Chapter 1

The scanner made a consistent, “Beep ... Beep ... Beep ... Beep...” sound as a cute, but bored looking cashier scanned the items of another customer in front of me. I was waiting in line in the supermarket to pay for my groceries, wanting to get home fast, while it felt like the line was taking forever. Instead of opening another checkout, we had to make do with the ones that were already open.

I had the choice between two lines and since they seemed equally long, I figured I’d stand in line with the one that had the cutest cashier. Might as well enjoy the sights while being forced to wait, right?

It had been a slow day at work. Because it was summer, there wasn’t a lot to do and with half my colleagues on vacation the building felt empty. My department especially felt nearly abandoned with just me and two other colleagues, both at least twenty years older than I was. One of them was in the habit of muttering a stream of curses when he couldn’t get the PC to do what he wanted, which happened quite frequently I might add, while the other guy had a personal hygiene problem and smelled like sweat, without being aware of how his scent was assaulting my poor senses.

It’d probably have helped if he wasn’t wearing the same shirt for an entire week and if he used some deodorant, especially with the temperatures outside and the air conditioning occasionally breaking down. Neither of them made for great company and that left me sitting in my own quiet corner at the other side of the floor.

Not that I minded it all that much anyway, since I preferred to keep to myself and was more interested in getting my job done than all the gossip usually flying around. I work as an accountant for a big firm in the Netherlands. Even though the work is often tedious and sometimes outright boring, it pays the bills.

I had received a royal raise last year due to my work efforts, which gave me the opportunity to get a mortgage and buy the house I had already been eyeing for a while. With the economy going through a depression, prices for houses were at an all-time low and it was the ideal time to move out of my old apartment, which I was renting from an unscrupulous balding man. It sometimes took weeks for repairs to be made and usually it was quicker to repair it myself.

The apartment itself also hadn’t been all that great. It was built sixty years ago and whenever there was a strong wind it seemed to blow right through the apartment, while the house I had set my sights on was built only fifteen years ago. I wasn’t rich by any means, but I made more than enough to put a decent amount of money in my savings account every month. Due to the raise I received, I could easily afford the mortgage without having to worry about my finances, or cutting back on expenses.

In short, I was living the life I dreamed of when growing up and I didn’t have much to complain about. I had a nice car, a lovely house and a lazy cat, whose only job was to hunt after the occasional insects that invaded my fortress. It was a job that she took quite serious, that was as long as I made sure she had enough cat food. Not that she’d have to worry about that for long anyway, since her whining usually got annoying quickly enough for me to get up and refill her bowl. Not to mention, if I wasn’t fast enough for her likes she’d get my attention by standing up against my leg, putting her nails out and giving me a ‘friendly’ reminder of who was the real boss around here.

One of the things I did complain about was that I’m single and also very horny. I’m a bit socially awkward, which made finding a woman hard for me. It wasn’t that I was a weird guy, but making first contact with a girl I liked usually results in me stuttering some cheesy pickup lines and receiving either amused or annoyed looks, before being put down, again.

As such, I was left with only one alternative, jerking off. Masturbating three times a day seemed to be more of a standard than an exception. The usual routine was one time before work, to take care of the morning wood, another right after work, while fantasizing about my sexy female co-workers, and finally again before going to bed, since I usually ended up watching some porn or reading a dirty story and letting my vivid imagination take me over the edge.

As I was twenty-seven, I sometimes wondered whether my testosterone levels would ever go down again. Ever since hitting puberty I had the need to relieve myself multiple times a day, although the last couple of years it did slow down a bit from four to six times to ‘just’ two to three times a day. Occasionally, I overslept and didn’t have time for my morning session, which made it feel as if my balls were ready to burst by the time I get home.

This morning I happened to have overslept and by the time my workday finally finished I urgently needed to relieve myself. During lunch break, one of my female co-workers had bent over to pick up some fruit she had dropped by accident. She was unaware that she was showing a lot more cleavage than was decent and it had kept me hard for the majority of the afternoon.

I hurried home and drove my car as fast as I could get away with during my twenty-eight minute commute, but during the trip home, I recalled that I was low on groceries. Since the supermarket was on a direct route between work and my house, my usual after work jack off session would have to wait fifteen minutes longer. Annoying indeed, but it wasn’t the end of the world.

The customer finally paid for his groceries and there was only a woman with two young children left in front me. There wasn’t much else to do than waiting and my fantasies started to run wild as I ogled the various women in the store.

The woman in front of me looked to be a couple of years older than I am, I estimated her to be thirty-one or thirty-two. She was wearing shoes with a low heel and a simple summer dress that ended five centimeters above her knees. I noticed she had sexy calves, a slim body with wide hips, the kind made for child bearing, and full breasts, the ones women get after nursing infants. She was a head shorter than I am, had shoulder length, auburn hair, and a pretty face, which wore a tired and worried expression. Her children, a boy and a girl, were probably about five and four years old.

