This Town Needs a Monster

by Andersen Prunty

  Maybe having the camera on me was making me nervous but I lasted a lot longer than I thought I would. I kept fucking her as hard as I could, ramming the bed against the wall, smacking her ass until it was red. I felt out of my head.

  I pulled out and rolled her over, yanking her legs apart and reentering her, trying not to catch even a glimpse of the photo.

  “She wants you to finish in her ass,” Dawn said. “That’s the way Barcie liked it.”

  I continued fucking her hard before pulling out. I ran some of her juices around her asshole, spit into my hand and rubbed that over my cock. Taylor pulled her legs back, reaching down and spreading herself for me. I pressed my cock against her tight asshole, thinking it probably wasn’t going to work.

  “Don’t be gentle,” Dawn said. “Fuck that little asshole. Some girls like to hurt.”

  I wasn’t gentle.

  I ignored Taylor’s twisting and whimpering and came inside of her a couple of minutes later.

  After getting dressed and heading back to the car, I felt awkward and weird. The girls, on the other hand, seemed ebullient and chatty.

  We went back to Dawn’s house.

  Outside the car, she said, “Follow me.”

  I followed her through the house and down a short, carpeted staircase into a fully finished basement. On the far side, she opened a heavy wooden door and I followed her through it. I half-expected some kind of torture dungeon or something with a sinister aura, but it was a completely normal looking home office. I felt like it was probably Sheriff Bando’s but didn’t really know.

  Dawn sat behind a heavy wooden desk.

  “Sit,” she said.

  I sat in one of the two chairs facing the desk.

  “Am I in trouble?” I said, feeling like I’d been called into the principal’s office.

  “Cute.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But, actually, you are in trouble. Quite a bit.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just kept looking at her face and trying not to fidget. I felt like anything I said would be incriminating. I glanced into her eyes but it was tough to keep eye contact. There was something empty and soulless there. At first I’d mistaken it for some kind of sadness.

  “I guess you liked what happened back at Barcie’s? You didn’t resist at all. Came a lot too.”

  “Resisting hasn’t really helped a lot.”

  “I thought it was because you had some chemistry.”

  I shrugged. I didn’t really know what she meant.

  She tapped something into her phone.

  A few seconds later there was a gentle knock on the door.

  “It’s open,” Dawn said.

  Taylor stood in the doorway.

  “Sit,” Dawn said.

  Taylor sat in the chair next to me.

  “Go ahead,” Dawn said, tapping her phone and training it on Taylor.

  Taylor reached back and unclipped the gauze wrapping her head. She slowly removed it. My heartbeat increased. She turned her head away from me as she removed the last of the gauze.

  Something wasn’t right.

  I knew there had to be some horrible reason for what had just happened. Making fuck videos might have been part of what Dawn did, but not when it came to me.

  Taylor’s hair had been long and blond.

  This girl’s hair was short and black.

  I recognized the hair.

  How had I not recognized the body?

  My heart pounded faster and faster.

  She finally brought her head back up and turned to face me, a malicious smile spread across her face.

  Stasia Warner. White Power Larry’s wife.

  Fuck me.

  She put her hand on my knee. “That was so much better than the last time. I guess all it took was thinking I was somebody else.”

  My mouth was dry and I couldn’t speak.

  My mind raced.

  The first time we’d done anything I was pretty drunk and it had happened in the relative darkness of my bedroom. I distinctly remembered the swastika tramp stamp and thought there’d been more tattoos. The girl I’d fucked a little while ago definitely didn’t have any. Was it possible I had just fucked Stasia again or had they swapped her out while I was in the office with Dawn? Why would they even do something like that? Maybe Stasia had covered the tattoos or maybe they weren’t even real in the first place.

  “I know,” Dawn said. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “Why?” I managed to croak out. “Why are you fucking with me?”

  “It’s what we do. It’s just business.”

  “It’s fucked up.”

  “Not really. It’s pretty practical if you think about it. Beats the hell out of college.”

