by Jim Goforth
Corey walked into the room as if in slow motion, glancing around, reassuring himself that he was indeed back in the comfort of his own room.
His various pictures and posters stared back at him, welcoming him back from his nightmare in the wilderness-more Giger prints, another Dali, countless rock musicians and scantily clad nubile young women in highly suggestive poses.
Dropping his towel on the foot of the bed he went to the wardrobe and selected a plain white cotton T-shirt and black cargo shorts along with a new pair of underpants.
His most explicit poster, a mind-numbingly gorgeous brunette on all fours seemed to leer seductively at him as he gathered up his clothes. Ignoring her sexy charm he slammed the door and returned to his bed, sitting on it, wincing as the butt of his gun made a dent in his hip.
He yanked the pistol out, ensured the safety was on and shoved it under the pile of pillows at the head of the bed.
As he did so he managed to catch a glimpse of himself in the large mirror on the left hand wall and recoiled in fright.
The mirror on Corey's wall was a constant source of amusement to Tim who'd always likened it to a mirror in a seedy brothel. Having never attended a brothel, seedy or otherwise, Corey could always only assume Tim knew what he was talking about and merely take his word for it.
Staring at himself now for the first time since arriving home this morning Corey received a shock to gaze upon his appearance.
His face looked gaunt and haggard with dark raccoon circles under the eyes and a myriad of scratches from running through the bushes dotted the rest of his visage.
Locks of his hair hanging on his shoulders were thickly matted together with dried blood and his borrowed clothes looked like a butchers outfit.
He pulled the beanie off his head and tried unsuccessfully to unknot some of the tangled mess which constituted his hair.
He'd seen enough of his disreputable self to acknowledge there was no better time for him to be in the blistering hot spray of a strong shower than right now.
Scooping up his towel and bundle of clean clothing he departed the bedroom, leaving the door open, and trailed off down the hallway, heading for the bathroom.
He didn't have to walk right down to the one formerly occupied by Ryan for the one Melissa had been in was now free.
The door stood wide open allowing steam to trail out in wispy formations.
Obviously Melissa too chose to blast herself clean with a good solid scalding hot shower.
Corey wandered in, feeling as if he'd just entered a sauna, and closed the door behind him.
As he hastily stripped off his bloodied clothes, dumping them with his boots in an untidy pile on the tiled floor, he tried not to think too hard about the fact that Melissa had been here before him, gloriously naked.
Aside from his boots the rest of his gear -or rather the borrowed gear- was a write off.
Staring at it he abruptly realised how desperately he needed to use the toilet; he couldn't recall having relieved himself for a good number of hours and his bladder now felt as if it were the size of a watermelon.
He did that first, relieved to be emptying out what seemed to be gallons and after a cursory glance at his disheveled appearance in the bathroom mirror stepped into the large spacious shower and turned the hot water tap on.
How easily he forgot that the hot water throughout the house took so little time to start coursing out, never mind that Melissa had just been here using it.
He jumped backwards away from the scalding spray with an imaginative burst of obscenities and thumped into the glass wall of the shower cubicle.
Dodging the burning flood he grabbed at the cold water tap, twisting it a little to temper the heat from blazing hot to nicely warm and then stepped gladly into the surging water.
It was an absolute delight to stand in the hot water, feeling it sluice over his naked form, washing grime and grit and blood away.
He thoroughly drenched his hair, shampooing it, rinsing it and then repeating the process until he thought the final vestiges of blood were gone. After that he soaped up solidly, not really thinking much, but how damn good it felt to be immersed in the wonderful heat.
He could have remained there for hours on end, but he knew others needed showers, despite the fact that those waiting for the facilities seemed to be in no urgent rush to get there.
Finally he reluctantly switched off the water and then stepped back out, missing the bathmat and almost coming to grief on the slippery tiles.
Yanking up his towel he briskly rubbed himself dry, finding it somewhat difficult to breathe adequately with the swirling mass of steam engulfing the room.
