Edward crouched down next to Lucas’s corpse and struggled to turn it over.
Lena wondered why the rest of the night had felt so heavy and this felt kind of fun.
“Come on, Shawn,” she said. “You want the mouth? That wife of yours probably never gave you head, huh? Probably saved that for the other guys. Take off your clothes. Don’t be embarrassed that you’ve let yourself go. I don’t think Lucas will care.”
Shawn began unbuttoning his shirt. Lena watched as his large, tight belly was exposed. He unbuttoned his jeans with shaky hands and let them drop past his black boxer briefs. Lena had personally never been attracted to fat guys, but she kind of got it, and had certainly been with plenty of them. It was the weight. All that weight behind their cock, ramming it into you. There was something satisfying about it. She’d never been in a long-term thing with a fat guy, but she got that too. The woman wouldn’t have to try to keep up her own appearance. She, too, could let herself go. Wasn’t there so much freedom in that expression?
He slipped his underwear past the bulge of his cock and it sprang to life.
She found herself smiling. That, she thought, that’s why Lexi keeps coming back to you.
Edward had spat in his hand and was lubing up his cock. She assumed he was no stranger to anal sex. It was like the final frontier of the non-monogamous male. Stick with a girl until you’ve thoroughly explored every hole and then move on to the next one. Like some kind of video game. A little priapic male running from hole to hole. What were they looking for?
Grant drifted back to the utility room. She knew he would come back.
Lena positioned her chair upright and sat down. She unbuttoned and unzipped her jeans but didn’t bother pulling them down.
She sat down and slid her hand into the front of her underwear.
These hands, she thought, killed a man.
She watched Edward work himself into Lucas’s asshole.
Shawn sat on his ass and scooted toward Lucas’s head, lifting it up by the hair.
Lena parted her labia and worked her middle two fingers into herself, swirling her clit with her thumb, like the same thing she’d done in the bedroom upstairs had been practice for this moment.
Grant came back with a screwdriver.
“That side.” With her free hand, Lena pointed to Lucas’s right side. “So I can see your face.”
Grant plunged the screwdriver into a soft place on Lucas’s side.
He tried fitting his penis into the hole, but it wasn’t big enough. He inserted one finger, then two, and Lena watched a look of satisfaction cross his face. She wondered if he felt as good as he had when he’d shattered Lucas’s arms and legs. Or had that been Debbie? Maybe he had no recollection of that at all.
Shawn let Lucas’s head drop onto his massive cock, a pool of liquid spreading out below him. He didn’t seem to mind.
It was like the three men were transported, but Lena had never felt more grounded. Had never felt more there. Watching them violate the corpse made her feel more aware of her body than she ever had. No. Not aware of it. In thrall to it. Not afraid of it. She was letting herself go. This bundle of nerves between her legs was not there to alter the course of her life. The flesh and muscle surrounding her skeleton was not there to take or deliver pain. It was all there to give her pleasure.
She braced herself in the chair with her free arm as her hand vigorously worked her clit and she felt a delirious tremble begin in her muscles and she focused on the three men all driving into the corpse and she felt for a second as though she were living in a beautiful nightmare she never wanted to end and then she was crying out and the guys were grunting, almost simultaneously, and then everything was quiet, quiet.
TWENTY-NINE
After running away from the car, Natalie went back to her spartan studio apartment and tried to calm down by smoking a joint. It had maybe worked temporarily. She messaged her friends (she didn’t have that many) on MyFace but they were all at a party. Harvest said they might all go to Apricot’s later, especially if the kegs ran out. Natalie told Harvest to let her know.
Something deep inside of her wanted to freak out but . . . what was there to really freak out about?
The truth was, she couldn’t really explain what had happened. She had managed to get away from it. That was the important part. She could maybe hang out with her friends later, or not—she hadn’t really decided yet—and get a proper buzz on and then she’d have all day tomorrow to recuperate and she felt sure that when she went back to the Wyatts’ on Monday morning that weird guy and all of his creepy friends would be gone and it would be as though the whole thing never happened. It would go back to the way it had been, the worst part of which was having to fend off Mr. Wyatt’s somewhat obvious advances and pretending not to notice when he and the second Mrs. Wyatt had a furious fight. Luckily, Mrs. Wyatt traveled a lot and wasn’t there very often. She knew she could have called the cops but she hadn’t when she had the chance and now it seemed . . . she didn’t know. Less important? It would be too hard to explain. It wasn’t really a home invasion, she supposed. And she guessed it was entirely likely that the guy—Grant or something like that—really did know Mr. Wyatt and wanted to surprise him. He seemed pretty out of it and the Wyatts did have people in from out of town all the time so . . . who knew? Actually now, in retrospect, it seemed almost ridiculous to be so worried about it. Besides, it was something she was ultimately complicit in, albeit in a sort of roundabout kind of way, and knew she couldn’t provide some random tip that would have the Twin Springs Police Department swarming the house. If anything serious ended up happening, sooner or later, she would be questioned, and then she might have to answer some uncomfortable questions and she wasn’t a hundred percent sure, but it was entirely likely she would have to provide evidence of her identity, whereupon she might have to admit that, no, her driver’s license wasn’t what you would call legitimate and, no, that wasn’t exactly her legal name. Then what was she going to do? She was twenty-four. Of course they couldn’t send her back to her adoptive parents because Natalie had taken care of them. If her name, well, the name they’d given her anyway—she wasn’t sure if she’d been given a name at birth—got out, then she would be punished in one way or the other, just like she had been the sixteen years she’d lived with them. But she had managed to put an end to that. Images of fire and screams—why had she insisted on sticking around to hear the screams?—darkened her thoughts. Whatever punishment awaited her would most likely be more . . . institutional. Something faceless and clinical and impossible to take vengeance out on. But that was the past and the future and all of that was too dark to think about.
