or
"An Exquisite Death"

Copyright© 1999

"Damn."

The urine is cold and wet on my skin as it soaks through my best uniform top and slacks. "Damn it, Sherry," I curse to no one in particular. Sherry's long gone, and if Mr. Peterson hears me, he couldn't tell anyone anyway.

"That's it," I think to myself, "this is the final straw." It's bad enough that I'm on alone again tonight, bad enough that I have to do a double again because they haven't hired a new third shift aid yet, bad enough that because of this horrid, nasty job I have no life of my own whatsoever. What upsets me the most is the incompetence, the laziness, the downright selfishness. I specifically told Sherry to empty Mr. Peterson's urine bag hours ago. But, no, she left it for me to do, and now, when I finally find the time to get to it, the damn thing is too full, too heavy, and while I'm carrying it to the toilet it splits wide open, pouring its entire contents all down the front of me.

I sigh in resignation as the urine runs down my legs and into my shoes. I pull a towel from the linen cart and futilely try to sponge what I can out of my drenched clothes. Giving up, I frown in disgust as I take another bag from the cart, connect Mr. Peterson's catheter tube to it and hang it on the side of the bed.

Once I'm sure Mr. Peterson is secure and safe for the moment, I head for the laundry room in the basement, feeling my pantyhose squishing with each step. There's no way I'm going to get through the rest of the shift in these sopping wet clothes, much less wear them until eight in the morning. I figure I'll find something clean to wear temporarily while I run my clothes through the washer and dryer. I just hope there's a bar of soap down there so I can shower.

I shouldn't be surprised to find the laundry room filthy. At least a day's worth of dirty linens is just piled up on the floor. Looks like they lost another laundry guy. This place is falling apart. It was bad before they'd lost the Medicare residents, but now they don't even try to follow the state regulations.

Like me being on alone. Besides me, there's supposed to be a nurse on duty, but they won't pay a nurse's salary so they do without, knowing I can administer meds, even though I'm not supposed to. And they keep on hiring people with no training at all and they all either stop showing up after a couple of weeks or, like Sherry, don't do doodleysquat. And it's the residents who suffer.

That's the only reason I stay. There's only a few residents left, but somebody's got to take care of them. Their families don't care. Most of them don't even have families to speak of. The owners certainly don't care. And sure as heck people like Sherry don't care. So I work evenings and nights and weekends, because I care. I don't have any kind of life, because I care. Somebody's got to. I know they're taking advantage of me, but I'll get my reward in heaven. I'm not getting it here, that's for sure.

I rummage through the linen shelves and, just my luck, all I can find clean is an old, threadbare scrub top. It'll just have to do for the hour or so that my clothes were washing and drying. I don't care, I'm desperate to get these urine-drenched clothes off of me. I take off my top, slide off my slacks and throw then both into the washer. My canvas shoes, knee-highs and panties follow. I find the box of laundry soap, pour it in. I'm about to turn the machine on when I see the yellow stains on my bra. It goes in, too.

I've been alone in this laundry room at night hundreds of times, but it's still a bit unnerving to stand here naked. Before I get into the shower I start to go to the laundry room door to close and lock it, but then I remember there isn't even a doorknob on the door, just a handle, so I don't even bother closing it. After all, it isn't like anyone going to barge in. None of the residents are ambulatory and even if they were, I'd given most of them their meds and by now they're all in a heavily drugged sleep. And before evening rounds I'd secured the building. No one can get in unless I let them in, not that anyone had ever tried.

I find a fresh bar of soap and a clean washcloth, pad over to the shower stall, turn on the water and get in. Most of the urine had poured onto my abdomen and ran down my thighs, so I spend a lot of time scrubbing down there. My panties had gotten really soaked through and I'm a little worried about catching something. As I rub the lathered washcloth up and down the folds of my labia, I think cynically that, the way my life is going, getting a lap-full of urine is the only way I'll ever catch anything down there.

It takes a while but finally I start to feel clean, or at least clean enough, so I turn off the water and open the shower stall door. But, as I reach for the towel, I 'm surprised to see something suddenly moving across the room. I jump back in fright, hitting the back of the stall hard, and my arms fly up in a useless attempt to hide my nakedness. Then I start to giggle as I realize I'm staring at my own frightened reflection. Stupid place to put a mirror!