Done toweling, he dressed in what he'd brought in with him, gathered up the blood spattered garments earmarked for the rubbish and headed back to his bedroom.
He tossed the haphazard bundle on the floor and stood in a daze for a moment.
It all felt so mundanely normal to be in his bedroom and yet with the knowledge he had of who else was in the house and who would never be returning also bizarrely surreal and abnormal.
If it weren't for the pile of dirty bloodied clothing strewn on the carpet Corey could almost have sworn he'd just woken up from a dreadful nightmare and gone to have a shower in order to chase the frightening remnants of the dream from his mind.
He knew that wasn't the case at all, the events of the previous night were horribly real.
Corey had an overwhelming urge to have a cigarette.
Though he rarely smoked cigarettes, after the respective deaths of his parents he had taken the habit up with a vengeance, a habit he'd broken relatively easy. Now he mainly only indulged whilst out on the town drinking though he did keep a packet in his top drawer for when the occasion warranted it.
This occasion, Corey decided, was one which warranted it.
He helped himself to that very pack now, noticing it was still three quarters full and lit one up with the lighter accompanying the pack.
Opening his bedroom window and deciding to utilise the inch of flat coke in the glass on his nightstand as an ashtray, Corey seated himself cross-legged on his bed and gazed blankly at nothing in particular.
A veritable army of twisted mangled thoughts were marching feverishly through his mind, thundering and stampeding over one another, too fast to make any sense of anything.
He realised he had to get to sleep soon, rest his head and try to subdue the cavalcade of cogitations rampaging within.
He decided he would finish his smoke, briefly pop back downstairs and let the others know he was going to crash.
With that one minor decision made Corey leaned back against the headboard, stretched his legs out and dragged on his cigarette.
As he exhaled a plume of smoke a figure appeared in his bedroom doorway.
Desiree, wearing a plain black T-shirt and a white towel wrapped around her waist.
She was simply gorgeous, more achingly beautiful than any human being had the right to be, with her long black hair wet from the shower, her dark piercing eyes so intense they were some infinite vortex which could suck one in like an immeasurably powerful vacuum.
Seeing her framed in his doorway almost caused Corey to swallow his cigarette.
For a fleeting moment he wasn't entirely sure if she was actually there or if she was some hallucinatory mirage conjured up by his fatigued brain, standing in the haze of tobacco smoke.
Corey seemed to lose all power of speech.
CHAPTER 25
He sat hunched on the bed with the smoking cigarette clenched between his fingers running a million things to say through his mind like out of control locomotives. When he eventually cracked open his mouth to speak, what came out very lamely was,
"Hi."
Of all the witty or charming remarks he could have opened with that was the best he could do and it was dismal.
Jamming the cigarette into the corner of his mouth he puffed on it and waited for Desiree to turn tail in disgust and walk away.
She didn't.
"Hi," she responded, hovering in the doorway as if his bedroom was a consecrated sacrament she couldn't enter. "Can I come in?"
"Sure," Corey said with a touch of a stammer in his voice.
He almost flung himself off the bed swinging his outstretched feet around to make room for her in case she wanted to sit on the bed.
A faint smile tugged ever so briefly at the corners of her delectable lips then vanished to be replaced with the same neutral expression she'd been wearing previously. She wandered into the interior of Corey's smoky bedroom and closed the door behind her.
A brief panicked thought jumped illogically into Corey's mind, a stupid question asking if she was about to kill him in his own bedroom.
With what, would have been a better one.
There was nowhere for her to be harbouring a weapon on any description, her smooth bare legs had no knives strapped to them, her hands were empty and as far as Corey could see she was only wearing the shirt, the towel and whatever was under the towel.
His heart-rate increased tenfold.
She glided in and perched her perfect bottom on the edge of his bed, gazing with interest around his room.
