by Edward Lee
More shots of the city’s destruction flashed. “Experts at the U.S. Meteorological Center estimate that the destructive energy released in these several square miles may have equaled all of the force combined during the April, 1974, Super Outbreak that tore through 13 states from Ohio to North Carolina, produced 148 twisters, and killed over 300 people.”
“All that power,” Ashton muttered, “packed into just a couple square miles...”
“It’s too depressing,” Hazel complained and switched it off. “And they show it over and over again. I don’t know why they do that. Like Katrina, and the tsunami several years ago.”
“Hazel, how can the daughter of a Christian minister be so apathetic? It was a tragic event. It’ll take years to repair all that damage,” Ashton said.
“I’m not denying that! I just don’t understand why they have to show it over and over. It’s like the media’s rubbing our faces in it. Christ, it happened months ago.”
But Ashton was still reflecting upon the event itself. “Can you imagine what would’ve happened it if had lasted for fifteen hours instead of fifteen minutes?”
Hazel chose not to imagine. “But I wonder what Wilmarth meant when he said it wasn’t really tornados?”
“Who knows...After sitting through all that? And being right in the middle of it, and somehow being the only survivor? Just the shock of it all probably fried his brain crispier than a bag of pork rinds.”
At last a question occurred to Hazel, not that it mattered much. “What was he doing in Florida anyway?”
“Vacation, I guess,” Ashton said. “He only retired from Brown a year or two ago. Hell, why don’t you ask Frank Barlow? You’re going to see him this week, aren’t you?”
Hazel smirked. She didn’t like the way he said that. “I’m not going on this road trip to see him. I’m riding up with Sonia, to keep her company.”
“Sonia, ” he emphasized. “You mean Professor Heald.”
“She’s my boss, Ashton, and my best friend—”
Ashton was beginning to develop a permanent frown. “You’re twenty-two, Hazel. She’s thirty-five. Twenty-two-year olds don’t have best friends who’re thirty-five. It’s weird.”
It’s not weird, Hazel confessed to herself. It’s just that I’m in love...” Let me get this straight. Is it Frank Barlow you’re jealous of, or Sonia? ”
He made a grim chuckle under his breath and got up. “With my karma? It’s probably both.”
She could’ve spit...but then how disingenuous would that have been? She didn’t feel bad about being an overly sexualized woman, but she did feel bad about keeping things from Ashton. In truth, she’d had a sexual dalliance with Sonia last winter, and one with Frank Barlow before that. None of them can ever know about the other, she fretted. “Don’t be so uptight all the time,” she said after Ashton. “The only one I’m sleeping with is you.”
“Sleeping with?” he questioned, and now the cynicism was really pouring out. “Is that what we do?” He meandered over to some bookshelves and grimaced at the titles along the top row. Understanding Chronic Female Paraphilia, one read. Ideas of Reference and Sexual Aberrancy. The Modern Rape-Fantasy Complex.
“Jesus,” Ashton muttered.
“It’s just fetish stuff, Ashton,” she complained, because she knew what he was thinking.
He raised a high brow at her. “I think some of your interests go beyond fetishism, Hazel. Hell, you know they do, otherwise you wouldn’t have gone to those counselors.”
“That was before you and I were dating, and—shit—I wish I’d never told you about it now. It’s like you’re throwing it in my face.”
“I’m just confused...”
“I have sexual desires that are different from most women, Ashton. That’s all. Why can’t you accept that? The only reason I went to counselors in the first place was to find out if I was sick, which I’m not. ”
“I never said you were—”
“No, but that’s what you imply.” She leveled her eyes on him. “That’s what you think: I’m sick. I’m fucked up in the head.”
“I do not.”
“I’m only twenty-two years old and I’m already working on my doctorate,” she pressed on, maybe to give him a little pay back. “Do sick people do that? How many ‘fucked up in the head’ twenty-two year olds already have their masters? Oh, and by the way, you’re how old? Twenty- six? And still working on yours?”
Ashton laughed. “I never said I was smarter than you, Hazel. But your idea of fun and games can really get over the top. I don’t know how to–what’s the word? I don’t know how to reckon it. I don’t know how to assess our relationship sometimes.”
