The Power Wagon, all-terrain tires humming menacingly, followed the highway into town. It prowled the streets. Cruised the movie theater parking lot. Circled Sonic drive-thru.
Nothing.
The truck made another lap.
Still nothing. No sign of Sharon, David, or David’s pickup.
He spotted his friend’s car parked at the theater and began to regret not having went along, too. But he wanted to see Sharon. He needed to see her. She’d fucked David many times since they last met, since David had “rescued” her from her mother’s place over the summer. Now that they lived together they must fuck on a daily basis. Several times a day. How many times had they screwed, he wondered. He’d given it to her himself as many as four times a day, made her scream out in orgasmic bliss. She often counted, starting at two or three, each climax that ripped through her teenaged body.
Does David please you like I can? he wondered. Do you shred his back with your fingernails like you did with me last time? Did you tell David nothing happened between us that time in your house, when you know good and well you dry-humped my brains out?
Where are you?
Are you home, with David? Home sucking his cock? Letting him fuck you? You don’t even love the son of a bitch and yet you give up everything between us for a roof over your head and a bed to sleep in.
You had that with your dad. You didn’t need David.
And then he realized: You simply chose him over me.
Perhaps if he left the dorm room for an apartment next semester, got a part-time job and Sharon did too, anything at all, some fast-food gig or job bagging groceries, they could move in together, get their own place, then everything would be great again. It could be wonderful, actually, like the summer before he left for school and Sharon’s father had started staying with some woman and her kids and left Sharon home all alone, without so much as a dollar to buy food.
I was there for you then, Sharon, he reminisced as he steered the Power Wagon. I took you to dinner, nothing fancy, just fast food, but I made sure you didn’t go without. I offered to buy groceries for you but you declined. Do you remember? Or do you simply remember my screw-ups? Things such as basically telling you to suck it up and stay with your mom, instead of doing something to help. Instead of coming to get you, like David did.
He'd failed Sharon on many different levels. But he loved her. And he had tried. Between parents trying to give him an education, Sharon’s father trying to get rid of her, and David trying to manipulate and steal her away, it seemed a nearly impossible situation. Especially for a nineteen-year-old boy.
It’s no wonder so many young couples elope or run away together.
It seemed like their only hope.
A light caught his eye. Headlights flashed in his rearview mirror. Sharon? Or was it David? For a moment, he feared David had sensed something askew, had determined Sharon’s true intent for tonight, had interrogated her and determine details, and it was David, not Sharon following behind him in the truck. Or perhaps it was someone else altogether.
The Power Wagon turned off into a gas station-convenience store parking lot only to have David’s pickup truck continue cruising by. He noticed what appeared to be a single silhouette in the cab but he couldn’t be sure of the number of occupants, nor the identity of the driver. He quickly pulled through the lot, bypassing the island of gasoline pumps, to pull out behind David’s truck before another vehicle could separate them. The pickup led them down the incline to the area where Sharon had spoken to him that afternoon, making it obvious that it was her behind the wheel.
Window rolled down and a sprinkling of rain on the windshield, he pulled alongside and said to Sharon, “I’m glad you could see me tonight.”
She appeared nervous, agitated. She simply said, “We can’t meet here. We need to go someplace nobody will see us. David knows everyone and they all know I’m with him.”
“Okay, fine.” He suggested the first thing to come to mind: “The old church outside of town?”
Sharon responded by raising her window electrically as she pulled away. He switched on windshield wipers and started rolling up his window as he followed.
It took maybe fifteen minutes to drive there and he allowed a few cars between them along the way, to help prevent anyone noticing his truck following along behind David’s. In a small town without much to gossip about, all it took was the wrong person, perhaps a cousin or close friend of David, and word could spread like wildfire. As it went, the Power Wagon pulled off the highway without incident. Sharon had pulled to the shoulder just beyond the church, well out of sight of any passing highway traffic. The Power Wagon rolled to a stop in the grass, directly behind the old church. Sharon sat waiting on a stump for him.
