Joshua Ginsberg is the author of Secret Tampa Bay: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure (2020), Tampa Bay Scavenger (2021), Oldest Tampa Bay (2022), and co-author of Secret Orland: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure (2023). His work has appeared in numerous print and online publications including Trembling with Fear (The Horror Tree), The Chamber Magazine, The City Key, 365 Tomorrows, Atlas Obscura, Travel After Five, and on his own blog, Terra Incognita Americanus. He currently lives in the Town n’ Country neighborhood of Tampa with his wife, Jen, and their Shih Tzu, Tinker Bell.
INSIDE AND OUT
by
Joshua Ginsberg
Tara locks eyes with him inside the only bar for miles. He’s well dressed, well built, just over six feet tall and rippling with muscle under his dark suit. Sandy blond hair just beginning to grey in the sideburns. Something about the way he smiles unnerves her though, like he might be into things that she doesn’t permit. But business has been slow, and she’s willing to chance it.
She seats herself at the barstool next to him, he reciprocates by buying her a drink, and the dance has begun – the age-old lead up to a transaction. She doesn’t mind the small talk, especially with his accent, which she thinks might be British, or Australian. But he makes short work of the conversation and cuts to the meat of the matter.
He agrees to her terms. Condoms. A little rough play is okay, but nothing that breaks the skin or leaves a mark. And no kissing, that’s more personal than she cares to get. He agrees to pay upfront in cash and gives her twice what she’s asked. Wants it both ways, he says. Inside and out.
She isn’t sure what he means. Maybe he wants to take her the usual way, then have her use a strap on. Whatever, she shrugs, money is money.
He drives them to the motel down the road, the one that Tara has been using since she kicked her former manager and sometimes boyfriend to the curb some weeks ago. The purple neon light above the single-level structure buzzes loudly and rather than casting illumination, seems instead to just intensify the shadows.
The night manager, Greg, sees her coming and taps the “vacancy” sign on his desk, letting her know she’s in the clear. She slides him an extra twenty through the slit at the bottom of the glass window. He raises an eyebrow that say, really? So she peels another twenty from her roll and slides it through. Inflation’s a bitch, the whole world round.
Tara takes the key she’s given, for room twelve, and leads her John by the hand around the building through the dry, southwestern night air.
Once they’re inside and the door swings shut, he nods and begins stripping out of his clothing, which he folds neatly and stacks on the dresser. Like he’s been in the military, she thinks, or prison. Either way, all business, this one.
Despite how tough he looks, he is surprisingly gentle and takes his time. After they’ve finished, they lie side by side on top of the sheets, wearing only a thin sheen of sweat.
“Now the other way,” he says after a time.
He swings his legs over the side of the bed, stands up, then drops back down to his hands and knees on the warped, wooden floor. He begins making a series of godawful retching noises, followed by the sharp crack of bone snapping.
Tara looks over at him and can’t quite make sense of what she sees. His jaw hangs loose, broken, and what look like toes begin working their way forth. She shuts her eyes tight. When she reopens them, she sees a full foot, up the ankle protruding from her client’s mouth. He continues to make gagging noises, and, with difficulty, finally succeeds in spitting himself out of himself.
He stands, fleshless, glistening wetly in the flickering neon pink and purple light that leaks in through the crooked blinds. At once both newborn and fully grown, he could be an alien or child’s misconception of how humans are made. The empty skin he’s shed is bunched up on the floor, around his feet, like a deflated, man-shaped balloon.
Tara’s eyes are wide with terror. The list of upsetting things she has seen and done is not short, yet nothing on it even remotely compares to this.
He reaches out with the raw meat and nerve-wrapped bone that is his index finger and traces a sticky, scarlet path down the side of her cheek.
Trembling, Tara thinks she might pass out.
She hopes so, anyhow.