  “I’m gonna go find something to eat,” Stasia said. She stood up. “Bye, lover.”

  “Before you go,” Dawn said. “I have a question for Brad. Brad, who was the last person you jerked off to?”

  “You,” I said. “It’s been you ever since we met.”

  “That’s it,” Dawn said to Stasia. “You can go now.”

  I watched Stasia walk to the door, still trying to figure out if this was the same girl I’d followed into Barcie’s house.

  “What was the point of that?”

  “What? It was just a question.”

  “Were you trying to make her feel bad?”

  “Bad? Stasia never feels bad. I guess I was just curious.”

  “You could have just asked me. She didn’t really need to hear that.”

  “Oh, I think she did. I’m pretty sure her answer would have been the same.”

  “I quit my job today.”

  “I know. How was Denver?”

  Her question momentarily took the wind out of me. How did she know I’d gone to Denver? Of course she knew. I was beginning to think Dawn knew just about everything about me.

  I swallowed and coughed, my throat dry. “I missed you,” I said. “So I came back.”

  Dawn stood up.

  “I want you to lick my pussy again.”

  She pulled her underwear down and sat on the edge of the desk, spreading her legs.

  I pushed the chair back, got down on my knees, and went to work on the sheriff’s wife.

  This was all I’d wanted, all I’d been able to think about since the last time I’d done this, and greedily lapped up every bit of her I could. Everything else melted away.

  I was hard the entire time.

  She seemed mostly unresponsive.

  I again went to that same heightened place I had the first time I’d done it. If I had any regrets about coming back to Gethsemane, they were all erased.

  * * *

  Later we went to a party in a house in the middle of nowhere. Most of the people there were much younger than me. The main purpose of the party seemed to be to destroy the house. I drank way too much. By the time we left just after midnight, the house was nearly demolished. We had to leave because someone started a fire. I had no idea what the point of it was but I had a lot of fun. It seemed relatively non-threatening compared to a number of the things I’d seen Dawn do up to that point.

  Stasia drove. Dawn sat in the passenger seat and I sat in the back.

  Dawn pulled up an image on her phone and held it up to me.

  “Do you think she’s pretty?” she asked.

  This always seemed like a loaded question coming from another girl. Then again, I supposed there really wasn’t anything happening between Dawn and me, other than the occasional vagina licking, and she had recently coerced me into fucking her very attractive friend only a few hours ago so I thought I could be honest.

  “Sure,” I said. “But I’ve had quite a bit to drink.” I decided to qualify the statement because Dawn still terrified me a little.

  “Good,” she said. “We’re meeting her in a few minutes.”

  “I don’t think I’m up for much,” I said.

  “You don’t have to be up for anything. This isn’t about you.”r />
  She opened the glove compartment and I heard the rattle of the chain.

  “I definitely don’t think I can take any more of that,” I said.

  “Any more of what?”

  I pointed to the chain. “That.”

  Dawn quickly turned around and brought the chain down across my thighs. In my attempt to not howl out in pain I let out a defenseless whimper that sounded even more pitiful and embarrassing.

  “This chain is transformative,” she said with probably more passion than I’d heard her say anything. “Do you want to get out of the car?”

  “No.” I kept my head down and gently rubbed my burning thighs.

  Stasia pulled the car into a Krispy Kreme parking lot somewhere outside of Dayton. I was pretty sure it was Kettering again.

  A couple parking spaces over, a slender attractive girl—the one from the picture—sat leaning against a Volkswagen convertible eating a donut that looked huge in her small hand.

  Dawn got out of the car and approached the girl. I rolled my window down and asked Stasia if she had a cigarette. She handed me one and I lit it and it wrapped me in a layer of comfort as I inhaled all the sense memories that came with it.

  “Are you Kat?” Dawn asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m Dawn.”

  “Wooow.” The girl drew out the word like meeting Dawn was some kind of honor. “I didn’t think you’d come.”

  “Come on. Let’s get in the car.”