The air had grown misty and a light fog covered the warm ground. It parted as he strode from his truck to the stump.
“Sharon, I’ve missed you.”
“Don’t start,” she warned. “It’s over.”
“It can’t be.” The old adage All’s fair in love and war rang in his mind, as did I can play the thief of hearts too, David, you bastard.
“It is over. You’re away at school. I’m with David now.”
He ignored the statement, moved to stand before her. A delicate hand caressed her face.
“Please don’t…” she begged, with downcast eyes.
Again, he ignored her statement. He lifted her chin and their lips met with a gentle kiss. A kiss in which Sharon, for the briefest moment, reciprocated before pulling away and saying, “It was a mistake coming here.”
“There have been a lot of mistakes, mostly made by me, but coming here isn’t one of them.”
“I can’t…”
“I love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I mean it.”
Her head shook in the misty moonlight. “I shouldn’t.”
“You should. We should. And you know that.”
“David… He’s my best friend.”
“And I’m your soulmate. Tell me it’s not so.”
“I don’t know. I’m so confused. My dad… You… David is always there for me. He’s my best friend,” she repeated.
“Best friend? Is that what you want, a friend? Sharon, I’m your lover. We were meant to be together. We still can be. We’ll get an apartment. I’ll finish should. You’ll finish school. Then we’ll move anywhere, do anything, and we’ll be together forever.”
“You don’t understand. I can’t wait. I can’t. Not any longer.”
“It won’t take long. I don’t know, a few weeks, maybe a month. But it won’t take long. We’ll make it happen. And I’ll make you happier than ever.”
“No. No…” She turned to walk away.
“Don’t go.” He caught her by the wrist, turned her to face him.
“I told David I needed to see Tonya, that I wouldn’t be gone long. I have to buy popcorn or chips for a movie we planned to watch.”
“Tell me you love him. Tell me you don’t love me. But don’t give me that bullshit about him being your best friend. You’re better than that.”
“Damn it, let go.”
She tried to jerk away but he gripped her wrist tighter, pulled her against him. He pinned it behind her back and grabbed a fistful of hair, their lips dangerously close.
“I’m not letting loose until you say it. Say you don’t want me anymore. Tell me you don’t love me. Tell me to go away and never speak to you again. Go ahead, tell me, and I promise you’ll never see me again.”
Moonlight caught the tears in her eyes. Cool, humid air closed in around them. Everything ceased to exist except the both of them and this one impossible obstacle.
“I do love you,” Sharon gasped. “I love you with all my heart and I always will. But it’s over. Do you hear me, it’s over?”
“I can’t let you go. Not like this.”
His mouth pressed hard against hers. His tongue slipped past unforgiving lips. She smelled wonderful, like a cou
ntry garden in full bloom, a scent of lilacs in her hair. Soft, ample breasts pressed his chest as he hugged her tightly against him. The roundness of her ass pleasantly filled a hand.
“What’s this?” she asked, pressing away.
“What?”
“This?”
She’d felt the knife at his hip.
“Nothing. Just something in case David made trouble.”
“You’re the one making trouble.”
“No, not me.”
He tried to hug her tight again but suddenly a knee powered into his crotch, stealing away his breath, same as David had stolen away his love.
Sharon turned to rush away but he snagged her blouse. It slowed her enough that he caught her arm and, struggling against the pain in his groin, managed to wrestle her down into tall grass and fog. She wept and hissed, kicked and screamed. A knee caught his thigh, dangerously close to another painful blow. He’d never known Sharon to struggle so. His ability to talk sense into her now seemed a remote possibility. Nearly impossible, actually. David had warped her sense of priorities, totally driven a wedge between them already. A complete travesty of their love. Emotions gone haywire.
“David will know. I’ll have to tell him, you asshole. My clothes’ll be filthy.”
