Turns out you can make a machine for everything. But, and the irony was not lost on Sarah, it was far more economical to employ one person minimum wage to work obscene hours than spend a lump sum on a machine to screw the tops of toothpaste tubes on. Everyday she went home smelling minty fresh. Sometimes she longed to be hit by a car that would fling her crumpled body into a ditch, just so once someone would remark, “damn, this bitch stinks!” rather than eternally being the mint fresh woman. Such is the curse of modern economics- cheaper labour and colder hearts.

Tonight like all others she would savour her precious half an hour where endless cigarettes would be smoked and a hastily made ham sandwich would be stuffed into to her tiny thin mouth. Perhaps, if she was feeling exciting she would go to the bathroom on the second floor and read the graffiti that coated the stalls. And so here sits Sarah, peeing into a toilet with burns on the seat possibly from those who had turned to drugs to relieve their monotony. There she sits, greyish blonde hair, stick thin, a face that hasn’t smiled in a month, twenty nine, but you’d be forgiven for thinks she was forty. Sarah would shed a tear, but it seems after years of neither highs or lows her tear ducts have dried out.

Sarah returned to her work station, taking a slow drawn out breath as she sat down upon the well worn chair. The graveyard shift again, every Thursday she would sit on her little stool screwing on caps until at five AM she was allowed to return to her tiny flat where she lived (alone…natch) and would sleep until she was called back to the grind of the toothpaste factory.

Next Thursday, on her half hour off she crept once more to the second floor, pausing at the divide between the male and female toilets she drew her pen and began to write:

Dear God,
Despite my best efforts here I am left.
Your creature of the earth screwing (but not fucking) her life away.
I dream of nuclear waste.
And wide screams of ecstasy.
I want to wear permanently painted skin.
Wrapped in nothing but police line tape.
To be covered in the passion of another.
To take the drip out of this life.
And turn off the life support.
To suck and fuck and fight and drink and smoke.
To laugh and cry to bleed and moan.
I demand a Carnal Athlete.
Sincerely,
Forgotten.

Putting her pen back in her pocket she smiled the first smile she had in a month. The last few hours of her shift flew by, where at 5 AM she went home and wildly masturbated for an hour. Lying in her dirty bed sheets covered in her own sweat and cum she felt alive for the first time in years.

The next night also working the graveyard shift David saw the words that Sarah had written, staring at the words, his attention turned to his own erection forcing its way out of his pants. He felt that the name Carnal Athlete accurately described him. Taking his own pen out he quickly scribbled underneath Sarah’s musings:

I like sharp curves and wet beds.
I want cold skin and brittle bones.
Needles and pills for Sunday mornings.
Leather and lace.
Soap with bite marks and scars with stories.
Scratches and broken glass.
Aching teeth and pulled out hair.
I want my victim.
I want my vessel.
Sincerely,
Carnal Athlete.

He too smiled at what he had written on the wall. He was having to behave in this job, If his parole officer heard that he had taken a single step out of line we would be back at the half-way house again with the crack heads and prostitutes.

Sitting back down at his work station where his job was to meticulously check each tube for any signs of damage, David scratched his heavily scared for-arm. Reminders of his past that would refuse to leave him, their unevenness made him still feel alive. David once more withdrew his pen and next to where the ingredients on the side of each tube are written he neatly added ‘may cause syphilis in children under five’. Grinning at his handy work he looked up from his masterpiece and thought of Sarah his Co-worker. He smiled, He had always noticed her as being one of the few workers at the factory that still had an inch of life within her.

Once again Thursday rolled around and with the same dulling sensation of being slowly stabbed to death by pins one at a time, Sarah sat and began working at her station. Break time lifted her mood as she passed her art work from last week, only for her to stop dead in her tracks at the sight that someone had written a reply to her musings. Reading what David had written her mouth began to widen into a smile and then a grin. As she read those final words.. “sincerely, Carnal Athlete” she whispered them aloud. Aware as if by fate of someone behind her she spun round straight into the eyes of David.

“Yes Forgotten?”

As their eyes met Sarah’s mouth grew small again, David’s smile rose and parted. His eyes glowed with life and her tongue flicked the roof of her mouth.

They kissed. They left the factory. They went to David’s bedsit on the edge of town and had sex.

Fast sex, slow sex, dirty sex, passionate sex, caring sex, debasing sex, illegal sex, missionary sex, sex like girls have, violent sex, violating sex, orgasmic sex, sex like boys have, sex with toys, sex with tears, sex with fears, sex for prisoners sex for animals cold sex slow sex fast sex warm sex claustrophobic sex sensitive sex given sex taken sex tied up sex raping sex wordless sex upside-down sex screaming sex inside out sex silent sex sex sex sex sexsexsexsexsesexsexssexsexssxesxesexsexsexsexsexsexsexse
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Lying next to David Sarah let out another stream of blue cigarette smoke into the air as David fought to catch his breath. The scars on his arms which she had noticed at work reached up over his shoulders and down to his legs. What she had imagined to be the work of a self harmer gradually grew into something more sinister. During the last few passionate hours she had not noticed.

The scars were forming into words before her eyes.

SLUT carved deep on his left thigh, WHORE on his right shoulder, KILLER in his rippled stomach only partially covered by a tattoo of a scorpion. Words covered his body, each more disturbing than the last.

As David turned over Sarah could see in his hand he held a razor blade. His mouth grew small and scared while his eyes grew round and lust filled.

“Girls who write on walls are begging to be written upon” whispers David.

Sarah’s caution became full terror-she’d have any kind of sex but not with a razor blade. She backed away, trying to smile at David, pleading with her eyes that he was kidding, that the scars were not as fresh as they seamed, that the words NEVER A VICTIM did not still show signs of scabbing on his lower back.

She leapt out of the way as David crashed down upon her. Her weak body offering no resistance to David’s as he grabbed hold of her ankle. Clutching at the bed sheets she screamed and pleaded with David to stop. But slowly and calculatingly he began to carve.

The pain of the razor cutting though at first skin then into muscle and fat gave Sarah a last burst of strength. Kicking hard out against the razor blade it shot back deeper into her foot but also into the right eye of David. Her screams were only matched by those of David as he tore the blade from them both. Kneeling on the floor he sobbed and howled as he held the remnants of his destroyed eye.

As Sarah ran from David’s home, leaving a trail of blood in her wake, she could still hear the low moan from David’s disfigured face. Finally erupting into a howl she would never forget.

She never returned to the factory.

She never demanded a Carnal Athlete after that.

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