"Yes. Daddy. I am almost there," the woman said. "Don't stop."
The bald man continued to thrust back and forth with a steady power.
His large hands gripped her hips to hold her in place. He leaned down and whispered into her ear.
"You want it like that?" he asked.
"Daddy give it to me harder," the woman said while she edged herself toward the peak.
The bald man drew back almost every inch of the girth he had.
The woman opened her eyes and felt a moment of cold emptiness.
Then he pushed everything back inside with a deep thrust.
The sheets scrunched under her fists. Toes curled as pleasure crested, and she cried out.
"Aah! Aah! Aah! My god."
Her eyes rolled back. Her body spasmed and liquid leaked between her legs.
The bald man pulled out and turned toward the woman.
She opened her mouth and took his hood deep into her throat.
The bald man finished with a rough and passionate grunt.
The woman gulped every drop of his release without hesitation.
She looked up at him with eyes full of submission and heat.
The show was then paused. Next came the chuckle of the very bald man who had acted in the scene.
Joji Sins was older now, but he was certainly not washed up.
He rose from his chair and looked out across his very own studio.
He walked around the floor with a steady pace.
A pair of lesbians licked each other while they poured honey over their bodies.
In another corner, a naughty blonde student worked on seducing her teacher.
A man with an innocent baby face shivered as a mature actress of over fifty tried to seduce him. Her hands were already deep inside his pants.
There were at least thirty more scenes being shot simultaneously. One could confidently say that this was no small studio.
Joji's attention drifted past them to a single flickering bulb at the far end of the grid. It winked like a nervous eye.
"That's gonna ruin the lighting," he muttered.
No one heard him. Everyone was busy, which suited him well enough.
'It is just a light bulb. I own all this shit anyway,' he thought.
He fetched a spare bulb, dragged a ladder beneath the light, and set it in place himself.
He moved with surprising speed, still hale at seventy-seven. Then he climbed.
This was not his first time changing a bulb, and the climb of more than twenty feet did little to trouble him.
At the very least, height had never been what scared him. Age, however, brought other enemies.
Forgetfulness. Carelessness. A certain faith in the body that no longer deserved it.
Somewhere beneath him, one of the ladder locks slipped loose with a faint click.
Joji did not hear it. His hearing had dulled over the years, and he kept climbing.
By the time he reached the fixture, he was already committed.
He twisted the old bulb free with slow care, held it between his lips, then fitted the new one into place.
A few careful turns, and the light came back.
For one small moment, it felt like a job done.
Then he started down.
The ladder gave without warning.
Its open frame buckled, the wide V collapsing into a straight line with a violent clatter.
Joji barely had time to react.
One moment, there was metal beneath his feet. The next, there was nothing.
Instinct made him throw his arms up and shield his head.
Then his body hit the studio floor.
The sound rang out hard. Air blasted from his lungs. Pain tore through him before he could even form a thought.
At first, no one turned. The set was busy, voices moving, people focused on their own work.
Then someone saw him. The owner was on the floor.
"Sir Joji!" a man shouted. "Someone call 911!"
"Anybody who knows first aid, get over here!"
"No one move him," another yelled. "We are not medical professionals. Everybody get dressed, now."
Shouts erupted. Feet pounded toward him. Faces swam into his blurred vision, warped by worry and the harsh studio lights.
"Joji. Are you there? Joji, blink for me," one of the older directors said.
Later, the ceiling above him had changed. Sterile white had replaced the studio rigging.
Hospital light had replaced stage glare. The air smelled of antiseptic.
A doctor stood beside his bed, flipping through a stack of papers with the brisk calm of a man who had seen every kind of fall.
A man in a white coat stood nearby, watching him with open curiosity that barely hid his excitement.
"Doctor Joji? I am a huge fan of your work. How do you feel?" the doctor asked.
Joji swallowed, wincing at the scrape in his throat.
"I have seen better days. How bad was it?"
He had already prepared himself for grim news. Age taught a man many things, and one of the few honest lessons it gave was this.
When you hit the ground that hard, you expected something to stay broken.
The doctor gave him a reassuring look.
"A slight concussion. Your back is fine. Just some bad bruising."
Relief came first, quiet and heavy. Then the ache in his body returned to remind him he had not escaped unscathed, only cheaply.