Hazel’s shoulders and pert bare breasts slumped at the same time. “Ashton, you know you’re not supposed to use the R-word. We’ve discussed this over and over. We’re lovers, that’s all. We’re friends, and what’s wrong with that? I’m not looking for a relationship now—not the kind you’re talking about.” She drifted to the window, only half-noticing the Providence’s stately financial district, the School of Design, and the fringes of the college whose lights were just flicking on as dusk arrived. Headlamps beat like glitter down Fulton Street, and the bay looked like something molten as the sun sank. “Things are better when they’re not complicated, right?”
“But I love you,” he replied.
This is not going well. Why are men so needy? “You’re kidding me, Ashton. The R-word and the L-word in the same day!”
He pulled his t-shirt back on, which read HARRY WAS RIGHT. THE CELLAR WAS THE SAFEST PLACE. Hazel had never known what that meant, and had never asked. Because I’m not interested in HIM. I’m only interested in what he does for ME. This she knew too well and usually felt guilty.
“I can’t help how I feel,” came his next blank remark. He put the pistol back in a box that read REPLICA SIG P-226. When he put the box up on the shelf he noticed Hazel’s answering machine blinking. “You’ve got a message.”
“I’m sure it’s just my father again.”
“Aren’t you going to call him back?”
The question exasperated her. “Yeah, later, Ashton. What’s it to you?” but, again, she knew what he was thinking in his ever-tailspinning paranoia. He thinks it’s some guy who called, some guy I’m fucking behind his back. “Here, listen, since you’re so interested,” she griped and hit the play button:
“Hazel, honey, it’s me, your father. Please call me, I haven’t talked to you in weeks, and I’m worried.” A pause. “God wants you back, and He always will. So, please. Come back. Come back to church...”
The message ended.
“Not a bad idea, huh?” Ashton said.
“What?”
“It might do you some good, going back to church, I mean.”
She couldn’t resist. “You have a big credibility problem. Here’s a guy who just held me at gunpoint and made me eat his cum out of the toilet, telling me I need to go to church.”
His teeth ground, and he growled, “I only do that nutty sicko stuff because it’s what you want!”
“Jeez, Ashton, I was only joking. You set yourself up, you know.”
“You ain’t kidding.” He flung his book bag over his shoulder. “But if you don’t believe in God, why do you wear that cross?”
Do I believe in God? she asked herself. The question made her feel withered. “Maybe I’m just into iconography, Ashton. Did you ever think of that?”
“Ask a silly question...” He looked utterly defeated as he gazed at her. “I have to go now.”
“Don’t you want to go to dinner? We could drive out to Cagliastro’s Fry House.” she objected. “It’s my last night.”
“Yeah, before your road trip with your best friend—”
“Sonia’s my best female friend, and you’re my best male friend,” she amended.
“Great. I have to go to the Hay and study tonight. But have fun on your trip.” He headed for the door. “Where exactly is this campground
you’re going to?”
“It’s in central New Hampshire, near some town called Laconia.”
Ashton turned very slowly to re-face her.
“Why are you looking at me like I just said ‘Rosebud?’”
“Didn’t you say you and Sonia were driving up there to meet her fiancé, Frank Barlow?”
“Yeah. He’s been up there a few days. We’re going hiking and nature-trailing. So?”
“To a campground near Laconia, New Hampshire?”
“Yeah...”
“And Frank Barlow was friends with Professor Henry Wilmarth.”
Hazel’s lips pursed. “Yes, Ashton! So what?”
“That’s where Henry Wilmarth committed suicide,” Ashton augmented. “It said so on the news. He committed suicide at a campground near Laconia, New Hampshire. ”
Finally the words sunk in. Hazel’s green eyes glittered in bewilderment. “How...odd.”
Ashton flapped it off. “Just a coincidence. I’m sure there are a thousand campgrounds up there. Couldn’t possibly be the same one...”
