Chapter 5

Nola stared at Johnny as if he'd grown two noses. He sat, stirring his coffee, a strange relaxation softening his face.

"I didn't know you even knew I wore clothes," she said.

"Aw, come on, sis! Anyway, since my legs got better and I've been taking little walks I see people. Why don't you go downtown-wherever town-is-and get yourself some new clothes. There's money, and I don't think you've bought a new dress since we left 'Frisco, have you?"

"No, Johnny. But I have clothes. I don't need new dresses. We n-never go anywhere."

"That's got to change, too," he said with an exaggerated wink. "Hell, I haven't seen a goddamned movie since I left the hospital. You buy a new dress, and we'll go to a show before you cut the price tag off. Would you like that, sis?"

Her mouth dropped open in shock, then a small smile broadened her lips. "Oh, Johnny, yes, yes, yes!"

"Say no more, kiddo," he told her. "It's about time we came back to life."

Clearing the table, she dropped a plate. Her mind was like a summer cyclone, twirling, flitting, unable to rest. She wanted to jump up and down and cry; she had not quite the courage to say it had happened, but she was sure it had at last begun to happen. She moved to the dinette and peeked in at her brother. He was sitting quietly, reading the Cranden Bulletin. She began to count the things.

He hadn't laid a hand on her since she'd come home from work. He had asked her quietly, with a smile, for his vodka. He had smacked his lips over the small filet mignons, which had cost a dollar and forty cents apiece. Then had come the bombshell about the age and seediness of her clothes. And before she had even begun to recover, he had mentioned the theater, his words about "coming to life" still echoed in her ears. Nola began to cry, but from happiness, not sorrow.

Well, of course, she thought. All along she had carried it in her mind that it would happen suddenly. But anything different would be suddenly. Perhaps he wasn't completely cured, but he was on his way. His legs were fine now, she was certain. And obviously his tremendous recuperative powers were now concentrated on his mind. A rush of plans came to her brain and she told herself, no, no. Let him find his own way back into normal levels. To push him or to attempt to guide him might well cause him to revert. She giggled through her tears. Her Johnny was getting well, and she had won.

She did not count what she had lost because with him climbing out of the swamp in which he had so long wallowed, she had not lost anything. But, she assured herself, she would have to be careful. She had been fooled before by a seeming spell of normalcy, only to have him exhibit a vicious, lustful inversion, more terrible than the last. But her hope lay now, not in his pleasantness, but in the awareness of her and their hermit-like life. Never before had he even mentioned expanding their existence. She had a gleeful image of herself on Johnny's arm, entering the lobby of a theater. He was so tall and handsome, and people would stare. They'd sit together, both eating popcorn out of the same box and they'd murmur about the movie and maybe laugh together. Her brother was getting well. He was beginning to think like other men, like she remembered him before Vietnam.

And this thought gave her slight pause, a moment of premature apprehension. When he was well, what would she do? She saw herself alone, with Johnny gone off about his own life. Even now, as happy as she was, her belly felt empty and abandoned, and her tits ached for hard fingers and tweaks of pain. She would have to learn how to talk to men all over again. She would have to learn to say no, even though she lay quivering and desiring in a man's embrace. Nola quivered.

She saw herself in wild embrace with a faceless man. She felt his hand on her big, excitable tits, and one low on her back, maybe even to the rounds of her ass. She would squirm in protest, and the low hand might get under her skirt, creep up her thigh and send its fingers to any one of her private places. Could she lie with a rigid cock against her belly and not be forced to unearth it from a man's trousers? Would it be possible to deny fingertips creeping over her flesh to find her pulsating clitoris in the high wet press of her cunt?

Suddenly Nola found herself breathless, leaning over the sink, her tits hanging weightily, her hips softly writhing. She felt wet between the legs and hot behind. She opened the vodka bottle and took a short straight drink from the neck. The shape of the bottle in her mouth increased her panic. She pursed her lips and swallowed. The liquor hit her belly like a bomb and she turned, her eyes trying to see through the walls to where Johnny sat. For a moment, she was tempted to strip naked in the kitchen and rush in to plump her trembling body across his lap. A moan of agony escaped her lips.

