Chapter 1
Beth Calhoun was feeling very happy with life in general and her own in particular. She had left Peoria a week ago to escape the monotony of small town life, and in that short time had found herself a job as a receptionist in a small insurance agency on the Northwest Side of Chicago. Also, she had found a modestly priced one-room efficiency apartment, complete with tiny kitchenette, in which she could prepare her own meals, and in which, after the confining life she had had even in her mother's house back home, seemed wonderfully spacious and free, exactly because it meant freedom to her.
Beth Calhoun was twenty years old, about five feet six inches in height, with dark brown hair and a sweet, heart-shaped face, large and very expressive dark brown eyes, a dainty little uptilted nose, and a full, sweet, kissable mouth. She had already attracted many a wolf-whistle back in Peoria, and she had been drawn to one or two boys in her senior year of high school, but she'd never really dated, first of all, because her stepfather had put his foot down the moment he'd married Mom, just five years ago, just a week after her own fifteenth birthday. And ever since that time, life in the pleasant, roomy old house on Linn Street had been little short of hell for Beth Calhoun.
In fact, when she applied for the job at Pimco Casualty-Assurance Company of California and Montrose, she had used her own father's original name. She had done this for two reasons: first, so that she would never again be reminded of Dennis Calhoun, the man who had kind of swept her mother off her feet and then acted like a dictator; and second, so that he wouldn't be able to trace her here in her new life. Her father, Clark Calhoun, had been a kindly, easygoing salesman for a farm machinery outfit in East Peoria, and he and she and Mom had got along wonderfully together. Mom couldn't have any more kids, but somehow Dad and she seemed to have as much fun as a whole big family. But that had all changed when Dennis Henderson had moved into the house on Linn Street.
Mom was just about to hit forty, but still was very good-looking. Plump, with a kind of apologetic look all the time, and still a very nice figure, and wheat-colored hair that didn't have any gray in it yet. Dennis Henderson was tall, stern-faced, about fifty, with gray hair and a harsh, dry voice. She had never seen him smile once in the five years she had lived there. And several times he had slapped her across the mouth and reprimanded her for some tiny little mistake or another, and when she had gone weeping to Mom, all that Mom could do was say helplessly, "I know, honey, you just have to put up with him. He's a good man in his way, and he'll get to understand you. Just go along with him, for my sake."
So she'd tried, even to passing up dates when she went to college in St. Anne's College for Girls, ten miles outside Peoria. Her stepfather had sent her there purposely, although she had wanted to go to the University of Illinois. He had told her that no daughter of his was going to go to a distant campus where she could be exposed to all the nastiness of boys away from home who looked upon single and attractive girls like her as easy marks.
There had been many quarrels at home during her years in college, and sometimes she had come home to find Mom weeping and hiding bruises on her arms. Then, a month ago, when she had come home early, Dennis Henderson had been out shopping and she had pushed open Mom's bedroom door and seen her mother lying there in her slip. It had been rumpled up, and she had seen dark, angry marks on her mother's legs and body, and when she asked questions about it, Mom had told her, "I guess I did something wrong, and he took the strap to me."
That was when Beth Calhoun had made her decision. She would be next, she knew. What she hadn't told her mother was that just the night before this had happened, he had come to her room late at night, opened the door and stood looking down at her. She had wakened and looked up at him, and he had muttered, "One of these days, young lady, I'm going to teach you a lesson you won't forget. You think you're so high and mighty, but deep down inside you've got the makings of a little teaser. I'll take the strap to your butt, and then I'll show you what a man is really like, you hear me?"
And so the next morning, without telling her mother what had happened, Beth Calhoun began to plan how to get away from the house on Linn Street.
Her great-aunt in Springfield had left her about two thousand dollars. It was in the bank, it was to be hers on her twentieth birthday, so she had waited until that happy day, when she had gone to the bank, shown her birth certificate and drawn it all out. Then she had bought a suitcase and some clothes, written a letter to her mother and taken the Rocket to Chicago.
She lay on the indoor bed in her little apartment, wearing just her white cotton pajamas, which though they were very modest, emphasized the magnificent, high-set, closely spaced round globes of her titties, snugged her round and spacious bottom-cheeks, and called attention to the full, womanly curves of beautiful white-skinned thighs. She was thinking that there were lots of nice fellows down at the insurance agency, and that maybe when she got over the fear of being followed, when she had conquered her fear of Dennis Henderson, she might just find out what it was like to be loved by a decent guy.
How could she know, in her trusting innocence, that she had jumped from the frying pan into the fire?