You set the pinecone afire with your lighter and lay it at your feet. You can feel the heat warming your naked thighs, your swollen genitals. And you look back out and Mrs. Lovejoy is no longer in her window. It is just an empty rectangle of soft white light.
“Is that supposed to be a candle in the window for me?”
You are caught. Literally caught with your pants down. And a forbidden fire. In one fluid movement you pull up your pants and stomp the pinecone out under your workboot.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Don’t tell.”
“Don’t tell who? It’s just you and me.” She is wearing jeans and an unbuttoned blouse, her bra visible.
“I’m sorry.”
She does not respond. What she does is slip off her blouse. She reaches behind and unfastens the white bra. And her breasts swing free and they are perfect full glands. Substantial flesh that gravity has somehow not yet touched. And you realize they must be implants. That her husband bought those for her.
“If we’re going to look, let’s see what we’re looking at. I wanna see. Do you wanna see?”
You nod your agreement and you are scared to death. You have never had a sexual experience with another human being. You do not know what to do. Your heart is beating so hard and so fast you can feel it in your throat, choking you, robbing you of air.
Mrs. Lovejoy tugs down her soft faded jeans. She is not wearing underwear. Her stomach is flat and tan and tapers down to a pale planchette of rough hair. Way more hair than you have. And in the moonlight streaming in—yes, the moon!—you can see tiny flecks of moisture caught in the lower part of that tangle. Little slippery beads. And she parts the planchette and presents herself to you. And you see. It is red and smooth and deep. And she spreads herself apart and it is so smooth and so red and so wet. And the entire world is red smooth wetness that promises a depth that will pull you down into it, and that is where you want to be that is where you want to go that is where you want to go that is where you want go and Jesus Jesus Jesus your pants are back around your ankles and her fingers have disappeared in the smooth red wetness first one then two then three and you do not need the fire you do not need the fire this is all you ever wanted this is all you ever wanted this is all you ever wanted. And she is crying out like she is in pain. Over and over, crying out. It is spiritual. Like Sid’s pain, Mrs. Lovejoy’s pain is spiritual.
Your orgasm is different, stronger, more intense. It comes from a place within you that you have never drawn from before. You do not even have to touch yourself. You take your eyes off of the red wet smooth world only long enough to look down at yourself. At the five-and-three-quarter inches of your carefully measured, mostly bald dick. It twitches like a divining rod that has sensed a massive underground lake. It spasms, again and again, bringing up thick streamers of ejaculate, not the watery seminal fluid you are used to, but gelatinous opaque semen that arcs through the air and lands at Mrs. Lovejoy’s feet like an offering. Like alms.
You are riding around with Chandler. Tweaked on crank. Or something. Whatever that powder is. Bath salts. Molly. Krokodil. Carpet cleaner. Who the fuck knows? Your mind is racing. Your thoughts are no-thoughts. You do not want to have thoughts. You want what is to come—to come. Let life wash over you. Do not let your thoughts try to alter the future. The future is set in stone. Carbon fiber. Billion-year-old carbon.
But then Billy creeps into your mind. And your no-thoughts become real-thoughts and real-thoughts are just an attempt to change a future that will not be changed. Billy.
Chandler speeds past a burnt-out gas station. Esso. You flip down the passenger-side visor and look at your face in the dirty mirror mounted there. You’ve got a pimple on your cheek. Like you’re a teenager again. You set a finger on either side of it and squeeze, but it won’t pop. It isn’t ripe enough to pop yet. You need to stop fucking with it. It’s getting red. Inflamed. Probably impurities in that bathtub speed working their way out of your body. No telling what Uday cuts it with.
The road opens up and green pasture rolls by on each side, hemmed in by rusty barbed wire. Cows grazing. After a while, Chandler pulls off to the side and stops the car. He tells you to roll down your window, so you do. It is ingrained in you. You do what Chandler tells you to do. He pulls Bessie from under the seat and leans across you.
