My name is Brix…Mr. Brix if you’re a client. I’ve found that it’s best to maintain a certain amount of professional distance. I am a Door Closer—by nature, and by vocation. What began as an obsession has become a career.

As far back as I can remember, I’ve closed doors…and gates—entryways of any kind, after myself and everyone else. I always considered it just a quirk. But lately I’ve started waking up several times a night to walk around my apartment checking. Not just the front door, but the bathroom door and the closet doors, cabinet doors and the little door under the staircase that can really freak me out if I think about it too much.

Oddly enough, I’m comfortable leaving the windows open…but that little staircase door really bothers me. What could it possibly lead to? Nothing good, in my opinion. So I try not to think about it. In fact, I’ve blocked it with a big painting of a man hanging himself. I’m convinced that this nullifies the possibilities. I still check it though. Not as often, maybe only once a night since I’ve been in therapy. I’m thinking about booby-trapping it, but I would probably end up only hurting myself.

My shrink, Dr. Paul, and I decided that it would be therapeutic to turn this preoccupation into an occupation, so I put an ad in the paper and now I make money from it. It’s amazing how many people find it impossible to close the door behind them. Of course, I’ve always known. Most people, it would seem, actually were raised in a barn. Dr. Paul and I have discussed whether it might have something to do with allowing for a hasty retreat. Opening a door once to enter a room is apparently the extent of most people’s door-opening capabilities. Expecting them to actually have to open it again on the way out may be too much to ask.

But this doesn’t explain why they leave the door open on the way out. We’re still analyzing that. Regardless, there are other people in the world who want the doors closed. And those are usually the people who hire me. I’m not insane; I’m an entrepreneur. It isn’t the greatest job in the world, but it pays the rent. And it gives me some interesting stories to tell Dr. Paul and my drinking buddies down at The Morgue.

My latest client is this crazy bitch who hired me to door-close her husband. I’m not just making a general sexist remark. I don’t believe all women are crazy bitches. Most women, in fact, tend to close their own doors, and this makes them in my opinion highly superior to men, who by and large are the worst open-door offenders.

But this chick is a crazy bitch. When I first meet her at her office, she screams at me to leave the door open behind me, because the heat is stifling. I try to explain that this is not what I do, but she will have nothing of it. She’s on the verge of attacking me, and she looks like she could do some real damage too, even pregnant. So, mustering all my will, I leave the door open. When I go home after the interview, I close my own front door 17 times to try to make up for it. But it still grates on my nerves.

Her husband is this muscled up little Asian dude with a real attitude. When I first knock on their condo door to meet him, it swings open to an empty room. I step in tentatively, and this little pissed-off man is suddenly standing in front of me, like he’s been there the whole time. I don’t think I even blinked. Seriously, I wonder why this guy ever even has to open a door to begin with. He seems to be able to just appear out of nowhere. He must be about 5’5”, but packed—muscles everywhere. He isn’t too happy about me being hired to follow him around. But then he isn’t too happy about much. He’s one of those perpetually scowling little men. I tell him at least it’s only while his wife is at work.

From what I understand, someone came in through an open door while Freaky Dude wasn’t paying attention and ripped up her favorite dress. At least, this is the story I got from Crazy Bitch. She found the dress in the garbage. I find it hard to believe that he never noticed someone was in his house. Freaky Little Dude seems to be a little too aware of his surroundings, and given that weird ability of his to suddenly be somewhere that he wasn’t before, it just doesn’t seem likely that someone could sneak in through any door at all. He’s a little guy, but built like a motherfucker. And with that pissed-off attitude, I just don’t see somebody messing with him or his home. And why would somebody come in just to rip up a dress? Something doesn’t add up, but I keep my opinions to myself and the doors closed. That’s what I’ve been hired to do.

“I will tell you something,” he says.

But then he doesn’t tell me anything. I’m sure he will later. They always do. People tend to tell me things they wouldn’t tell anyone else…things I really wish they would just keep to themselves. I think they recognize my little peculiarities and believe that this will naturally cause me to be accepting of their own. The truth is, I really just don’t want to know. Knowing secrets binds you.

God only knows what I’m going to hear from Freaky Dude. Right now he’s holding me at arm’s length, but sooner or later he’s going to want to tell me the “truth”. Oh well. It comes with the job.

Dr. Paul is the lucky one. He gets to hear all the juicy tidbits of my jobs without having to interact with these people. Granted, he has to listen to my complaints, but that’s only for an hour a week. Then he gets to say “stop closing doors,” or “close doors for money,” and I fork over a hundred bucks and leave. I actually have to deal with these people for hours and hours every day, for whatever length of time they need me.