Somewhere along the way, she had become two women. One was now elated over the nearness of victory, the other squirmed with lust, as compelling as the need for breath. Nola clenched her fists and hung on. She had saved Johnny, but he had destroyed her. No matter. Until the job was done and he was once more a man among men, she had neither the right nor the real desire to think about herself. Later she would set about repairing Nola Banner's life. For now, act as if what he did or did not do was exactly right. And be careful, Nola, be very, very careful.

For a moment she thought her heart was going to break, then she stroked her hair with the stiff brush and fought for calm. In the mirror she could see Johnny at the door, his naked body a magnificent thing in the subdued light of her bedroom. His prick was up, but not fiercely. It hung out in a heavy arc, the scarlet head half-covered by the ample foreskin. It had been too much to hope for, she told herself, but in any case, he seemed calm and unfrenzied. Perhaps it was habit. He had fucked her once, and sometimes twice, every day for months; like her own quivering, revolted sex, his probably demanded relief.

"I thought you said good night," she murmured.

"I know. I was in bed and got to thinking."

Nola tensed. She had never heard him qualify his lust before. Four hours before she had told herself to act as if what he did or did not do was exactly right. She put the hairbrush on her dresser, and with a swift, animated movement, shrugged her filmy nightgown up over her smoothly-brushed hair. She looked at Johnny in the mirror and at her own nakedness. She hated her huge, almost grotesquely out-thrust tits, yet she loved to have them rolled and tip-sucked and lightly bruised. She saw how her belly flexed with each breath, and she felt every nerve and organ in the flat loveliness. Because of the light, only the top fringe of her pubic hair showed. Then he was moving to her and she stood, waiting for obscenities and sweet relief from the hungriness of her cunt. His arms closed around her, and his big palms filled with her tits. His prick lay down, pressed into straining in the soft valley of her ass cheeks. Be careful, Nola, very, very careful.

"Are you sure you want me tonight, Johnny?"

"I'm sure."

"I thought-you didn't touch me like you usually do."

"Do you hate me for what I do to you, sis?"

She sighed. "N-no, Johnny. I couldn't hate you no matter what you did. Not in the beginning, but I guess I need you now as much as you need me," she decided to say.

His chuckle was deep, almost an animal growl but not an angry animal. He moved his body and his cock heated her bottom with its friction. His hands were pulling at her tits but not with their usual disregard for her sensitivity. In sudden, private distress, she tipped her head back onto his shoulder. She wanted him to kiss her, but kissing was something he seldom did unless his mind had already decided to hurt her. He kissed her now, wiping a moist caress along her temple. "Ohhh," she breathed through open lips.

His right hand dropped downward, smoothing her flesh until it curled under the tip of her belly. She twitched as his fingertip found her stiffened clitoris, and briefly she was afraid. Then the sublte, rubbing came, and it was a lover's touch. Lost in delighted amazement, Nola leaned back while Johnny adeptly finger-fucked her, not deep, not roughly, but with a skill and deliberation she did not know he possessed. Nola shuffled her slippered feet apart and arched to his manipulations. The momentary shadow of defeat she'd known when she'd seen him at her back now faded. There was a difference in him. Even his skin felt softer and warmer to her back and while she could hear his breath, it did not have the furious hiss she knew so well.

Slowly, she let her hand creep back between them, and with a small twisting hunch, she freed his cock from the greedy crease of her ass and caught it in eager fingers as it bounded up. He maintained the space between them so she could frig him tenderly, and as the huge shaft filled her hand, she began to pant with building excitement. His finger in her quim was maddeningly marvelous, and she let her hips wander in lazy urging to his caress. She wanted desperately to be fucked, but the sweetness of this new ecstasy was too wonderful to stop. She thrilled anew as Johnny fucked up gently into her awkwardly twisted hand, letting the head of his thundering cock bump in the small of her back. Suddenly, she wanted to be a foot taller so she could tuck his prick right up her asshole and go on like that forever, feeling his pole sliding and rippling, while his finger fired her cunt to impossible heat.

