His grip tightens, but now, instead of relieving the pain, the pressure increases it with each stroke. He lets go and his eyes roll back into his head. His stomach spasms as the fluttering wings fly into his groin where they gather together and force their way into the throbbing shaft. His stomach tightens again and the pressure moves forward, forward, forward.
Another shudder almost knocks Chris onto his back, but he maintains his position on his knees. The spasms shoot through him in rapid-fire succession and he watches with a mixture of pleasure, horror, and pain as a stream of thick, white liquid shoots out of him and falls to the ground in a thin line—then another tremor, and the first streamer of liquid is joined by another—then another.
Chris gasps and cries out, voice echoing off the trees. Above him, birds take flight, startled from their perches by the sudden noise. He hangs his head low to the ground, mere inches away from pressing his forehead to the mud. He breathes deep and relishes the fact that the throbbing in his groin is finally abating and his hard penis is finally shriveling back to normalcy.
The humiliating experience is over and Chris just wants to roll over onto the soft, muddy forest floor and sleep, but he can’t do that. It’s not safe out here beyond the protection of the Guardians. He pulls the waistband of his britches back up and carefully reties the cotton twine.
Food, he has to find more food.
He takes a right off the trail and heads into deeper woods. It never occurs to him until later that, through that entire debasing ordeal, his father’s voice had remained quiet.
Chapter Eight
“I hope you don’t expect me to eat that fucking shit.”
Chris has no idea what fucking shit means, but based on her voice and the defiant set of her shoulders, he has an inkling as to its meaning.
He places his knife under the skin and makes a long downward slice, slitting the serpent through the belly. He glances up briefly, catches her eye, and then looks back to his task. He matches her tone, saying, “You can eat what you want. Food is food out here.”
“I’m not eating a fucking snake!”
“Here then…” Chris tosses his bow toward her then picks up a couple of arrows and throws them at her feet. “Go kill your own animal… then you can skin it and cook it yourself.”
“Fuck!” she shouts. Leaving the bow and arrows on the ground, she stands and walks away, continuing to shout obscenities to the stormy night.
It seems to take forever for Chris to start the fire. The stack of wood lying on the inside corner of the hut is almost saturated. However, he locates a few logs toward the center that are relatively dry and uses cedar shavings as kindling. As the kindling sparks and flares to life, it fills the small room with a glowing warmth after days and days of cold, drenching rain. The funnel-shaped ceiling directs the smoke out of the hut. Above the opening, his dad had attached a metal plate on four narrow, metal spikes. The plate serves to keep rain from rushing in through the opening.
A lot of good it does too. He glances around at all the leaks in the ceiling. Once the rain finally ends, it might be a good idea to redo the roof—especially now that he has another person around. If she’ll help, that is.
He cuts the snake into sections and pierces the meat with double-pointed skewers. He leans the skewers against a log so that each section of snake is just above the flame. Within minutes, the smell of cooking meat wafts through the room and his stomach begins to turn flips.
“I told you I’m not eating that.” Her grating voice wedges its way into his head.
“And I don’t care if you do,” he says, not bothering to look at her. He points to the weapons on the ground. “I also told you to go get your own meat.”
“What about vegetables?” she asks, exasperated. “Didn’t I see a garden?”
He nods. There was a garden. However, all the rain destroyed it. What vegetables he could save were already consumed—what remained, covered with mold, ruined by excess moisture. “The rain destroyed it.”
“Jeezz-us!” she says, drawing the word out and adding a lilt of poison to the last syllable.
Chris turns each skewer. Juice from the meat falls into the fire, making popping noises.
Something outside, a dull roar, catches his attention and he springs to his feet.
Remy grabs his pants leg, a sudden look of worry washes across her face. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” Chris says, jerking his leg away and walking outside. But there is something. A slight vibration in the ground—there and gone in a flash, but there was no mistaking the slight tremor.
Remy joins him outside just as the rain quits falling. As he glances upward through the trees, the sky appears to grow lighter, as if the clouds are beginning to dissipate.
Then it happens—the peninsula begins to shake, driving Chris and Remy to the ground. He pulls Remy as he crawls south. He knows what’s happening.
The entire northern face of the peninsula seems to twist at an odd angle. The trees, once pointed to the sky, now lean at a forty-five degree angle. Ten feet beyond the hut, a crack opens in the ground and quickly fills with rushing, muddy river water. The crack widens—six inches, a foot, then five feet wide before the river swallows it all.
The landslide is so massive, it creates a large wave of water that radiates north and east—luckily, heading away from the peninsula. Just as quickly as it started, the ground stops shaking. The damage has been done though. Chris wanders past the hut and follows the northern cliff to the Picket Fence. By his estimation, the river just consumed roughly one-third of Homestead.
His heart sinks as he approaches the Guardians. Four more are gone, two of the originals and the two from the mob that attacked the day he met Remy—all lost to the river.
Only four remain, and the distance from the northern peninsula to the southern has lessened. Chris walks the distance from one point to the other and imagines how the swath of land might look from above—how the birds would see it. It must look more like a wooded teardrop now. He’s afraid this might be the last year he’ll be able to stay here. Another rainy season like this one and the river is sure to eat away the remaining narrowing strip of land.
