The Abduction of Veronica X

by Lizbeth Dusseau

  One sunny July afternoon, Daphne watched outside the kitchen window as McGill’s truck pulled away from his stone house and traveled down the road and out of sight. Feeling unusually free of worry, she left the cottage and moved toward the stone chapel some fifty feet from her own home. She had initially assumed that the building was either locked up, or too unstable to explore. McGill informed her otherwise, suggesting during one of their brief encounters that she might want to explore the old edifice. “It has a unique character you might appreciate.”

  “And was it actually used for church services?” she’d asked him.

  “Not in the formal sense. No priest or minister has ever used the chapel for regular worship. Like all the other buildings on my property, it was part of an estate. The main house was located over there.” He pointed to a rise in the landscape where she could imagine a substantial fortress of a building once sitting.

  “What happened to it?”

  “I tore it down.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “My father built it for my mother. We lived here one year and knew nothing but sadness in that house. My stillborn sibling was delivered there, and my mother went a little mad after that happened. She left, my father died… I went to live with my aunt until I was grown. When I inherited this land, I tore the house into rubble—built the wall that lines the property to the north with the stone. Too much unhappiness crowded into one space.” He shook his head sadly as the memory returned to him.

  With permission granted to freely explore the other buildings on the property, Daphne indulged, like indulging in extravagant chocolates. Exploring just one building or ruin a day she moved through the hut, the shed, the campsite and the beach house. She privately named each one. She made herself stand inside the stone walls, or what was now just an embankment and feel the earth beneath her feet. She breathed in the surrounding air as if the events that took place in that spot would suddenly come to her out of the ethers, appearing in her mind so clearly that she could live them in her imagination. She stayed clear of the rise where the house had stood, thinking it was likely spooked, and bad luck. She saved the chapel for last. Other than her own cottage, it was the most significant structure on the property. McGill’s house, while built of the same stone, was trivial in comparison—she couldn’t imagine the tiny abode was more than one room.

  Daphne spent weeks meditating in the rough gardens amidst the stone structures, her bare feet mingling with the sandy dirt. Once she felt comfortable in one spot, as if she’d learned everything there was to learn there, she moved on to another. As soon as she’d explored all of the other buildings and ruins, she was ready for the chapel.

  Seeing McGill’s truck disappear, her excitement peaked realizing that it was finally time for this last special adventure. Moving briskly from her cottage to the edifice, she wanted to run but managed to walk. Reaching the heavy oaken door with its rounded top and austere ironwork, she stopped, breathed in to calm herself, which was a pointless act, and finally took the handle and opened the door.

  She stepped inside and carefully closed the door behind her. Facing forward, her eyes took in the sight and she felt a cool draft of air tickle her skin. It was a hot muggy day outside. Inside the air was easier to breathe and there was no sun. But a strange oppressive force made her move cautiously. She tiptoed in, finding with every step, her body thirst increased. A desperate longing rose up in her like an angry creature on the loose.

  The chapel was not a brightly decorated temple to any fancy God. The God who lived here was a plain one, and like Him, there were simple wooden pews, a crude baptismal font near the door and toward the front of the chapel was a simple communion rail and altar. From a small stained-glass window to her left, where outside the sun beat down against the stone, a fiery light bled through with shadows of blue and ochre and red staining the floor with their color. McGill had been misinformed. This was a house of God, or sanctity, and she felt like a heathen inside the sacred chamber.

  Her face became flushed, her pulse rose steady. A fire burned in her crotch she could not explain.

  It had been many nights since her hand had strayed between her legs—she too often thought of Emerson when she did, so masturbating made her sad. But this was very different. Oddly, Emerson was nowhere to be found inside a mind filled with images of punishment. She journeyed back to the Dark Ages, before reason made self-flagellation perverse. If there had been a scourge to use, her back would have been bloody by the time she left. But instead of acting out the punishments of another era, she sank to the hard stone floor, banging her knees enough to bruise, and lifted her sundress. Her fingers quickly found her center wet. She rubbed lightly, and a torrent of bodily desire burst from her groin. She moaned, feeling relief and pleasure and shame wash over her. More rubbing and the pangs inside her belly sharpened.

  “Ohmygod, yes…” she exclaimed, ever so quietly, over and over again. Her pussy began to forcefully buck against her invading fingers until an orgasm brightened inside the flesh about her pubis, her thighs and her belly. She wrenched to feel the hot warmth of her desire finally sated and then sank back on her heels in a near faint, feeling wasted and dirty. The temple of any God should not be used for sin.

  The obsession fed on itself. The chapel seemed to be the only place she could get off not thinking of Emerson and Veronica X…and Bo, and Zack and Penelope and Kathy Ann. Days passed when she remained chaste. But when she saw McGill leave his property, her physical need rose up, fierce as a lion in heat. Impetuous, dark and rampant, the desire cast off her reason, her will, her own rational power of thought. Only one choice remained for her.