2
Hazel dreamed of faceless men gang-raping her in what appeared to be a barn. Though she’d never actually been in a barn, ever in her life, this had to be one because she saw bales of hay, racks of tools, wagons with harnesses as if to be drawn by horses, plows, etc. Wooden ladders led to upper lofts above crisscrossing rafters, and stacked on platforms sat more bales of hay. The men were dressed in Colonial garb: brass-buckle boots, billow-sleeved tunics, rough-fabric trousers with rope belts, and they all wore three-pointed hats; but, as aforementioned, they had no faces. Neither did they speak; in fact, the dream—the nightmare—existed in dead silence.
She was nude and covered with scratches; when her profuse sweat ran into the long, thin cuts, her skin sang in pain. The men all stood round watching, their uncircumcised penises hanging from the fronts of the pants like dirty, fleshy snouts. One held her from behind, pinioning her elbows together so extremely that her breasts thrust right out and her spine arched back like a bow. Another stepped up and began to lay his open palm across her face time and time again, dozens of times, then dozens more until her cheek throbbed and she could see nothing but a dizzied tulle of sparkles. When the blows had all but rendered her senseless she was lain down in the straw and a man on each ankle wish-boned her legs. A third kept his boot-sole vising her throat so she couldn’t squirm. One by one and in grueling, silent slowness they raped her, each dirty “snout” sliding into her over-lubricated sex, in and out until, at the precise moment before crisis, each was promptly withdrawn to ejaculate copiously upon her belly and bosom.
At the end of this first round, Hazel lay enslimed and shimmering. Some minutes passed, then round two commenced. Her ankles were pulled over her head, to essentially fold her in half, and then the process repeated itself, only this time it was her rectum that was routed; here, though, the ejaculations were not externalized but instead pumped deep into her bowel. When they’d all finished, she was held in that same position...and round three began.
Oh my God, is that a...
Two men led in a large, mangy field dog that was immediately positioned over her. The animal needed little goading before the glistening pink bone slid out of its penile sheath and got to the task of steady fornication. Hazel felt cross-eyed as it desperately humped, yet in the middle of the process one man dragged a cotton sack over her head and then—
Whiiiiiizzzzzzz
—the sack grew saturated. Hazel knew that one of them had urinated on the sack, and the sequent moisture made it nearly impossible to breathe through the fabric. Meanwhile, the dog humped on and on, that pink bone darting in and out, and as Hazel’s consciousness began fading to black, she thought, They’re going to smother me to death while I’m being fucked by a dog, and it was during the instant that this thought crossed her mind, her loins began to quake in a series of powerful orgasmic spasms. Every muscle in her body drew taut from the cannonade of gusting pleasure...
Moments before she would surely suffocate, the sack was yanked off her head. She sucked in breath while at the same time sensing the dog’s hot, watery release. Hazel sighed from the exhausting satisfaction.
Suddenly the men’s voices could be heard, like a mute button being switched off. “Keep her devil’s slit upward, brothers. It mustn’t spill out.”
“T’is no transgression to defile one who blasphemes against God.”
“Christian soldiers, let’s be about it! String her up!”
Pulleys keened after loops were slipped around her ankles and she was suddenly being hoisted upside-down in the air.
“This ungodly harlot needs to die full of the cur’s jism...”
The ropes were tied off, leaving Hazel suspended. Upside-down, she watched the men leave the barn, but even in the horror of this trauma, every nerve still buzzed from the delicious orgasm.
“Hazel, my child,” came a soft, echoic voice.
It had come from above. Squinting, she looked up into the loft-platforms past the network of rafters. From the lower lofts, squashed, indescribable faces peered down, fang-mouthed, snake-tongued, and gibbering in delight at what had been done to her. Demons, she thought, because some of them had horns in their heads.
“Hazel, I adjure you...”
It was from the highest loft that the clement voice issued, and it was not the face of a demon she saw speaking to her. It was a long-haired, bearded man whose eyes radiated a strange and pristine peace.
“Hazel, child of God. Come back. I adjure you.”
Save me, she thought and reached up to him, but as she did so, the cross hanging about her neck slipped off her head and fell to the dirt below.