I get out of the shower and start to towel myself off, trying to avoid my image in that mirror. I don't like to look at myself naked. My butt is too big, my thighs too thick, my hips too wide, my belly too round. I really don't weigh all that much; I'm much too short for anyone to call me a "big" girl. No, I was told often enough in high school what I was: the word begins with "p" and it isn't "pretty."

When I was a little girl, I used to dream about being married and having a family but those dreams died years ago. Most boys don't even bother taking a second glance at me, and the few that do, don't have marriage on their minds. I was a "good girl" in high school. I didn't "put out" just to be "popular," I guess because I was so afraid I'd get pregnant. I wanted my babies to have a daddy who loved them and didn't leave. So now, here I was, almost twenty-two years old and still a virgin, and in all likelihood going to die that way.

I stop drying myself and look at my reflection. I used to be really proud of my breasts. They were my only decent feature. They were large but they stayed up by themselves without a bra. Now they're beginning to sag, and it's only a matter of time before my bottom begins to do the same. I've wasted the best years of my life stuck in this place. Even if by some miracle there's a boy out there who would find me attractive, he'll never find me if I spend my every waking hour cooped up in here taking care of old people and vegetables.

I know I could make a boy happy, if only one would have me. I think about that a lot when I masturbate. I have a "hair trigger" and I know boys like that. I can orgasm over and over and over. It's the only way I can get to sleep after work. It's the only pleasure I have in my life, a pleasure I've resigned myself to indulge in alone.

I don't even realize I'm rubbing myself between my legs with the towel until my body shakes in release. I've never masturbated at work before and if there'd been anyone else in the building who could have seen what I'd just done, I'd be embarrassed. But I know I'm alone. As usual.

I'm pretty much dry by now, so I throw the wet towel onto the pile of dirty linen on the floor and put on the scrub top. It's pretty short, barely covering my thighs, but it's all there is and I have to finish the evening rounds. Besides, who's going to see me, anyway? I tug at the bottom to pull it down a bit and the shoulder seam start to rip. I hope it'll stay together until my own clothes are done. But if it doesn't, who cares? What difference does it make if I finish rounds naked as a jay-bird? It isn't like there's anyone around to get repulsed at the sight of me.

"God," I think as I walk barefoot up the stairs, "I'm really depressed." I always get this way in the middle of my cycle. I can tell when I'm ovulating because I'm even quicker to orgasm then, and all I can think of is what a waste my fertility is. I was so excited when my period first came, and I used to dream about the day I'd take care of my own babies. But there'll be no babies for me. The egg now inside me will just go to waste, just like every month. In two weeks it'll be flushed out, unfertilized, and another egg would be gone, another baby that wouldn't be, month after month, year after year, until all my eggs were gone, along with every chance I'll ever have to take care of a real family instead of a bunch of slobbering invalid strangers whose piss I have to wear.

The total silence that greets me when I get to the main floor deepens my depression but brings me back to reality. I don't have time to indulge in a pity party right now. I have to finish rounds, and the first thing I have to do was clean up the mess in Mr. Peterson's room. I decide that when I get home in the morning, I'll have a good cry and then masturbate until I totally exhaust myself. My mood brightens a bit as I open to door to the janitor's closet to get the mop and pail. At least I have something to look forward to.

Mr. Peterson is exactly the way I left him in his drugged out "sleep." The "on-call" doctor believes in "preventative medication," so four times a day all the residents get a shot of thorazine, so even if they weren't vegetables when they got here, they end up that way. Less work for the doctor, less worry for the owners, and more work for the aids. Especially if there's no nurse on shift.

I've already given Mr. Peterson his bath and changed his bedding before the "accident," so pretty much all I have to do is mop up the urine on the floor. Careful not to step in the puddle with my bare feet, I take the mop and run it back and forth across the floor, the motion making my unrestrained breasts swing with each push, my nipples hard in the cool air. I'm surprised at how good it feels.

