THE TRAP

by Tabitha King

  He resisted for a few seconds, then let her take it over.

  “I don’t know if I like it,” he said.

  But he didn’t tell her to stop and she didn’t. She kept on drawing him in, releasing him, drawing him in again. When she stole a look at him, he had closed his eyes and wore an agonized expression. She had to suppress a laugh. None of the drunken, doped-up little teenagers he had terrorized or seduced in the past had ever given him a hint of what it was really all about. Her own terror receded. She didn’t need to fuck him to death. It was enough to humiliate him. Now she felt her power and calmly and deliberately brought him, first with a quicker rhythm, a second of respite, and then an irresistible pressure, to sudden orgasm. Like squeezing the last toothpaste out, she thought.

  He groaned and twisted against her, then pushed himself up on his elbows and glared at her. “You bitch,” he said. “I wasn’t finished.”

  She turned her face away to hide her smile.

  He cupped her chin and jerked her head to face him. “You made me come,” he accused her.

  She fought to keep a straight face. “Sorry,” she said.

  He drew his fist back as if he were going to slam it into her. She grinned at him, and showed him the ruins of her front teeth. He dropped his fist and pulled out of her, with as little care as he had slammed into her. Sitting on the side of the bed, he slugged back the contents of his cup of wine, and reached for the coke.

  “We ain’t done yet,” he said sullenly. “You’ll see.”

  The pleasure went out of her victory. She felt enormously stupid, ashamed of her own foolish pride. The power of the slave had been nothing more than coke talking. There wasn’t any winning with this man. He would only become more dangerous to Travis and herself. All she had done by showing him resistance was provoke him.

  She slid by him, intending to go to the bathroom. He caught her arm and jerked her back.

  “Where you think you’re going?”

  She pointed mutely at the bathroom door.

  He shoved her hard again. “You bin enough. Just let it dribble.”

  She pulled herself backward onto the bed and waited.

  “Sit up,” he said.

  She propped herself on her elbows. She was cold, and tired, and felt dirty.

  He held his palm with a pinch of coke in it under her nose. “Suck it in, O-liv-i-a. It’s good for you.”

  She turned her head. He grabbed her chin and jerked her back. “Do it before I break some more of your teeth making you. Do it.”

  She bent over his palm, closed one nostril, and inhaled the powder through the other. It tingled and burned a little. Then she felt better.

  Rand lit a cigarette. “Feel your ass loosening up?”

  She ignored him. It was all the resistance she dared.

  He sucked at the cigarette a little, then set it on the edge of the nightstand.

  She thought about telling him when it burned down it would char the wood, and the ash would certainly fall onto the rug and dirty it, and if the butt became unbalanced between ash and burning end, it might fall onto the rug and burn a hole in it. Or burn them up. But he was fondling his penis with one hand, and feeling her breasts with the other, and he pinched one nipple hard enough to break the skin and make her cry out and knock his hand away.

  “Ooops,” he said, and reached for the coke baggie. “Fix that right up.” He dipped a fingertip in the powder.

  She covered the irritated nipple with one palm.

  “Suit yourself,” he said. “I got a better idea.” He pinched a generous amount of coke into one palm and rolled his fingertips in it. Then he began to spread the powder over her labia.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “Stings,” she said. “Numb.”

  He seemed pleased. He continued his application until his palm was empty. He pinched her labia experimentally and she felt nothing. He snorted a little coke himself and then ordered her to open her legs wider. He placed one hand firmly on her pubis, and began to insert small quantities of the powder into her vagina.

  She twitched and tried to close her legs. “Hold still,” he said, “less you want me to twist your tits some more.”

  It was like the biopsy seven years ago, after a falsely suspicious Pap smear. The gynecologist had taken the tissue sample in his office, after injecting her with a local anesthetic that had felt much like Novocain or one of the other anesthetics dentists used. It felt like that. Except for being injected. She was absorbing the coke directly through mucous membrane. She wondered what damage he might be doing her, how much could her body absorb of the stuff, and whatever it was cut with.

  Rand propped himself up next to her and snorted a little more. He took her hands and put them on his penis. “Get me up,” he said. “Wish your mouth wasn’t full of them jagged edges.”