Someone watching from a distance would see a once-red but now washed-out-burgundy 1997 Cutlass Supreme. From the passenger window of the Cutlass, an arm extends holding a handgun. The snubnose seems to scan the field, before taking aim at a cow in the distance. The innocuous pop of the revolver firing is later followed by the pleasant odor of burnt propellant wafting in the clean mountain air.
The bullet misses the cow but digs a divot in the earth that disturbs the bovine. The cow moves away, lumbering. What the observer then sees (and you are the observer, your no-thoughts place you outside of yourself sometimes, just an onlooker watching your own life unfold) is a profoundly fat man heaving himself up out of the driver’s side of the car, the folds of his black muumuu billowing grandly like a judge or a nun. The fat man yells back into the car, “Hey Frankie! Watch this!”
The fat man crosses in front of the car to the shoulder of the road. In a feat of contortion you would not think possible for someone so large, the man holds the gun two-handed, behind his back. Then he bends over so that he is peering between his legs, under the hem of the muumuu, looking back at the now meandering cow. He aims. Technically, the fat man is shooting the pistol both behind his back and upside down. He fires. The slug pierces the animal’s brain. The cow drops.
“Now that’s shooting!”
It takes the fat man far longer to unbend himself and stand erect than it did for him to bend over and fire. But eventually he rights himself and squeezes his body back into the sedan. He has to pull the door two times before it pushes his fat out of the way enough to click shut.
The Cutlass takes off, as slow as the lumbering cow once was. The car looks misshapen, knocked out of true with the driver’s side riding too low to the ground.
Chandler steers with his knees while he replaces the spent rounds in the revolver.
“What the fuck does he think this is? Vacation fucking Bible school? An after fucking school job?”
Chandler is different now. He didn’t used to be like this. He was sweet. Kind. You know they did something to him up at the Diagnostic Prison. Hooked him up to some machine. Or maybe it was just the speed.
Chandler puts the gun back under the seat and lights up a joint sprinkled with dust. You have done so much powder you feel that the molecules of your body have become polymer. You are chemical and plastic. You are spun. You are poly. You are stardust. You are golden. You hit the joint when Chandler passes it to you. You have not slept or eaten in three days. How can Chandler be so fucking fat and tweak nonstop? How is that possible?
“He’s supposed to be watching the place so we can rob it. ‘Oh, they’ve got a really neat garden.’ What the fuck is that? Bullshit! That’s what the fuck it is. Who is this kid? Harry Potter? I’m telling you we’ve got to move. The feds. The feds. You think local cops are bad? You don’t know. Do you hear what I’m saying to you? The heat. The heat is closing in. I’ve got to have money. You don’t know. You don’t know what I’ve seen.”
You are chemical. You are synthetic. And you’ve got to get yourself back to the garden.
“White slave market. We could sell the kid. Young white kid like that. Two thousand. Easy. I’m not kidding. You think I’m kidding? You don’t know.”
You place your hand on Chandler’s right knee and apply downward pressure. The Cutlass grunts and lurches forward. You use every crank-fueled sinewy synthetic bit of strength you have to force Chandler’s leg down and onto the accelerator.
Chandler screams like a girl as the Cutlass flies into a mountain curve. The speed is exhilarating. It cleans your mind of the toxins trapped there. Maybe this will clear up the pizza face you’re getting. You feel the molecules o
f your body melding with the car. You are syntheticgoldenstardustchemical.
The car is all over the road. The pasture land is gone, replaced with steep mountain passes, now just a golden chemical dropoff. Death.
Finally Chandler’s screaming pierces the plastic film in which your mind has been wrapped.
“. . . are you doing? Are you crazy? Die! We’ll die. We’re gonna die! You’re gonna kill us. I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I was just kidding! FRANKIE!!!! PLEASE!!!!!”