Hazel woke up as if at a pistol shot, and after a moment of shifting awareness, she covered her face with her hands and thought, Sick, sick, sick...
Then she jerked up in bed and shuddered.
“I’m sick,” she whispered aloud, and when she did so she glimpsed her reflection in the mirror above the dresser and thought of The Scream by Edvard Munch. If any other woman had a dream like that, they’d throw up, she thought. But me? I’m turned on like a light. It was bleak times like this that Hazel realized no amount of rationalization or liberal shrink-talk could sway the truth. Last night when she’d snidely told Ashton that she wasn’t sick, just highly sexualized, she knew she was lying. She was obsessed— titillated—by fantasies of defilement, debasement, and all manner of rape. It’s not right. It’s all I think about...
Well, not quite all.
I think about Sonia, too. A lot. And these thoughts carried with them no taint of the rough and seamy fantasies that so occupied her id. Somehow, Sonia was the floodgate. Hazel’s secret love for the older woman burned so acutely that her subconscious punished her in the knowledge that that love could never be returned. Her love for Sonia Heald couldn’t have been more crystalline, nor more beautiful...but then the floodgates opened like a sewer line piped directly into the midst of her soul. If I can’t have Sonia, then fate force-feeds me filth, she knew.
Why?
She deliberately blanked her mind as she readied herself, then dressed in shorts, a tank top, and fluorescent-orange flipflops. This was the only time of the year when such flimsy apparel was a comfortable bet in New England. Her Salvador Dali clock—a melting dial—read two minutes to seven in the morning. She grabbed her bags and rushed out of the off-campus apartment; she’d scarcely set foot in the parking lot when Sonia beeped and pulled up in her brand-new silver Prius.
“Hi, Hazel,” said the pretty, near-black-haired woman in the driver’s window. “You’re right on time, as always.”
I love you, Hazel thought, staring with her bags hanging off her arms. She could’ve wept.
“Get out,” Hazel directed. “Let me drive.”
“Oh, I can drive—”
“You should just relax and enjoy the scenery. The doctor told you to relax.” Hazel threw her bags in the back, then opened the driver’s d
oor.
“Hazel, you don’t need to pamper me. I’m perfectly capable of driving–”
Hazel giggled. “You’ll be uncomfortable. Come on, look. Your stomach barely fits behind the wheel.”
Sonia looked down at her gravidity, then raised her brows. Only an inch of space existed between the bottom of the wheel and her belly. “Well...”
“Women who’re nine months pregnant shouldn’t be driving on six-hour road trips.”
“I’m eight months pregnant, Hazel, and it’s only a three- hour drive.”
“Come on. Out.”
Sonia, with more than a little difficulty, swiveled her legs out of the footwell, then let Hazel take her hand and help her to her feet. Ashton says I’m more like a guy visually, Hazel mused. And I guess he’s right. When Sonia leaned over to rise, her thinly bra’d breasts slid half out of the v-cut of her summer dress. Hazel’s eyes targeted the fleshy, white valley without forethought. She wanted to plunge her face into the warm abundance of mammarian flesh. She wanted to lick the valley...
“Up you go,” she said when Sonia got fully to her feet.
Sonia stood five-eight—six inches taller than Hazel—and impeccably postured for a woman late in term. Even before she’d become pregnant, she’d always been robust-bodied, not overweight: exorbitant curves; wide hips; strong, well-toned legs; and a high, full bosom. A “brick shit-house” men would call her, whereas they called Hazel a “spinner.” Luxurious was the word Hazel would use to best describe her friend’s physique. Even in her pregnancy, she’d not gained undue weight. The mere sight of Sonia’s body made Hazel want to melt. I’m like a teenaged boy looking at a centerfold of Pam Anderson.
The angles of Sonia’s face would make a model jealous, and there was something about her creamy, white-white skin that just seemed flawless. It glowed in the healthiest luster, while the thick, straight hair put a black frame around the beaming face.
Ice-blue eyes blinked over a beaming smile. “What’s wrong?”
“Wrong?” Hazel snapped out of it. “Nothing, I was...”