That’s when she had the first crushing thought that it wasn’t going to work.
But she continued anyway, lowering herself until he was buried deep, stretching her and tickling that spot at her core. She kept herself pressed onto him, rolling her hips rhythmically. Too bad he didn’t really remember their first time together so he could appreciate the skills she’d picked up. She leaned forward and lowered her mouth to his, plunging her tongue between his lips.
As much as anything, she remembered the way he’d tasted: an ashy char, possibly from smoking, along with the tang of beer, and some personal, indescribable taste that was probably all him, his mucus and saliva. Now he tasted acrid and sour, something she recognized about herself when she woke up some mornings. Stress and booze and prescription meds. Some foul chemical cocktail. If he’d tasted like youth and naiveté before, this was like drinking modern America’s toilet water.
Still, there was that sensation deep within her she tried to move faster and faster to maintain. She’d gotten to this point many times before. It was getting past this point that had been the problem.
“Don’t come yet, okay?” she said and caught him with his eyes open, which proved to be a mistake.
He wasn’t going to come anytime soon. He was doing everything in his power just to stay hard. It was a look she had seen in Trent’s eyes for the past five years. It was the reason they didn’t fuck with the lights on anymore. The only difference was, with Trent, he would have seen the same look in her eyes too.
She couldn’t really blame Lucas for wanting to be a million miles away. She wondered who he was thinking about.
When she knew it wasn’t happening, she leaned in again, not for a kiss this time.
“Who are you thinking about fucking right now?” she asked, knowing it was probably the biggest mood killing question for anyone who wasn’t into role playing or humiliation.
She put her hands on his shoulders, lifting her hips and slamming them into him, aware what she was now doing bordered on hate fucking.
“You have to tell me. I deserve that much, at least. If you’re not going to make me come, at least let me know who you’re thinking about.”
Quite honestly, she was doing the same thing herself. Or was trying to until the illusion was shattered. She was not fucking the modern day Lucas who lay virtually powerless beneath her right now. She had been fucking the Lucas of the past, who was not the same person.
“Tell me, motherfucker,” she practically snarled.
He grunted and said, “Natalie,” only it came out “Na-natalie.”
“The maid?”
“Yeah.”
Lena didn’t know if the inexplicable rage that broke within her was because she thought he was lying to her or because of course he was thinking about Natalie. She didn’t know if Lucas was married or not but Natalie was a young, attractive woman he came in contact with every day or maybe even just weekly. Unless he wanted to completely abuse his power, then she was off limits to him. But she had to earn her employment in some way and that was to provide a real world, tangible object he could take into his masturbatory fantasies every night. Maybe he even thought about her when he fucked his wife or girlfriend, if he even had either of those things.
She thought of her one encounter with Natalie. What was it the girl had said to her? “I do what is asked of me.” Now Lena was curious if Lucas had ever actually fucked Natalie.
Sometimes it was the little things, but that was all it took for the illusion of Lucas to fall away completely.
Lena suddenly understood the expression “losing my religion” to denote anger.
It was like she no longer believed in something she had for over two decades, going so far as to make decisions—mostly really poor ones—based on that belief. It was the realization that she was broken and the one thing she thought she could do to fix herself wasn’t working.
She pounded her hips into him, lifted her head to the ceiling and howled like a lunatic.
She wrapped her hands around his throat, wondering if she had the power to take the life from him.
She screamed and screamed and screamed. For a moment, it seemed like she wasn’t the only one and she wondered if everyone in the room had joined her.
Lucas gurgled beneath her, the drool leaking from his mouth as he fought for breath. His pulse was strong against the palm of her hand. He arched his back, the only way he could possibly fight against her. Especially now that his power of speech was, quite literally, in her hands.
She moved her thumb over that pulse and pressed down harder. She had no idea how long it would take. He was still inside her, so impossibly hard it was nearly uncomfortable. Her hips still moved against him, almost involuntarily at this point. In this case, the end would not come with her orgasm. It would come when the beating of Lucas’s heart stopped.
She glanced away from Lucas, toward Shawn. She would have thought he would have asked her to stop by now and, who knew, maybe she would have, but he seemed almost catatonic.
Surprisingly, the protest came from Grant.
“You can’t kill him.” He’d taken his hand off his cock and come up behind her.
She didn’t realize how much effort she was putting into strangling Lucas until she tried to talk.
“Give me one good reason why not,” she said through clenched teeth.
“Because it hasn’t happened yet.”
“And it’s not going to happen. That’s why this motherfucker has to die. He has nothing to do with it anymore.”
Faulty logic, perhaps, but she needed something to have an ending, needed to feel complete in some way, and anything she could say to keep Grant from dragging her off Lucas was good enough for her.
“You’re right.” He sat down in the chair she’d formerly occupied, crossing his skinny legs. “I need to think about this.”
Lena’s adrenaline raced as Lucas’s pulse grew weaker and weaker. She closed her eyes, unable to look into the desperation of his bulging sockets. Maybe that meant she was weak, but she was doing this and that was enough for her.
