Chapter 3
The only sound in the room blared from a television set, its picture little more than an image vacillating in the midst of a snowy screen.
Across from it, on the bed, the woman sat, her back propped by several pillows. She was immobile save for the constantly moving eyes and the quivering of one near-palsied arm. Once in a while, beneath the thin covers, a log would attempt to match the arm's movements.
Her mane of dark hair was shiny like the coat of a raven with only mottled streaks of gray that added to the beauty of her face rather than distracted from it. It was unevenly cut, appearing somewhat long and shaggy at some points and then stubby short and unkempt at others.
The face was beautiful, with only faint lines belying its owner's forty years of age. High cheekbones and full, sensual lips graced alarming features that flowed down into a long, graceful neck that was covered with white, clear skin.
The large, full tits jutted braless beneath the nightgown, filling it with their desirable softness. Beneath the covers the gown had crawled up to leave her wide, flaring hips and curved thighs naked and inviting to both the touch and the eye of anyone who might wander into the room.
But no one had wandered in for a very long time; no one but the girl.
Outside she could hear the sharp cackling of an angry chicken. It got louder and angrier until it was abruptly stifled by the thud of an axe blade.
In the yard, below the window, the girl studied the red spot on the front of her dress. It reminded her of something, another spot just like it.
It took her several moments, her eyes moving to the pool of red on the stump and back to her dress to equate what she had done to the chicken to the spot. Her eyes blinked. Her head shook. She almost had it and then it disappeared, floating out of her mind as the sound from the television upstairs in the woman's room seemed to replace it.
"Soup," she said aloud, and pulled the chicken off the stump. She followed the cement walk up to the house, carefully avoiding each crack. It was getting harder and harder for her to avoid the cracks because each day there were more of them. Grass grew up between the cracks. It didn't use to and she absently wondered why suddenly it had started.
A kettle of water boiled noisily on the stove.
She dropped the chicken into the water and moved across to the sink. As she washed the blood from her hands, she noticed that the sink, like the walk in the back and the steps in the front, seemed to also be accumulating cracks.
She remembered that her father used to repair all the cracks. Since he had gone away there was no one to do it any more. She wondered how he had done it.
Without bothering to dry the water from her hands, she picked up a tray from the sideboard and started for the stairs. She was halfway to the landing when a knock sounded on the front door. She set the tray on a step and came slowly back down the stairs, one at a time. She knew it would be someone from the outside. As she opened the door, she concentrated with all her energy on playing the game-that they always played with her.
She couldn't remember the man's face. Faces rarely stayed with her for long. But she did remember his uniform. Except this time there were two uniforms. She was sure that the last time he had come there had only been one uniform.
"Hello, Retha."
"Hello," she said, remembering to smile.
The man handed her a lot of envelopes bound with a rubber band.
"Here's your mail. You gotta start going down to the road and gettin' your mail outta the box, Retha. I mean, it gets so the box is so full I can't get no more in it. You understand, Retha?"
"All right."
"I mean once every couple weeks I gotta bring it up here to the house. Now you can just walk down to the end of the lane and get it, can't you?"
"Yes."
"How's your ma?"
"Fine."
"I haven't seen you in town for a long time."
"No."
"This here's Ted. He's gonna be your mailman now. So you better start gettin' your mail, 'cause he jes might up an' take it right back to the post office if you don't."
"All right," she said, accepting the letters and closing the door.
"Woeeeow, she's a good-lookin' little gal," said the younger man as they made their way back to the red, white, and blue truck.
"Yeah... 'spose she is. She's got a little strange though since her family troubles. Probably didn't hear or pay attention to a word I said, so just keep fillin' the box up till it's full, then bring it up to her like I been doin'."
They climbed into the truck and backed around to the head of the lane. As they moved away under the trees, the younger man looked back at the huge old house looming against the graying skies. "She live clear out here all alone?"
"No... she got her stepmomma up there with her. But she's kinda funny in the head I think. Had a stroke or somethin'. It's a sad case, really... "
"She ever go out? I mean, with anybody?" he asked, interrupting the older man. He didn't care about the stepmother or the girl's past. She was the best thing he had seen since coming to town. He wanted to evaluate his chances with her before he brought the mail up to her the following morning.