She had to stay in the moment. If the police ran her ID and found out she was a fake, she wasn’t going to be able to bat her big brown eyes and say, “That’s not important, is it?” No. Absolutely not. Twin Springs was a liberal town but that just meant the police force had to be even bigger dicks in opposition to that kind of devil may care attitude. Besides, the only types of people that really worked on were creeps like Mr. Ellis, who’d rented her this apartment, no real questions asked, favors probably pending, and Mr. Wyatt, who she felt took days off just to sit around the house to stare at her ass.
One day when Mr. Wyatt had had his afternoon drink on he’d said to her or to her tits, which was what he was making eye contact with, “You know, it’s okay to dress a little more . . . casual when Mrs. Wyatt isn’t around.” She’d known exactly what he meant. She also knew he was just working up the right amount of courage before making some ludicrous proposal to her. Of course, it wouldn’t seem ludicrous to him. It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened. And it wouldn’t be the first time she’d said no. At her relatively young age, it already felt like she’d had a lifetime of saying no. It was how she’d found herself in the wilds of Ohio from Astoria, Long Island. Although most of the times of saying no in between there and here had not been punctuated with fire and screams.
So . . . just forget about it.
She didn’t need to know why she’d leapt out of the car at that red light, the vaguely familiar passenger sitting stunned next to her. She couldn’t, for the life of her, remember where she’d seen that face. Maybe it wasn’t even the face. Maybe it was the way he moved or something. At first she thought he was maybe someone famous or at least semi-famous but with the way he was sweating and the way he smelled, she doubted that was likely.
Eventually her friends stopped texting completely. The last thing Harvest had sent was the address of the party. It was somewhere out in the country. They were excited because famous comedian Bill Chappeau was rumored to be showing up later. Natalie didn’t see what the big deal was. He was in town all the time when he wasn’t out promoting his latest Netflix special. She realized that drinking at the same party or bar as Chappeau would eventually mutate into actually drinking with the guy, like having a conversation with him or being his friend or something, and that might make them feel really special or important for a few minutes, maybe even a few days. He probably wouldn’t show up anyway. As far as she knew, he was rumored to show up at just about every party she’d ever been to and he had done so exactly never. It was like the hosts were desperate to keep their guests around as long as possible. The party was probably just a bunch of underage kids, their enabling parents, and a handful of townies her age, invited to make the older folks feel more vital or relevant or, fuck, she didn’t know, maybe just younger.
It didn’t matter. She didn’t have any way of getting there anyway.
She turned off her phone and slid it into her pocket.
She should just polish off the last of the pot and go to bed. It had been a long day. Her nerves were fried.
She’d thought about shit she hadn’t thought about in years and didn’t want to spend any more time thinking about. It had taken her this long to construct a world that made even a shred of sense and she would do nearly anything in her power to not have that undone.
But she knew she wasn’t going to do that. Smoking more pot, lying in her bed . . . that would just make it worse.
Right now, being alone felt like the absolute worst thing in the world.
The more time she spent by herself, the more time she would think about whatever was happening back at that house, the strange journey she’d taken that had led her here, that had led her to that house.
They were probably having fun. She didn’t know if it was legal or not but, then again, the most fun things never were.
See. She was already doing it. Thinking about them. Thinking about stuff. She needed to get out of her fucking apartment. At least there would be people at Apricot’s. Even if she didn’t know any of them. Listening to other people’s conversations would have to be better than conducting her own ridiculous conversation in her head. Besides, it was Saturday night. Phil was probably bartending. He was all right. She could talk to him. As long as it wasn’t that surly one. She couldn’t even remember his name. Probably tried to block it out each time. How could someone give you PTSD by tending bar? That guy could.
There. She was already thinking about other things.
She definitely needed to get out of the apartment.
She needed to get out of these awful clothes first.
Why did uniforms have to be uniformly awful?
She managed a small smile, if mostly inward. Phew. At least she was feeling the pot a little bit. She was glad she hadn’t decided to smoke all of it. It never mixed very well with drinking and she felt like she was going to need to drink a lot. Drinking didn’t make her think. It made her want to do stuff and then pass out. She wanted to reduce the time between her head hitting the pillow and unconsciousness to like two-to-three seconds, no more. No room for other thoughts to creep in.
She still hadn’t moved.