“It doesn’t matter, Sharon. We’ll tell David you love me, not him, that we’re getting a place together.”
“You’re out of your mind,” she screamed, then followed it up with, “Let me go! Help!”
Heart pounding in his chest, he slapped a panicked hand across her mouth; he yelped when she bit a finger, likely drawing blood. Then fingernails, the very nails she’d heartbreakingly scratched polish from not so long ago, dug into his face, just below an eye, and raked painfully down, leaving bloody furrows in their wake.
“Goddamn it, Sharon, you impossible—” He stopped short of calling her a bitch, because he loved her and knew he needed to make more of an effort with her. But he also knew he couldn’t let her go. Not until he convinced her what was best for them both. Before he realized what he’d done, he’d snapped free the strap securing the knife in its scabbard and it pulled free. Moonlight glinted off the blade as he brought it to Sharon’s throat. The act caused her to freeze. She didn’t dare breathe.
They lay prone there, him straddling a leg. He could feel her warmth at his groin as he recovered from her most damaging blow. The knife pressed her neck with masculine power.
“What are you doing?” she dared ask.
“I love you, Sharon. Can’t you see? I’ll do anything to keep us together.”
“It’s too late,” she said, voice barely a whisper.
Tears filled his eyes. Filled hers, too. Shadowed turmoil crossed her face he saw in the moon’s sinister glow.
“You love me,” he said. “And I love you. Love conquers all. I’ll tell David for you.”
“No. Get off me. David will be worried. You’re making things worse.”
Worse? Worse? They couldn’t get much worse, couldn’t she see that?
“Put the knife away and get off me.”
No, he couldn’t. Her warmth felt so good. Seductively good. He pressed closer, knife still at the throat, growing stiff at her body beneath his, just like before. He forced a kiss upon her and when she grew rigid at his touch his mind swam at the rejection.
She began to sob, which caused his tears to flow. Then they both wept, a love lost, a devastating sorrow.
“One last time,” he said. “Make love to me once more.” An act of lovemaking could repair all, he so strongly believed. “You want to.”
“No, I don’t,” she cried, but he ignored her words and began to grope a breast with one hand and kissed her. His cock, throbbing like mad at the pressure against her, filled him with such wild desire to be within her again.
But then, despite the blade at her throat, she began to struggle. She writhed beneath him, attempted unsuccessfully to buck him off her leg or strike another critical blow to his genitals.
“Get the fuck off me,” she shouted as she clawed at his face.
But he pressed the knife tighter against her throat, bringing a weeping line of moonlit blood to the razor-sharp edge of the blade, and somehow managed to catch her wrists and press them to the ground above her head.
“I need you again, Sharon. And I’ll have you.”
“Over my dead body,” Sharon promised.
Anger flared within him.
If I can’t have you, nobody will! Especially David!
Elbow pulled back, taking the knife from her throat. And in one desperate instant the blade thrust forward and plunged into Sharon. It stabbed forth again and again, a phallic extension of his inner emotional turmoil. It took much effort but he was filled with rage, with lust, and he forced in the point, with the saw edge snagging with each mad thrust. Her summer dress shredded to bits, became soaked in blood. Sharon gasped for breath, tried to scream. But she only managed to gurgle blood. Crimson drooled from her mouth as she endured the violent bloody ravaging of her body.
Then, after numerous stabbings, as anger ebbed and sorrow increased, did the thrusting of the blade slow. Sharon lie dead now beneath him, still soft, still warm, still wonderful and as beautiful as ever. He realized that with each thrust of the knife his erection rubbed erotically against her thigh. With an impending climax urging him on, he couldn’t stop. But he repositioned himself between her thighs, cock stiff against the softness of her pubic mound, and gave her a few more blade-fucks as he dry-humped his dead girlfriend’s corpse to an incredible orgasm which soaked his jeans in ejaculate.