As I bend down to pick up the broken urine bag from where I'd dropped it, I feel the top's hem riding up my bottom, so I decide to give Mr. Peterson a little "show," pointing my butt at his bed and parting my legs a little. "Want some of this, Mr. P.?" I mutter, wiggling my ass at him.

The furnace decides to kick on at that moment. I must be standing near a heating duct because I suddenly feel a warm gust of air blow between my thighs, making my skin tingle. It feels really nice. "You sure?" I continue saying to Mr Peterson, my voice betraying a bit of moan. I stand up. "Too bad, Mr. P.," I sigh, "your loss," and I toss the used urine bag into the trash bag on the cart. I take a final look about the room and, satisfied I was done, I begin to push the cart out of the room.

But before I turn off the light, I turn around, walk back to the bed and stand mere inches from Mr. Peterson's face. With a wicked grin, I pull the hem of my top up to my face, exposing myself completely. "Last chance," I say. No reaction whatsoever, of course. Mr. Peterson just continues to dribble from his slack jaw onto his pillow.

I shrug my shoulders, spin around and walk back to the cart, enjoying the freedom of my nakedness under the loose fitting top. As I turn out the light and push the cart to the next room, I realize I was also enjoying the freedom of being a "bad girl." I mean, I'd just flashed Mr. Peterson! For a moment I wonder what had possessed me to do that, but I decide I don't care. It's about time I actually have some fun. I wheel the cart to the last stop of my rounds, Mr. Riley's room.

I always make Mr. Riley's room the last one, because it gives me something to look forward to. He's the youngest of the residents and for a vegetable he isn't bad looking. He isn't buff, that's for sure. He's lost a lot of muscle tissue from being bedridden, but he's in a lot better shape than any of the other men I'd ever taken care of. They say he's "brain dead" but when his family took him off the life support, he just kept on breathing, so they're not sure what his functionality is. Far as I can tell, though, his body seems to work just fine. I found that out the first time I gave him a sponge bath.

Mr. Riley seems to be resting comfortably, but it looks like he's lying a little too much to one side. When I turn down the bed sheet, I find out why. He has one of those vibrating mattress pads that helps circulation and prevents bedsores, but it doesn't work too well if it's all bunched up on one side of the bed instead of being underneath him. I shake my head. Just another example of the incompetence I have to put up with. Sherry was too lazy to get it under him properly. Well, I think, I have to take it off the bed to change his linens anyway.

I get Mr. Riley's wash basin, fill it with warm water and put it on his utility table. Then I go around to the far side of the bed and put down the side rail so I can pull off the blanket and top sheet. All the rooms are small, but this one seems the smallest. There's barely space for the bed, the night-stand and the utility table, much less my linen cart, so it's a bit of a tight fit between the wall and the bed. I drop the dirty bedclothes on the floor on that side so they'll be out of the way, and I put the massage pad there, too, rolling it up so it won't get damaged. Then I come back around, get the soap and a washcloth from the cart and take off Mr. Riley's gown, throwing it onto the pile on the other side of the bed. And then I begin to bathe him, just like I do every night.

After you've washed a few hundred decrepit old men a few hundred times, any embarrassment you might have had about pulling and poking around a man's privates is long gone and it become just another job. It sure ain't sexy, let me tell you. But Mr. Riley is different.

Normally, Mr. Riley hardly moves at all, and he certainly won't respond if you talk to him, but he seems to be able to tell when it's time for his bath, because he seems to start breathing just a little bit faster, even before I start. I don't know if that's just me imagining it, though, because I sure start breathing faster when it's time.

Especially tonight. After the night I've had, I'm looking forward to this. I take the wet washcloth and clean under his armpits. Then I wash his chest and it's not my imagination, he is breathing faster. I like his chest. It's still kind of muscular. You can tell he used to be real athletic. As I press the warm washcloth against his skin, I can feel a warmth of my own growing between my legs. I rub in little circles down his torso, and when I get to just below his belly button, I see it begin.

Since I started working here, I've seen a lot of men's penises, but Mr. Riley's is easily the biggest I've ever seen, and that's even before I start washing him. But it's now, when I start to wash his pubic hair, that it starts to get even bigger. I've got a routine. First I scrub his pubic hair really good, then I pull his thighs apart and wash the insides of his legs. Then I wash his scrotum. He really likes it when I wash his scrotum, especially when I use both hands, because he really starts to grow. Like I said, I know I can make a boy happy. I sure can make Mr. Riley happy.

