Fiction: In the Lighthouse

By Jon Doughboy

The Official Witcher Wiki says Crippled Kate’s is one of the less prosperous brothels in the free city of Novigrad but it’s the only place I feel I can unwind maybe because I’m one of the less prosperous citizens of the most prosperous empire in history. Where else can a witcher relax after slugging back decoctions made from dead monsters to save all these ungrateful villagers and earn a few orens? And truth be told I don’t give a fuck about Ciri or Nilfgaard or the Wild Hunt. I care about the whores at Kate’s and more so, much, much more, about Triss, my love, her green eyes and red hair and I can’t get the Yennefer ending because every time I play through, I fall hard for—

My girlfriend gets home. She’s in her blue scrubs and white clogs. Another twelve-hour shift at the psyche award. I put down the controller. I try to be sane for her, try to make this place her Crippled Kate’s, try to be her Triss.

Still witching, huh?

A witcher’s work is never done, I say.

I’m going to shower.

Ok, I say, smiling, but conscious of the controller on the armrest beside me. Of Triss, waiting for me, the “A Matter of Life and Death” side quest which to me is the main story, the real thing. I’ve completed it seven times already but I’m itching to make it an eighth. This time with the piercing cold aard build so I can freeze all those fuckers in their tracks to protect her, weaponize my inner iciness in an act of violent passion.

After her shower, my girlfriend comes in wearing a robe and nothing else. I exit to the home menu. She sits in my lap, straddles me, smells like Head & Shoulders and Aveeno. I don’t know what I smell like because you can’t really smell yourself. What does a man smell like who’s spent his whole day on the couch pining after some bit of pretty programming?

The couch sags with the weight of us. We kiss and grope and all the rest, our fat, familiar bodies settling into each other. I slide my sweat pants off and she sits on my dick and rides me in her slow, after-work way, and it takes me a long time to come not because I’m some Don Juan, I’m just old so things take longer now and she comes and then slows, tires, so I’d better come too or we’ll have to flip over and I’m too lazy for that and anyway this is my preferred position, on the couch, facing the television, so I grab her shoulders and pull her down, encourage her for a few more thrusts even though she’s tired, panting, and I see her back reflected in the tv and though her hair is black I swear it turns red for a second, reflected in the screen, our whole lives reflected there and I’m me and she’s her but I’m also Geralt, all scars and abs and big hands and she’s Triss and her ass is small and perfect and my shoulders are wide and perfect and the fire is burning and the lighthouse is sending a message out there, a warning for everyone to see except for those frozen inside it.

Jon Doughboy is the sole proprietor of “Geometry and Theology,” a dual hot dog cart and mobile library in New Orleans. Peruse a volume with a side of relish @doughboywrites.