The Woman

by Jack Ketchum

  He can see everything now. Her bush. No — her cunt. Everything.

  His father drops trou.

  And something else hasn’t gone soft on either of them.

  ~ * ~

  It is the way of the world and she has expected this. There is a time to dominate and attack and a time to submit and this is just another submission in a series she has lately suffered at his hands. He now spits on one of those hands and strokes her cunt and spits again and strokes his cock, takes her ass in the other hand — she smiles to herself, the wounded hand and lifts her, enters her and begins to work. And it is work because she is dry inside, has been dry since the death of First Stolen who filled her as this one never could, whose teeth marks remain on her shoulder to this day.

  She thinks of First Stolen and his teeth and his cock and hands and thus makes it easier for the man, makes her cunt slicker. She does this as she focuses on the hole in the cellar door. A small hole but one she hasn’t missed. Behind the small hole there is an eye which watches in the dark. In that eye she has recognized the same cruelty as in the man.

  Only younger. And sweeter to the taste.

  She nods to the eye and smiles.

  ~ * ~

  Jesus! Brian flinches away from the peephole as though she’d poked him in the eye. She sees him! She knows he’s there! How the hell can she know that? He hasn’t made a sound.

  And this is the second time she’s caught him.

  His cock retreats into his hand.

  But then he thinks. Who cares what she knows? She can’t tell anybody. No speaka da English. His eye returns to the peephole again. Fuck what she knows or doesn’t know.

  His father is grunting. He can hear him grunting which means it’s loud. He’s nearing home base. It occurs to him that he’s watching his own dad down there. Is there something incestuous about that? Something gay? He doesn’t think so. But he doesn’t much care one way or another. He’s watching this woman get fucked, that’s all. He’s watching her tits fall up and down, watching her thighs quiver with each of his father’s thrusts. He can almost smell her sweat.

  And then suddenly he’s coming. He’s shooting jizz all over the grass at the base of the cellar door. It’s fucking pumping out of him in jets, in spurts. Like he’s hemorrhaging out here and his cock is so sensitive he has to take his hand away or he’s going to groan out loud or faint dead away but it’s shooting out of him anyhow — his cock isn’t done with him yet — and he’s trembling all over and shooting and then finally he’s still.

  ~ * ~

  The man clutches at her breast as though he wants to rip it off her body and then moans and shudders and releases into her.

  If she has a child by the man she will kill it.

  She has done so before.

  ~ * ~

  Cleek thinks that once this really got going it was probably the best damn fuck of his life.

  Despite the odor of her mouth.

  So what’s wrong here? Why is it that he can’t wait to tuck his dick back into his shorts? Is he afraid of disease? He isn’t, not really. He can’t see her having the AIDS virus living alone out there in the woods. And anything else is treatable as the common cold nowadays.

  What, then?

  He can’t figure it.

  He looks at her. At her face, her eyes. And there it is.

  He sees something cold and blank and without any emotion whatsoever or any regard for him at all. He sees himself looking back at himself.

  He feels something vaguely like shame.

  He buttons her up. She looks fine. Like he’s never been there at all. He turns off the cellar light and leaves her in the dark.

  ~ * ~

  The Woman shifts a bit against the wooden plank behind her. When the man was fucking her pushing her back against it she had felt it give slightly, heard it give slightly. The man had not. The man was busy fucking her. She shifts her body up and then down with the plank wedged between one vertebra and the next and feels it give some more. It hurts.

  But she will work on this.

  TWENTY-THREE

  At quarter past three in the morning Genevieve Raton rolled over out of her sleep and out of a dream in which she was burning autumn leaves in the fireplace on her dad’s old farm long since sold in favor of a condo in Sarasota, realizing much too late that the flue wasn’t working right, wasn’t drawing correctly, and that leaves alight with flame were burning on the hardwood floor.

  Awoke with her left forearm shoved right into Laura Hindle’s face.

  Laura grunted and opened her pretty green eyes.

