by Rosie Harper
Winking to herself, Kate put the make-up back into her purse before picking up the bag and mincing out of the room. After double-checking on everything, Doctor Walker opened her door before stepping through and locking it behind her.
***
Doctor Walker opened her eyes, back in the now. It was still night, and she was still in the dreaded forest. Her chest didn’t hurt anymore, a clear indication that she had been out for a while.
Then I must have escaped it. Some monster that was… Elated, Kate sighed in relief, taking in a couple more deep breaths afterward in order to double-check on her lungs. Everything was working properly and there was no pain. Yes.
Carefully, the woman helped herself up by using both of her arms, looking over her left and right shoulders repeatedly. There was some slight spinning once she rose, and a short-lasting onset of darkness over her eyes, but it didn’t last long, and by the time it passed, she was ready to slowly creep away from this awful place.
For a second, she even considered sneaking back to “Primal” in order to try and get her car, but that idea was so ridiculous she almost laughed out loud. The creatures are there, Kate remembered, and even though her memory refused to let her recall the exact details, she knew full well that going back was the last thing that should be done.
No way around it, the doctor concluded, turning back toward the direction she was certain faced away from the motel. I will have to hike. The thought wasn’t appealing at all, but whatever was behind her horrified her even more. I am so going to dive into that ice cream when I get back…
As soon as she took her first step forward, however, the woman regretted it; somewhere behind her, approximately to the right of where she came while running through, a slight growling sound could be heard. Blood frozen solid within her veins, Kate slowly turned around in time to witness a pair of glowing yellow eyes directed toward her from between a pair of somewhat distant trees.
Oh, hell no! Her heart rate accelerating again, Kate re-faced herself away from the thing, running as fast as her bulky body could take her. Roaring behind her, the beast took chase, as was evident from the breaking and cracking of various small and large branches.
But why… the woman felt the pain slowly expand through her chest again, aggravated by the treatment she gave it not so long ago. Why did it let me lie there for so long? One unpleasant step after another, she pushed on through the barely lit forest, her view of the thing growing darker with each passing second.
Is it… is it possible that it’s toying with me? Doing this on purpose? Having been driven crazy enough to consider that idea, the woman clumsily tilted her head in order to check for the creature’s location. It still wasn’t close enough, but it was getting nearer and nearer.
Soon, however, the doctor regretted having done that, as her senses, dulled from the running as they were, did not allow her to perceive a sizeable tree that was right in her way. By the time she re-centered her view forward, it was already too late. The force of the impact knocked her off her feet, and well into the near past.
She was in an amazing mood back then. “Primal” appeared exactly as it did on the picture, even though the parking lot seemed slightly less filled up than she expected for a Friday night. Oh well, she reasoned while pushing her jiggling body out through the opened door of her car. Gently, the woman shut the door, locking it with a remote control, before setting off toward the building in a seductive stride.
I’m looking for bad boys tonight, Kate spoke to herself, now several feet away from the motel’s door. And I’m hoping you could help me. Putting on her best smile, the doctor readjusted her hair, brushing a couple of stray curls away from her mouth, before pushing the entrance open and stepping inside.
The smell of tobacco hit her like a locomotive, only closely followed by the roar of some extremely loud heavy metal song she never heard in her life. Waving her purse enticingly, the woman scanned the place from left to right, trying to get a good look at every face and body that wasn’t obscured in darkness.
There aren’t as many of them, the doctor noted, still giving off the best show she could for the patrons, whose gazes now turned toward her in unison. But what they lack in quantity, I’m sure they’ll make up in quality. Now acting as if she didn’t want to stand out, Kate paced toward a vacant spot near the right wall, shaking her backside all the while.
The stage is set, she found herself chanting silently, as was usual for her wgeb she did this. Tough guys don’t like to have their prey delivered to them. They want to hunt it down themselves. Leaning back on her chair, she crossed her legs, pulling out a small picket mirror and checking on her make-up while secretly still scanning the room.
Some of these men actually look pretty good, the woman noticed, now pleased with her choice of locale. I can’t wait. She licked her lips, anticipating the inevitable moment when someone would approach her. Her first contact, however, was less than satisfactory but not entirely unexpected: within seconds, a woman stood above the doctor’s head, holding a thin notebook and a cheap pencil.
“May I take your order, sugar?” the waitress asked, displaying a far greater level of interest than Kate was used to getting from female employees. In a calculated manner, she slowly lifted her gaze from the woman’s sandal- covered feet, over her knees and torso, finally stabilizing it somewhere around her face.
The employee was lean but somewhat shapely, skimpily adorned with a cut-out pair of faded jean shorts and a red tank top. Her skin was decidedly pale, and her doe-like face was framed by several layers of short, straightened black hair. Kate wouldn’t have noticed these details if it weren’t for the tattoo that made the girl stick out like a sore thumb: underneath her collarbones laid a symmetrical row of tribal tattoos that descended all the way down to her cleavage. They had the appearance of sharp teeth, arrayed in two rows of five.
