Special Delivery

I discovered my vibrator was dead at the worst possible moment.

There was probably no good time to discover such a thing, but this felt particularly cruel. I had spent the better part of half an hour preparing for an evening of shameless self-indulgence. The bathwater was exactly the right temperature, the overhead light had been replaced by the soft glow of three vanilla-scented candles, and a glass of chilled rosé waited within reach on the windowsill. My phone sat on top of the laundry basket, playing a relaxation playlist that seemed to consist mostly of rain, mournful piano music and whales calling plaintively across the ocean.

I had bubbles. I had privacy. I had finally convinced the cat that a closed bathroom door did not constitute abandonment.

Most importantly, I had nowhere else to be until tomorrow morning.

After three weeks of overtime, two catastrophically bad dates and an embarrassingly vivid dream involving the man who delivered my groceries, I had decided I deserved an orgasm.

Possibly several.

Instead, the little pink vibrator in my hand gave one weak, stuttering buzz before falling silent.

I stared at it. “No.”

I pressed the button again, then held it down. Nothing happened. I shook the vibrator hard enough to splash water over the side of the bath, rubbed the button with my thumb and even held it to my ear in case it was vibrating so faintly I had somehow failed to notice.

It remained stubbornly lifeless.

“You cannot be serious.”

The vibrator appeared unmoved by my distress. After several more increasingly aggressive presses, it produced one final apologetic twitch and died completely.

I dropped my head against the back of the tub with a groan.

I should have charged it. I had meant to charge it on several occasions, but I only ever seemed to remember when I was already in bed, rushing out of the flat or holding something that would suffer if dropped, such as a mug of tea or the cat.

The charging cable was somewhere in the bedroom. Probably behind the chest of drawers, where cables went to gather dust and await the eventual collapse of civilisation. Retrieving it would require getting out of the bath, drying myself, crawling around on the carpet and then waiting at least an hour for the toy to accumulate enough power to be useful.

By then, the water would be cold, the wine would be warm and my brief enthusiasm for being a sexual creature would have shrivelled beneath the fluorescent glare of reality.