Prologue


        “You sure ‘bout that?” Jericho said, asking his friend, “It’s been forever, boyo. Not sure if we still got it.” He followed, drinking from his glass of pink lemonade with a gentle slurp and a swallow, putting the glass back down on the table in front of him. The base of the glass near matching the ring of chilled water surrounding it on the wood of the table.

        Sitting across from Jericho was Dorothy, a friend of a friend of Jericho’s. Although there was a long friendship between the two, it was never a stable one. There was a constant tension between them, pushing and pulling the two in ways not even they could explain. Dorothy, with her sharp eyes poking through Jericho, glanced up to the guy as she sipped her own drink, a dark soda sweating on the table as Jericho’s lemonade did. “Sure we do,” Dorothy answered, “as if I would lose my stuff in a year or two.” Her comment was followed by a short chuckle, along with her putting the glass down, dripping the condensation down to glimmer on the surface. She leaned forward, uncrossing her legs and folding her arms on the table so she could tap her muscular triceps with a finger or two as her gaze held Jericho in place. 

Jericho, feeling nothing but the weight of Dorothy’s stare, put his elbow down on the table, giving the drinks a slight tremor to sway to, and rested his chin against his palm. His flawless skin folding against the pressure of his hand on his jaw. “Meant us, boyo.” He corrected, looking Dorothy’s wanting stare straight on, “You remember how we left things off. I do, at least.” He broke their glare looking down, haunted by painful memories of him and the woman sitting across from him. A thought visually heavy on Jericho, seeming to weigh his shoulders just to remember. Looking at the guy, Dorothy let out a heavy sigh, drooping her head downwards as if those same memories had just landed in her brain. Lifting her head up with a slight tilt, she stared Jericho with sympathy. “I remember, but I was different, angry all the time.” Dorothy explained, Jericho’s expression hardly changing more than glancing at Dorothy’s reasoning. “It wasn’t your fault, Jer. You only had us in mind. So just think about here and now.” Dorothy sat up, her elbows pressing against the wood of the table to hold her posture back and her head up. “I want to try again, Jer. You and me.”

Hearing Dorothy’s plea, Jericho lifted his head to look into Dorothy’s sorrowful gaze. Staring at the small hint of tear building up in the corners of her eyes. “So do I, Dorothy.” Jericho answered, “But how? Don’t wants a get pushed around again.” A heavy sigh following his statement, his hands now locked together in front of his lips, just close enough to lean his head against by the mouth. He followed, still looking into Dorothy’s sad sockets, “Or lied to. I gave you everything, and you pushed it back.” His words smacking Dorothy’s face, she recoiled back with a gasp and a thought. A single thought bouncing around in her mind, and her eyes focussed solely on an imperfection in the wood of the table while she tossed it. By the time she caught herself up, she was already staring Jericho down, this time with confidence. Dorothy’s eye lockeed with Jericho’s, her gaze like arrows into his. She spoke, a strong voice from a tough woman, “Let me show you, Jericho. I can prove I’m not lying now.”

Dorothy’s voice paralyzed Jericho. He felt himself gulp the words down for processing. Her confidence boiling his thoughts like an egg. Jericho was ever so slightly pushed away by Dorothy. He opened his mouth to answer, but his pale lips said nothing. He was stuck, only able to look down at his glimmering glass of lemonade. The pink liquid rattling with every little movement of the table mocked him, as if telling him to say something quick. Jericho looked back up to the woman still piercing him with her stare of sheer will. His throat sank before opening his mouth to answer Dorothy. His dry, shivering voice spilling out like a waterfall onto his quivering lap. “Where?”

With a single word slithering across the table, Dorothy seemed to pick it up with the one side of her mouth rising into a victorious smirk at the now petrified boy sitting across, yet below her imposing stature. Her voice now like a leash around Jericho’s neck, she spoke with the might of a tyrant, slamming her hands against the table with the weight of the world and standing up to stare the boy down. “You know exactly where, and exactly when.” Dorothy’s demand crashed down on Jericho as a tidal wave of command, “And you know what happens if you aren’t there.” She leaned forward, the confidence in her eye now gone and replaced with lust that crawled over and explored Jericho’s shakey posture. Her stance over the poor guy quietly commanding him to obey anything Dorothy implied, making him unconciously nod with a wimper. His eyes were clamped shut but Dorothy’s stare, which seemed to burn his cheeks a bright red.

“Of course, Doll.” Jericho submitted, “I a be there, ready and willing.” His face glowing with passion, in full view of the dominance he could feel above him despite his efforts to conceal his own lust for her. With Jericho’s submission begging for attention below her, Dorothy straightened her stance, her abs gleaming in the heat of the day around them and the arch of her back seemingly casting a sex-driven shadow across the submissive slave still sitting and trembling across from Dorothy. Still looking down over her property, Dorothy’s lustful lips parted to shoot Jericho one last comment. A comment that would haunt Jericho’s sex for hours to come. “Good boy.”

Having finished her work, Dorothy wrapped her thick fingers around the glass of dark soda, now soaked in the water seemingly generated from the passion of the conversation around it, and gulped it down, making sure Jericho could her every drop of her drink slither down her throat, caving his feelings in one sip at a time. The glass clacked against the table as Dorothy put it down, making Jericho jump in a short terror, and Dorothy grin in dominance. Finally, with a swipe of her purse and a sway of her hips, Dorothy trotted off, surely to where Jericho’s destination was soon after, leaving him alone at the table. With a lift of his head, he watched his master strut away from him without so much as a piercing glance back at him. He could feel the point of her stare, however, as if her hips called for him to follow, swaying hypnotically around while getting further away.

Jericho crumbled, gasping for his breath as if it had just been stolen right out of his lungs. He slammed his crossed arms against the surface of the table, the sweat of the glasses sinking down to soak the wood surface beneath them from the violent shaking that was Jericho’s fatigue. Jericho gulped, still gasping for a life-saving breath of air. His head laying against the table, he could feel himself being crushed from submission, embarrassed even. “How could I?” Jericho asked himself, breaking the heavy silence surrounding him, “We was through. Now I gots a take her all the way.” His trembling voice bouncing around and into no one’s ears but his own. He waited for an answer to his longing question, but waiting wouldn’t answer, he had to search harder. With a deep breath and a drink of lemonade, Jericho sat up and stroked the hair away from his passionate expression, his hand soaked in water from the lemonade glass. “You a beat this, Jerry boy.” He said to himself with an unstable confidence, “You stronger than you look. Can get through anything, boyo.”

The boy finished his lemonade, clacking the glass down same as Dorothy, pushing himself to stand up. His wet hands reaching up to grab the edges of the bright red bow hanging from his neck, tugging ever so slightly to straighten his signature dress. A final sign of confidence before taking his first steps to a new Jericho. Following, not the woman that dominated him near seconds ago, but his own path. A voice called him, not one of submission, but one of self-confidence, leading him home, where he will start again. “Not anymore, Doll. Not. Anymore.” Jericho said to the ghost following him, knowing full well that it could weigh him down no longer.