  Sometimes after dark, with McGill snug in his tiny house, she’d wait in the shadows by her bedroom window to see the light extinguished inside his four walls. She’d wait for an hour with the energy building inside her, then would force herself to wait another hour more, until she could be certain her landlord was asleep for the night. Only then would she slip from the cottage. Possessed by her need, she’d make her way in the dark to the chapel for the same savage experience of carnal release she required to soothe the terrible ache. Her fingers flew to the task. It would take just minutes with her fingers exploring the juicy portal between her thighs for the spasms to begin. Two, three, four fingers pushed brutally into the steamy hole and fucked it so hard it hurt. Surrounded by the simple religious icons in the tiny church, she flaunted a voracious and unrepentant lust, always wondering when it was over for one day or night, if she could ever break this cycle of debauchery.

  One afternoon, a few weeks after the torrid masturbations began, she was recovering, kneeling as she usually did before the wooden altar, when she heard the sound of the chapel door opening behind her. She practically jumped a foot then instantly scrambled to her feet.

  McGill appeared in the opening, surrounded by a halo of light behind his body, so she couldn’t see his face and could hardly make out his large form. Regardless, she knew it was McGill; she had studied every nuance of his physical movements in the past two months. She knew his body in her imagination. Knowing who it was, she shuddered now feeling like a trapped rat, ashamed of herself for taking such liberties in a house of God.

  McGill stared at her, saying nothing until he stepped inside the chapel and closed the door. As the light from behind him vanished, his physical form emerged from the darkness and she didn’t have to strain her eyes.

  “I-I was just …” her tongue felt cottony; her mouth just wouldn’t work. Her brain was far too flustered to spit out any reasonable explanation, even though it was likely that he hadn’t seen her kneeling before the altar with her hand inside her crotch.

  Still, she couldn’t explain herself now. She’d always been a terrible liar.

  “I told you you could come here,” he reminded her.

  “Yes, I do, sometimes,” she answered nervously.

  “You like to meditate?”

  “Yes, exactly,” she was relieved to agree wit
h the explanation he offered her.

  He stared at her with knowing eyes. “But…” he cocked his head as his mind worked, “I think you need my chapel for other reasons, don’t you?”

  “I-uh…don’t know what you mean.” She started to blush.

  “Something weighs heavily on your shoulders, Mrs. Gray.”

  “Mrs. Gray? Oh please don’t call me that.” She fidgeted nervously with her hands, not knowing what to do with them.

  “Marriage not going well?”

  “You know how my marriage is going. He’s never here.”

  “Pretty much like what he said.”

  “Did Emerson tell you he wasn’t coming back?”

  “Not exactly, but he told me that as far as he was concerned, you were a free woman.”

  She gazed down despondently, nodding.

  Over the course of the conversation, they’d moved progressively closer, until now, they stood no more than three feet apart. Her entire body was hot and flushed. Sweat from her brow ran in rivulets along her hairline. She looked down, making sure she wasn’t naked—her entire secret seemed written into the pores of her skin. And if not that, the sultry air screamed the truth. Thankfully, she was still wearing her dress—even in the middle of the night she’d not been bold enough to remove her clothes. Not that the desire to masturbate naked hadn’t occurred to her. She pressed her hands against her thighs to smooth the winkles in the paisley granny dress, then shifted from her right leg to her left and modestly pulled a straying dress strap back up on her shoulder.

  McGill moved another step closer and reached out, placing his hand at her neck. His skin was warm, and this gentle touch traveled though her body with lightning speed.

  “You have a powerful pent up need, Daphne Gray.”

  “You can tell?”

  “I can see it, feel it, almost taste it.”

  She breathed deep, wanting to make up the two small steps between them. She hadn’t the courage, and it took McGill firmly drawing her to him to make her petrified body move.

  “The first time, I’d rather take you in your own bed,” he said.

  Oh, my! How easily he skipped from conversation to talk of sex! But she hadn’t the courage to question him or resist. He played to every desire that owned her—lust, security, mystery, darkness. He filled all her needs in a single man. This she finally realized at the moment he made his proposition. But then, it wasn’t really a proposition, was it? It was a statement of what he would do … She wondered when.

  Daphne looked up, into his eyes, shivering, feeling bizarrely cold on this Michigan summer afternoon. There was no reason for the cold except fear.

  His hand moved to her hair, tangling his way inside it, tugging it, testing it. Every tug, every yank ripped free another spasm of desire.

  “We’ll take care of this shortly…your need to be here,” he nodded to the spot where minutes ago she masturbated. “But I have some things to take care of first.” He let go of her hair and then stepped aside, indicating that she should leave the chapel. Dazed, she walked away from him, stopping only when she reached the door. She looked back, seeing him still standing there, eyeing her. She bit her lip to feel the pain, to bring back reality, to feel her body again. Lifting the door latch, she fumbled a moment, nervously, snuck a final look at McGill and slipped out the door.

  The sun didn’t set until well after nine o’clock. It was a cloudless night with stars popping out of a dark blue heaven. She sat in the rocker outside the cottage door and looked toward a setting sun, the color of baked pumpkins, hazy and about to vanish from the sky.