Up and at ’em! she thought, hopped off the couch, went in to her closet, undressed hatefully, slid on some shorts and a t-shirt, slipped her feet into some sandals, grabbed some cash and jammed it in her pocket.
She locked her apartment door and headed into the soft drizzle of the night, contemplated going back in for an umbrella before thinking, Fuck it. Hopefully she wasn’t soaked by the time she got to Apricot’s.
The place was relatively empty for a Saturday night. She didn’t know exactly what time it was. Probably near midnight. Twin Springs was a pretty early-to-bed early-to-rise kind of town. Either that or everyone was at the same party as her friends.
Phil leaned against the bar, his arms crossed at his chest, head crooked to the side as he bemusedly watched a puffy, aged Robert Smith perform at some festival.
“You look bored,” she said.
He turned. “It has been a slooow one. What can I get ya?”
She ordered a pitcher of Yuengling. He let it pour and covertly looked her over.
“All alone?” he said.
“Friends are at a party. They might be by later.”
“Hope so,” he said. “This place is a tomb.”
So much for listening in on other people’s conversations.
“Is there anyone here?”
“They’re all out on the patio.” He held up a cigarette. “I’m about headed there myself.”
“I don’t suppose I could get one of those?”
“Ask and ye shall receive.”
He dug his hands into his weird hemp pants and came up with another one.
He pushed the draft topper back and slid the pitcher across the bar toward her.
“Just one glass?”
“I’m not gonna drink it out of the pitcher.”
He brought a glass up from under the bar and said, “Thirsty girl.”
Natalie grabbed the pitcher and the glass and began walking around the partition to the doors leading out to the patio. Phil stepped out from around the bar and followed her. Before making it to the doors, he quickly stepped in front of her and held one open.
“Thank you, sir.” She nodded.
There were three small groups on the patio and one lone woman standing at the railing and staring out at the darkness of the nature reserve across the street.
Natalie poured a beer from the pitcher. Phil held a cigarette out to her. She placed it between her lips and he lit it for her. She caught a whiff of the beer and liquor tang coming from his hands. She inhaled deeply and took a sip of her beer. It wasn’t the best but it was cold and it contained alcohol, so it would do.
Phil took a drag of his cigarette as a couple approached the front doors of the bar.
“Shit.” He took a couple more quick hits and crushed it out. “So much for that.”
“Poor guy,” Natalie said, slightly disappointed her source for easy conversation had been called away.
She looked around at the groups of people to see if she recognized them while continuing to sip her beer and smoke her cigarette. Of course she recognized them . . . kind of. It was a small enough town and she’d been here long enough that everyone seemed vaguely familiar. But she certainly didn’t know any of them well enough to try and insinuate herself into one of their groups.
She turned to the lone woman at the railing. She closed her lips around the cigarette and grabbed the pitcher and glass. Maybe the woman could use a refill soon. Maybe she’d offer to pay for the next round.
Natalie set the pitcher and glass down on the railing, said, “Little rainy,” and turned to look at the woman.
She immediately tensed up because if she didn’t she was afraid her stomach would drop through her asshole.
Shit. It was the woman from the house. The small athletic blond. The one who’d come in with the man, not the creepy one who’d asked if she liked pussy.
“Looks like it.” The woman pulled a cigarette from her box and lit up. She turned and gave Natalie a half-hearted smile. No recognition whatsoever.
Natalie crushed out her cigarette and thought about getting away from the woman as quickly as possible but knew curiosity would compel her to stay.
“Where’s everybody else?” Natalie said.
“Huh?” The woman again turned toward her, this time studying her more closely.
“Your friends at the Wyatt place. I’m sorry.” She exhaled for what felt like the first time since recognizing the woman. “I’m Natalie. The maid. We met earlier.”
Recognition finally dawned on the woman’s face as she gave Natalie a quick once over.
“Right,” she said. “Must not have recognized you in the civilian clothes. I’m Lexi but, well, I guess we’ve already been introduced, right?”
“Well . . . good to see you again.” Natalie was now completely stumped as to how she could possibly continue this conversation. She wanted her friends to show up.
The woman kind of rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah. Likewise. So how long have you worked at that house?”
“Coming up on a year if . . .”
“If what?”
Natalie gave a nervous laugh and said, “If I don’t get fired, I guess. I kind of bailed earlier.”
Lexi took a drag from her cigarette and said, “Sounds like you lasted longer than me.”
Natalie didn’t know how much of it she wanted to get into. “I just . . . got a weird vibe, you know? That guy, Grant? He doesn’t live there. Just kind of showed up. And . . .”
“It’s okay,” Lexi said. “You don’t have to tell me. Bad vibes is the least of it. There’s some super bad energy there. I will say . . . I mean, I guess it woke me up or something.”
The woman took another drag from her cigarette and Natalie became aware of how sad and lonely she looked.
Lexi kind of shook her head and glanced at some indiscernible place in the parking lot.
“Maybe you’re too young to really understand but . . . do you ever feel like you know someone and then you have this moment where you realize you don’t know that person at all?” She didn’t wait for Natalie to respond. “It’s worse when you realize you hate the person they actually are. And it’s even worse when that person is your husband.”
Irrationalia Page 14