You release Chandler’s leg. The Cutlass returns to normal speed. Chandler is hyperventilating. He tries to push words out of his mouth, but his lungs want air flowing in only.
“What . . . fuck . . . wrong . . . you . . . crazy?”
The spiked joint has gone out, so you fire it up. Billion-year-old carbon. You are stardust. You are angel dust. You are devil dust. You are Sevin Dust. You are house dust. You are Endust. And you’ve got to get yourself back to the garden and dust that motherfucker.
You put the roach between Chandler’s lips and he slurps on it like a kid with the dregs of a milkshake. You wait until Chandler has got himself together. This is the first time you have ever stood up to Chandler. You look him in the eye.
“Don’t ever talk about hurting Billy.”
“It’s cool, Frankie. It’s cool. I was just kidding around. For the love of fuck. Almost killed us.”
“You coulda put your other foot on the brake.”
“Guess I wasn’t thinking clearly. Didn’t realize there was going to be an impromptu driving exam. Next time I’ll study beforehand.”
You flip the visor down and get back to work on that zit.
You are fucking her. You are actually fucking her.
She grabs hold of your skinny white ass, pulling you deeper inside her. She wants every bit of that damn-near six inches of dick that juts like stone from between your legs. She wants it between her legs. And you are actually fucking her.
She brought you up to her bedroom. She took your clothes off. Stripped you. And you were afraid that you would not be hard. Because this was not jacking off. This was touching. This was touching another person and that person touching you. And she undid your pants and pushed them down to your ankles and your almost-half-a-foot of cock sprang out like a steel rod, like a lead pipe, and her mouth was on it hungry for it and she took it all the way in, her lips touching the patches of pubic hair, and up and down and up and down and she was living for it, living for it. And you were not thinking of fire. Not thinking of fire. This was normal. And she pushed you back on the bed and you were amazed at how cold and soft the sheets were and then she was pulling off your shoes and socks and tugging your jeans completely off. And your cock beat and bobbed and bounced on your belly—cold and hard as her saliva evaporated on the shaft. And you could feel it maybe shrinking a little bit. Shriveling. Getting soft. And you wished you could hold fire in your hands. A flame to excite you. But then she was on top of you and you didn’t know when she took her clothes off, but they were off and she was naked, her tits like something drawn on a bathroom stall. And in a single fluid movement she was on top of you, tits swaying, her hand guiding your just-hard-enough cock inside her as she opened her red orb to you, for you and only you the red silky flesh was open and it grabbed hold of your cock and you were rock hard and thrusting up as she was thrusting down and you leaned your torso forward to catch those swaying fantasy tits in your mouth but they were too fast and too heavy and you sucked and bit at them as they swung past and your lips sometimes latched on and then lost them again.
And then she was making her own sounds. Tiny little pet sounds that were just for her but getting louder. And you could smell the funk and the musk of all the juices that were flowing through her and dripping down your balls and slicking your thighs and that smell drove you crazy. And then she was screaming. She was screaming. Not just screaming but screaming your name. Billy. She was screaming Billy and then she was sitting straight up on you, grinding herself brutally against her cock. No, not her cock. Your cock. Your cock your cock your cock. She ground so hard and her pussy grabbed hold so tight that it hurt you but she was finished screaming. It was over. That part was over. And she rolled off you. Except that she held onto you when she rolled. So that you were then on top of her. You never separated. You stayed plugged in. And then you started humping. Clenching your butt cheeks and sliding deeper into her. And out of her. And in. And faster. And deeper. And you are fucking her. You are actually fucking her.
You do not need fire.
You are pounding her. You are a man. You force her legs rudely apart. You grab her by the ankles and spread her legs as wide as possible and she gasps as you go ever deeper and she has no choice this is what you want and you will do whatever you want and you do not need fire and she can’t stop you even if she says no more she can’t stop you and you have her feet pinned behind her head and feel that cock bitch feel that cock take it take it take it and she likes that and you pound and pound and your body is a weapon you are using against her your cock is a weapon and she is powerless to stop you and spread those fucking legs bitch you are moving up and down back and forth so fast and she is so wet and so powerless against you and you are panting like a dog in the sun and crying out as fast as you are pounding and she can’t ever stop you.