  She heard the crushed gravel on the path crunch. Was he coming to her now? She hastily moved inside and waited by the kitchen table. He opened the door without knocking, and as in the chapel, he covered the doorway with a darkness that emanated from his being in a profound swoosh that had Daphne loins fluttering in a maddening frenzy.

  He came to her without asking.

  His first kiss was swift and rough, generating an instantaneous pounding in her groin. Then his hand went for her left breast, fondling it crudely. He had none of Emerson’s sensuousness, but he had his own erotic ways. She might need to grow to love it; as this was hardly what she was used to. But for now, his rough style was what she wanted more than she wanted the charming polish of Emerson and his kind.

  When he suddenly broke the clench, he pushed her toward the back of the cottage, to the bedroom and the bed. They fell to the sheets without saying a word, with his arms going around her body, devouringly. He bit into her neck and breasts in a flurry of urgent kisses, then pried her legs apart, with his hand moving under her dress and searching in the nest of curls between her legs. He found her clitoris sensitive to even the slightest touch.

  Finally, he backed off long enough to tear her dress away and stare like a conquering warrior at the treasure he’d just claimed. Coming down on her again, his erection stuffed her full, while his big body pressing on her chest made it difficult to breathe.

  After so many dry and lonely weeks, she relished the feeling of being smothered by a man who knew exactly what he wanted. Her body seemed to liquefy within his embrace.

  She stopped being afraid and being tentative, as the ticklish flutterings in her belly and crotch grew vicious. It had been too long between men. His earthy aroma, the smells of dirt and coffee and a bit of whiskey were better aphrodisiacs than most. Her legs opened wider as any reservation fled. And he banged her harder just as she hoped he would.

  “Ooph, gawd, yes, yes…” she cried without holding back. “Oh, my, yes!!”

  The pummeling was rough and abrasive. His beard scratched her skin. Places that had never been opened in her turned wild. She impulsively bit his shoulder and he slapped her face. She bit him again; he slapped her again.

  Yes! She was starting to come, Yes! Yes! She was ready, was there, was over the edges, spasming crashes going off again and again in her belly, her thighs, her brain, while her pussy sucked him in deeper, deeper, to milk his big muscle with her clenching cavern.

  She could feel his end coming quickly, and the bright burst of energy passing from him to her when he finally shuddered and gave up his body to a grunting, animal climax.

  She quivered; her back arched and the rage within her burst inside her in bright, bold spasms.

  McGill fell away from her body to the cool sheets, while Daphne lay beside him having nearly fainted. Neither talked for a long time as if they’d said everything they had to say in the last raunchy half-hour.

  And yet, the longer the silence, the more uncomfortable she became. Her mind turned back to the confrontation in the chapel as pangs of guilt and shame clouded her thoughts. What had he seen? Did he know she used his chapel for her unholy masturbations? What kind of woman did he think she was? She prayed that he would speak first, but when the silence began to scream in her ears, deafening all sane thought, she couldn’t stop herself from saying:

  “I’m sorry about all that.”

  “Sorry about what?” he came right back.

  “I mean in the chapel. I feel like I’ve desecrated your private place.”

  “Sex is as sacred to me as food and drink and worshipping God. Why not use my chapel to satisfy your physical need?”

  Oh, my, he must have seen her! She was terribly embarrassed. “How did you know?”

  “Know of your pleasuring? I’d be a fool not to guess the truth, Daphne Gray.”

  She couldn’t look at him, but could feel the hot blush rising on her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry. I’m terribly self-conscious about private things. I should never…”

  “You’ll do it again if that’s what taps your sexual core.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t now.”

  “And I say you’re lying. You’ll get over your embarrassment with me. I suspect there’s a good deal more inside that needs a good confessional.”

  “But I could never!”

  He turned to her, pulled her his way and forced
his eyes on hers. “You’ll do what I tell you to. Make no mistake about that.”

  Fear leaped on her like an angry bear.

  “No, no! This is all wrong. I am still a married woman. I love my husband and I’m waiting here for him.”

  “And you’ll wait a long time, I’m afraid. You may love him but he doesn’t love you. A man like that probably never did.”

  “Oh, but he did!” She started to cry.

  He drew her naked body into his and held her close. Their heated groins pressed together in a passionate unison that raised their sexual heat again. She felt his erection throb against her thigh, demanding, goading, ominous. She tried to push herself away, but he refused to allow it and his hand came down on her bottom with a terrific smack. The force of it reverberated through her body.

  “He gave you to me like he’d give away a worn out coat.”

  “No. He couldn’t have!” Her face contorted with pain.

  “Do you really deny it?”

  She wanted to. She wanted to believe that Emerson would come for her, but she could feel truth all through her body. The months and weeks of their shared life as Mrs. and Mrs. Gray flooded into her mind, the memories vivid, from the wildness of their courtship to the odd wedding, to the weeks of Emerson’s craziness as the author of the Writer’s Club, to their profound crime and the desperate aftermath as they ran and ran with no place to settle. She knew the truth from their first vicious moments in bed to their last colorless attempts at sex. She was worse than Kathy Ann believing in her love for Zack. There was never anything in Emerson but lust. It was never real mutual love. It took a long three minutes of memories to reacquaint herself with the truth.