"Oh, Johnny, Johnny!" she moaned. "It's so ... so wonderful!"

His lips moved against her hair. "You dirty, rotten, fucking slut, you prick-loving bitch!"

"Yes, Johnny!"

Chuckling, he swung her around and carried her to the bed. The blow she expected did not come, and he surprised her again. As she sprawled, he went to his knees, and uttering a low growl, his face went into her open crotch with hard insistence. She felt his lips on her juiced vulva, and his tongue licked firmly at her clitoris. Supported on her elbows, Nola stared at his bobbing, pressing head. He had never before done this, and as his tongue and salivating revived the acute passions his finger had begun, she controlled the urge to protest. Why, she did not know, but this weird and wonderful kissing did not seem quite manly to her unsophisticated mind, then she controlled herself, accepting the exquisite caress as part of Johnny's new mind. And within seconds her eyes closed and she began to roll and lift her hips to the devastating friction. He seemed like a hungry animal, but not vicious. She heard him swallow the fresh flow of her cunt fluids, and his hands, now pressing her inner thighs wide apart, worked excitedly.

"Johnny! It's going to m-make me c-cum!" she panted. "Oh God! Johnny, don't stop, don't stop! Oh Jesus, Johnny, I'm c-cumming!"

Her head fell back, straining her throat. Her mouth opened, sucked in air, expelled it in gusts and sucked in again, and the streaks of gouging ecstasy were almost more than she could bear. For a few moments while he licked the lips of her cunt and kissed the throbbing clitoris, she lay as if clubbed. Then she opened her eyes and he was standing over her, his prick so stiff it stood nearly straight up. With a cry of need, she sat up and took it in her mouth, letting the head float on her tongue as she vibrated her lips around the sleek, hard shaft. It had a strong taste, as if it had just been plunging in her cunt, but she was so unnerved with desire she paid no attention. After a minute, she ceased to fear the smash of his palm to her head, or perhaps his knee swiftly raised to her solar plexus, as he had done several times. He had never minded her sucking and mouthing, but under her eyes and his, his inability to complete the orgasm by flooding her throat induced anger. Now, although she wanted the flavor and filling of his prick, she remembered that tonight was not like other nights. And when her hands on his thick thighs felt the tensing and his cock jerked, she gave a cry and fell back on the bed, drawing her legs up and kicking her heels out. But he didn't fall onto her and finish his fuck in her quaking cunt. He fell beside her and rolled her into his embrace, fitting her over him, his cock lying stiff and hot and wet between her spraddled nates. Crazy with passion and shaken with the nonsexual joy of his strange pacification, Nola reached back and placed the head of his cock to her asshole. Maybe for the first time, she thought, she could test this erotic intrusion for delight and satisfaction. He had fucked her in the ass many times, but always with such brutal ruthlessness, the weak-ly hovering suspicion of possible pleasure had been frightened away by pain and lacerating force.

Now she raised her ass and held his cock and then, with gasps and squeals of anticipation, lowered her posterior, using her own saliva as a lubricant. He chuckled and screwed his hips, and Nola closed her eyes, concentrated on relaxation. When his prick passed the sphincter and triggered her softening, she had to fight to keep from urinating on his chest. Then he held her and forced his penis up and up, and with a small shriek of insane need, she sat, hard. The huge prick in her bowel seemed to be made of red hot steel. She folded forward, grinding her tits to his hairy chest, her lips to his. He curled his spine and sent his cock deeper, then with a rolling undulation, he fucked her to quick orgasm, and she did not let him know. In the half-minute of clarity following her violent cum, she felt her butt seem to split, the flesh distended to impossible circling. She rubbed her cunt on the hirsute mound of his pelvis and she groaned with ecstasy, trying to expel his prick like a gigantic turd and inhale it like a breath of solid air. The fire around her anus was unbearable, the feeling of raw sex was exquisite, and most wonderful was the sense of being opened, filled, pummeled and rammed. Her fingers clawed at his shoulders, pleading, harder, deeper, thicker, and she screwed herself down and around with spastic fury. Abruptly, his ass came up off the bed and Nola snapped erect, sitting high above him, impaled upon his thumping, urging penis. She felt a familiar ache high in her belly; before it had been frightening because the head of his cock had seemed to be too huge, too deep, too close to vital wounding. Now she thrashed her arms and tossed her head and had a brain-chilling orgasm around the pains.

