I found myself gazing nearly straight down into wedges of open space on either side of the knife handle. Twin triangles formed by red plastic, white spandex, and bare skin. Smooth, flawless, private skin and curls of black hair.
The view sucked my breath out, made my heart start to slam, and sent a quick surge through my groin. I grew hard as I reached down to rescue the knife.
I tried to pinch the tip of the handle where it jutted out above her waistband.
Not enough there to get a firm grip on.
So I slipped my thumb and forefinger down inside. By accident, they brushed ever so softly against her skin. I felt the smoothness, and moaned. I murmured, ‘Sorry,’ in a shaky voice.
I was taking too long.
I squeezed the sides of the handle between my thumb and forefinger, and slowly lifted. The knife slid upward. I could feel the tightness of it, trapped like it was. But it came up smoothly. When it was nearly all the way out, I stole a glimpse down deep inside the gaping front of her pants.
Then the elastic snapped back. Her pants shut like a mouth.
‘Got it,’ I murmured.
‘Thanks,’ Kimberly said.
Thank you, I thought. Didn’t say it, though.
I raised my head and forced a smile. The look she gave me, she knew what had happened. She’d intended it. Or maybe I just read that into her look, and all she’d really intended was to have me stop the knife from falling out. Who knows?
‘If you need any help down there ...’ I said. The words were out before I realized they could be taken in a couple of different ways.
I expected Connie to pop out with a nasty crack. She didn‘t, though.
Kimberly said, ‘I might want you to lower the knife to me. We’ll see.’
‘Sure. Just let me know.’
She bent her arms. The stone edge rubbed its way up her thighs, her groin and belly. Propped up on her elbows, she grabbed the rope with one hand.
I took my position beside the ax. Keeping the knife snug inside my right hand, I held the ax handle down with my left. By the time I looked at Kimberly again, only the top of her head showed. A moment later, it vanished below the rim.
With Kimberly out of view, I focused on the ax and the rope. They looked fine. The ax seemed to be solidly planted in the crack. The rope, taut and stiff, vibrated slightly.
Connie was still beside me on one knee.
Billie still stood near the edge, watching Kimberly’s descent.
Someone yelled ‘YAHHHHHH!’
The noise of it almost stopped my heart. For an instant, I thought Kimberly’d fallen. The yell didn’t sound like her voice, though.
Sounded like a man’s voice.
I raised my head.
He came at us from the other side of the chasm, yelling as he charged. He didn’t look like Wesley. He was Wesley, though. And he was bigger than the guy in the chasm.
Even though I only saw him for a few seconds, I remember every detail as if I’d snapped a photo of him. Or caught him on videotape, to be more accurate - they’re moving pictures. Often, I see them in slow motion.
Somewhere, Wesley had gotten hold of a blue cap. He wore it backward, the plastic adjustable tabs across the middle of his forehead so he looked like some sort of fat, white gangsta rapper.
He also wore Thelma’s large, red brassiere. He seemed to be using it as a harness to hold a bandage in place against his left boob; the red cup on that side was stuffed to bulging. The right cup had been cut away, so his hairy tit bulged out through the frame, bouncing and flopping as he dashed toward the chasm.
Since the night of the ambush - the last time I’d seen Wesley - he had also found a leather belt. If he’d come upon a pair of pants to go with it, though, he’d chosen to go without. He wore the belt around his waist, and hunting knives in leather sheaths at each hip.
On his feet, he wore a pair of high-topped sneakers.
He wore nothing else except his own sweat, hair, and hard-on.
He was pretty damn funny-looking, in a way.
But there wasn’t much amusing about how he ran at us yelling like a madman and waving machetes overhead with both hands.
Even though I’m able to see him in slow motion, everything actually happened very fast. He had almost reached the far edge of the chasm by the time I raised my head and saw him coming.
Connie made a squeaky little noise.
Billie let out a loud gasp.
