by Jim Goforth
"Come on!" Desiree urged with a sultry and somewhat malevolent smile, giving her nude butt a pert little wiggle which served to immensely stir the sleeping creature within Corey's pants.
Jumping up Corey dropped his smoldering cigarette butt in the ashtray he'd taken from his drawer -for Desiree had taken the glass they'd utilised earlier- and stumbled over clumsy feet on his way to close the bedroom door.
The ups and downs of this day were like some demented roller coaster gone absolutely haywire and Corey was having a hard time keeping up with the rapid pace changes. He wished he had some kind of mental seatbelt to prepare him for the bumpy rides for the ups like this particular occasion came so swiftly out of the blue he was left dumbstruck.
"Hard!" She urged. "Drive me through the wall."
Considering the bed was located in the very centre of the room and the wall she must be referring to was still some metres away that was going to be an interesting proposition.
This time was the quickest they both reached climax, eclipsing the brief duration of the second encounter and it left Corey virtually breathless, blood pounding through every vessel in his body.
"Feel better now?" She asked Corey as he fetched the G-string she’d swiftly removed beforehand and returned it to her.
"Yes I do," Corey declared. "Unfortunately, I also feel like going to sleep."
"Ha, fat chance of that happening."
"Was it good for you?" Corey felt he had to ask though it was a moot point really.
Unless Desiree was a spectacularly accomplished actress, the variety of sounds and noises she'd given vent to during the short fast lovemaking were a reasonable indication of whether it had been good or otherwise.
"Honey, anytime I'm bent over getting rammed from behind by you it's gonna be great for me," Desiree said saucily with shades of the kinky bitch referred to by Raven. "I just can't wait until all this bullshit is over so we can do it all day, every day."
'Hot damn!' Corey told himself.
If that was Desiree's master plan, well then Corey could hardly wait for that to happen too.
In fact he would be the happiest man on the face of the earth if they could just fast forward and skip all the bullshit and proceed right to the happy ever after part.
'You must be dreaming Somerset' he said to himself. 'This sort of shit just doesn't happen to you. Not three times in one day with the hottest woman ever created who then goes on to tell you she'd like to be doing it with you all the time!'
Unfortunately it was all the bullshit between now and when they'd be able to do it all the time which presented a dire dangerous hurdle.
If things did not go well, neither one of them might be alive to do much in the way of anything.
Done dressing, Desiree helped herself to a cigarette from Corey's dwindling pack without asking him.
That didn't bother him at all.
Hell if she'd insisted upon smoking all of them one after the other it wouldn't have fazed him in the slightest.
In his glorious state of afterglow everything was alright by him, provided he didn't dwell too hard on cogitations about the night which was yet to unfold before them.
However Desiree had other ideas. She wanted to discuss the perilous evening looming before them and as she sparked up her smoke, inhaled and blew out a cloud, she fixed him with her beautiful beguiling eyes.
"Tell me about this Spot Corey," she said. "What is it? Where is it?"
"Okay," Corey seated himself on the bed alongside her. He didn't feel like a cigarette, like he'd said to Desiree he felt like going to sleep, but he knew her response to that was very true.
He had zero chance of that happening.
"It's way out of town," he started. "Not the lakeside where you guys are from, but the other side, I suppose maybe twenty or thirty kilometres. The Spot itself is an old abandoned church built way back in the day when there wasn't much to the town. Because the town wasn't much, it was just remote properties sprawling everywhere they tossed in a church which was in a vaguely central location for all the religious folks to go do whatever they do. Then the town started thriving and becoming like a city, but the major areas of development were located closer to the lake and further from the church. Eventually the very centre of the city was nowhere near the church and the church was just a pain in the ass for people to get to, never mind the fact that various other churches had been built more locally.
So assorted religious souls tried to get the funds together to try and renew the old church, give it a facelift, that sort of thing, but they didn't have the financial backing because people just weren't prepared to drive so far out of the centre of town for sermons and whatnot when they had perfectly good new churches right here.