"Nice room," she commented offhandedly, staring for so long at a picture of Salma Hayek in her stripper outfit from the classic vampire motion picture 'From Dusk Til Dawn' that Corey felt embarrassed and wished he had some kind of foresight to take down all his sexy girlie posters before letting this goddess into his room.
Desiree gestured towards the pack of cigarettes sitting on the nightstand.
"Do you mind if I have one?"
"Not at all," Corey said, fumbling to get one out for her.
Gentleman that he was he even held up the lighter to spark it up for her.
She bent her head over his hands and a wet lock of hair fell across his wrist, even that minute contact causing electrifying emotions to jolt inside him.
"Thanks," she said, squinting her eyes as she drew back on the smoke.
"Do you want a drink?" Corey asked.
She gazed at him evenly for a long moment then shrugged briefly.
"What do you have?"
"Um...just about everything," Corey said, and though reluctant to leave this cosy section on the bed he stood up and walked over to what looked like a square section of wall with a handle on it. Tugging the handle pulled the square section outwards and up.
In the recess beneath stood a small squat refrigerator and above that, a fully stocked liquor cabinet boasting the grandiose likes of Absolut Vodka, Wild Turkey bourbon, Jack Daniels, Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker Red, Smirnoff, Karloff, Southern Comfort just to name a few.
Desiree looked suitably impressed and couldn't resist a smile.
"I have plenty of soft drink or milk or whatever if it's too early to hit the booze."
"It's not too early. I need something strong. I'll have a vodka and coke, fifty fifty mix."
Now it was Corey's turn to look impressed.
"Coming right up."
Corey hooked a couple of glasses from the top shelf of the cabinet, a shelf which contained just that -glasses and nothing else- and placed them on top of his dresser.
Surreptitiously he turned a couple of glasses with sexually suggestive slogans printed on them around so the words faced the back of the cabinet.
Observing thankfully that the tumblers he'd selected were plain ones he took out a bottle of vodka, uncapped it and poured three fingers of alcohol onto one glass. Knowing she was watching him he repeated the process with the other glass, though he hardly felt like having such a strong drink.
In actual fact he didn't greatly feel like having an alcoholic drink at all; he'd been thinking that she was going to decline his offer or at least opt for something softer.
Replacing the vodka in the cabinet he took a bottle of Coca Cola from the fridge and topped up the two drinks, making sure he poured just a little more coke into his own.
Desiree accepted her drink with a brief smile, tasted it and proclaimed it to be just right.
Sitting back beside her Corey dragged a little table affair on wheels from under his bed for them to rest their drinks on.
"Play a bit of guitar then?" Desiree asked, eyes on the Ibanez in the corner.
"Yeah, but not very well," Corey admitted. "Nothing like Pete. He can really play. He can hear a song on the radio, pick up his guitar and play it back note for note without ever having to study it or anything. Me, I can't even read music. I teach myself with tablature."
"Okay. What's that?"
"What's what?"
"Tablature," Desiree said. "What's that? Some kind of music thing?"
"Ah yeah. It's just an easy method for dumbasses like me who can't read music to learn how to play guitar."
"I see." Desiree took a decent swig of her vodka coke.
Corey extinguished his cigarette in the glass he'd been ashing into and took a healthy slug of his own drink, trying hard not to grimace. As a general rule he found the taste of vodka virtually undetectable in a normally mixed drink, but with this monstrosity Corey could certainly taste it.
Actually more to the point he could feel it, a strong alcoholic burn searing down his throat to rest uneasily in the pit of his stomach, and it left him with the literally overwhelming desire to light up another cigarette.
He refrained, at least for the moment, and took a more cautious sip of the vodka laced coke.
"Anyway, Pete would want to be good at playing guitar since that's what he does for a living," he said.
"Really?" Desiree raised her eyebrows. "Plays guitar? In a band or something?"
"Yeah, he's in a band. Called Senseless. They play good heavy rock stuff. They do alright for themselves, should have a record deal pretty soon."
