by Lila Veen
Justin looks at me and takes a lock of my hair and tucks it behind my ear. “I love you, Jenna,” he tells me, “but I think I need to talk to Kate now.”
“You mean-?”
He nods. “Can you just let her come out and talk?”
I nod and feel her consume me.
*
“Kate?” she hears him say. “Can we talk?”
She smiles and rakes her fingers through her hair. “What I want to do involves more than talking.” She leans over and starts to push Justin down onto the mattress but he stops her.
“No, I can’t do that with you,” he says. “I love Jenna, Kate, but I don’t love you.”
Kate scowls at Justin. “Jenna is a part of me,” she explains. “If you love Jenna, you love me too.”
Justin shrugs. “Perhaps I do, but I think it would be a violation of Jenna’s trust to touch you…like that.”
“Well then,” she purrs. “I guess we’re not going to talk.” She gets up and begins to open drawers, pulling out clothes.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going out,” Kate explains. “Since all you want to do is talk, and I find that boring, and I’m horny.”
“Charming,” Justin says. “What can I do for you to get you to talk to me?” He stands up and takes a hot pink lacy bra out of her hand and puts his arms around her waist. “Anything?”
She grins and laughs. “Oh, Justin, you’re terrible at manipulation. But fine, since you’re asking. I’ll give you what you want, but you have to do what I want.”
“I can’t do that to Jenna,” Justin explains. “If you’re asking for what I think you’re asking for.”
“You won’t know until after I tell you. Then you have to do exactly what I want. And it will not involve leaving your clothes on. Or mine. In fact, let’s play it tit for tat.” She pulls her shirt up. “I’ll start with some tit.”
Justin looks at Kate. “It’s scary how much you look like Jenna, but you aren’t.” He sighs. “Fine. Tit for tat. You get to start. What do you think Drake was looking for when he broke in and took the DVDs?”
“That’s a loaded question,” Kate says. “First you’re assuming that it was Drake.”
“Who else could it have been?”
“Perhaps any of the men who were videotaped with Jenna back when Jack used to record her and get paid to do it.” Kate smiles slightly. “Don’t look so shocked. Jack did whatever he could for money. The video was just another method for profit.”
“So you think those videos are somewhere in this house?” Justin asks.
Kate shakes her head and puts her finger against his lips. “Not just yet,” she says. Now it’s my turn.”
“Okay,” Justin agrees. “Fair enough. Tell me what I should do.”
“First,” Kate says. “Get naked. I want to see how hard you get.”
Justin reluctantly begins to take his shirt and pants off and stands naked in the middle of the room. Kate grins and opens the closet door and Justin hears her rummage around. When she comes out of the closet, she is holding a huge red dildo in her hands. “Now,” she says, “I want you to fuck me with this until I come.”
Justin sighs. “Okay,” he agrees. He takes it out of her hands and inspects it. Besides it being about nine inches long it’s about two and a half inches around in girth.
“Get it nice and wet in me,” Kate says. “The wetter it is the less painful it will be when it’s inside of you.”
Justin’s eyes practically pop out of his skull. “Um, no. You can’t expect me to-”
“You will if you want to hear everything,” Kate snaps, laying herself down on the bed. She positions herself as though she might be going through a gynecological exam, and Justin notices she’s so wet, she’s literally dripping on the sheets. “Get it inside of me, and if you feel any resistance, force it in. Push hard.” Justin slowly walks toward her and presses the tip of the dildo against her. He pushes it up from the bottom of her slit to the top to collect all of her wetness. “Ohhhh,” Kate moans. “You seem like you’ve done this before.”
“No,” Justin says through his teeth. He feels ashamed for betraying Jenna, and most of all, ashamed for how hard he is getting. She is Jenna, he tells himself. Everything I do to Kate, I’m doing to Jenna. With that thought in mind, he pushes the tip so it slowly sinks inside of her, making Kate gasp and arch her back. “Don’t resist,” Justin says sternly. “The harder you resist the more I will push and tear you apart if I have to.” His hand moves to his cock and he begins to rub the glistening tip with the palm of his unoccupied hand while he moves the shaft of the dildo deeper inside of her, pushing it in slowly and out. He can feel her loosen up.
