my forehead hard enough that she heard it over the phone. She giggled, "Is this Luke the banker?" "How'd you know?" "Burner phone. I only gave this number to one person. I figured ya'd find it where I left it." "Yeah, that was...yeah, certainly a spot to leave it." "I've been thinking about ya'." "Me too, I mean, thinking of you. Not me. I've been thinking about you, too. A lot, actually." I thought I had a working brain at one point. My verbal mess didn't seem to faze her....

I resisted for a week. Longest week of my life. I hemmed and hawed about what I should do. The logical part of my brain kept telling me not to do it; to throw away the paper and walk away. Like throwing the paper away would do any good since I had already memorized the number. But, still, she was a super villain. She robbed banks, she killed people. After the attack I Googled her. The lower brain rationalized all of it. She was hot, financially independent and, yeah, she killed people, but very rarely. Compared to other villains in the city she looked like a saint. I also couldn't stop thinking about what she had done to me at the bank. When my co-workers brought it up I went beet red. At home, though, I pleasured myself to the memory until I was too painful to continue. I knew I was going to call her the night I went online and found porn with girls dressed as cowgirls.     Chapter 4

The first time I met Beth was when she robbed the bank where I worked as a teller. It was a Thursday, the day before payday. We had just finished off-loading the money from the armored truck and were preparing to sort it. Her enormous black pickup truck accelerated into the parking lot. The ram bar on the front was modified to look like massive steer horns. The truck hopped the curb and smashed into the front of the bank. The glass windows exploded in, showering the patrons and a few of the bankers with shards of glass. Beth, I didn't know her real name then, only that she was the super villain Black Hat, hopped out of the truck. She was dressed in her costume which was all cowboy garb, heavy on black leather, but with a Kevlar vest like a rodeo rider. She wore a bandanna tied around the bottom half of her face, leaving only her clear blue eyes visible. She had two Colt .45 revolvers drawn. One was aimed at Jeff, our elderly security guard picking himself off the floor, and t...

  Somehow I was still hard. That was surprising. I didn't ever think I would be able to keep it up in a situation like this. My girlfriend was riding on top of me with the barrel of her revolver jammed in my mouth. I felt the front sight rubbing painfully at the back of my throat. My eyes watered; there was a coppery taste causing me to gag. It was way past my comfort zone. Still, I was hard. It wasn't just the gun. My girlfriend was naked except for her cowboy hat, gun belt and boots. I felt her spurs digging into my thighs as she used them for leverage. Her bouncing increased in frequency as she neared orgasm. With her free hand she waved her hat in the air like she was riding a bucking bronco. The gun barrel rattled around my mouth against my teeth. I was concerned she would chip them. I was always sensitive about my teeth, constantly worried I would trip and break them. It made me nervous to even imagine the pain and the blood if they got chipped. Finally she peaked...