“My eyes are up here, sweetness,” the waitress reminded Kate in a coy tone, which was unusual, but not unheard of. During the doctor’s excursions around the states, she’d met all kinds of people. Girls who showed an interest in her were barely an exception. However, Kate was anything but attracted to her own sex. The kind that piqued her interest had always been of the rougher, rowdier stock, and she didn’t mean to change it for a scrawny little floozy like this one.
“I see where they are without you telling me,” the doctor responded, clearly un-amused by the wench’s cheekiness. “Please be so kind as to use them to navigate back to the counter and bring me a Pina colada.”
Without a word, the waitress paced toward the barman’s place, while a triumphant Kate greeted her withdrawal with a sweet sounding “Thanks, sugar.” However, the good doctor didn’t have time to bask in her display of female dominance for too long, as an impressive hunk of a man found his way to her table before that scrawny little waitress could even place her order.
“Didn’t see you around these parts before,” the recent arrival began his introduction in an unoriginal way. His appearance, though, more than made up for the shortcomings in his approach. Well over six feet and an inch tall and bulging with lean muscle, it was apparent that this man meant business whatever he did. His choice of clothing, consisting of a black but worn wife-beater and a pair of chain-decorated blue jeans, coupled with the bear tattoo on his right bicep clearly denoted his allegiance to some sort of smalltime gang.
“People don’t come around here too much anymore, and that goes double for smoking hot women like you,” the man continued, grabbing her attention with the way his exceptionally well-shaped masculine jawline danced with every word he said. “Unless of course,” he smiled, displaying a row of while but excessively sharp teeth “you know exactly what you’re after.”
I like the cut of his jib, Kate mused as she kept checking out the finer details of this man’s visage: shoulder-length black hair, a thick beard patch located just below his lower lip, a couple of bronze piercings in his right eyebrow. Seems like the perfect type to serve my needs.
>
“Oh, I know very well what I’m after, handsome,” the doctor replied, licking her lips as if she was going to eat the man. “I am here for something wild. Something uncontrolled and unbound by the thin norms that civilization has imposed on us. What I want is something primal. Understand?”
“Perfectly,” the local ground up an answer right as the waitress was back with Kate’s Pina colada. Visibly amused by the doctor’s order, as if he didn’t know the place even served the beverage, he rolled his eyes. “Marie, hit me with the usual, girl.”
“So it’ll be beer flavored beer?” the woman responded as she lowered Kate’s drink in front of her. “Don’t you ever get bored of the same thing over and over again, Rick?”
“Never if the thing is good enough, cutie.” The man replied, leaning against the chair himself this time. “Now be good and bring me my stuff.”
“Of course,” Marie spoke as she rose. “Off the tap as usual, I presume?”
“You know it”
After a quick nod, the girl was gone, well on her way toward the counter. Upon reaching it, she bent forward, sticking her rear out as if she wanted Kate to notice. There’s something you don’t see from your average waitress. The doctor was pleased with her choice of locale. Sex was already in the air, and the night was only beginning.
“She hit your fancy?” Rick interrupted her train of thought, somewhat betraying just how much he cared about the woman’s answer.
“Not really,” Kate spoke slowly, her mouth still full of sweetness from the initial sip of her Pina colada. “It’s just unusual, the way she’s making obvious advances toward me, all while being less than courteous toward you, whom she obviously knows.” Immediately after finishing her sentence, the doctor wished she didn’t. The way these people think and work was still alien to her. Perhaps the two have some sort of history.
“Excuse me,” she interrupted the awkward few seconds of silence that passed after what she had said. “I’m a big city girl, and I’m not exactly an expert on this place or its history.” Her apology seemed to have had an effect, as the man’s expression turned from that of slight irritation into one of… concern?
“But be assured,” the doctor continued, hoping to turn the situation to her advantage. “I’m not into women. Never have been, never w-“
“That might be because you haven’t found yourself the right one, sweetie pie,” Marie’s silky tone caught her by surprise, the waitress having somehow appeared right next to their table without Kate noticing with any of her senses.
“Maybe yes, maybe no,” she replied, in a less than certain tone. Now slightly uncomfortable, the doctor was on the defense. Having sensed this, the tattooed woman leaned in to say something else, but was quickly interrupted in the crucial moment by a quick slap to the rear from Rick.
As if that touch was a punch to the face, Marie turned around with the speed of an agitated viper. “You do not lay hands on me!” She practically screamed the words into the man’s face, with zero reaction on his side. Unblinking, he merely pointed the index finger of his left hand toward the bar, signaling the woman to leave the table’s vicinity. Visibly agitated, the waitress obliged, but not before she sent a distinctly antagonistic glare toward the both of them.
“What the hell is her problem?” Kate waited for Marie to get a good deal of distance between them before asking her question.
“I’d like to know myself,” Rick replied, taking a significant swig of his beer pint. “But there’s something else I’d like to know even more.” Having lowered his drink onto the table, the man let their eyes meet for a good while before taking a deep breath. “Do you really know what you’re here for?”