The doctor handed him a prescription.
"I wrote you a prescription for painkillers," the doctor said. "Take them or don't. It is optional."
After that, they traded the usual hollow pleasantries. Joji dressed himself without help, slow but steady, then made his way to settle the bill.
'I wonder if it would feel different if I had a kid worrying over me,' he thought.
It was a foolish thought, and he knew it even as it came.
Some doors did not stay open forever. For him, that one had long since closed.
Outside, the day looked painfully bright. Joji squinted into it and felt the bruise along his back throb with every step.
Then his stomach let out a low, angry growl as hunger hit him full force. He looked around for something cheap and hot.
Across the road, a hotdog stand steamed beneath a metal awning, and the smell only made the hunger twist harder inside him.
Joji reached for his wallet and flipped it open. Cards. A few hundred bills. No small change.
"Dang. Hotdog guy sure as hell is not taking this hundred," he muttered.
He spotted an ATM near the corner and joined the line. People stood there in bored silence, eyes on their screens, hands glued to their phones, shoulders hunched for no reason at all.
Then an engine growled behind them. An armored car rolled up to the curb and started backing in, careless and sure of itself, as if the whole street belonged to it.
The steel bumper drifted toward the waiting line. Joji turned just in time to see it.
The bumper clipped his shin. Pain shot up his leg like fire. He lurched back and barely avoided the wheel before it could catch him properly.
The people around him scattered at once, shouting in alarm.
"Come on!" Joji snapped, his temper flaring as hot as the pain. "Watch where you're fucking going."
More curses rose from the line, but the driver did not even bother to look.
Joji let it go. Anger took energy, and energy was a smaller pile than it used to be.
He walked over to a nearby woman and held up a hundred.
"Hey, can you break this into smaller bills for me? Please, I'm beat."
She glanced at him, recognized him, and tried to hide it. She failed.
A photo was requested. A bit of small talk followed.
In the end, Joji got his change. He thanked her and moved on.
At the pedestrian lane, he stopped for the light and watched cars rush past.
The day already felt too long, too crowded, too full of small miseries.
"Can this day get any worse?" Joji said through sighs.
The light changed, and Joji stepped off the curb into the street.
Halfway across, even his old ears caught the sudden scream of a horn from the left.
This one came shrill with panic, stretched thin by speed and the promise of something going very wrong.
Joji turned and saw the tanker truck already losing itself, its long body sliding sideways across the road as it barreled the wrong way toward the crossing.
Straight at him.
His blood went cold, then hot. Adrenaline tore through him so fast it smothered everything else.
He ran. Not toward safety. Toward the hotdog stand.
The vendor was still there, frozen behind the cart, mouth hanging open, both hands locked around the tongs as though those bits of metal could save him.
"Move!" Joji roared.
He caught the man by the shoulder and yanked him hard.
The two of them went stumbling, then crashing behind the stand just as the tanker plowed into the street beside them.
The impact came like the wrath of God.
Glass burst outward in a shining storm. Brick shattered and spat jagged pieces through the air.
Metal screamed as it twisted against itself. Joji threw up a hand to shield his eyes and clenched his teeth as the force of it shuddered through the ground and up into his bones.
Dust rushed into his mouth. Something sharp bit deep into his arm.
When he looked, he saw steel lodged there.
His face soured at once. So much for being done with the hospital.
Then a strange, almost foolish optimism crept in.
His limbs were still attached. Nothing hung wrong. Nothing bent in a direction God had never intended.
A laugh broke out of him, rough and breathless, because surviving that much already felt like a miracle.
Then something cool splashed across his face.
It spread fast over the pavement.
The smell hit a heartbeat later, sharp enough to turn his stomach. His heart jumped straight into his throat.
Petrol. Unleaded fuel poured from the tanker in a steady rush, flooding the street, crawling toward the curb, gathering in shining pools wherever the road dipped.
Joji's eyes dragged, almost against his will, toward the open flame still burning beneath the hotdog stand.
"Well fuck me sideways," he muttered.
The explosion that followed shattered windows for blocks.
Fire punched upward in a roaring bloom as a mushrooming cloud climbed into the morning sky above downtown Los Angeles.