“Harder,” she whispers. It’s about halfway inside of her and Justin presses slowly and firmly against the base of the dildo, getting another inch inside. He moves his hand against his own member down his shaft, feeling it pulse and throb in his wet palm. His breathing quickens as Kate’s does, and he manages to get another inch deeper inside of her before he explodes and spurts into his own hand. Kate looks up at him and grins. “I guess you do feel something for me.”
“Shut up,” he groans and shoves the remainder of the dildo inside of her, making her shriek and cry out. She is coming hard and the dildo moves out of her as she clenches up and pushes it out. “Shut up!” he repeats, but it’s too late. There’s a knock on the door.
“Jenna!” Devin shouts from the other side. “What’s going on?”
“We’re fine!” Kate squeaks about an octave higher than her usual voice and Justin notes the difference in how Kate speaks versus Jenna for the first time.
“Okay,” Devin says. “Keep it down in there, you two. Some of us are trying to actually get some sleep.” He laughs and Justin hears his footsteps as he walks away. His heart is beating fast.
“Let me clean you up,” Kate says huskily, throwing the dildo aside and bending down and taking Justin’s cock inside of her mouth. His erection was fading but comes back almost instantly as she sucks his own juices off of him. She looks up and smiles. “So what else should we talk about?”
Justin lies back, still shuddering from his orgasm. “You’re unbelievable.”
Kate lays herself alongside of him. “We could talk about that if you like. I’m my own favorite topic.”
“Where are the videos?” Justin asks. “Do you know if Jack still had them before he died?”
“I know a lot about Jack that Devin and Jenna don’t,” Kate says. “I used to visit him, you know, without Devin and Jenna’s knowledge. Sometimes I’d come to see him in prison. We talked a bit about the past.”
“Where are they, Kate?” Justin repeats.
“They’re in the house,” Kate said. “There’s a whole crawl space full of them that has yet to be discovered. It was overlooked when we all moved in because it’s been sealed up for years and isn’t very large.”
“Thank you,” Justin says. “I have one more thing to ask you and I’m done.”
“I’ll allow it now,” Kate agrees. “But you know what you have to do for me next.”
“I’ll do it,” Justin says reluctantly, but he needs the information, and she is Jenna, he tells himself.
“I believe you will,” Kate says. “That’s why I’ll tell you first. I think you like me and can’t refuse me. I think you want me to have my way with you.” Justin doesn’t say anything. “Ask me.”
“Tell me if you think it was Drake, and how he’s connected to the past.”
“You don’t waste much time,” Kate teases. “You also don’t follow politics much. At least I’d assume you don’t. Or else you’d realize that Drake Carroll’s older brother Mike was a state senator about sixteen years ago.”
“I didn’t realize that,” Justin said. “I’m not very politically savvy at all. So tell me more.”
“Mike Carroll is in Washington,” Kate explains. “He’s running for Congress or something. Any incriminating evidence, particular
ly where he’s fucking a ten year old girl, is probably enough to destroy his career in politics and make him go to prison.”
“Holy shit.”
“Exactly.”
“Wait,” Justin says. “Are you kidding me, Kate?”
“Why would I joke about that?” she asks him. “Can I have a cigarette?”
Justin passes her Jenna’s pack. She takes one out and holds it between her lips while Justin lights it for her. “I guess I knew that Jenna was molested when she was younger, but hearing it so blatantly put…it’s chilling.”
Kate shrugs. “You’re going to have to get over that. Jack used Jenna all the time. Jenna got fucked younger than ten. It’s a fucked up world, sweetheart, and you’re knee deep in it with this crowd.”
“I’ll say,” Justin sighs. “So Drake thinks that video is in this house?”
Kate shrugs. “It’s a matter of finding it. I’d say that it’s probably here amongst the other hundreds of videos. Jack kept everything and sealed it off years before he went away. It was his hobby. He used to use VHS and even had fancy equipment to convert it all to DVD. The shit was like a gold mine, kiddie porn. I mean, as long as you don’t get caught. If anyone ever found out what was down there, he would have been put away for life.”