We're both really enjoying his bath tonight. Most nights I content myself with just making it grow a bit. But tonight, even before I'm done with his thighs and scrotum, it's already really long and really thick and it's actually beginning to rise up on its own. I'm bending over him so my breasts are brushing against him, my stiff nipples poking into his chest. And I'm feeling my thighs getting really wet.

I start to run the washcloth up and down the length of his penis with one hand, while my other hand dives between my legs. His penis starts rising faster and faster, getting stiffer and stiffer, as my own orgasm gets closer and closer. Then I move my fingers to stroke the underside of his penis just below the head. And that's when his hips start to move.

And, oh God, that's when I explode.

It's easily the best orgasm I've ever had. I feel my knees buckle and suddenly I'm falling across him as my body shudders with wave after wave of pleasure. I revel in the feeling of his body rutting up against mine as my spasming hand squeezes his rock-solid penis again and again.

The waves subside. I let him loose. His rutting slows and stops at about the same time I finally catch my breath. I stand up, feeling a little embarrassed. Thank God no one saw that. "That's all for tonight, Mr. Riley," I whisper, still a little out of breath, trying to ignore my orgasmic discharge trickling down my legs. My goodness, I don't think I've ever felt so open down there before.

I look at Mr. Riley and I see that his penis is slowly shrinking and his breathing is getting back to normal. I breath a sigh of relief. At least I stopped before he "went off." His penis was the only part of him left that "worked," and it worked very well. Too good, really. I once overheard his family asking the doctor about "harvesting" his semen for a sperm bank or something, and I heard the doctor tell them it was the most potent semen he'd ever found. I don't know if they ever did anything about it. I thought it was pretty sick. I mean, he's a vegetable. I would have thought that odds of birth defects were just about certain.

Once I went too far and brought him to ejaculation. It was a mess. The semen got all over the place, on the sheets, in my hair, on my face and all over my uniform. I know it's silly to worry about getting pregnant from just letting it touch my skin, but it still scared me to death. I've never let it happen again, even though it's a favorite image of mine when I masturbate.

Mr. Riley got awful close this time, though. There's a clear discharge seeping from his now flaccid penis. Too close, I think to myself. I'm beginning to wonder what's getting into me. I've never even touched myself at work before, and tonight I've made myself come twice. I decide I'd better get back to work. And I'd better get dressed just as soon as my clothes are done, because running around almost naked seems to have a bad influence on me. I'm losing all sense of propriety.

I finish washing Mr. Riley and roll him onto his side so I can get to his back and bottom. It's not easy to keep my mind on my work. When I lean over to pull him onto his side, my top pulls up so as I'm holding him to wash his back I'm feeling the warm skin of his hip against my bare abdomen. And I can tell he's reacting to this, too, because his breathing starts to get faster again. And, truth to tell, so is mine.

While he's on his side, I pull the bottom linens out from under him and toss them onto the pile of dirty linens on the floor between the bed and the wall. Then, finished with his sponge bath, I roll him onto his back again and I'm about to get the clean linens when out of the corner of my eye I see something moving on the other side of the bed. I freeze in my tracks, startled, and stare at the source of the movement.

I let go of my held breath. I feel silly all over again at getting frightened at nothing. The dirty bedclothes on the floor are vibrating as if they were alive because of the still-functioning massaging mattress pad that's rolled up and buried in the pile. For a second I watch the pile fluttering and for some reason it looks oddly erotic to me, which, I guess, shows the state of mind I'm in.

I have to again remind myself that I still have work to do. I get the clean sheets for Mr. Riley's bed, but before I start to put them on, I realize he's lying too low in the bed. All that hip movement must have made him slide down. I have to pull him up, but I know it isn't going to be easy because he's a pretty big man. I hook my arm under his armpit and try to pull him up, but he doesn't budge, just as I expect. I know I have to lower the bed, get behind the head and pull him up by both arms. So I lower the bed, but, just like practically everything else in this God-forsaken place, I find out the bed is broken. The wheels are jammed and I can't pull the head of the bed far enough away from the wall to get behind it.