  “Me, too,” she said, stroking him.

  He laughed. “I could always break ‘em off for you.”

  “Thanks,” she said, “you’ve done enough.”

  “You blow your hubby?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer him. He had grown thick and hard again in her hands. She squeezed the base of his penis gently and then stroked the tip. That distracted him sufficiently.

  He pushed her down and climbed onto her, entering her as crudely and violently as before. “I always wanted to fuck a couple grams of coke,” he said.

  She felt him within her but very little else. Her muscles did not respond to her. She was beginning to feel very strange and distant. She could hear her heart hammering hard a long ways away. Her body slicked with a cold sweat.

  He rode her viciously for what seemed like a very long time. She lost track of it. It was like being in a canoe on the river. The river was drawing her with it. The thrust of the oar only made the rhythm, pushed her into the river’s flow. The water thickened as if she were in a net of weeds, and she arched, reaching out to escape it. As the tangled web of weeds let go, she realized what was happening, but it was too late. She screamed, but not, as Rand Nighswander thought, with pleasure. With despair.

  The lights went out.

  Rand swore. Liv caught him by surprise and pushed him off. She twisted over the side of the bed, feeling frantically for the gun he had taped there. He hooked an arm around her throat and hauled her backward. They lay tangled together on the bed, panting.

  They could hear Ricky and Gordy stumbling around the living room and cursing.

  All at once, perhaps because the dark of the night had invaded the house, Liv felt very cold. Now it seemed quite extraordinary that they had not lost the power earlier. Triumphant, the wind howled around the house.

  Rand shook her by the shoulder. “Where do ya keep your candles?”

  “Nightstand,” Liv said. She untangled herself from him and undid the tucked in blankets and linen. She slid under them and turned her back to him, curling up on herself for the warmth.

  He groped for his matches. By the light of a match he opened the drawer. A stub end of candle rolled out of the back. Rand grunted and picked it up.

  Liv’s eyes, shielded from the flare of the match and then the meagre candlelight, adjusted quickly to the almost total dark. But she was paralyzed by confusion and pain and the drugs she had taken. She couldn’t think of anything very clearly.

  Ricky pounded at the bedroom door. “Rand!” he yelled. “We lost the fucking power.”

  Rand got up and opened the door. “I noticed,” he said.

  Ricky stumbled through the door. “You got a candle,” he said.

  “Ayuh,” Rand answered. Rand turned to Liv. “Anymore a these around, O-liv-i-a?” he asked.

  “Kitchen,” Liv said. “ ‘Bove the fridge.”

  Gordy Teed’s face showed like a faint moon at the bedroom door. “Power went out,” he said.

  “There’s candles in the kitchen,” Rand said. “Look in the cupboard over the refrigerator.”

  “Think you can do that?” Ricky asked Gordy sarcastically.
/>
  Gordy nodded eagerly and scurried away. He could be heard bumping into things and muttering swear words.

  Ricky cast a knowing glance at the bed. “How was it?” he asked.

  Liv cringed under the blankets.

  “Find out for yourself,” Rand said.

  Ricky hooted. “Do I get some of the coke?”

  Rand draped an arm over Ricky’s shoulders. “Listen up,” he said, and whispered in Ricky’s ear. Ricky’s eyes brightened and he covered his mouth and giggled. He poked Rand in the chest.

  “Fucking A,” he said. “You watching?”

  Rand picked up his long johns and started climbing into them. “You need a cheering section?” he asked.

  Ricky shrugged and rubbed his hands together. “Your idea, that’s all.”

  Rand walked over to the bed and picked up his cigarettes. He pulled the rocking chair closer to the bed and sat down. “What you waiting for?” he asked.

  Ricky hauled his sweater over his head and unzipped his jeans. He scuttled closer to the bed and bent over Liv.

  “Hey, Olivia,” he said, snatching up the baggie of coke. “I got something here for your tight ass.”

  Liv shuddered and curled herself a little tighter.

  A light wavered in the hallway. “Hey,” Gordy said. “I found them candles.”