Is this a trick question? Kate asked herself, not entirely sure how to reply. If this was in fact some sort of cult or private club, claiming to be acquainted with it fully will guarantee this man’s disfavor. If, on the other hand, Rick was checking out her dedication to the idea of sleeping with him, then a negative answer might cost her an entire weekend’s worth of fun. For several seconds she weighed her options like that, when suddenly another voice, this time belonging to another man, shattered that line of thought into splinters.
“Of course she does. Just look at the lady, Rick. I think she’s your type, as well.”
Her interest having been piqued, Kate quickly turned around to face this new arrival, whose coarse voice seemed to have belonged to a significantly older man. After getting a good look in however, she was not quite as certain anymore. Grey-haired yet standing straight and displaying significant muscle mass, the man’s age was as indeterminable as his intentions.
“Well,” he continued, stroking the beard that covered most of his face with one hand, while allowing the other to rest on the table. A bear head tattoo, identical to the one Rick had, graced the right bicep of this man as well. “Aren’t you going to invite your old pack leader to sit down and enjoy the fun, boy?”
“Of course, Jasper. You know that you are always welcome to anything I catch,” the younger of the two locals answered, seemingly more out of obligation than real affection.
“You flap your pie-hole, Rick, and the words keep coming out, but I know you don’t believe a darn shred of it! If it were up to you, boy, you’d have had your way with this delicious little-“, the older man paused for a second, taking a closer look at Kate before continuing his prattle ´with this delicious, sizeable morsel, and I wouldn’t have had a hand in it at all. Am I right or am I right?”
“I choose option three,” the younger man replied, apparently trying to soften the older one’s disposition with a dose of humor.
“Oh yeah? And what would that be, huh?”
“That would be you taking your due and enjoying it, and me partaking in what is also rightfully mine,” Rick explained, now visibly calmer than he was when this man called Jasper surprised them with his appearance.
“Now you’re talking like the man I raised up from the dirt.” The older man then turned his head toward Kate, checking her goods out for a good while before finally deciding to speak. “You down with this, lady?”
I have no earthly idea what they’re blathering about, the doctor pondered, perplexed by the politics of this place. Pack leader? Catch? What are these, some kind of modern tribals? Despite the negative sentiment her rational side had about this, the part of Kate that wanted her to come here in the first place was just about ready to burst from happiness. In a way, this is exactly what she was looking for: raw, barely civilized people who lived by their own rules. And fuck like wild animals.
“Are you… am I right to assume that you are talking about threesomes?” the woman asked hesitantly, hoping to minimize just how clueless she was about to appear. By the way the two men looked at her, it didn’t seem to work.
Having exchanged a surprised pair of glances, the two locals’ gazes quickly turned back toward the doctor. Rick was just about to say something, but the old man interceded before the younger one got the chance.
“Yeah, lady. That and a whole lot more.” Grinning as if he knew something she didn’t, which was obviously the case, he finished what he had to say by appealing to her wild side. “Do you think yourself woman enough to handle what we have to give? Rickie here seems to think so. I myself am not as easily convinced, though.”
While Jasper was rolling his eyes condescendingly, in a painfully rudimentary attempt at reverse psychology, Kate considered stepping out of the place and leaving home right now. But she did not think with her head anymore. The soft, pliable area between her legs had already hijacked control over her mind and body, and she wasn’t going anywhere. The challenge that this older man invoked, as well as the feeling of anticipation toward something unknown, made her positively cream.
Faking a lack of interest, an unintentionally blushing Kate reached into her purse, dragging out a small mirror and opening it while the two men still stared at her with anticipation. Having checked that everything was well in its place and that she looked the b
est she could, the woman nevertheless added another layer of lipstick. It never hurts to have more red.
“I don’t know,” she purred, pouting like a little girl misplaced in an exaggeratedly curvaceous body. “You’ll just have to show me what you’ve got.” She pouted, alternating between meeting the gaze of one man after the other. “After all, it’s the only way we’ll really know,” the doctor finished her sentence, giggling invitingly, all while trying to control the veritable stream that was forming between her legs.
“That’s our girl,” Jasper replied, visibly impatient. Almost immediately, Rick rose in response. Producing a feral grin, both men extended their right arms toward the woman, inviting her to join them. “Would you care to follow us into the unknown, madam?” Rick asked, visibly struggling to contain his excitement about what was about to occur.
“You betcha, honey!” Kate replied, not having the faintest idea about what lied in store.
***
Her whole body in pain, Doctor Kate Walker opened her eyes, back in the present again. The hit she took was powerful, but it would take a heck of a lot more than a mere tree to take out a woman of her size for more than a little while. With cockiness, however, came memory, and with it, despair. Eyes widening with horror, the woman turned to her left to check for signs of what was chasing her, and immediately found herself faced with seven feet of fur and claws.
With all the sluggishness of a person in shock, the doctor slowly observed the thing before her: it was a giant bear; that much was evident. What was not immediately visible from the first glance however, was a weak, metallic sheen that originated from above the animal’s right eye: a pair of bronze rings, pierced through the skin of its right brow.
Rick. The sight before Kate having reminded her of what she didn’t want to remember, she covered her face with both of her hands, hoping that the next scene she would witness would be the inside of a padded room.