Fifty-seven years old.  

     It was a cosmic timing thing, and not in a good way. 

     Four in the morning, yet still it felt hot outside. Adam got hit by another wicked bout of insomnia and decided to go to an all night laundry he knew about rather than wander around the house and wake Norah up. 

     And, damn it, he was horny for some reason.  

     It'd been years since desire'd swept over him so strong. 

     And wouldn't you know it... 

     He saw a young, pregnant woman in the laundry's parking lot. He returned to the lot two hours later with laundry clean and sweet smelling, and she was still there.  

     It was almost six by then. The sun had just come up to begin another scorching day. Adam pegged her as someone in her mid-twenties. She came over to him while he put his clean laundry in the car. She had thick, black bags under her eyes.  

     "I'll do anything for forty bucks," the young woman said. "I need that money real bad."  ​

     Any other time, Adam just would have shaken his head and driven away. 

     Cosmic timing. 

     Adam looked around. 

     "I've got a hundred bucks in my wallet," Adam said. "Let's go sit in the car."  

     They sat as far away from each other as they could and still be in the back seat. 

     "What's your name?" he asked her. 

     She pretended she hadn't heard him. Instead, she looked into his eyes so that he could see the intensity of her desperate fury. 

     She pointed to his crotch. She assumed that, whatever Adam wanted her to do, it would have something to do with that. 

     Yeah, okay. Adam pulled his pants and underwear down around his ankles, (the most ridiculous position for any human male to be in, by the way), and, of course, of course, Little Adam refused to co-operate. It rested on Adam's hairy balls as soft as a slug puppy. 

     She went to touch it, fondle it, whatever, but he batted her hand away. He knew that would only make him feel more self-conscious. 

     He pointed to the dirty shift she wore as if to say, take it off. She replied with a look that asked, are you kidding me? but off it came with one swift motion of her arms. Her bra and panties had been washed so many times they would never again look anything but soiled.  

     Her body was dirty. She smelled. She needed a shower, bad. 

     He pointed to her bra. Keep stripping, was his message this time.  

     She snorted but removed her bra, then just went ahead and pulled off her panties, and, wow, she really was very pregnant. It was like every vein and artery she had was visible on her bluish-pale skin.  

     Her arms and legs were stick thin. 

     Only her gut was big.  

     She spit on her hand, then used the saliva to lubricate her twat, and that's what finally got Adam hard, the sight of her doing that.  

     The girl saw it and jumped on Adam immediately. She wanted to get it over with. She faced away from him because that was the only way, in the back seat there, where he could get his dick in her.  

     He got one good stroke in before he softened again.

     "Fuck you!" the young woman gasped in exasperation.

     Suddenly, the absurdity of the situation overcame Adam as he looked at the back of the head of this young, naked, desperate woman, and an avalanche of regret and guilt and sadness became a depression fog that all but suffocated him.

     "Get off me," he said. "Get your clothes on."

     "What?"

     "Please."

     "I need some money, man!"

     "You'll get your money."

     She got out of the car to get her clothes back on.

     Adam pulled his underwear and pants back up, then got out of the car himself.      He pulled out all the money he had in his wallet. "There."

     She wouldn't look at him as she slid her toes back in her dirty thongs.

     "Take it. Take the money."

     She refused to reply. She had a look on her face like she didn't know whether to scream or cry.  

     Adam dropped the money on the sidewalk.

     He then climbed behind the wheel of the car, started it up, and got the hell out of there.

     He'd had insomnia, for Christ's sake. He knew of an all night laundry. How did things go so wrong so fast?

     Disgust and shame and horror overcame him so profoundly he felt he might actually have to pull over and get sick. 

     And it was all around him now, the red flame. He could not possibly drive fast enough to outrun it. Red flame filled the sky. Directly before him and in his rear view mirror, Adam saw only red flame. 

                                                      CONTINUE