"Okay. What about you, what do you do for a living?"
"Me? I do absolutely nothing," Corey said frankly. "I'm rich remember? No, I do a few odd jobs here and there, but mostly I don't do anything. I just invest money in various ventures, punt a bit on the stock market, buy shares and that. And I bet on horses at the races now and then. Usually go alright too."
"Jesus, what a life hey?" Desiree was impressed by Corey's shiftless existence. "You don't strike me as a stock market kind of guy."
"Looks are deceiving," Corey grinned, surprised at how easy it was just to be talking with her. Obviously that tiny amount of vodka immediately helped to strip inhibitions away.
What was more she didn't seem pissed off like she did before. Maybe that was still coming.
"Aren't they ever?" Agreed Desiree before dropping her cigarette butt in to join Corey’s in the putrid mixture in the ashtray glass. "So what about Lee? What's he do?"
Corey released a derisive snort of laughter and choked some more coke flavoured vodka down.
"Lee? He does less than me. For real. He grows a lot of pot, sells a lot of pot and smokes a lot of pot. Funnily he's always smoking his own supply, but he always has plenty to sell. He does well out of that. And anticipating your next question, Ryan is a mechanic who loves surfing when he's not tinkering around with engines. And Tim...well he used to be a labourer."
Momentary pangs of loss knifed at Corey when he thought of Tim so he tried to think of something else, something pleasant.
Like Desiree.
Like how stunning she looked right now, fresh from the shower, hair wet and shiny, eyes intent, lips perfectly shaped with a body Angelina Jolie would kill to have.
Having women in his bedroom wasn't entirely out of the ordinary for Corey Somerset, but he'd never had one so absolutely gorgeous that it hurt his head just to stare at her.
Suddenly she swiveled on the bed to face him, so quickly and abruptly he thought she was aiming to clobber him with her nearly empty glass.
She captured him with her beautiful eyes and gazed very intensely at him.
"Corey," she asked. "Do you want me?"
He couldn't have been more surprised if she'd asked him to
have sex with a herd of mountain goats. He didn't quite know how to respond.
Truthfully he knew exactly how he would like to respond, but wondered if that was the ideal answer.
So he went for it anyway.
"More than anything I've ever wanted in my entire life," he said with brutal honesty.
"After everything you know about me, do you still want me?"
"Yes," Corey said, his heartbeat pounding a painful tattoo inside his chest. "Like I said to Melissa, the Twilight Twins and Black Widow are heroes to me. I don't care what they...you did...or how it was done. You did what the justice system couldn't. I'm not holding that against you. I agree with it."
“Why?”
"Because you're my dream girl," Corey replied, maybe a little too fast and Desiree's perfect lips stretched into a smile.
"Your dream girl is a psychopathic killer is she?"
"No she isn't," Corey countered. "She's a scum eliminator. And besides, what does that make me? Melissa said the Plebs are essentially human and I just shot them down, unarmed all of them. I'm the coldblooded murderer if anything."
The smile on Desiree's lips was mirrored in her eyes as she stared back at him.
"You're no murderer Corey. They would have killed us if they'd got the chance. Besides they were human, past tense. I'm not so sure they are very human anymore."
"Still..."
Desiree said nothing.
She tipped her glass up and downed the remainder of her drink.
She placed the empty glass on the table and gazed penetratingly into his eyes.
"Tell me again how bad you want me," she said.
"Very badly," Corey said.
"Even now?"
"From the very first second I laid eyes on you," Corey answered which was the absolute truth. He'd been in love, in lust, infatuated, obsessed and bewitched by her the instant she stepped out from behind Melissa at the lake what felt like years ago.
Desiree was quiet.
After an elongated silence in which Corey thought he was about to pass out, Desiree got up off the bed and turned towards the door.
Corey's heart sank so far he could have sworn it was in his stomach, a giant cruel taunting fist of disappointment seeming to close around it and squeeze.