by West, Sam
She unbuttoned them and pulled down the zipper. They were so wide in the leg that they instantly fell to her feet in one whoosh.
Despite her numbed state, humiliation coursed through her as she stood there in just her cream-coloured panties and bra. Instinctively, she went to cover herself, wrapping one arm around her chest, her other hand splayed against her crotch.
“For fuck’s sake,” Paul said, jumping to his feet. He aimed a kick at James’s stomach, and he screamed into the gag; a horrible, muffled sound that made Mary’s flesh crawl. “No hiding.”
She allowed her arms to fall to her sides, he head lowered in shame.
“And the rest. I won’t ask again.”
With as much dignity as she could muster, she stepped out of her trousers and kicked them to one side, swiftly followed by the cream ballet pumps on her feet. She couldn’t bring herself to look at either of them; not her husband, not her tormentor.
“You keep yourself in shape, I see. You wouldn’t think you were in your forties and had had two kids to look at you. But then, it’s not like you work is it? What else are you going to do with your time apart from sit-ups and squats? Do you work, Mary?”
He laughed, and to her ears it was like nails scraping down a blackboard.
“I write,” she said quickly, keen to delay the moment when she had to remove her underwear.
“Is there much money in that, then? What do you write?”
“I guess I just about scrape minimum wage doing it. I write romance and I self-publish it onto kindle.”
“Oh, you do, huh? Is romance just a polite way to say erotica? Do you write porn, Mary?”
She didn’t, as it happened, she wrote the kind of romance that was okay to show the vicar. But talking about this was better than getting her or James shot. Keen not to anger him, she made a huge effort to stem the flow of tears and keep him talking:
“I write ‘clean’ romance, none of this ‘Fifty Shades’ stuff. You wouldn’t think it, but there’s still a market out there for what I write.”
Her voice sounded strange to her own ears; light and breathy.
“I don’t believe you, Mary, Mary, quite contrary. Take off your knickers and show me your cunt.”
She froze in fear, her heart hammering so hard she couldn’t catch her breath. In the peripherals of her vision, she was aware of her husband squirming more animatedly on the floor, groaning into the gag. Although perhaps he was trying to speak, it was impossible to tell.
“Paul, please,” she said as calmly as she could, although it came out as a hiccupping sob. “Please don’t do this. We can work through this, you’re family, you’re my family too.”
“You should ask your husband about family. I would say that family is his specialist subject. If you continue to beat around the bush, Daddy will pay the price. Now show me your bush.”
He laughed at his own pathetic joke and a wave of hatred washed over her. She clung to the feeling – it was better than the stomach-churning fear.
Just keep calm. Play along and do as he says. Bide your time.
With her eyes fixed on the floorboards, she hooked her thumbs into the sides of her knickers, sliding the lacey garment down her thighs. Shame curdled in her stomach, making her skin flush and her head spin. In that moment, she wished with all her might that the ground would just open up and swallow her whole.
“Mmm, very nice, now the bra. And when you’ve taken that off, you can sit back down on the sofa facing me and spread your legs.”
With wildly trembling hands, she reached behind her back and unclipped her bra. It fell to the floor with her knickers, and her tears flowed in great rivers down her face.
The humiliation, the sheer terror, was shocking. It consumed her, raged within her, a fire that obliterated any other feeling. Except the one to survive, that is.
She shuffled backwards until the backs of her knees connected with the sofa. It went against every natural instinct she possessed to sit there with her legs open, when all she wanted to do was curl up and sob like a baby. Holding her burning face in her hands with her forearms pressed to her breasts in one last act of defiance, she sat there.
Exposed. Humiliated. Wishing to die.
“Tut, tut, Mary, no hiding. This is your final warning. Tilt your pelvis up a little and spread your cunt with your fingers. With your other hand, I want you to tweak your nipple. Really hard. I want your nipple to darken, I want to see it fucking bruise.”
His voice had deepened with lust and disgust roiled in her stomach at his command.
I can’t.
Those two words in her head, threatening to be her undoing.
“Mary,” he said slowly, the warning stark in his voice.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the torrent of tears, her fingers doing his bidding. This was disgusting. She was disgusting. Her shame and humiliation was a palpable thing, evident in her gut-wrenching sobs and her own heartbeat thundering in her ears. She barely heard him over own mortification:
“You are a goddess, Mary. A goddess. So firm, so toned, such a neat little cunt. Does she do this for you, James? Does Claire do this for you, too?”
Her daughter’s name was the equivalent of a bucket of ice-water chucked in her face, as sobering as it was distressing.
“You leave her out of this,” she said, rocked by her own surge of anger, her legs clamping together and her hands balling into fists.
“Bit late for that, Mary. I followed her earlier, I know exactly where she is. I watched her with the little, blonde-haired brat. But if you do as I say, I won’t hurt her.”
Icy fear settled over her, seeping into every pore, every cell of her being. She would protect her daughter to the bitter end. She would do anything for her. Anything. Paul got up from his seat and went to her.
“Lie on your back, Mary, there’s something I want to do.”
As he spoke, he untwisted the silencer from the gun and slid it into the back-pocket of his jeans.