TWENTY-FOUR
Shawn and Edward lay side by side in the clearing. The sun had gone down completely, the darkness punctuated with tiny beads of light from the few lightning bugs.
“It never really gets this dark on my street,” Edward said.
“Even at my place we’ve got a pretty bright security light in the yard. You’ve got to go out way past it before it gets this dark.” He laughed. “It’s funny, though. We moved there when I was about eight and I’ve never done that.”
“Maybe you’re afraid of the dark.”
“I’ve never really thought about that. Could be. But I think it’s ’cause I just never really had a reason to.”
“Yeah,” Edward said. “I guess. Why would you? I barely even leave my fucking room.”
“And all this time we’ve been surrounded by this.”
Edward was quiet for a moment before saying, “I don’t think I’m too into it.”
“Into what?”
“Nature. All that shit. I mean, I get it. Like, I get why people are into it but I want to move to a city when I graduate. I don’t . . . I don’t know, I don’t want to feel like the only one of me, you know?”
“I guess that makes sense.” Shawn interlaced his fingers over his stomach. “But you know there’ll always just be one of you, right?”
“Sure. But . . . look, I’m into music and I feel like I’m starving to death. I go to guitar practice at the mall where some thirty-year-old stoner is teaching me to play Metallica songs. I fucking hate Metallica. Or I can go to the cafe and watch white dudes with dreadlocks play Bob Dylan and Bob Marley covers. I don’t know, man. I just feel like there has to be more out there. I’ve been talking to another guy at the music store where I take the guitar lessons. He gave me a tape last week and said maybe I’d dig some of it. It’s fucking great but . . . I guess what I’m saying is it’s from all over the place and maybe I nee
d to get around a little more. Have you ever heard of Kraftwerk?”
“No,” Shawn said.
“Aphex Twin?”
“No.”
“Can?”
“Nyet.”
“The Orb?”
“Nope.”
“Massive Attack?”
“I’ve heard of, like, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Doors. Dude, this is Ohio. Nirvana’s still considered cutting edge.”
“Exactly,” Edward said. “See? I need to get away from dudes like you.”
They both laughed but it was followed by an odd silence as the truth of that statement finally settled in.
“So . . .” Edward said. “Are you really feelin’ the shrooms anymore?”
“I don’t know. Let me see if I can stand up.”
Shawn stood up without much of a problem. Having never done shrooms before, he didn’t know if he was really feeling them or not. He felt a little lighter than usual, maybe, possibly even bordering on some sort of giddiness, but that could have just been from the beer or being outside at night.
“Still not sure,” he said. “If I am, it isn’t really what I thought it would be.”
“What were you expecting?” Edward came up to his feet.
“I don’t know. Something like The Wall, I guess.”
“Yeah.” Edward laughed. “Or Jacob’s Ladder, right?”
“That was fucked up, man.”
“I think it freaked Grant out.”
“Everything freaks Grant out. If there’s one of us who never leaves this fucking town, it’s gonna be him.”
“Well, Nature Boy, you still want to try and find the gorge?”
“Woo!” Shawn bellowed.
“I’m gonna take that as a yes.”
They continued to the far side of the clearing and into the woods, where even the faint glow of the moon was devoured.
Shawn liked the smell of the woods even more now that the night was cooling. There was something darker, yet airier about it, the unseen moisture rising from the warmed soil. The air around them was perfumed with a rich spiciness. As they walked the narrow trail, an occasional breeze swept through the woods, chilling their skin and rustling the leaves. Somewhere in the far distance a pack of coyotes unleashed their blood-curdling shrieks.
“That is a terrifying sound,” Edward said.
“They’re very far from us,” Shawn said.
They walked determinedly along the trail, unaware and uncaring what time it was, listening for the sound of the gorge. After walking so fast for so long, Shawn realized he wouldn’t be able to hear anything over his heavy breathing and thudding heartbeat.
He drew to a stop.
“Want to hold up a minute?” he said.
“Hear anything yet?” Edward asked.
“That’s why I wanted to stop. I can’t hear anything over my heartbeat.”
“Maybe it’s time to stop smoking.”
“You smoke too, douchebag.”
“Yeah, but my heartbeat is not . . . eclipsing all other sounds.” He closed his eyes and raised his index finger upward. “Shhh,” he said. “Let me become the human compass.”
Shawn made himself as quiet as he possibly could, watching as Edward spun in a slow circle. He stopped roughly where he started and pointed at about two o’clock from where he was.
“Me thinks the falls be that way,” he said.
“Okay,” Shawn said. Then he noticed an odd look cross Edward’s face. “What is it, man?”
“Do you hear that?”
Shawn still couldn’t even hear the rushing water from the gorge. He used Edward’s technique. He closed his eyes and tried to slow his breathing even further. He didn’t know how Edward heard things so well. It was like he had the ability to stop his heart or something.
After a few seconds, he was pretty sure he could hear the water from the gorge. He’d mistaken it for leaves in the wind at first but it was constant and unrelenting, though still very faint. A twig snapped somewhere in the distance.