Wesley was in mid-leap before any of us started to move. Connie started trying to get off her knee. Billie began to turn and take a step backward. On my knees, I opened my hand and glanced down at the shiny red plastic handle of the Swiss Army knife, the silvery edges of the blades and tools that were safely folded away.
No chance of getting a blade out in time.
I started trying to get off my knees.
Billie, glancing over her shoulder, flinched and gaped. Her arms began to rise as she continued to twist around. Something about her expression and posture reminded me of a football player lunging for an interception.
In that instant, I knew Thelma must be attacking from the rear.
I heard Wesley’s sneaker whap close by. Still in a crouch, I turned my head and glimpsed him on our side of the chasm - but not directly in front of me. Off a bit to my right. Charging straight at Connie.
I tried to stand up faster.
Connie had managed to get up. She was in the midst of turning her back to him, flinging her arms forward as if reaching for help.
That’s where it stops.
That’s all I remember about our ‘last stand.’
Just at that point, I imagine, Thelma must’ve nailed me from behind.
Perchance To Dream
Here’s my guess. While I was out cold from a blow to the head, someone ‘disposed’ of me.
That is, threw or shoved me over the edge of the chasm.
My guess is also that the fall didn’t finish me off because I landed on the dead guy.
Lucky me.
My buddy, Matt.
Short for Mattress.
I slept on him for a long time, in a condition known as ‘dead to the world.’
What’s the difference, I wonder, between being in a coma and simply being knocked out cold? Just that one lasts longer? I don’t know, and it doesn’t much matter.
At some point, I ‘came to’ in the night.
I opened my eyes, saw a starry sky above me, wondered vaguely where I was, decided I must be on a camping trip, then faded out again.
I came to again with the sun baking me. I wished someone would make the sun go away; it felt way too hot, and made my head throb. Then the sun went away and stopped bothering me.
Bugs bothered me, off and on. Mostly, I ignored them.
Sometimes, I found myself enjoying how they tickled.
I must’ve had a hundred dreams. I could write to the last page of this notebook, and not be able to finish describing all the dreams that rambled through my sore head (many of which I’d like to forget, but can’t) while I was sprawled there at the bottom of the chasm.
They were much more vivid and realistic than regular dreams.
Some of them were extremely erotic. Those mostly featured Kimberly, but I had some doozies with Billie and Connie, along with various combinations of the three.
Thelma found her way into some of my dreams. Those were usually sexy, but in a nightmarish way. Often her razor played a part. The Thelma dreams were really sick and perverted and repulsive.
The same goes for most of my other nightmares.
Horrible.
In one, for example, I was climbing the tree to cut down Keith’s body after he’d been hanged. Which was lousy enough in real life. In my dream, though, it got worse. He suddenly swung toward me by his neck and embraced me —wrapped his arms and legs around me - and started to chew off my nose.
That one was nasty, but brief.
I had several nightmares that seemed endless.
; Of those, one that I remember vividly involved a group of women who came walking up the beach toward me on a beautiful, sunny day. I didn’t know who they were at first. For one thing, they were naked so I couldn’t tell them apart by what they wore. For another, they didn’t have their heads. Their necks ended at pulpy, bloodless stumps.
I was pretty turned on, but also spooked.
They said I could save them, if I wanted to badly enough. (This in spite of having no heads.) I was eager to save them, and asked how. They said, ‘You have to match us up.’
That’s when I realized that each woman was holding something out of sight behind her back.
They brought their arms around to the front.
Each woman was carrying a head.
Among the heads, I recognized the faces of Connie, Billie, Kimberly, Thelma, Wesley, Miss Curtis (my fifth-grade teacher whom I’d had a terrible crush on), Ardeth Swan (a girlfriend from high school - never got to first base with her), and a total stranger (I think) who looked sort of cute except for all the rings and bolts and pins sticking out all over her face and ears.
The last head belonged to my own mother. God knows what it was doing there, but it sure added to the creepy weirdness of the nightmare.