  “Okay,” the girl said. “Lemme get my purse.” She turned and flung the donut out into the parking lot before staggering and nearly falling down. “Aw, fuck it.”

  Dawn placed a hand on her back and guided her toward the car. She opened the door opposite mine and the girl collapsed onto the seat. I was fairly drunk and the alcohol fumes wafting off this girl still seemed overpowering.

  She didn’t acknowledge Stasia or me at all. She sat at a slight angle, her glassy eyes fixed on Dawn.

  I rolled my window up a little and continued smoking. I didn’t really know what was going on. I figured this girl—Kat—was another one of Dawn’s actresses and we’d be taking her to a motel or something, maybe back to the storage sheds behind Barcie’s house. Or maybe not, since Barcie was dead.

  “I hate to be a buzzkill,” Stasia said, “but if I’m not home by three I’m going to catch hell.”

  “It shouldn’t take long,” Dawn said. “You need me to talk to him?”

  By ‘him,’ I assumed she meant White Power Larry. The thought of tiny little Dawn somehow rationalizing to a six-and-a-half foot Aryan lumberjack seemed hilarious but, well, maybe Dawn had some control over him too. She was married to the sheriff, after all.

  “Should be okay,” Stasia said. “As long as I’m not too late.”

  Stasia continued to drive toward Dayton. We ended up back in East Dayton in the well-lit but abandoned and overgrown parking lot of a closed up warehouse.

  Dawn and Stasia got out of the car. I got out too, a little wobbly on my feet. Dawn went around to the trunk and opened it up. When I glanced back into the car, Kat was sitting up straight, breathing deeply with her eyes closed.

  Dawn pulled out the camera and tripod and set it up a few feet from the car.

  “Go,” Dawn said.

  Stasia opened Kat’s door and brutally pulled her out. Kat went down on the grass-veined asphalt. Stasia crouched down and fumbled with the button of Kat’s tiny shorts. She yanked them down, revealing light blue underwear with a yellow flower in the crotch. Stasia smirked and ripped those off too.

  Kat didn’t struggle. She lay on her back, staring at Dawn who swung the chain slowly in her hand.

  Dawn pointed at Kat’s cunt, looked at me, and said, “Get down there.”

  “I didn’t think I was going to have to do anything,” I protested.

  Dawn lashed out with the chain, striking me hard across the lower back.

  I stumbled toward Kat and got down on my stomach between her legs.

  Stasia grabbed her wrists, pulled them well above her head and then stepped on each hand with a heavy black boot.

  I began licking the girl’s pussy, parting her lips surrounded by blondish peach fuzz. She tasted like strawberries with just the faintest hint of urine and chemicals and I wondered if she had prepared for this or if she always preferred a strawberry-scented crotch.

  The chain whistled through the air and across Kat’s face.

  Kat screamed and twitched, her bladder letting go.

  I pulled my head away from her and looked up at her face in time to see the chain come down again. The tip of the chain licked the asphalt and created a spark. I couldn’t look at Kat’s face. I looked at her lower stomach as it clenched and unclenched and went back to work on her pussy because I knew that was what I was supposed to do and didn’t want to get hit with the chain again.

  After Dawn hit her several more times, Kat released some sort of mighty, final spasm before lying still.

  I stood up, careful not to look down at her.

  Stasia stepped off Kat’s hands, bent down, and yanked the girl’s shirt and bra off. Then she spit on her and headed back to the car.

  Dawn quickly dismantled the camera and tripod and did the same. I followed.

  Once we were back in the car I said, “Do you think she’s going to be okay?”

  Dawn and Stasia laughed.

  They laughed most of the way back to my apartment.

  Pussylicker

  I felt lost and restless in my apartment. I had begun to not only expect but to look forward to my adventures with Dawn.

  What else did I have?

  After beating the girl in the warehouse lot, Stasia had dropped me off in front of the apartment and Dawn had said, “I’ll call you when I need you. Keep your phone on you.”

  And I had.