Then he thought he could hear what Edward was talking about. Once he latched onto it, it was hard to concentrate on anything else. It was a weird sound, too persistent to ignore.
“What the fuck is it?” Shawn lowered his voice to a whisper.
“Want to find out?”
No, Shawn thought. I do not want to find out. But saying that would make him look like some kind of pussy.
“Sure,” he said.
“I think we might have to get off the trail,” Edward said.
“Lead the way,” Shawn said.
The trees weren’t very dense here and the undergrowth had not had time to thicken so they wouldn’t get too scratched up.
As they drew closer to it, the sound increased in volume but became no more discernible. It sounded like some kind of pained mewling.
“Sounds so fucking weird,” Shawn said.
Edward, now leading the way, pushed a branch out of his path. “Uh-huh.”
They continued walking. Whatever was making the sound couldn’t be that much farther away.
The closer they got, the more maddening the sound became, like it wasn’t just some outside sound but some kind of aural drill, boring its way into his brain.
Soon Shawn felt like they were literally steps away from it.
Edward stopped. Shawn put his hands on his shoulders to keep from running into him.
“What is it?” Shawn said.
Edward turned. He looked pale. He looked scared. Shawn wasn’t sure, it could have been some lingering effect from the shrooms, but it almost looked like he was trembling.
“I don’t think we should go any further,” Edward said.
“Come on, man, why not?”
“I don’t . . . I don’t like the sound of it. It’s fucking with my head.”
Shawn didn’t want to bully Edward into doing something he didn’t want to do but, at the same time, he didn’t want to walk away not knowing what it was. Not now. Even though he was the one who hadn’t wanted to check it out in the first place.
“Stay back if you want. I’m going to check it out.” Shawn didn’t know why he was so curious now.
Edward took a deep breath. “I’ll suck it up,” he said. “But you’re leading the way.”
“That’s cool, man.”
Shawn stepped around Edward and continued toward the sound that hadn’t ceased the entire time.
What he reached wasn’t really a clearing but there must have been a break in the canopy of the trees because a single beam of moonlight shone down and illuminated the ground. A light mist had risen and an object sat in the shaft of moonlight.
As Shawn moved closer, the object looked like a small wooden cage.
“You see that?” he asked Edward.
“Yeah, man. You sure you don’t want to turn back? This is bad shit.”
“What if something’s trapped? What if it’s hurting?”
“What the fuck are we gonna do? Kill it with our bare hands? Carry it back to camp?”
They approached the wooden cage and looked into it.
The cage was bigger than he’d originally thought and it contained . . . He didn’t know what it contained.
Something that could have been a dog or a small goat, lying on its side. Its stomach had been ripped open and peering out through the opening was what looked like a human head. Only the head was hideous and malformed, like the face had been put on upside down or something.
“What the fuck is it?” Edward’s voice was weak and shaky.
“I don’t know.”
The creature struggled to stand up. As it did, the head-thing in its stomach dropped even farther out. Shawn felt like it was probably a goat. He knew there were goat farms in the area but, in order for this thing to be caged out here, someone would have had to put it there. Obviously, the first thing he thought of was some kind of ritualistic sacrifice. After all, the satanic panic of the ’80s wasn’t too far behind them and, back then, Satanists and
shady rituals lurked behind every closed door in every home and institution.
He looked into the creature’s eyes and saw only pain and despair. It was still impossible for him to think of it as a goat because he’d never seen a goat with a human head protruding from its stomach.
It continued with its pained mewling.
“What’s it saying?” Edward said.
“Um,” Shawn said, “it’s a fucking goat . . . or something, dude. I don’t really think it’s saying anything.”
“That is not a fucking goat.”
Shawn felt like Edward was as unnerved as he was. He understood how people could see things differently—interpret things differently—and he wondered what Edward was seeing. Maybe the mushrooms had hit them harder than they’d originally thought.
“It’s in pain, whatever it is,” Edward said. “It wants out.”
Even though it seemed injured and in pain, Shawn felt much more comfortable with this thing in its cage. He scratched his head and realized his hair was wet with sweat.
“Is it, uh, talking to you, dude?” Shawn asked.
Edward had a faraway look in his eyes, almost comically leaning his ear toward the creature like he was listening to some entirely different frequency.
“It is,” Edward said. “It says if we let it out, we’ll be spared.”
Shawn continued looking at the creature as though he might adjust to it the way he imagined people in Australia were probably not too freaked out about seeing the occasional kangaroo. Of course, this was no fucking kangaroo.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” Shawn asked.
“We have to let it out.”
Shawn continued to sweat, now aware of it rolling down from under his arms and between his legs. He tried to brush it out of his eyes. He didn’t know what he thought would happen but he was more afraid than he’d ever been in his life. How could Edward be so nonchalant about this? Given the home Shawn went back to every day, he would have thought he would be way more armored against fear than Edward.
“Do you really . . .” Shawn had a hard time speaking. His legs felt weak again and he was almost certain this was the effect of the shrooms coming back, if it had ever left. “Do you really want to walk back to camp knowing that thing’s out there somewhere?”
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