And they always need me a lot. I’m very good. I’ve been offered live-in positions, but so far I haven’t compromised my own life to that extent. Sometimes closing other people’s doors can distract you from closing your own. And I really can’t slack off on monitoring that little door under my stairs.

Crazy Bitch needs me for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week. She is currently working on some very important project of some sort or another and isn’t home much. Even her pregnancy is not holding her back. She’s driven.

For weeks I follow Freaky Little Dude around his home, closing doors behind him. He’s annoyed at first, but then turns it into a recreation. He leaves the washer and dryer doors open. He leaves the oven door open. He leaves the toilet seat up, even if he only brushes his teeth. Things that he doesn’t even use, he opens and walks away from, to give me something to do. I don’t know why he even puts up with it. Crazy Bitch clearly has some sort of hold over him that I don’t understand. But she doesn’t require me to follow him outside their home. She just wants her own doors closed. He could just leave me there.

Instead he brings me to the grocery store, where he opens the entire section of refrigerator and freezer doors and disappears while I rush around closing them. Then he reappears out of nowhere, and we go home without even buying any groceries. I interpret this as him warming to me.

Crazy Bitch has warmed to me, as well. Now she feeds me before I leave every day. “Take this cake. Take something,” she says. “He likes you. He doesn’t have many friends.”

She watches Freaky Dude’s every move when she’s around. She believes I am protecting her interest in him somehow, I think. She tells me one day that he hasn’t made love to her in weeks—since the day she found the ripped dress. I’m not shocked with disbelief.

I’ve heard that pregnant women can get really paranoid. I think she’s afraid he’s having an affair. Maybe he did…although from what I can tell, he doesn’t like anybody enough to fuck them. I’m a little surprised he even knocked her up. She so often comes in from work screeching about one thing or another, and he just goes somewhere else. But then I don’t see what happens when I’m not around. I wonder though.

It’s a funny thing. I started out being not at all interested in this strange little man, and now I find myself thinking about him after I go home for the day. I’ve all but forgotten about the staircase door—all but. Besides a certain proprietary interest that I take in any client, there’s something about him that intrigues me. He doesn’t say much, and I get the feeling that if I pressed him for information about his life, he’d either deck me or just go shooting up into the air in a fit, like some crazy cartoon character. He’s like that, kind of high-strung behind his mask of indifference.

I often find my hand in my pants when I’m thinking about him. I wonder how he would react to that.

Some of my friends at The Morgue have heard of him. He’s a movie star, they tell me, who actually thwarted a mad bomber in reality. Some terrorist got his ass kicked on a plane. There’s evidently a fan club. Freaky Dude clearly assumes that everyone is watching him, which actually causes people to look. Then he seems embarrassed. I think he expects to be treated different, but the different way he’s treated is not what he expects.

He’s probably just being stalked by one of these fans. That could explain the ripped dress, and why I’ve been hired. But I might have to rethink this whole situation. I’m not a bodyguard. I just close doors.

“If not for me, you would not be here,” he tells me one day while I’m sitting on the sofa reading a magazine, waiting for a door to open. My hearing has become fine-tuned to the sound of hinges turning. Even in my own apartment, I’ve begun to trust my senses.

“Duh,” I say.

“You would not understand.”

“You’re probably right.” If I feign disinterest, maybe he’ll just let it go, I think. I go back to my magazine, which I can’t even read anymore. I might as well be holding it upside down. Unfortunately, I’m stupidly curious. “Try me,” I say, finally.

“I could have died. But I had no thought other than saving the world.”

The whole world? I can’t help but roll my eyes—just another savior fantasy. I was expecting something a bit more original. But deranged isn’t always creative.

“Thanks,” I say, already composing the words I will use to tell Crazy Bitch I quit. I’ve got my own problems. I would like to leave on good terms, though. A reference from them could really boost my career.

“Stay,” he says, as if reading my mind. “She would only find someone else.”

And there I go. I think he really does like me. And he doesn’t like anybody.

“We’ll see,” I say, postponing the inevitable. I can’t help it.

I tell myself I feel for the guy. It must be difficult for him—trapped in this weird marriage with a controlling bitch, clearly insane. He needs my help, or my company…or something, even if he won’t actually ask for it. And I’ve never been able to resist such a request. Somehow he knows that.

The truth is, I just fall for the guy, right then and there—this little pocket-sized, self-proclaimed hero.

Since we’re speaking for a change, I have to ask, “What really happened? Did somebody really come in and rip up a dress.”

He shakes his head, smirking at me. “There are advantages to being small. I was wearing it. I had …a guest. It was ripped off of me.”

My mouth drops open. My tongue probably hangs out. He seems about to say something more, but then just turns and walks away, checking back over his shoulder, to catch me watching his butt.

From that moment on I can’t think of anything else.