  “Sorry,” she said.

  Laura yawned and smiled. “What’s with you tonight, kiddo? You‘re not ordinarily a thrasher.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “This is the third time, you know.”

  “It is?”

  “Yep. The first time you kneed me in the belly. The second time we went hip to hip. C‘mere.”

  She opened her arms and Genevieve nestled in.

  She felt comforted immediately. The flesh comforted. It always did. The flesh was warm and safe. By now they knew each other’s bodies almost as well as they knew their own.

  “Is it that preggy kid? The one who reminds you of Dorothy?”

  “I don’t know. I was back at my dad’s house. So maybe. She used to visit me there all the time. My parents thought we were only friends.”

  “You were friends.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  Laura was a social worker by day and a part-time bartender at Vance & Eddie’s by night. She knew how to draw you out. Sometimes all it took was a silence at just the right time. Like now.

  “Old dead leaves,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “I was burning old dead leaves.”

  Laura pulled back a bit and regarded her. Then gently kissed her forehead.

  “Maybe you still are.”

  “As in…?”

  “Yes. Fallen leaves. You really did love her, didn’t you?”

  “Not enough. Not enough to make her stay.”

  “Come on. You know better than that. People can’t make other people stay. They only stay if they want to. Or need to.”

  Of course. She knew the truth in that. It had been a bitter truth at the time. But she was so very young then. And when you’re young pain can take a long time to go away. And leave its residue forever.

  She looked up into her lover’s eyes.

  “Do you need to? Stay, I mean?”

  Laura kissed her again.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without you,” she said. “I really don‘t.”

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Peg awoke sweaty and disturbed. She didn’t know by what. She almost never remembered her dreams, especially the bad ones. But she felt sure she’d had a bad one.

  Her mother was standing in the doorway. Darleen was already out of bed and somebody was running water in the bathroom.

  “What are you doing, Peg? Time for school.”

  “I’m not feeling so good, mom. I’m really not. Okay if I stay home today?”

  Her mother looked angry. She didn’t know why she would, first thing in the morning.

  “There’s nothing wrong with you,” she said. “Get up.”

  “It’s only a half-day. Teachers’ conferences, remember? Please? If I get up I’m gonna be sick.”

  It was true. She felt queasy.

  If she got up there would be breakfast. The very thought of breakfast made her stomach turn. Her mother waved her hand in front of her face like she was swatting at a pesky fly.

  “I don’t have time for this. Fine!”

  She stalked away.

  What the hell was that about? she thought. She wasn’t about to ask.

  But she’d bet it had something to do with her dad.

  Or that strange, almost fascinating creature in the cellar.

  She pulled up the covers and closed her eyes and when the sounds of morning in the Cleek household
eventually ceased, fell back to sleep.

  ~ * ~

  Brian was standing at the school bus stop when the Escalade glided by. His father gave him the usual salute and Brian returned it.

  With a lot more vigor than his dad was used to seeing.

  ~ * ~

  Peg’s desk was empty. With the kids all working on their pop quiz that was all she really had to focus on. The desk was empty. Up to today her attendance at least had been perfect even if her work was not. She thought, what now?

  Laura was right. She was still burning leaves for Dorothy. In her arms she’d drifted off to sleep again and woke in the same position so evidently her thrashing had been over for the night. That didn’t mean it was over for good, though. In a way she’d been thrashing around all day today.

  By the time the school bell rang a good quarter of the kids were still working on the quiz and a collective groan went up from those who hadn‘t finished. It hadn’t been a particularly tough quiz. But then it wasn’t a particularly bright class either.

  “Enjoy your half-day of freedom,” she said. “Leave your papers on my desk, please.”

  She watched them file by and thought, they sure can vacate fast. A few smiled at her, a few said bye, but for the most part they were just in a hurry to get the hell out of there. That was fine with her. She’d have time for a smoke back by the ticket booth with Bill Fulmer before the conference.

  She wondered what Bill would say about what she was thinking.