“I wish someone had found it and killed him,” Justin says. “I would have killed him if he were still alive today.”
Kate rolls her eyes. “Not that it matters now. But it matters to people starring on those videos, or at least the ones who are trying to run for office. My guess is that Mike Carroll is having his little brother do the dirty work for him. He used to come and watch, you know.”
“Who?” Justin asks.
Kate smiles. “Drake, of course.”
“No!” Justin exclaims. “He couldn’t have been more than a little kid.”
“He was a teenager,” Kate said. “I remembered him the first time Jenna saw him, at the funeral.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you say something?” Justin says. “Aren’t you supposed to protect her?”
Kate rolls her eyes. “I’m supposed to be strong for her. I can’t always protect her, I just have to endure what she can’t.” She sits up and puts her hand on the dildo. “And now it’s your turn to endure something for me. I’ve told you what I know.”
Justin shakes his head. “I don’t even know what to do about this.”
Kate looks almost sad. “Give Drake what he wants. He’ll never leave Jenna alone until he gets it.”
“But that’s not fair,” Justin says. “These people did a horrible thing to Jenna and you expect me to let them get away with it?”
Kate shrugs. “They already got away with it. Hundreds of men got away with it, Justin. The deed is done. Now all Jenna and I need to do is to figure out a way to escape our past.” She takes Justin by the hips and flips him over with a surprising burst of strength. “My turn.”
Kate pushes the handle end of the dildo inside of herself with a soft moan and works it in and out, slowly. Then she reaches into the top drawer of the nightstand and pulls out a tube of lubricant and squirts a line of it up the shaft of the dildo and rubs it around with her hand. Holding the dildo inside of herself and also pressing the base of the shaft so it stays inside of her, she pushes the tip against Justin. He winces, even though she hasn’t done anything yet.
“This will hurt,” Kate says. “But I won’t make you take it all like I did. But if you want to understand Jenna, as you claim to, you need to know what indescribable pain feels like.”
Justin doesn’t answer. His teeth are too clenched in anticipation of the pain to respond. When he feels it enter him, he blacks out.
Chapter 15
Justin has a sledgehammer and we are in the basement. We are both looking at the telltale brick wall that lines the entire east side wall. He has told me what Kate told him the night before but only that much. I’m not sure how I feel about finally hearing the truth. It doesn’t surprise me that much, but knowing what’s been hidden in the house the entire time I’ve lived here makes me feel sick. I think about how Jack’s bounty could have gotten Devin and I arrested and we knew nothing about anything. Even a few months dead, I’m still pissed off at him for what he’s doing to Devin and me from the grave.
I also feel sore all over, but Justin doesn’t tell me that story. I can piece together what happened between Kate and Justin last night based on the soreness between my legs and the funny way he’s walking. Part of me wants to laugh, because Justin isn’t that type of guy, but I know it wasn’t pleasant for him. Oh well, that’s what he gets for wanting to have Kate come out and play. Still, I realize he “took a bullet” for me, so to speak. Though I’m sure most guys would rather take an actual bullet and be dead than to go through what Justin went through last night. It ironically lets me know he cares.
Without a word, Justin slams the head of the sledgehammer into the wall. I watch him as he swings, slams, swings, slams, swings, slams. His face is red but I don’t stop him. He moves in a jaunty way that shows me he is already in some pain. The air is stuffy down here already, and he breaks a sweat easily and I watch his arms tense and glow in the sleeveless shirt he has donned for the task. I watch him as I sit in a recliner, unreclined. I’m tense all over, and I sit with my back completely straight. I feel like a cat ready to pounce. Devin isn’t home. He’s working, and it’s a good thing because I don’t know how to tell him that we’re breaking down a brick wall in the basement in an attempt to find Jack’s hidden stash of child pornography with me as the star. That’s not exactly a conversation I feel like starting.