“Will you leave my daughter alone?”
Paul pressed the muzzle of the gun to her forehead, forcing her head down onto the cushion on the armrest.
“On your back, Mary. Let’s get kinky. I’ll give you something really good to write about, some inspiration for your porn-books. And if you’re very good, I won’t hurt Claire.”
That was all she needed to hear and she lay on her back, staring up at him as he peered down at her. His dark hair flopped forward at a right-angle from his forehead, his green eyes sparkling with merriment.
He looks so much like James. However did I not notice it before?
“Hold still, sweetheart, and open your legs nice and wide. This may sting a little.”
To her utter dismay, he placed the muzzle of the gun at the entrance to her vagina. It just rested there, an obscene parody of a penis.
“If you don’t behave, you will be the silencer. A human silencer.”
Dimly, she was aware of James screaming in protest into his gag. She looked down at herself, over the rapid rise and fall of her chest, at the gun positioned between her legs.
A metal cock.
What would it feel like to be shot up the vagina? she wondered. Would it kill her instantly, or would she die in excruciating agony over the period of a few minutes?
“No,” she gasped, instinctively going to clamp shut her thighs.
Strong hands kept her splayed. “You’d better take it. For your daughter’s sake.”
She allowed her thighs to part as if she were with a nurse and about to have a smear. She twisted her face to the side, staring at the swirling pattern on the back of the sofa. She flinched when the cold metal of the gun grazed her inner folds, stabbing at the entrance of her vaginal passage.
But it didn’t stop there. Instead, it trailed backwards until it came to rest at her rectum. She couldn’t help but flinch when it pressed insistently at her fear-puckered anus.
“Shush, relax, you might even quite like it,” he said, his free hand
smoothing back her hair.
The colours in the swirling pattern of the sofa blurred and ran together with her tears, and she half-groaned, half-screamed when the gun entered her.
“Don’t struggle, the safety catch isn’t on. We wouldn’t want any nasty accidents, would we?”
She tried to force her body to relax, but the pain, the sheer humiliation, was damn near soul destroying. Her breath came in ragged gasps and she trembled like a rain-soaked Whippet as he fucked her arse with the gun. Her lower gut clenched and spasmed, violently protesting against the invasion of her body.
But she gritted her teeth against it all, summoning up her daughter’s beautiful face in her mind’s eye.
If I die tonight, I’ll never get to tell her how much I love her.
She had only ever been hard on her to protect her because she was a girl; girls had it tougher than boys in this world. Claire was too beautiful, too pure. Just the thought of some bastard boy using her, or hurting her made her blood boil. Ryan, with his easy-going charm and buckets of confidence had never needed such a firm hand. She knew he would forge his own path. But Claire, she was too beautiful, too gentle; it wouldn’t take much for her to get hurt. Some people, not just horny boys, would take great pleasure in destroying her sense of self-worth, the very essence of her, out of jealousy and spite.
Stay away from my daughter. Just stay away…
“Are you liking the show, Dad?” he shouted. “Is this getting you good and hard?”
He shoved the gun in extra hard, and she felt something rip inside her anus. She screamed in agony, and he pulled out the gun.
“Did you like that, you horny little bitch?”
He sat down between her legs, crushing one thigh against the back of the sofa and patting the other leg that dangled down. Prising apart her thighs until she howled in pain at the tearing sensation in her rectum, he began to finger-fuck her pussy.
“Just stay away from Claire. She’s your sister,” she said through gritted teeth.
“I know that, dear Stepmother of mine.”
“Leave her alone,” Mary cried, trying to scramble up the sofa away from him. “Do not hurt my daughter.”
Agony exploded just above her left breast where he had whipped her with the butt of the gun. She flopped back down again, winded, humiliated and furious.
“You’re a little spitfire, aren’t you? I like that. I wonder if Claire is like that, too? Or perhaps she’ll be a big pussy, ‘cause you know, sometimes shit like that skips a generation.”
“Fuck you,” Mary said between gasping sobs.
“No, I do believe it is you that is getting fucked.”
As if to prove his point, he rammed in all four fingers, viciously twisting them inside her body. She squirmed in agony, feeling very much like her lower abdomen was being ripped open.
“You’re tight considering you’ve had two kids. Have you ever been fisted?”
Tears coursed down her cheeks, and she threw back her head, panting hard.
Why is this happening to me?
“Fuck you,” she repeated, but with less conviction this time.
Paul laughed. “Potty mouth. I have just the cure for that. Don’t move,” he said getting to his feet.
The foul, tight pain lifted from between her legs and as soon as he had vacated the sofa, she clamped her legs together. She rolled onto her side, her knees tucked into her chest, her back pushed against the back of the sofa.
Get away from him, a voice screamed in her head. Move! Go!
But she knew she wouldn’t be quick enough; knew he would catch her and punish her worse than he already was.
Worse? How can things get worse than this?
Now he was back, forcing her thighs apart and resuming his previous position.