It came two days later, like a huge, steel-knuckled fist that sprang from the printed page to pulp her senses. Her name had been Agnes Tiller, and she had operated the small dressmaker's shop behind which her clubbed and raped body had been found. She had been a widow of thirty-eight and one of Cranden's most popular residents. Friends had missed her for two days-the shop had been closed and there had been no reason to suspect foul play, even if her absence was unusual. Then the gas company's meter reader had seen two rats trying to get into the abandoned well. He had approached and discovered the plank cover slightly out of place, and Agnes Tiller had been found.

Cranden was a case of mass hysteria. Two murders and two rapes in less than a month, and a little girl who still only screamed gibberish. No clues, neither a fingerprint nor a hint of who the sex fiend was. On and on, editorials decrying the laxity of mental institutions. Paragraphs of speculation about the evil man who haunted Cranden's streets. Warnings to women about locking doors or answering doorbells if they could see and did not know their visitor. Police promises, and an immediate increase of surveillance around schools and public places.

It had apparently happened three days before. Nola, her hands clenched around the newspaper, tried to remember. One, two, three, and a streak of agony went through her when she realized that while Agnes Tiller's body was turning cold at the bottom of a thirty-foot dry well, she, Nola Banner, had been experiencing the most joyful night of her life. Yesterday she had bought the dress. Tomorrow evening they were going to the theater. She had not a bruise on her body, and if their physical lovemaking had not stopped, it had sweetened and tenderized and become so acutely exquisite she could hardly believe her happiness.

Again she stared at the rather sterile photograph of Agnes Tiller. She was thin, badly-groomed, and her hair was cut like a boy's. She had been nearly forty, the town's most innocuously pathetic figure.

And that night Johnny had made such tender, consuming love, her senses had nearly departed. He had not said a rough or obscene word, except in the grip of overwhelming passion, and he had left her warm, thoroughly fucked and melting with love at his new attitude. Not Johnny, Nola said to herself. She repeated it twenty times during the afternoon, but when it came time to board the bus for home, she was still listing reasons it could not have been Johnny.

At the front door she hesitated, to steel herself against losing her composure. Then she entered. He was sitting in front of the television, a beer can balanced on the arm of his chair.

"Hi," she said.

"Enter, said the spider to the fly," he returned with a smile.

She tossed the afternoon paper to his lap. "Somebody did it again," she said. "Town's in an uproar."

"Yeah. Been getting it on the news since four o'clock. That guy, whoever he is, has certainly got the town terrorized."

"Poor dear. She didn't look like much, apparently. The man who killed her must have had a sour taste in his mouth."

He opened the paper and sipped his beer while he read the huge black headlines. Nola removed her little hat and her gloves, her eyes searching for even the slightest change of expression on Johnny's face.

"Oh," he said, looking up. "I peeled some potatoes. Mash 'em, huh? Pork chop gravy is the living end."

"You're a dear," she remarked. "I'm hungry as a goddamned wolf, that's what I am!"

"Vodka?"

"Yeah. Check came from the Veteran's Administration. We're fat. Hey, the guy really bounced that broad around, didn't he?"

"They'll lynch him if they ever catch him," Nola said.

"Probably the Methodist minister," Johnny said, and spatted her bottom as she headed for the kitchen and the vodka.

Not Johnny, Nola assure herself. He was getting well.

Some time toward morning, she awakened with a start. Again, she was warm and well fucked and her bottom was only a little smarting from the gleeful spanking he had given her for running out of vodka. Not Johnny. But if it was Johnny, what would she do?

And she started to cry, because no matter about two dead women and a hysterical child, no matter the fury of Cranden nor the name of the crimes, Johnny, so near to total recovery, had to have his chance. And she had to have hers. She had to know, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that what she had suffered and what she had become was not a wasted breeze in the cottonwoods. She went back to sleep and had a bad dream.