Her kids were standing demurely behind their mom and looked down too, as if they were keeping some big secret to themselves. Most of the other children were happily running around, since it was summer and there was lots of fun stuff to do. Looking at their clothes, it was clear to see that, although clean, they weren’t exactly wearing the latest fashion. A picture on the boy’s sweater, the red car from Cars, looked faded and the girl’s pants looked like they were fixed up with a sewing machine.

Forgetting my horniness and fantasies for a moment, I noticed other things about this mother of two children. It was amazing what you can tell about people by just looking at their groceries. The products people buy often indicate their interests, eating habits, and social status. In her case, all I saw on the conveyor belt were the cheapest products the supermarket had to offer.

My own purchases were at the other end of the spectrum. I didn’t have to worry about money and I’d probably pay twice what she was paying despite having fewer items, since I preferred high quality products. At least, that was what the commercials on television had convinced me that I was buying. Some of the articles I selected were milk with banana flavor, chocolate chip cookies with an extra crunch, beef, and luxury buns with all sorts of extra ingredients, like nuts and raisins added. Those buns easily cost four times more than the cheapest bread available, but I loved the taste of them.

All I saw this woman purchasing were the bare essentials to make it through the week; there wasn’t even a pack of cookies for her kids!

I was starting to feel sorry for those children. They looked like well-behaved kids who were having a rough time. Giving the woman another look I noticed other things about her. Apart from a simple watch, she wasn’t wearing any jewelry and looking at her ring finger, I noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring either.

A single mom, taking care of two kids? My guess was that she was either divorced or a widow on welfare. Maybe she had a small part-time job, but with kids of those ages, she probably couldn’t afford daycare to get a full-time job. It sucked to be in such a situation.

Money had been tight for my parents when I was growing up, so I knew about the struggles to make ends meet. We had been lucky enough that my father had a decent job. Then again, he also had a habit of spending money on things he didn’t really need. Often this left my mother balancing between a maxed out credit card, waiting for his next paycheck and somehow still getting enough groceries for the family. With three kids, I being the oldest, getting a part-time job wasn’t an option for her either, since my parents would end up spending more on daycare than she could hope to make with a side job.

As kids, we were never short on things though, but occasionally there were months when things were tight and we had to make do without luxuries like potato chips, sweets, or ice cream, especially if my parents’ car had to go to the garage for repairs, or when an unexpected bill arrived in the mail. We could also forget about expensive toys for our birthday and had to make do with what family members gave us.

“Beep ... Beep ... Beep...” it looked like it was almost my turn!

When there weren’t any other items left on the conveyer belt that the woman wanted to buy, the cashier hit the button to finalize the bill and she said, “That will be 24.95 Euros.”

The woman put her last groceries in her bag and took her wallet out of her purse. She appeared to be a bit nervous when she opened it and when it didn’t appear to have any cash.

“Can I pay with my bank card, please?”

“Sure, no problem,” the cashier replied politely, hitting another button to switch payment methods.

Apprehensively, the woman slid her bankcard in the machine and she seemed nervous when she entered her PIN code. It always took several seconds for the device to complete the transaction and especially now those seconds seemed to last for an eternity.

When she received a negative beep in return I saw her visibly tense, for a moment unsure of what to do next.

“Can I try again? I think there is something wrong with my card,” she explained.

After she took it out, she swept the card against her dress. Occasionally, when those machines didn’t accept a card it was because there was some dust on the magnet strip and sweeping it against a piece of cloth often helped. The thing was, since the machine had already accepted the card itself I knew that it wouldn’t help in this particular situation. If there was some dust on it, she couldn’t have entered her PIN code.

When I was a teen I wanted to make some money on the side and so I worked as a cashier myself in a supermarket. I recognized the negative beep as insufficient funds in an account and my earlier observations led me to the conclusion that she was probably out of money. I also knew that she likely wouldn’t get any money until the twenty-first of the month, when the welfare transaction was made and when companies generally pay the wages. Considering that it was the fourteenth today, it looked like she wouldn’t have anything to eat for a week.

The cashier gave her a sympathetic look, but like me, she realized very well what was really going on. She pushed a button that allowed the woman to try again, unfortunately, with the same results, the negative beep confirming my suspicions.

I saw how she trembled slightly, somehow still maintaining a cool composure. Behind us some customers were getting annoyed at the hold up and began to get restless at the delay, which only made this poor woman even more nervous.

Sounding slightly panicked, she asked, “Could I try one more time, please?”