  He stood in the doorway grinning. Nobody seemed very interested in his accomplishment. Rand just sat there smoking, and Ricky was shucking his pants with one hand and waving the baggie in the other. Gordy thought about it a minute. It looked like Rand was giving Ricky some of the nose candy. It looked like Rand was going to let Ricky whack off a piece of the woman, too. Gordy shuffled into the bedroom for a closer look.

  “Hey,” he said. “Watcha doin’?”

  Ricky kicked his jeans away and struggled out of his long johns. “What do you think, asshole?”

  “Can I have some?” Gordy asked. He crept a little closer to the bed. The candle dripped hot wax over his fingers but he seemed not to notice.

  Rand laughed.

  Ricky tore back the blankets and climbed onto the bed. “It’s my turn now, O-liv-i-a,” he said gleefully.

  Liv shrank away from him. “Leave me alone,” she said. “Get away from me, you creep.”

  “It’s my turn,” Ricky explained.

  “Don’t you touch me,” Liv said. “Don’t you touch me.”

  Ricky slid his hand under the blankets to Liv’s belly. “Come on, Olivia.”

  Liv slapped his hand away. To her surprise he backed off and looked at Rand.

  “Come on,” he whined. “It’s my turn.”

  Rand sighed and stood up. He leaned over the bed. “You just don’t have no technique,” he said. “You have to say the right words to her.”

  Ricky turned sullen. “I don’t have to say nothing to her.”

  Rand sank to his haunches and pushed his face close to Liv’s. “You better let him, O-liv-i-a, or he’ll be corn-holing your kid instead.”

  Liv exploded from the bed, tearing up the linen as she came up in one motion and heaving them over Ricky and Gordy. She struck Rand in the chest in passing and he staggered back and fell on his behind. She was out of the room and down the hall before they could react. Behind her, Ricky and Gordy struggled, cursing, to free themselves from the bed linen. There was a violent whoosh and hysterical screaming. Liv saw light reflected on the walls like shadow. One or both of the candles had ignited the bed linen. The shadows of the three men danced on the wall in the tormented postures of demons in hell.

  Ricky freed himself from the burning sheets and stumbled into Rand’s arms, shrieking. Rand thrust him aside. Gordy, the sheets still tangled around him, struggled frantically to escape the flames licking his ankles and knees as if he were being burned at the stake. He kept up a ceaseless screaming like a teakettle on the boil. The fire was the only light left in the room. He was between Rand and the door Liv had fled through. Rand hesitated, then leapt on Gordy, knocking him to the floor.

  “Towels!” Rand shouted at Ricky, cowering by the bathroom door.

  The habit of obeying Rand took over. Ricky could always do something, anything, if someone just told him what. He dove into the bathroom and ripped towels from the bars and shelves and threw them through the open doorway toward Rand.

  Rand snatched towels from mid-air and buried the flames with them. Gordy sat up and pounded at them, beating out the fire, first hysterically, then angrily. The room was suddenly dark again. Rand leapt over Gordy and tore out into the hallway after Liv.

  In the blacked-out living room she stumbled against furniture, knocked over trays that still had dishes on them, and tripped over The Poor, who seemed to come from nowhere, as if she had coalesced out of the dark itself. It was cold there; they had let the fire go out. Liv scrambled for the fireplace and found by memory and feel the niche where she left the kitchen carving knife hours before. Then she dashed back across the room toward the hallway to Sarah’s bedroom and Travis.

  Rand hurtled out of the dark, intersecting her at the entrance to the hall.

  There was no time even to scream. Liv struck at him with the knife. She felt the resistance of flesh as the knife caught and slashed the side of his face. Rand’s hand closed like a manacle around her wrist and twisted. She felt her ulna twist with it. Her whole body was lifted up, her bare feet left the floor. She cried out in pain and hopelessness. Trying to tighten her grip on the knife, she realized she had lost control of her fingers. They felt boneless. They seemed, of their own accord, to loosen. Rand shook her wrist lightly as a dog might shake a dead duck by the neck, and her fingers let go. Rand put out his other hand and caught the knife as it fell.

  Casually, he shoved her into the living room. She sank onto the couch and curled up, shivering. He was breathing hard. He felt his face, and then looked at his fingers.