He starts leaving the shower door open when he’s showering. What a sight—water flowing over those muscular shoulders, down his narrowing back to stream between the globes of his butt. This is my reward for sticking around, I figure. When I close the shower door, I make some joking remark, like: put a ribbon on it, it must be my birthday, etc. He’s doing it to get a reaction from me, I know.

He does have a sweet little ass—that rare round, perfectly hairless kind that just begs for attention. I noticed it from the start—the pert plumpness of it beneath his clothes at least, but I’m a professional and kept it to myself.

Now he won’t allow me to ignore it. I see it when he’s showering in the morning. I see it in the afternoon after he’s been working out and drops his sweaty pants to be more comfortable. Even when he’s fully clothed he wags it around in front of me, finding various reasons to bend over at just the moment his butt is strategically nearest my face, until I’m wound up like a clock. He’s tempting me, taunting me. But I know his type. I’ll have to play my cards right if I want to get a piece of that. I let him make every move.

This is what I’m here for, I figure. A woman couldn’t possibly satisfy an ass like this. It’s not her fault. Fingers and toys are mere substitutes. She just doesn’t have the right tool.

I tell Dr. Paul about my conclusions, and he agrees with me. All men are queer, he believes. According to him, homosexuality is socially unacceptable because we know as a species, subconsciously, that if men were allowed to follow their nature, the species would ultimately die out. Of course, Dr. Paul has wanted me from day one. His wife knows it, too. After my first session, she put up a huge portrait in his office of them with their two children to remind him of his responsibilities. He told me this himself.

I have never understood my apparent appeal to “heterosexual” men. I don’t have bulging muscles or an exceptionally handsome face. When I look in the mirror, I see someone easily overlooked. I have an average build for someone of average height. My hair is that mousy color that could almost be called blonde but is not quite brown either. I don’t have pretty eyes, or cock-sucker lips, or a bubble butt—none of the things that attract me to a man. Yet as far back as I can remember, men have been drawn to me. I’ve come to expect it.

But sooner than I expect, Freaky Dude is next to me on the sofa one day after he’s been practicing whatever martial art it is that he practices, stretched out with one bare foot on the floor and the other leg folded so that his knee is pressing against my hip. His shirt is off, and he’s wearing loose-fitting jersey shorts. I feel waves of heat rolling off of him. I smell his sweat. My eyes wander up his body to the smirk on his face. We don’t speak.

I haven’t done this in awhile. But it’s like breathing out and breathing in. I drop the magazine I’ve been staring at mindlessly and unfold his leg onto my lap to massage the pumped up muscles. His legs are as hairless as his ass. There is nothing to resist my caress of his skin from ankle to thigh, not even the tiniest fuzz to impede my exploration of the supple flesh. He closes his eyes and pretends he doesn’t notice what I’m doing.

Even his foot attracts me—small but strong and wide with a perfect blue vein running over the top of it. I would pull it to my mouth to suck on his toes, but I don’t want to lose the contact of his leg against my hardening dick. I lick my finger to run it over that vein, then I fingertip down his sole just to watch him squirm.

It’s his knee that my hand lingers on. I palm the sudden unyielding squareness of it, then move under to thumb the moist crease behind. This gets him. His whole body jolts. I would bet that no one has ever licked him there. I make a mental note to do that before I’m through, but not yet.

I rub my hand up his leg into his shorts to nudge at his balls and strum my fingers up and down the pudgy hillocks of his ass crack, not delving in. He sighs heavily, still not acknowledging what I’m doing. I’m like a pirate taking something that doesn’t belong to me. There is a treasure hidden here, and I have stolen the map to it. I watch the growing wet spot on his shorts over the mound that I know I have raised. It’s a heady experience with a tough little guy like this, to know that you can evoke such a response.

I take his other foot from the floor to fondle that calf and thigh. His eyes are still closed, but he places his feet on either side of my waist and pushes my shirt up to my armpits, then torments my nipples with his toes. He runs his feet over the dusting of hair on my chest. My body hair clearly intrigues him, while I am infatuated with his absolute lack of it. I start to comment on this, but he presses a foot against my mouth.

His hands are crossed behind his head. Only his feet touch me. He knows what he’s doing. My dick is throbbing, and he hasn’t even touched it yet. I almost don’t want him to. I want this exquisite torture to go on forever. I catch my breath, willing a nearing climax to subside.

When I can continue, I cup the baseball-sized biceps of his arms. He flexes them for me, hands still behind his head, eyes closed as if he’s doing this in his sleep. His mouth is slightly open, like he’s waiting for me to kiss him. So I do. He tastes sweet, like apple, with something spicier beneath—a subtler, richer flavor: desire. He wants me.