  She dug the paper with the Cleeks’ phone number and address on it out of her purse, placed it on her blotter and smoothed out all the wrinkles.

  ~ * ~

  The bus ride home was typically manic when you had a bunch of kids with a half-day off. Loud and obnoxious. Kids throwing spitballs in back. Guys flicking the earlobes of the girls in front of them. Some days he might have gotten a little obnoxious himself, what the hell. But today he had other things on his mind. Good things. Important things.

  So that when Cyndi walked up the aisle and sat down beside him she was a distraction he didn’t need.

  “Hey, Brian. A bunch of us are going to the movies. The new TWILIGHT movie. Want to come along?”

  “Nah. TWILIGHT’s lame. Besides, I gotta get home. Got stuff I gotta do.”

  Cyndi never had glommed on to the fact that he’d planted gum in her hairbrush. The poor kid really liked him. He could tell she was disappointed. But that’s what she was — a kid. Just a kid. Pretty, though. Too bad.

  “Okay, then,” she said. “Maybe next time.”

  “Sure. Next time.”

  Like there would ever be a next time.

  He watched her slink back down the aisle to her seat and in a little while his stop came around and the door creaked open and he got off the bus.

  ~ * ~

  Peg was lying on the couch, still in her pj’s and covered by an old quilt, reading UNDER THE DOME for the third time when he came rushing in headed straight for the kitchen. She considered saying something like what’s the big hurry, Brian? but she knew it would come out bitchy because bitchy was how she was feeling and besides, they were just about to bust Barbie and Rusty out of jail and gruesome though it was, that was a part she liked.

  So she said nothing. He didn’t even notice she was there.

  ~ * ~

  The note on the refrigerator beneath the magnetized ELVIS LIVES photo was in his mother’s hand. Darlin’s dental appointment it said, which he already knew. Sandwich stuff in the fridge. Feed dogs, Brian. Home by 3. Mom. No X’s and O’s today. His mother had been in a mood.

  Instead of making himself a sandwich he wolfed down what his sister called a little-man cookie and pocketed a couple more. Took the keyring off its hook on the support ring and went back outside. He noted the old rusty push mower which had probably belonged to his grandfather leaning against the porch, one of its broken blades lying beside it. It had been down in the cellar along with all that other junk the day they made room for her. He guessed his father had finally decided to throw something out.

  He took the steps two at a time.

  ~ * ~

  She glanced out the window and saw him loping toward the barn. She’d read the note on the fridge. He was supposed to feed the dogs. But she couldn’t remember ever seeing him so eager to fulfill that particular duty.

  She went back to the book.

  ~ * ~

  In the barn the dogs were all excited barking and snapping but the dogs could wait. ‘Till hell froze over as far as he was concerned. He had other stuff to do.

  He went directly to his dad’s old toolbox and rummaged inside.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  This is the boy whose eyes hunt her through the hole in the cellar door. The boy who burned her. The boy with the gun.

  His body betrays him. He walks down the stairs and over to her as though it’s nothing to him — but it is something. Something that makes him jitter inside. When he reaches out to her to do as his father as done, to remove her clothing, his hands tremble. The boy is a coward. It’s time to show him that.

  She hisses. Long and hard through her bared teeth. She is a cat, a snake.

  She strikes him dead with her eyes.

  ~ * ~

  Brian lurches back. And then thinks, fuck you, there’s nothing you can do to me. His hands return to the buttons of her dress. By the time he’s finished he’s already got a hard-on. But he wants to play with her a while.

  He takes a cookie out of his pocket. In the other pocket is the real toy. But for now he breaks the cookie in half and eats half of it and then holds the other half out to her. Daring her mouth. Daring those teeth.

  She’s fast, he knows. But he figures he’s faster.

  She won’t accept it. She turns her fucking head away.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?” he says. “I mean, who doesn’t like cookies?”

  So he eats that half too. He takes his time chewing, looking her over.