Then he stopped thrusting his hips, stopped thrusting the knife. Tears rained down on Sharon as fog enveloped them both.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and left Sharon’s body alone behind the church, after one last kiss.
But he’d return shortly. He saw no other choice.
Chapter 19
A kiss? He’d given her a kiss. He must be crazy to think I’d want a relationship with him, Julia thought of the man’s insane proposal. Of course, it was obvious this delusional man cared deeply for Sharon. What sort of hell did she put you through? The answer seemed clear. Sharon, at least in the man’s eyes, had shunned him for another lover. And, based on what little he’d mentioned of their tumultuous relationship, Sharon had still loved him greatly, perhaps more than she cared for David. But Sharon had chosen to follow the path of least resistance instead of following her heart.
Have I done that? Julia wondered regarding her love life. She thought about it and didn’t believe that she had, except, perhaps, by moving on from a relationship much too soon instead of trying to make a relationship work. So, in some crazy way, this creep represented exactly what she wanted in a man. Someone insanely dedicated to the one he loved, unlike most of the men she’d dated. He wasn’t bad-looking. And, in some equally insane way, Julia knew, if given the chance, this man could make a wonderful lover.
I can’t believe he made me come, she thought of his repeated rapes. Tears filled her eyes and streamed down her face. They dripped upon cold, bare flesh: breasts, arms, thighs, as she hugged herself tight. Chad brought her to orgasm maybe half the time. Other men faired a little better. If Marcus, the high-school physical education teacher, had failed to bring her to orgasm, she couldn’t recall. The idea that she’d gotten off with this madman haunted her.
There’s more to a relationship that just sex, Julia reminded herself. Commitment, support, and trust, to name a few. This man offered them all.
He also offers pain, suffering, confinement, and horror. This asshole could kill me, she reasoned. Yet he has the audacity to suggest we have a relationship together?
The thought boggled the mind. It expanded into a scenario where she went from being chained in the basement to chained to a bedpost upstairs. He’d have to remove any telephones, assuming he’d retained a landline, else she’d easily phone for help when he left. Beyond that, she saw herself kept as a sex slave, same as now, albei
t in relative comfort upstairs. Kept in bed during the day, brought into the living room or kitchen in the evening. A travesty of a relationship, to be sure. A heinous joke perpetrated on her.
He’ll burn you with cigarettes, whip you with a belt, slap and hit you.
She didn’t want any part of that. Yet she realized the thought of some of the roughness excited her. If, perhaps, someone like Marcus, a musclebound lover, chose to manhandle her…
Oh, lord… Her body began to respond to the fantasy. Then she recalled daydreaming of Marcus during her rapes. If forced into living a mockery of a relationship (something many people willingly do, she thought) it would simply be supplanted by an ongoing fantasy of Marcus. She’d never truly think of her captor in such an erotic way. That delusion would remain his entirely, though it seemed preferable to death, if only just.
She feared what might happen. The thought, along with a constant state of cool humidity in the basement and lack of clothing, left Julia in a perpetually chilled state. She shivered as his footsteps, while relatively light, seemed to thunder above her.
He’ll come down again soon. To kiss me, to rape me, to ask me to be his goddamn girlfriend, Julia feared. She didn’t know what to do. Search as she might for a plan of escape, nothing presented itself as an option. Enough time had passed that, unless this madman attempted to run some other poor woman off the road and got caught in the processes, the chance of being caught by authorities seemed slim to downright nil. If the sheriff couldn’t locate her, what was the chance of Chad finding her?
All Chad will find is a new sexual position Texas Tatas or some other art groupie likes.
Julia buried her face in her hands and began to cry. She was still crying when the overhead sound of footsteps moved toward the staircase and started to echo through the wall instead of the floor.
The door creaked open and the man entered, along with the offensive scent of cigarette smoke, a smoldering butt pinched between lips, some sort of wine cooler in his hand.
Insanity Road Page 11