So the old lady got abandoned, left to rot and die, although she was supposed to have been demolished."
Corey shrugged his shoulders at this juncture in the tale in response to raised eyebrows of questioning from Desiree.
"I don't know what happened there, why it never went on that date with the wrecking ball. Probably because those fat ass council fucks, as Tim was so fond of calling them, were just too lazy to get around to it or maybe it was just too inconvenient to haul all the demolition gear out there. I don't know. Maybe they saw it as sacrilege to knock down a church.
Whatever the case it just got forgotten and so it still stands today. And the likes of Haskell and Drake have made it their headquarters."
"Why so far out of town?"
"Probably for the very same reason you and your crew took up residence beyond the lake," Corey said. "Nobody is likely to bother you and with the shit these deviants get up to that'd be a good thing for them. I don't think anybody even visits the graveyard anymore."
"Graveyard?" Desiree raised her eyebrows a fraction further.
"Yeah, I'm getting to that." Corey said. "A few of the local kids thought that the old church would be an ideal place as a party venue so they got everyone together and headed out there. Big mistake since Haskell’s crew had already claimed it. I won't go into details, but let’s just say the local kids don't go out there anymore."
"Right. Haskell and co. gave them trouble?"
"Big trouble. Most of them got bashed and tortured. I daresay somebody got raped. The Spot is not a nice place to be."
"So, what of the graveyard? You said there's one there too?"
"Yeah, over beyond the church. There's the church in the middle of a big clearing kinda thing, though it’s probably a bit more overgrown now, then just outside of that is surrounded by woods. North of the church, beyond the woods is a huge cemetery which is probably some ten hectares or more of graves. It's ancient; I think there are tombs from the 1800's right at the back. Like I said, there isn't too much in the way of visitation now since probably everybody in the various families who owned plots there is dead."
"I see." Desiree extinguished her cigarette. "Would you have a map of this area?"
"Actually I would," said Corey.
He wandered over to his sets of drawers alongside the bed and hunkering down, pulled out the bottom one.
Here he kept all sorts of paraphernalia. Amongst that was a set of local maps which he and the lads use to take along on their various shooting and hunting expeditions.
Though they had never traveled as far afield as the Spot, Corey knew the grounds encompassing the church lands and the cemetery were on the maps.
He leafed through the small stack of maps until he encountered the one he sought. This he passed to Desiree, who proceeded to turn around and seat herself cross-legged on the bed, spreading the map out over the quilt.
"And a marking pen or something would be handy too if you don't mind me scribbling on your map.”
"I don't mind. I've got millions of maps," said Corey.
He located a suitable pen for her and then joined her upon the bad.
"Here," he pointed out the area she was seeking. "Is where the church is. See it even says St Agnes, that's what it used to
be called. All this other stuff, that's the cleared area. Beyond that's the woods so it is kind of a circular area."
'Like your camp used to be,' he thought to himself, for the area did put him in mind of the now obliterated site where the women formerly resided.
"Go north through the woods here and this big rectangle, that's the cemetery. Our main problem is going to be getting in there without being seen. There is an access road to the church through the woods which also carries on around the outskirts of the clearing to the graveyard, but once you come out of the woods heading to the church it's very conspicuous. Since the grounds probably haven't been well maintained it could be grown up a lot, but my bet is Haskell and co. have kept it trimmed just enough to enable them to see when people are coming.
So if we drive in, we're gonna have to leave the vehicles in the woods before we hit the clearing and get closer by foot."
"If he sees the white Range Rover won't he think its Big Wes and Dennis coming?"
"Good point. The windows are very darkly tinted on that. You can't really see much inside, not from a reasonable distance anyway."
"That said, we haven't really decided how we're going to approach the church yet anyway." Desiree said. "You don't mind if I take this map and show Melissa do you?"
"Not at all. I have enough maps to wallpaper a small house."