  She’s naked underneath there. All he has to do is lift the dress.

  His hard-on’s a whopper now.

  He reaches into his other pocket and takes out his father’s needle-nose pliers. He shows them to her. Snaps them open and closed a couple of times just to show her what they can do. He wonders if she gets the picture. He wonders if she bruises easily.

  He pokes her in the ribs.

  Pokes her again. Hard this time. The pliers aren’t sharp enough to draw blood but you can bet they hurt. He pokes her in the belly. In each of her breasts. He hears the sharp intake of breath. Each time he pokes her she throws herself back against the shelf behind her but her nipples are hard now. He wonders if she’s enjoying this.

  He sure is.

  Isn’t that what happens to women when they’re enjoying having sex? Their nipples get hard?

  He throws her dress over her shoulder just as he’s seen his dad do and stands there a moment to take her in. There’s all of a sudden this really strange, really good sensation. And not just in his cock. He feels good all over, tingly, strong. If this is what power feels like, he likes it very much.

  He runs his hands over her belly up to her breasts and squeezes. Her skin isn’t as soft as he’d imagined but her nipples are huge and long as budding twigs. The woman squirms beneath his touch as though something dirty’s touching her and he doesn’t like that at all, there’s nothing dirty about him, this is only natural. He’s a guy and she’s a woman and this is what women are all about, right? So fuck her. He grabs the tits again and squeezes so hard he thinks they‘ll pop.

  She growls at him and sniffs the air and spits out some words in that stupid language he doesn’t understand.

  “Feoil ur! Muiceoil!”

  ~ * ~

  “Fresh meat! Pig-meat!”

  She says this with contempt and presses back against the wooden board behind her, feels it shift and give again, give a little more each time. The boy is confident now. The boy thinks he has power. If she can break this board he will not
feel so confident anymore, not at all.

  She can suffer his hands. The hands are nothing.

  ~ * ~

  She repeats her words and Brian doesn’t like that one bit. He gets her goddamn tone if not the meaning of the words. It’s as though she thinks he’s beneath her. As though she’s somebody. Time to show her who’s who, Brian, he thinks. Time to seriously fuck with her.

  His parents haven’t got a clue god knows but he’s seen stuff like this on the internet, exciting stuff that seemed like it was made just for him, just for Brian Cleek. There are dozens of sites — probably hundreds. They all make noises about consenting adults and role play and submission but he knows what they’re really all about. They’re all about this.

  He reaches over with the pliers open this time and snatches up her left nipple in its serrated jaws and twists.

  The woman jerks up and back but makes no sound. No hisses and no cursing — he assumes that was cursing— she just sucks it up. So he twists again. A full one-hundred-eighty degrees this time. Still no sound. Let’s see if she can go all three sixty he thinks and jams his free hand into his pants working her and working himself and he’s just about to come, he’s that close when he hears footsteps pounding on the stairs behind him.

  “Brian! What the hell are you doing?”

  It’s his sister Peg, closing in on him like a storm cloud. He palms the pliers and takes his hand out of his pants and suddenly he’s scared. He’s not in charge anymore. Far from it. Caught is what he is.

  “You’re in trouble now, you little shit.”

  “You got no need to be down here, Peg. This is guys’ business. Men’s business.”

  He’s trying for indignation, for defiance. But he can see she’s not buying any.

  “Men’s…??? I don’t see any men around here you fucking little pervert!”

  And that pisses him off. Really pisses him off. He’s no pervert. He’s doing what any guy would do under the circumstances. And what plenty of people do on the net every day. Just who the hell does Big Sister think she is, anyway? His conscience? He doesn’t need any.

  “Screw you, Peg!”

  He takes a step toward her and it’s as though that single step has created some sort of force field between them because she takes one step back. He does it again and so does she and he realizes she’s seen something in his face, he doesn’t know what exactly but it scares her, she’s a lot more scared now than he is. He’s smiling. He considers the pliers in his hand. He considers his sister.