There's only one other way for me to pull Mr. Riley up to where he belongs in the bed. I'll have to get onto the bed myself. If I was dressed properly, I wouldn't give it a second thought, I'd just do it. But I'm far from dressed properly. I think about waiting until my clothes are dry, but they aren't even out of the washer yet, and I can't make the bed until Mr. Riley is positioned correctly, because if I do I'll just pull the bottom bedclothes, including the pneumatic mattress pad, all out of place when I pull him up. And I can't leave him lying on the bare mattress for over an hour.

What the heck, I decide. I just need to keep a professional attitude, that's all. And so I proceed to kneel on the bed next to Mr. Riley's nude body.

Very carefully, trying not to touch him, I swing one leg over to the other side of the bed so I'm straddling him, but when I put my other knee on the bed to kneel over him, I feel my thighs brush against his hips. Immediately his breathing changes. So does mine. And it catches in my throat when I lose my balance, my hips drop and I feel his limp penis pressing against my exposed labia.

It's like feeling an electric shock between my legs. My body jerks forward and my hand flies up, grabbing for the side bed rail to try to pull myself back up. And the whole world suddenly lurches sideways.

Suddenly all I'm feeling and seeing and hearing is confusion. All I feel is a dizzying sense of rolling and falling. All I hear is the sound of grinding metal and tearing cloth. All I see is Mr Riley's body flying up and crushing into mine. And when reality stops spinning I find myself staring at the ceiling with my arms wrapped around Mr. Riley's neck and my legs wrapped around his waist.

Desperately, I try to make sense of my senses. My bare breasts are pressing up against warm flesh. My top is gone! I feel something under me tickling my buttocks. And, oh my God, something soft and warm is nuzzling at the cleft of my labia!

Slowly I begin to grasp what had happened, becoming more and more terrified with each realization. Between me and Mr. Riley, the weight must have been too much for the springs of that ancient bed. They'd given way on one side, the bed pitched sharply and when I started falling I clutched at anything to stop my fall. That's when my top got caught on the IV pole. The flimsy cloth tore from my body as I grabbed Mr. Riley's shoulders and together we rolled, falling onto the pile of dirty linen next to the bed.

And now we're wedged between the bed and the wall, locked naked together with his genitals pressed tight against mine in the most intimate embrace a man and woman can experience. I'm lying underneath him on the pile of bedclothes with my shoulders lower than my bottom, my legs caught around his waist, my feet pointing practically straight up. It feels as if I'm supporting his entire weight between my legs and I can feel my bottom settling deeper into the linens. Oh, God. I'm trapped, exposed, and totally defenseless. And this realization becomes clearer when I discover to my horror that my struggling to get out from under him has no effect but to cause whatever is pressing against my vagina to nestle itself even more snugly between the folds.

My whole body is shaking in utter terror. I try to calm myself down, but it isn't easy with the increasing pressure I'm feeling upon my vaginal opening. I can feel that Mr. Riley's body is responding to my efforts and becoming agitated, his chest pressing more tightly against my breasts as his breath quickened. And, God help me, I know it's his gradually thickening penis that's slowly nudging into my labia. How did I get into this? How, oh God, how am I going to get out of this?

Panicking isn't helping. It's only making it worse. In the small part of my mind that isn't frozen with fear, I tell myself that I have to stop moving. If I stop moving, I'll stop stimulating him and he'll calm down and at the very least I'll avoid the inevitable consequence of his penis pushing into my vagina.

I'm finally able to still myself and for a fleeting instant the overwhelming terror gripping me begins to lessen. But to my shock and confusion, I realize that the strange tickling I'm feeling against my bottom is becoming a fierce vibration. Suddenly I remember. It's that rolled up massaging mattress pad, still working away, working directly under my hip bone, and as we settle into the linens the vibration is growing stronger and stronger until now my buttocks are churning. And Mr Riley is responding to the quivering body underneath him with a sickening predictability. The limp flesh that is his penis continues to slowly swell, lodging itself even tighter into the crevice between my legs.