He presses his face against hers. Lips meet lips, teeth on teeth, tongue on –

Ashley sits in a wheelchair, and he's an old man whose hairless scalp is a checkerboard of liver spots and other marks. His frail hands rest, steepled in his lap atop a blanket the color of Pepto-Bismol, and

– tongue, and she bites his lower lip and he bites back. She raises her knee and wraps her leg around his bony denim-clad hip and pulls him tight, and then flips him around so he's the one against the couch's arm.

She takes off her shirt in one fell swoop. His hands grip her sides tight, hard, painfully –

an oxygen tank sits on the floor next to him, the tube snaking up under the pink blanket and back out, up to his nose. He's small like a crumpled cup, like a slowly composting sack of bones ill-contained by a powder blue bathrobe, but his eyes, his eyes are still young, flashing like wicked mirrors. Those eyes look left, look right, suspicious, or looking to see who is suspicious of him, and

– and the balled-up shirt disappears over her shoulder. Again they kiss.

Clothes peel away, leaving a trail of fabric from the living room into the bedroom.

Before too long, it's all skin on skin, and as they topple onto the bed, she gasps –

he spies two orderlies chatting and chuckling in the corner, telling some bullshit story to break the monotony of their jobs, to help them forget about how many times they have to shower and scrub and shampoo to wash away that pissy-pants old-people smell. But nobody's watching. The ancient and antediluvian inhabitants of the old folks' home orbit the room in various stages of languor; a woman with orange-dyed hair fiddles with a pair of crochet hooks without any yarn between them. A skinny octogenarian drools. A pot-bellied man lifts his shirt and scratches under his waistband, empty eyes half-following an old Spongebob cartoon on the TV

– and the bed isn't long for this world; they tumble to the floor. She bites his ear. He pinches her nipple. She digs nails into his back. His hands are on her throat, and she feels the blood ballooning in her head, a dull roaring pulse that grows with each beat, and she closes her eyes and shoves her thumb in his mouth…

and all the while Ashley sits, his body still, his eyes moving. He pulls the blanket up to his chest, and as he does so, it reveals his legs. A plastic flip-flop dangles from his right foot, but he has no left foot. The left leg dead-ends in a stump past the faded plaid pajama bottoms. It has no prosthesis. Ashley stares down at it, wistful, sad, scowling.

Her foot touches his, and it sends an electric, awful thrill through her body. She feels equal parts ecstatic and disgusted, like she's one of those people who gets hot under the collar at car accidents, but she doesn't care. She's lost to it. Dizziness enrobes her. His hands tighten around her throat. He laughs. She moans. Her leg kicks out. Toes cramp.