It is a pleasure to fuck.
You have scheduled this training to coincide with your regular chat session with Madison, a girl you have never met. You want the cadets to see how easy it is to manipulate a child.
ROCKERME — So u finished it
MADISON_44 — 2nite prob
ROCKERME — ur team win the game ystrday?
MADISON_44 — bruins 11 allstars 2 wut u think
ROCKERME — think u guys kicked srius butt
MADISON_44 — LMAO!
ROCKERME — :)
MADISON_44 — how r u guys doing? Still losin?
ROCKERME — don’t ask :(
“Children think they are safe. They think they are Internet savvy. And they are. Children today are raised to be suspicious and wary. For good reason. But, still, they are only children. And children can be tricked.
“I talk with Madison every day at this time. Three-thirty. Except the days she has a game. I think I can safely assume that she gets home from school at that time. And no one is there to monitor her Internet use. Her parents receive logs of their daughter’s phone texts, but Madison knows how to cover her tracks online. She likes privacy.
“Now Madison would never tell a total stranger where she lives. She’s too smart for that. She would never tell me the name of her school either. But I do know she walks home from it every day. She told me that. I mean, what harm could it do? It’s just a bit of trivial knowledge, right? It’s not like I know what school she goes to.”
MADISON_44 — parent tchr conf this week
MADISON_44 — sux.
ROCKERME — ours last week. My rents didn’t go
MADISON_44 — mine r going – 2nite!
ROCKERME — that kinda sux
MADISON_44 — no kidding
ROCKERME — hit me up 2mro tell me how it went
MADISON_44 — k. ttyl
“But I do know that she probably lives somewhere in metro Atlanta. We met in a local chat room. I also know that only one elementary school in the metro area has a girls’ softball team called the Bruins. And I know that Madison is number forty-four on the team. In fact, I already knew that the Bruins won their last game, before Madison told me. I was there. I watched her play. And I followed Madison_44 home after the game. She didn’t see me. But I saw her. In fact, I saw where she keeps the key to her house hidden. It’s tucked in the dirt of a cracked flower pot on the porch.
“And now I know that Madison will be alone this evening.”
You look at the small group of men and women who are watching you, and you say: “And tonight I’m going to pay Madison a visit. I’m going to her house and I’m going to get inside that house. Lucky for Madis
on, I’m not a monster. I’m going to wait until her parents get home. And we’ll all sit down together and talk about the real monsters.”
You dismiss the young recruits from the training you’ve just given them.
Your name is Joe Jernigan. Detective Joseph Jernigan. The words SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT are stenciled on the door to this room that houses your desk and those of the other members of your department. The Special Victims Unit investigates rape and other sexual assaults, cases of child exploitation, child abuse, missing juveniles, and child neglect. On your desk are three framed photographs. Two photographs of your daughter, school pictures. Fourth grade and fifth grade. And one photograph of you, your wife, and your daughter. Big white smiles like a toothpaste commercial.
You have been with the Atlanta Police Department for nineteen years. Right out of the Academy you were assigned to Patrol Zone One in West Atlanta, and there you did see some shit. You worked the Bluff, Bankhead Courts, and Bowen Homes. You saw some shit, it is true. The Gangs and Guns Squad. You made Detective and served in the Central Investigations Division of the Major Crimes Section. A few years later you were promoted to Sergeant in the CID. You did well. For a while. Then two years ago you requested a demotion, a “non-lateral transfer” back to the rank of detective and reassignment to the SVU. There was resistance from above, but you had made friends in the course of your career. You called in favors. Made promises. You got what you wanted.
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