Bricks begin to loosen and dust is rampant. Time seems to stop but I know Justin’s been hacking away at the wall for maybe an hour. The sound bangs away in my ears and fills my brain. I wish I’d had the foresight to put some sort of breathing mask on, the air is so thick with brick dust in addition to the dust already settled down here. Devin and I didn’t do much with the basement after we’d moved in, other than throw a few collapsed empty boxes down here. It seemed set up as Jack’s hideaway, with an easy chair I’m sitting on that faces a television and even some empty beer bottles on a table next to the chair. Posters of old classic cars cover the concrete walls, mostly with women in bikinis leaning against them. They look like old beer ads from the 80’s. Actually, there are some of those too, I notice. Paint cans are stacked up against one wall and tools are scattered everywhere. It’s a man cave, and we are about to completely tear it apart. “Holy shit,” Justin says, interrupting my thoughts. He hacks away a bit more at the bricks and starts to pull them away. They aren’t cemented in completely, or even at all in some places, I can tell from the way they start to tumble, bringing up even more dust. I watch Justin pull more bricks away and we soon discover that the entire wall is covered in DVDs behind the bricks.
When he stands back I walk over and pick up one of the DVD cases and inspect it. “P. Barnes - 8/16/1996” is typed up on the cover. I pull a few more out and see the same format; a name and a date. They seem to range from 1992 to 1998, from when I was six to twelve years old. There are hundreds, and I rack my brain wondering why I never realized that everything Jack made me do was recorded. There are video tapes as well, and when I look over at the television in the basement, I realize that the setup is to copy tape to DVD. I wonder how long after I was out of Jack’s life he managed to profit off of whoring out his daughter. “I feel sick,” I tell Justin.
“I do too,” he agrees. “I think we should destroy them.”
I shake my head. I take one of the DVDs and walk over to the television. I figure out how to turn it on and I put the DVD in the player. “Jenna, what the hell are you doing?” I hear Justin ask me.
I silently wave him away. My focus is on nothing in the room but the television. I see myself appear on the screen. I’m back in my old bedroom, a naked little girl on a twin bed with a pink flowered Laura Ashley hand me down bedspread, probably acquired from a thrift shop. A man stands to the
side of me pleasuring himself. I watch in horror as he makes a face and his semen spills over my stomach and nonexistent breasts and realize the volume is turned all the way down. The man climbs over the little girl me and pushes himself inside of me and all I can stare at is my face on the video. It’s blank and motionless. I am vacant and absent from the scene, even though my body is there. “What the hell is going on here?” I hear and Justin and I both whirl around. Devin is standing at the foot of the basement stairs with a disgusted expression on his face.
“Devin!” I cry out. “Wh-what are you doing home?”
“Mrs. Strahl called me saying she heard a lot of noise coming from our house. She thought there might be another break in. I came home.” He walks toward the television, not taking his eyes off of it. “What the fuck is that?”
“Devin, don’t get mad,” I say.
“What the fuck is all of this?” he asks, taking in the wall that we broke down, Justin and I and the television.
Justin steps forward. “We found out something about Jack,” he explains. “And realized that what he had been hiding was connected to the break in the other night.”
Devin looks confused. He sits down on the ground. “Turn that off. I can’t think with that on. It’s disgusting.”
Justin nods and takes the controller out of my shaking hands. He pulls me toward him and cradles my head against his shoulder. I’m not crying or even shaking, I’m just numb. Everything I just saw, everything I’ve tried to forget, it’s all directly in front of me and there’s no repressing or denying anything. I’m feeling something foreign to me, and I can’t put my finger on what it is, but then I realize, it’s everything Kate has felt for me. I’m feeling it. It’s all me right now, and it sucks. Instead of the hollowness I’ve always felt inside, something new fills me, and I think it’s called rage. I feel my fists clench up, push away from Justin and walk over to part of the brick wall that hasn’t been torn down. I pick up my arm, put my hand in a fist and punch the bricks. They are loose and collapse down on the ground. One smashes my toes, and it feels amazing. I keep going. I punch the bricks and they continue to crash around my feet. Devin and Justin begin shouting at me but I don’t hear them. All I can focus on is the physical pain I’m causing myself and it helps. Devin and Justin each grab one of my arms and I wrestle away from them and focus on the wall. They are stronger than I am, though, and their second attempt restrains me. “Let me go!” I scream. “Don’t fucking touch me!”