  “Bitch,” he said. “You cut me.”

  Ricky padded into the living room, and peered at them.

  “You got her, Rand?” he asked.

  Rand grunted. He studied the knife. “Get some more candles.”

  Ricky ducked into the kitchen.

  Gordy shuffled into the living room. He was weeping. He stank of burnt cloth and urine.

  Ricky came back clutching a fistful of candles. “Gordy pissed himself,” he said. “Too late to put the fire out, but he tried.” Ricky giggled.

  “You’re mean,” Gordy snuffled. “You’re always mean to me.” He crept to the hearth and slumped onto the floor, hugging his knees.

  Rand tucked the carving knife under his arm, and took a candle from Ricky. “Matches?”

  Ricky shrugged.

  Rand looked around impatiently, then went to the fireplace. He picked up the poker and turned over ashes until he found glowing coals. He rolled a cone of newspaper and lit it from the coals, then lit the candle from the newspaper taper.

  “Rand,” Gordy whimpered, “I got burnt, Rand. It hurts, Rand.”

  Rand crouched and examined Gordy’s burns. Gordy showed him blistered hands, feet, ankles.

  “Ain’t pretty,” Rand said. “But you’ll live.” He looked at Ricky. “Go look in the bathrooms and see if you can find some first-aid cream or some burn spray or something like that.”

  “Kid’s bathroom,” Liv said. “Burn spray there.”

  Rand nodded. “Thank you, O-liv-i-a.”

  Ricky lit a candle from Rand’s and scurried off.

  Rand took the knife out from under his arm, and sat down on the sofa, next to Liv. “I oughta cut your throat,” he said conversationally. “I oughta cut the kid’s throat.”

  Liv rocked herself gently. She was very cold, shaking with it, cold all the way through, as if she were all surface, and all exposed.

  Ricky came back with the burn spray. He glanced at Rand, and took the spray to Gordy.

  “Don’t say I never did nothing for you,” he said to Gordy.

  Gordy took the can of spray gratefully. “Oh, no, Ricky. I
won’t never say you never did nothing for me. Not ever.”

  “Ricky,” Rand said. “Where’s the coke?”

  Ricky started. “Fuck me,” he said. “I think I dropped it. I’ll go see.”

  “You cold?” Rand asked Liv.

  Liv nodded.

  “Good,” Rand said. “I oughta put you right the fuck outta doors.”

  Ricky slunk back behind the wavering light of his candle. He showed Rand a charred towel with the remains of the baggie in it. The fire had melted both plastic and crystals into a stinking, unappetizing lump.

  “Great,” said Rand. “Great.”

  “Yeah,” said Ricky.

  Rand poked the carving knife at Liv’s bare breasts. “Come on, O-liv-i-a,” he said, and stood up.

  Liv pushed herself off the couch and into a standing position.

  Rand took her elbow and shoved her toward the bedroom.

  The air was thick with the smoke from the fire. Rand unlocked a window and opened it. The smoke fled to the out of doors, along with the heat in the room, and snow blew in, in bone-chilling gusts. Liv took a spare blanket from the closet, and wrapped herself in it. Rand looked over her shoulder, and took out a blanket for himself and one for Ricky, who was still buck naked. Ricky giggled and wrapped it around his waist.

  “Find your clothes,” Rand said. “And mine.”

  He shut the window. “You make up this bed, O-liv-i-a.”

  “Be easier if I had real clothes on,” Liv said.

  Rand nodded.

  Liv slipped a nightdress over her head.

  “My feet are cold,” she said.

  “So put something on ‘em,” Rand said.

  “My socks are in the bathroom.”

  “Go on.”

  She pulled on the socks quickly, wiggling her toes and flexing her foot to redistribute the contraband narcotics into crevices between toes and under her arch. When she came out, Rand was kneeling by the bed, removing the gun and ammo he had taped under the frame.

  While Ricky kicked burnt toweling and linen out of the way, and sorted his clothing from his brother’s, and the brothers dressed, Liv stripped the bottom sheet from the bed and remade it with fresh linen.

  “You take some pills outta that bathroom?” Rand asked Ricky.