When she looked up through the blur of tears, she saw exactly how much worse things could get. He held up a pair of large garden shears with green handles, the blades of which were at least ten inches long. Grinning like the Angel of Death, he opened the blades in front of her face with a quick snick. He placed the tip of one at her vagina and she struggled beneath him.
“No,” she gasped, bucking and writhing.
Her actions caused the blade to nick her tender skin and a gasp escaped her lips, born more of fear than pain. Instinctively, she went to push him away and he punched her in the face. She screamed in shock, her hands flying up to her bloody nose. For some reason, out of everything he had done to her, this was the worst.
He’s capable of anything and you’re going to die.
“Please,” she sobbed, clutching her face.
“Shut the fuck up.”
White hot pain exploded in her arse and vagina. Her world exploded in a brilliant white light; light that swamped her vision and her brain. The light dimmed, to be replaced by a grainy darkness. She could feel her blood, her very life-force, pumping out of her rectum and vagina, a hot wetness that saturated her lower torso.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” he said to her from what seemed like very far away.
But she barely heard him above the ringing in her ears and the pain that consumed her body. Dimly, she became aware of pressure at her neck. On some level, the pressure alarmed her more than the searing agony in her lower gut. Her hands fluttered upwards, gently grazing the blades of the garden shears that were open on either side of her neck.
He whispered foul things in her ear – things that she didn’t really understand but made her blood curdle nonetheless – as he brought the blades together.
There was an explosion of hot wetness at her neck, erupting over her chest, accompanied by a flaring, short-lived agony that blotted out everything.
Darkness rushed up to meet her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Claire hovered in Saskia’s bedroom doorway, watching the sleeping child.
She’s almost cute when she’s sleeping, she thought, momentarily entranced by the long, blonde hair spilling out over the pillow, and the angelic little face that had been contorted into a rictus of a scream a mere half an hour ago.
She made her way back down the broad, winding staircase, running her hand over the highly-polished banister.
Fuck me, this place is a fucking palace. Who has six bedrooms? Shame about the décor.
The soulless, interior design was as about as trashy and tasteless as Jeff McQueen’s much younger, second wife. She seemed to have a thing for zebra and tiger skin rugs, and despite the vast amount of money that had obviously been pumped into the place, it looked about as classy as a hooker’s boudoir.
And to think, this is only their second home. I wonder what their main home in America is like?
Claire entered the huge living-room, complete with shiny, white tiled-floor, white leather sofas and obligatory zebra skin rugs. There wasn’t an original painting, or a book in sight.
Four hours to kill before the McQueens got back. What was she going to do with herself for the rest of the night?
Sighing heavily, she plonked herself down into a white leather sofa and was almost swallowed whole by the cushions. Her dad’s words echoed in her ears:
You’re coming to work for me, young lady, and if I catch you smoking again, or lying to us, you can forget University. In fact, you’re out on your ear and you can find your own way in life.
Claire thought her dad was full of shit, but at the same time, she wasn’t sure she wanted to put him to the test.
Christ, she was dying for a fag. Her mum had been watching her like a bloody hawk all day so she hadn’t had a chance to smoke.
I could go out the kitchen door and have one. No one will ever know...
Grabbing her shoulder bag off the glass and chrome coffee table – and at the same time thanking her lucky stars that her parents hadn’t thought to frisk her before she went out – she made her way out of the living-room towards the equally huge kitchen.
Unlocking the backdoor, she surveyed the vast garden, the end of which was shrouded in darkness. The e
dge of the garden backed out onto the coastal path which was on the outskirts of town.
Christ this place must be worth millions. She shivered in the cool evening air, rubbing her goose-bumped forearms. Should’ve brought my coat.
Locating the fags in her shoulder-bag, she lit up and took a long pull.
Fuck, that’s so good…
The smoke filled her lungs and her head swam pleasantly with the sudden rush of nicotine. Lost in the moment she closed her eyes, feeling completely at one with the world. Completely content.
Her phone chirped in her bag, making her jump.
Fishing it out of her bag, she read the lit-up screen:
Hey Claire, whatcha up to? Has ur dad chilled out yet?
She frowned at the message, not recognising the number. Barbs must’ve got a new phone, or something.
Despite this entirely logical explanation, her stomach fluttered and unconsciously she placed the flat of her palm over the sudden and inexplicable bout of butterflies.
Still staring at the screen, she wandered further out into the garden, sucking thoughtfully on her fag.
Just reply, she told herself. You’ll soon find out who it is.
Hey, she wrote back. He’s been happier I’m still babysitting, what are you doing?
She pressed send before she could change her mind. The reply was instant.
Babysitting, huh? Have you ever seen that movie? The one where the babysitter gets a phone call from the psycho? Except the phone-call is coming from inside the house..?
Claire stopped dead, staring at the phone in disbelief with her heart slamming against her ribcage.
Who is this? She typed back.
No reply. Frowning, she pressed ‘call’. The phone rang once, then went to the phone company’s voicemail:
The person you are calling is currently unavailable...
“Well, fuck you then,” she muttered under her breath.
Why aren’t you picking up your phone? she wrote.
Still no answer. She grunted in frustration, glaring at the screen. It suddenly occurred to her to text her best-friend, Barbs.