"I guess we should head back down anyway," Desiree said. "You ready? Feeling better?"
"Much better thank you. Ready to do this."
In reality, though Corey did feel much better and had ceased the nervous shaking, he doubted he would ever be as mentally prepared as he needed to be for the harrowing expedition that lay ahead.
"Let's go."
Together they vacated the bedroom and returned to the lounge room.
Downstairs the girls seemed to be psyching themselves up for the mission, spurred on immeasurably by Melissa who issued constant reminders about what Raven and her brigade of turncoats had done to them.
For his part, Dennis King was truly helping the cause. He was sitting beside Serena on a three seater which also contained Caroline, relaying tales of some of the nasty things which had been done by Errol Haskell's crew in the past. He handily omitted his own name from any of these deeds, making himself appear more of a spectator than a participant which in essence was possibly true.
Serena looked like she was going to be sick.
She hunched over on the sofa with her head between her knees.
"You okay there?" Asked Dennis, appearing genuinely concerned.
He even went so far as to place a hand upon her back, giving it a gentle comforting rub.
Over on the other side of the room Lee watched Dennis with suspicious distrusting eyes.
When he saw Corey and Desiree returning he turned his eyes elsewhere.
While Serena was struggling valiantly with nausea, others seemed to have their own ways of preparing.
Britt was sitting on the floor next to the television cabinet very still with her eyes shut. Her lips were moving fast and soundlessly as if she was reciting some mantra or saying a silent prayer to whatever entity she believed in.
Rachel was using Melissa's upraised palms as a punching bag, slamming lefts then rights as Melissa urged her on, making her visualise Raven's traitorous face.
Of the lot, Caroline's preparation was the most bizarre of all.
With a tiny straight razor she was slicing at sections of her own flesh, just enough to make it bleed a little, and then rubbing blood across her face like war paint.
Tasha sat calmly on the floor as if in a meditative trance, eyes wide and staring.
As Corey and Desiree appeared Melissa glanced at them and conjured up a sly smile.
"I see some people have a novel approach to calming nerves," she commented with a wink of the tattooed eye.
Desiree blushed and gave her the finger. Corey pretended he was more interested in watching the shenanigans of the trio comprised of Serena, Dennis and Caroline, though it possibly wasn't such pretence after all; it was truly an intriguing scenario.
The telephone blasted discordantly.
Lee was closest so he snatched the receiver from the cradle.
"Yeah?" He challenged rudely.
"Lee?" Blaise queried.
"It is I," Lee replied.
"We're here. Open the door."
"Okay then. Bye." Hanging up the phone Lee announced, “They’re back."
"Who?" Caroline looked up from her self-mutilation ritual with questioning eyes before it dawned on her. "Oh, Blaise, Jess and the boys."
Shaking his head in despair, Lee vanished into the kitchen to go through and let the quartet in.
The five returned in a short manner of minutes, Peter slinging what looked to be a duffel bag.
"What's that?" Caroline wanted to know.
"Stuff," Jess answered vaguely, then went on to elaborate. "We got all kinds of stuff, ropes, cords, flashlights, tools, you name it. Stuff Blaise thought we might need."
"I distinctly recall telling you to just the cars and come back," Melissa reprimanded. "But, good call. We probably will need all that stuff."
"Jesus, what the hell are we in for?" Ryan wondered.
Instead of answering him, Melissa looked him scornfully up and down.
"What are you wearing?"
"Clothes," Ryan provided helpfully, glancing at his black jeans and pristine white T-shirt.
"The jeans are fine, but lose the shirt."
"What's wrong with the shirt?"
"May as well place a big fucking target on it that's what. Change into something dark you idiot," Melissa said. "That goes for everybody. If you are wearing something light coloured either change it, or cover it up. Dark clothing only."
"Ah man, I don't like this," Ryan lamented.