Right off the bat, it was clear to me that none of the ladies was holding on to her own head.
Wesley’s head explained the rules of the game. ‘If you wanta save us, you’ve gotta match up our heads correctly before sundown. Think you can do that, little buddy?’
‘I wouldn’t save you if I could,’ I told him.
Besides, Wesley’s body wasn’t even there. Of the nine decapitated bodies standing in front of me on the beach, each and every one appeared to be a properly equipped female.
I took Wesley’s noggin out of the hands of a heavy-set gal, and tossed it down the beach. Then I rushed over to Thelma’s head, plucked it out of the hands of a slim gal I suspected of being Connie, and hurried with it over to the stocky gal who’d been holding Wesley’s head. I plonked it down on her neck stub.
Thelma, now properly assembled, smiled and wiggled her fingers at me.
I won’t go through the whole nightmare. I don’t want to even think about some of what happened, much less write it down. So I’ll skip the worst parts, and just tell about the stuff that isn’t quite as disturbing.
Through the whole dream, whether I was laughing or feeling horny or confused or disgusted or terrified, I always had this terrible, heavy feeling of dread. Nobody’d explained what would happen if I failed to match the heads correctly with the bodies before sundown - aside from the obvious, that I wouldn’t ‘save’ the women. But I had a feeling that my fate might be something too creepy for words.
Sundown was fast approaching.
So I raced back and forth, snatching heads out of hands, rushing this way and that, shoving them down onto neck stubs.
It wasn’t as simple as it might sound.
I’d taken care of Wesley and Thelma right off the bat. Two down, seven to go. I’d seen enough of Connie and Kimberly to recognize their bodies, so they presented no problem (except when I dropped Connie’s head and it rolled away and I had to chase it down the beach). Four down, five to go.
I tried to do Billie next, figuring she’d be a cinch. After all, she’d been running around forever in nothing but her bikini, and I’d seen her breasts completely naked the night she tried to tackle Thelma but ended up diving through the sand. (I remembered, even in my dream, about how they’d looked looming out loose over her bikini top.)
I grabbed Billie’s head from the hands of a body I didn’t recognize, then hurried it over to the broad, lush figure I knew to be her.
When I plonked it onto the neck, Billie’s mouth said,
‘Dumb move, Rupert. You don’t know your own mother when you see her?’
Yuck!
Down the line, I spotted an identical body.
To me, they both looked like Billie.
Whoa, Nelly. Here comes Freud, Oedipus leering by his side.
The hell with it. This is no time to start worrying about what might be lurking in my subconscious. Screw id.
Anyway, I was shocked by that part of the dream, but the mistake had a silver lining. I quickly matched two heads to the proper bodies: Billie’s and my mother’s.
Next, I went for the head of the stranger.
Its ears, nostrils, lips, and even eyebrows bristled with all manner of metallic ornaments. I took her head out of Kimberly’s hands and rushed it down the row of ladies to a pale, skinny gal who had rings dangling from her pierced nipples, clitoris, etc. Easy.
That done, only two heads remained.
My cute blonde fifth-grade teacher, Miss Curtis. And my high-school girlfriend, Ardeth Swan.
Unfortunately, three headless bodies remained.
That’s because my first move of the game had been tossing away Wesley’s head.
It wouldn’t have matched any of the three remaining bodies, anyway.
Off on the horizon, the sun was sinking slowly into the sea.
Miss Curtis and Ardeth gave me no trouble.
Miss Curtis had a petite, slender body with a nice tan, cup-sized breasts with turgid dark nipples, and a shiny tuft of blond hair between her legs.
Ardeth Swan, a freckled and pimply tub, had lost her head but not her modesty. She kept an arm across her huge breasts, a hand clamped to her crotch.
When I put Miss Curtis’s head on her neck, she gave me a warm smile and said, ‘You always were such a fine young man, Thomas.’
I didn’t know who the hell Thomas might be, but I thanked her anyway.