I grope his tongue with mine while slipping my hands into his shorts to feel the smooth fullness of his hips. He arches upward to allow me to push the shorts down over his ass. I lick down his neck and chest and belly, then lick up his dick as I push the shorts off his legs. My reward is a droplet of clear, salty-sweet dew.

“Yes,” he groans.

I have to pull away. The sound of his voice has almost pushed me over the edge again. I take a moment just to admire the view. I have never seen, much less fucked, anyone so perfect. He opens his eyes now to watch me gaze at him.

His dick is extended against his belly, much larger than I would have expected for such a little guy. In comparison to his height, his dick is actually gargantuan. But that’s not really what I’m interested in. I mouth up and down the shaft for a bit, but only as foreplay. We both know where this is leading.

I unbuckle my belt, and he rubs the backs of my thighs with his heels as he pushes my pants down to my ankles. He’s making a noise I have never heard before—a low continuous growl, almost like the purring of a cat but fiercer. Even lying on his back, he’s still a little scary. He flips onto his belly and tucks a foot under my balls. The other leg is bent at the knee, causing his ass to tilt up and part slightly. This is definitely my favorite perspective. He clenches and unclenches his cheeks seductively, or maybe just showing off. I catch glimpses of the little dark pink rosette, the same color as the lips of his mouth.

Part of me wants to put my face right in there and lick him out good, to make him wet enough to fuck, but another part tells me that this would be a conquest for him, and I want the little prick-tease to be my bitch. So I lick a finger and poke it in abruptly up to the first knuckle. His gasp is exactly what I need to spur me on. I poke him repeatedly until he is gulping for air.

I pull him to his knees. One hand on his shoulder steadying him through his evident waves of rapture, I reach around with the other to finger the tip of his dick, getting the dewdrop I have provoked. I rub this over my own dick and then finger the resulting mingled fluid into his ass. After about a dozen passes of this, we’re both bubbling like fountains, and he’s wet enough so that my finger slips in and out easily.

His hands grip the arm of the sofa. Kneeling between his legs, I nudge my dick against his asshole, begging for entry. He grants this with a groan, pushing his ass back hard against me, taking me in, forcing my butt down onto my heels. Despite all my efforts, he remains the one in charge.

Every experience I have ever had has just been leading up to now. Fucking this Freaky Little Dude, I realize, is the very reason for my existence. Fucking him…as if you could even call it that. He does all the work, moving back and forth against me, fulfilling his own need, fucking himself with my dick. I’m just a device, a most fortunate gadget. Delirious with ardor, I nearly faint. I slump against his back, powerless. One hand still on his shoulder and the other reaching around to grasp his dick, I hold on for dear life as I ride him, believing for the moment that if I let go I will surely die, and that if I don’t I will be lost forever.

I don’t know how long we fly like this. From a distance I hear myself screaming as sweeping, almost painful seizures bring me back to reality, finally and yet too soon, my whole being convulsing against his. He is shuddering and gasping, but doesn’t come. I want him to. I want to know I have given him even a token of what he has given me. His dick is sliming profusely in my hand, a harbinger of his impending orgasm. He’s almost there. Kissing the back of his neck I start to jack him off, but he pushes my hand away and, flexing his ass muscles, squeezes me out.

It’s over.

I fall onto my back, too spent to question him. Standing beside the sofa he looks down at me for a moment, his rigid dick near my face still curving upward obscenely. Such a tease. Such a fucking prick.

“The bitch will get what she wants tonight,” he says with a sneer. “She will be home soon. Assemble yourself.”

Pulling my pants up I realize that’s how I feel…disassembled, separated into pieces—my dick here, my heart there, my mind somewhere else. This little freak has taken me apart.

When I get home late after drinking myself into oblivion at The Morgue, there’s a message from Crazy Bitch on my answering machine. She sounds giddy.

“Mr. Brix, your services, though greatly appreciated, are no longer necessary. You will find a glowing letter of recommendation in the mail within a matter of days. I’m sure you will find no lack of employment in the future. My husband and I wish you the best in all your endeavors. Once again, I would like to express my sincere gratitude for a job well done. A toast to Mr. Brix.”

What a couple of freaks! Good riddance, I tell myself. I feel used, even with the ample bonus check that accompanies her letter of recommendation a few days later.

I try not to think about him anymore, but I can’t help it. He invades my dreams, my every waking thought. I want his ass. I want to taste his kiss again. I never even got the chance to lick the back of his knee.

I’m convinced that he will find me. I’m convinced that he is as marked by me as I am by him. I start leaving my front door unlocked, even though I know that he could get in anyway.

I still check the little door under the stairway night and day, but now I open it and inspect the empty space hopefully. It seems like the place he might suddenly be in, waiting for me.

I put the painting of the hanged man on the wall in my living room. That seems appropriate.

 

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