* * *
Remy eats the snake. She complains the entire time she pecks at it, but Chris ignores her bickering. When she sees that she is no longer getting to him, she shuts up and starts wolfing down the meat as if it might be her last meal ever.
Who knows, it might just be, his dad chimes in. It’s the first time he’s let his voice be heard in quite some time. Chris had hoped that, with Remy’s appearance, maybe his dad’s voice would go away for good—but it isn’t to be. Besides, he’s not sure if that trade-off would be worth it anyway. However, one over the other might be better than having them both.
After they eat, and given the fact the rain has left, Chris takes all the pelts he and his father collected over the years and lines them on the ground outside to dry. It wouldn’t do to leave them stacked inside the hut and allow them to mildew. Winter will be here soon and they will need anything and everything warm they can find just to survive.
* * *
Remy’s outburst and attitude toward the snake meat has Chris on edge. When night comes, rest comes fitfully until he can hear the slow, deep breaths of heavy sleep from the other side of the hut. As far as he is concerned, she’s a wild animal; unpredictable and ferocious when cornered. He worries she will wake in the night and put a blade to his throat just so she can take everything he and his father labored so hard to build.
If only that’s what would have happened—in his mind, it would have been better than what did happen.
Chapter Nine
Day two with Remy goes downhill fast. It starts during the night while he tosses and turns, nervously trying to get comfortable on his bed of pelts. It is no use. Just when he thinks sleep has finally come, then so do the dreams—dreams of her.
He’s back on the trail, the aching in his loins repeating all over again
, but this time, she’s there, leaning against a tree to his left. Her naked body is pristine, devoid of all dirt and grime. Her breasts push against the tree, pressing her nipples against the rough bark, hiding them from view.
“Do you like what you see?” she asks.
That’s when he wakes for the first time.
He turns over. Remy still lies in the same place against the eastern wall of the hut. He can barely make her out by the light of dying embers. Her back is toward him, a deerskin covers her shoulders. The blanket is not large enough to conceal all of her; it stops at her waist. Her pink dress, its hem usually stopping just above the knee, has hiked up to her waist, revealing a smooth hip and a dark crescent of shadow between the cheeks of her ass.
Chris hurriedly turns away and, in an attempt to clear his memory of her naked skin, he adds extra logs to the fire so that it won’t go out.
* * *
He enters the dream again, beginning right where it had left off earlier.
“Do you like what you see?” she asks. She pushes away from the tree and turns toward him. Without all the dirt and grime, she is beautiful beyond anything he’s ever seen. Yet, he has no basis for comparison, just the photographs in the red box.
Chris, kneeling on the trail, turns away, his throbbing penis gripped in his hand.
“Go away,” he says, voice achingly quiet. He squeezes his eyes shut as tears of embarrassment begin to sparkle at the corners of his eyes. He says it again, trying to force a demanding tone, but it comes out sounding more like a plea. “Please, go away.”
She takes a step toward him. He doesn’t see her, but he can hear her bare feet squishing against the muddy, rotting-leaf covered ground.
The aching in his groin grows. Eyes still shut, he can see stars and feel the rushing flood beginning in the pit of his stomach.
“What’s wrong with me?” he screams, not realizing he’s said it aloud until Remy answers.
“Nothing’s wrong… everything… is… just… right.”
He hears another wet footfall and awakens again.
* * *
The new logs pop and snap in the fire pit and the interior brightens as new flames replace dying embers. Beyond the noise of the fire, Remy’s breathing indicates she is sleeping deeply. He breathes a sigh of relief. The dream seemed so real he just knew that she was actually creeping up behind him, ready to pounce.
He yawns, wishing now that he could have a dreamless sleep. With the storms and rising river over the past few weeks, then the appearance of Remy and the mob of Tainted that followed, he hasn’t been able to get any quality rest. And now this dream comes—reminding him of that horrid event alone on the trail.
What’s wrong with me, he asks, hoping that his father will finally answer a direct question. However, all is quiet in his head and there is not one peep of his dad’s voice.
Yawning again, he settles his head onto his outstretched arm and tries to…
* * *
…sleep.
Just let this be over again. He wants to die, just roll over on this trail and die. For all her nakedness, he wishes this dream-Remy had one item with her—the machete. Raise it up Remy, strike me in the skull and let me sleep forever.
He hears another step and tries to imagine the mud as it squishes up between her toes—to hear the drip, drip, drip of rain on leaves—anything to take his mind off his aching, swollen penis…
…and to take his mind off Remy.
But no. She maintains a steady pace and with each step, the aching increases.
“Little Man having a problem?” she asks. She’s close now. Her voice is so close.
Another step.
“Does Little Man need Remy to take care of him?”
“Stay away,” he says, voice low, weaker than ever.
“I’ll take good care of your little man, Christopher.”
“Stay away.”
“I will… I’ll take good, good care of him.”
“Please…” The ache increases, his penis mushrooms with purple pressure and the butterflies press down and out.