After returning Ardeth’s head, I simply smiled at her. She said, ‘Fuck off, meatball.’
Even in my nightmares ...
Only a small curve of orange sun remained above the horizon.
I faced the final headless body.
I had no head to give it.
Thinking I might spot a head I’d missed, I looked around.
Everyone had vanished.
Everyone was gone except me and the lone, headless woman. We stood close together on the empty beach, facing each other. (She wasn’t ‘facing’ me, of course, as she didn’t possess one.)
What she did possess was an absolutely fabulous, incredible body.
Her skin gleamed all over with a tawny, golden tan.
She was at least six feet tall, from neck to toe. She had long, slender arms and legs, broad shoulders, breasts that were high firm mounds with stiff jutting nipples. Her hips were wide and smooth, her belly flat. Lower, she had a glossy curve without so much as a trace of whiskers - as if she’d never grown any hair at all down there.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ I told her. ‘I’m out of heads.’
She shrugged her shoulders, which made her breasts lift and descend wonderfully.
‘Do you know where your head is?’ I asked her.
Again, that lovely shrug.
I checked the horizon and saw the last sliver of the sun easing out of sight.
Fast as I could, I snatched off my own head and shoved it onto her neck.
‘There!’ I yelled in triumph.
The yell didn’t come from my mouth, though. I was looking at my mouth, my face, my head, on top of that gorgeous body.
Not a match!
In my haste to provide a head for her, I’d forgotten that the rules called for a match.
Not just any old head would do.
But mine did!
Figure that one out.
Anyway, I watched my own face give me a very nice, friendly smile.
Then my dream woman said, ‘Thanks, Rupert.’ (Not my voice, I’m glad to report. It sounded more like Lauren Bacall in To Have and Have Not, and a lot like Billie.) ‘You won,’ she told me. ‘You saved us all, do you know that? You should be very proud of yourself.’
It made me feel really good.
‘Of course,’ she said, ‘now you don’t have a head.’
‘Oh,
that’s okay.’ I can be quite the gallant fellow, sometimes. ‘I don’t need it that much,’ I told her. ‘I’m just glad I was able to match everyone up.’
‘Do you know what you get for winning?’
I shook my head. (Well, maybe not. I thought I did, though.)
‘You get me,’ she said.
‘Oh boy!’ I said.
She came forward. She took me in her arms, and I felt her body against me. Unfortunately, she had my face. When she tried to kiss me, I turned away.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked.
‘I don’t know about this. I don’t think I wanta be kissing my own face.’
‘Okay. That can be fixed. Whose do you want?’
‘You can change your face?’
I watched myself give me a knowing smile. ‘Sure. Just tell me who you want me to be.’
‘Yourself,’ I said.
‘I am myself. I’m your dream lover. I’m whoever you want me to be.’
‘I sure don’t want you being me.’
‘Who, then?’ she asked.
‘Can it be anyone?’
‘Anyone you’d like.’
‘How about Kimberly?’
‘Excellent choice,’ she said. Immediately, the face of my dream lover stopped being me and became Kimberly.
Then things really sizzled.
Somewhere along the way, my nightmare had gotten left behind, leaving me with a fantastic erotic dream. Probably the best dream I’ve ever had.
It stayed great, too. The worst thing about it, from the moment after I saved her with the donation of my head, was when I woke up very suddenly and the dream ended.
I remembered her (Oh, God, did I ever!), but she had fled, along with my sleep, and I couldn’t bring her back.
I would gladly let myself get knocked out today, if I thought she would return.
Of all the dreams and nightmares that came to me at the bottom of the chasm, though, she only put in the one appearance.
In my last dream down there, I found myself on the beach in a wheelchair, trying to get away from someone. I couldn’t turn my head around to see who was chasing me, but I was plenty scared. I kept shoving at the wheel rims, trying to pick up speed, but the wheels were bogged down in the sand. They kept sinking deeper and deeper, until my chair wouldn’t move at all.
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