  And I’d found myself doing almost nothing but waiting for her to call or text.

  I didn’t just sit around. I was way too anxious for that. I read some of the Murakami book I’d been working on for the past month but had a hard time getting into it and couldn’t seem to focus on more than a couple sentences at a time. An hour would pass and I wouldn’t remember a single thing I’d just read. It was the same thing with the films I tried to watch. I cooked little meals and cleaned the apartment. I kept music playing in the background constantly because I didn’t think I could take the silence but I couldn’t tell you what song was playing at any given time.

  I began monitoring the crime section of the Dayton Daily News website to see if there was any mention of the girl, Kat. I didn’t see anything. Maybe she’d been okay after all. Maybe they just hadn’t found the body.

  I got another idea and searched Gethsemane obituaries for Barcie’s death. I didn’t see it listed and thought that was a little curious but supposed some families may not want to list that kind of thing. Maybe they were embarrassed of her. Maybe she wasn’t dead at all.

  I grabbed my phone and texted the number I had for her.

  “How’s the grave? Comfortable?”

  I began scanning Google for images of mass graves and ended up jerking off to brutal rape porn.

  When I picked up my phone again, I saw Barcie had texted me back.

  It said, “I’m so cold.”

  I was too freaked out to respond.

  I went back to the internet and scanned through the past few weeks of the Gethsemane paper’s very modest crime section, looking for something about Travis. Surely, if he were dead or missing, there would be something about it in there. Hell, that would probably be big news in Gethsemane.

  I didn’t see anything.

  My thoughts drifted to Dawn again.

  What did I want from her?

  What did she want from me?

  What was she doing when she wasn’t around me?

  Did she ever act in her own videos?

  Did she spend the days her husband was away getting fucked senseless by guys she met on the internet? She’d said she
didn’t like cock but how much of what she said could really be believed? I mean, she was married, after all. Did that doughy old cop get to come home and fuck Dawn every day? I couldn’t really imagine it but didn’t see how it could really be any other way.

  Was Dawn just fucking with me or did she have bigger plans for me?

  I didn’t want to run around the greater Dayton area assaulting young girls with chains but . . . maybe I would?

  I wanted to say I wouldn’t but I was starting to think that almost anything would be better than sitting around this apartment, broke, unemployed, and bored out of my fucking skull. It felt like what I’d been doing since graduating high school, for the most part.

  I walked to the convenience store a block away.

  Stepping into the Snack Barn, it was like the harsh fluorescent glow threw a bright light on my internal fear. Stasia and White Power Larry stood at the counter. Neither one of them acknowledged me and my heart slowed a little. I glanced at them on my way back to the beer cooler. Stasia looked good, all pale skin contrasting with her black clothes. White Power Larry looked menacing. Huge and bald, his physique hinting he’d been athletic at one time. A giant swastika screamed from the back of his skull. Maybe he was stocking up on energy drinks for the next rally.

  I crouched down, out of sight, pretending to scan the beer. When I popped back up they were gone.

  I still wanted to make sure they were completely off the premises before leaving the store so I grabbed a twelve-pack of beer and wandered around grabbing things like Doritos and Funyons and beef sticks and a couple of frozen breakfast burritos for in the morning. I took my haul up to the register and asked for two packs of cigarettes, figuring I might as well go all in.

  My eyes went to a pamphlet on the counter. It was a cheap Xeroxed thing, the front covered with swastikas and the American flag. The title or headline or whatever read: PREPARE FOR THE COMING MIDDLE EASTERN BLACK PLAGUE.

  The clerk, a teenager with a mop of black hair and stoned red eyes, saw that I was looking at it and said, “Dude told me to give it to the owner. I’m gonna read it for shits.”

  “I’m sure it’s Pulitzer material.”

  “Scary dude.”

  “Mind if I borrow it?”

  It took him a couple seconds to digest what I’d asked him. He rubbed his fingertips across the top of the pamphlet. I glanced at his nametag: Kren.