“Let me have it…”
“No!”
“I want it…”
“No!” he shouts again, then pleads to the forest. “Please… let me wake up.”
His breathing increases as his heart hammers against his ribs. Behind him, Remy is close…so close. He can feel her breath on the back of his neck—can feel her breasts pressing against his back.
“Please… let me…”
* * *
“…wake up, Chris.” Remy’s voice—its menace grinds into his ear and her sour breath wafts around the side of his head, its repulsiveness causing him to jerk away. A mixture of bile and remnants of snake threatens to crawl back up his throat, but he chokes it back down.
She lies behind him, pressed tightly to his back. One arm somehow snakes underneath him and clutches his chest as one leg drapes over his hip. He tries to push away but she hangs on.
He freezes, as if stung by a scorpion. Her other hand has found its way between his stomach and the waistband of his pants—it grips his penis like a vise.
“Do you know how long it’s been?” she asks, her mouth right on his ear. He can feel spittle drip from her lips like poison. It runs down his neck and slides like ice across his spine.
She strokes his penis with fierce, jerking movements. She says, “Holy fuck, it’s been so long.”
“Stop it,” he says. He rams an elbow backward and grazes her ribs as he tries to push away. She holds onto him like a parasite. He spins toward her in an attempt to loosen her grip but still, she holds on. He turns the other way, his penis twisting in her grip, the skin pulling tight as it pinches between her fingers—yet still she hangs on even as he cries out in pain.
He pushes her onto her back, hoping that if he can get on top of her, he can use her own weight against her. However, this only allows her to wrap her other leg around him, pinching her arm between their bodies.
“That’s what I want.” She flexes her legs, forcing her hips upward into his groin. Despite the repulsion—the need to get away from her, his penis is as erect as it had been that first time on the forest trail. His waistband, too loose to stay up without the string holding it, with each struggling movement, works its way down to his thighs.
“Oh yeah,” she says. “That’s it!”
She pulls his penis down toward her waist and tightens her legs, bringing her hips closer.
“Let me go,” he pleads. He puts a hand to her chest and pushes. The soft swell of her breast cushions his palm.
She grinds against him again. Her hand snags some of the hairs around his penis and uproots them. The pain is sharp and immediate but doesn’t compare with the pressure threatening to spurt from within him. It swells then abates, as if her grip is keeping it from that final release. As she moves, he can feel a wetness against his penis’ head—then rough, coarse hair.
Her hips jerk again and he pushes away, only to find that the fingers of her other hand have twisted into his shoulder-length hair. His head turns sideways with the effort and the hand against her chest slides upward to her neck.
“Oh,” she says, “you want to choke me?” She pulls and he can’t help but lower himself—otherwise, her grip will tear a hunk of hair from his scalp. Her venomous voice says, “If you want to choke me… then you have to fuck me!”
Again, her hips pound upward, pressing him against her groin, but now there’s something different. A wet, slick warmth surrounds his member. She locks her legs tight around his hips and then begins to move rhythmically against him. With each movement, the warmth slides further down his shaft, enveloping him with slick heat.
He freezes, no longer attempting to get away—and Remy notices. “Oh? Does the little man like Remy’s wet cunt?”
She moves her hips down and the wet tightness around his penis moves with her, drawing him out of her—a soft suction pulls at him, as if her body is trying to draw him back inside.<
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He doesn’t know why he does it, but instead of continuing to struggle against her, he thrusts into her, driving her body down.
“That’s it,” she says, fingers still gripping his hair, pulling him down. “Give it to me.”
Now that she doesn’t have to keep a grip on his penis, she uses her free hand to lift her dress up to her neck. Her massive breasts sway with each thrust and suddenly, the only thing he wants is to take one of them between his lips and suck. He looks down the length of their bodies. His light blond pubic hair is a stark contrast to her ebony mound. His pale, white penis emerges from within her, the shaft glistening with her juices. The smell of musk and sweat fills the room—to Chris, the aroma is simultaneously erotic and repulsive.
Suddenly, he’s free. Her legs relax as she draws her knees up to her chest. Now’s his time to get away—but he doesn’t. The feeling is like nothing he’s ever experienced before. He looks down again, two pink lips of skin swallowing his penis—both wet and slick and glistening. Between the flaps of skin, just above where his penis enters her, is a mound of soft flesh—like a pink button. She reaches down and rapidly rubs her fingers across the nub of skin—panting and moaning with each thrust of her hips.
She pulls his hand away from her neck and places his palm over her left breast. He squeezes—again and again.
Her eyes narrow. “Give it to me, Chris.”
He does give it to her—oh, does he ever. He pounds into her with a vain hope that he can split her open with his penis—that somehow he can thrust his way through her, into her—to drive her body into the ground with such force that it will crack open and swallow her down—down into the fiery pits of hell.
As if from some divine influence, he realizes that by her actions, Remy has taken something from him—stolen something that can never be returned. He doesn’t know what it is or what it’s called, he just knows that this—this thing they are doing—is something he should be sharing with someone else.
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