"None of us like it!" Melissa snapped. "It's a badly fucked up situation, but tell me would you rather be dead? Because we will be if there's any fuck ups. I'm not going to sugarcoat any of this so let's get tonight's mission very very clear. We are going to go deal with these people because they are planning to kill us. Not just me, not just the girls, not just Corey, they want all of us dead. All of us. And if they get the chance they will, without batting an eyelash. You want to wear a bright white T-shirt and stand out like a nun in a whorehouse you will be the first one to die. I mean that. If these people don't get sorted out by us we are all going to die tonight."
"By sorted out you mean killed?" Ryan said quietly.
Again Melissa failed to answer. She stared malevolently at him.
"Do you want to die tonight?"
"No. I don't want any part of it."
"You don't have a choice. Now go change."
"There's gotta be some choice."
"This is the choice. Choose to die or choose to live. You decide."
"I chose to live."
"Then go change. Don't argue Ryan. I can't speak for your mate Haskell, but let me tell you the people he has decided to affiliate with are making plans to kill every single one of us, including you. And once Haskell has outlived his usefulness they will kill him too. I'm not fucking joking."
"Okay, okay," Ryan grumbled, meandering off to borrow a black shirt from Corey's stash.
"He needs to change his attitude too," Melissa said to Pete. "If he thinks this is a big game he better wise up real fucking smartly. Your friend Tim is already dead and it was the Plebs who killed him not even these lunatic girls we're talking about. You guys need to get real serious about this shit; it isn't a fucking game, a joke or a fucking walk in the park.Now I'm extremely sorry that you guys all had to get involved in this because ideally you wouldn't have been, we'd have settled our mess ourselves. As it is, you are now all involved, what with this guy Haskell getting himself messed up in it all, and knowing that you guys took part in stealing his van.
He now wants you dead because he knows that you are aware he had a dismembered body in the car. We all need a little cohesion here or the wh
eels are going to fall off our machine big time. Haskell's crew wants you guys gone, Raven's bunch want us girls gone plus a couple of you guys so since those two groups have teamed up to take us all out isn't it logical that we all stick together to prevent that happening?"
"Look I'm not disagreeing," Pete held out his hands, palms upwards in a placatory gesture. "You are right. I said I'm in so I'm in. If we're all on the same hit list I agree with the notion of getting to them before they get to us."
"Me too," Corey chipped in. "I'm in too. I have to be. Sitting here praying for all this to go away isn't going to help. I know Haskell is out to silence us and I don't want that to happen. I'm not looking forward to tonight, Melissa, but yes you are right and it has to happen."
"Good to hear. I like you guys and I want you to stay alive, but your friends-that's Ryan, and maybe you Lee-need to get on the same page real quick."
"Don't worry about me," Lee spoke up. “I’m on the page. Hell I'm a page ahead. I've already accounted for one of these fuckers and if I'm forced to kill every last one of the others I fucking will. I swear it. And as for those fucking Plebs who murdered Tim well I can't wait to shoot a truckload of them."
Melissa looked astonished and taken aback by Lee's impassioned outburst, but if Corey wasn't mistaken she also looked very pleased.
She slowly clapped her hands and the rest of the girls joined in.
"That is the spirit Lee. Very well spoken. That's it, get angry, get real fucking angry. You too boys," she said to Corey and Pete. "Those fucking Plebs killed your friend and it's all through Raven's underhanded backstabbing. Get mad at them, get mad at her and her bitch cronies, get mad at your old enemies and then, we'll get even. Tonight we're gonna settle some longstanding scores. Is that right?"
"That's right!" Many chorused.
"Can't here ya. Louder!"
"THAT'S RIGHT!" The whole room erupted in a burst of cataclysmic noise.
Corey found himself carried along with it and suddenly felt super charged adrenalin surging through his body, hyping him up immensely.
He looked at Peter and saw that Peter was grinning insanely, his eyes crazy and wide.
"Yeah!" Pete bellowed. "This is gonna rock! I'm twenty one now and authorised to kill scum!"