Through the light from the open doorway, he had seen the girl's naked body under the thin dress. The round, pure darkness of her large areolas with their pink centers had stirred the blood in his cock as they shone clearly through the material. Her legs had been slightly apart and the dark curl of her pussy hair had hung in a long length down between her beckoning young thighs. He guessed her to be about seventeen and, living like she did clear out in the middle of nowhere, she was probably still tender and every inch a virgin. Just toe thought of it made his mouth water and his cock harden.
"... the father ran off a while back. Folks say he use to do some drinkin' and, I guess maybe they was another woman involved. Well, right about the time he left, the wife took sick an"most died. Guess the girl nursed her but as far as I know, the woman ain't walked since. I heard in town once that she can't even hardly walk. The girl takes care of her though, real good, considering that she ain't even the woman's real daughter."
The younger man lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and let the smoke seep slowly between lips thinly creased in a knowing smile. "So that sweet thing's out here all alone with a helpless old woman."
The other man laughed. "Don't you pay no mind to that, boy. Folks around here say that little gal could butcher a steer and hit a squirrel in the eye with her own rifle when she was only ten years old. You believe it, she can take real good care of herself."
I'll take care of her, the young man called Ted thought. I'll take real good care of her first thing come tomorrow morning.
Retha closed the door behind the men and leafed through the mail. After extracting one letter from the pile, she opened the hall closet door and dropped the rest on the floor. The pile, she noticed, was getting very large. She would have to burn it, or throw it away, or whatever her father use to do with the mail that wasn't used to buy groceries. She was sure her father had done something with the mail besides fill up the closet with it... but she couldn't remember.
Upstairs the woman could hear the voices in the hallway below. She worked her lips. Her mind wanted to scream, but no matter how hard she tried only faint sounds came from her throat. With trembling fingers she moved her hand towards the cane that hung from the bedpost.
If she could only reach it, if she could just lift it and tip it enough so it would fall against the window. The heavy metal head would surely crack the glass, and perhaps shatter the window.
She could feel the texture of the material under her forearm shift from quilt to sheet as she willed the limb upward on the bed. At last she could feel the metal shaft.
It moved a little... and then a little more.
She tapped it lightly with a finger until she made it swing. Then, as perspiration from the effort poured off her forehead, she was able to curve a finger clear around it. She grasped the rubber tip in her palm and then, slowly, with what she felt as her last ounce of strength, she started to lift.
"What do you want with your cane, Beatrice? You know you're not strong enough to get up yet."
The woman fell back against the pillows. As the girl drew the cane from her hand, it fell lifeless, hitting her hip and falling on down her side to the bed. Her lungs heaved, grabbing for great gasps of air as her huge tits strained against the taut material of the nightgown.
She hadn't heard Retha come up the stairs or enter the room. She wondered where the voices had gone.
"You've got to cooperate more if you're going to get your health back, Beatrice. You know that. Now just relax and I'll bathe you." The young girl smiled more to herself than to the woman and leaned close to the other's ear. "And then maybe if we both feel like it, we can do it... I mean, maybe together."
While the girl talked, she methodically pulled the older woman's nightgown from her body and removed the layer of covers from the bed, leaving the white, near-perfect body completely nude and vulnerable against the blue of the lower sheet.
Then she helped the woman move upward and placed several pillows behind her back until she was in an upright sitting position.
Carefully she dampened a rag, soaped it lightly and began bathing the woman's body. When that was done, she took a large bath towel and proceeded to dry her.
"I'll do it right today. You'll see. I've been practicing. Just give me enough time, Beatrice, and I'll do everything as good as he could ever do it. And pretty soon you'll be well again and you can do it to me... just like he used to."
Absently Retha let the towel slip from her fingers, but she went right on rubbing the woman's naked body. She cupped the large full tits and squeezed the nipples until they became hard and erect in her palms.
She moved her hands down across the woman's smooth, flat belly and, with two fingers of one hand she spread the lips of her cunt wide apart. She then took two fingers of her other hand and started vigorously rubbing the hardening and lengthening bud of the woman's clitoris where it jutted from the hairy folds in wet splendor.
"You can feel it, can't you, Beatrice?" the girl said gleefully. "You can feel me playing with your pussy the way he used to do. You are getting better. Pretty soon now you'll be able to lick my pussy instead of me just rubbing it off against your face. You'll like that, won't you, Beatrice? Then you can truly take his place... when you can fuck me and make me come with your tongue, then you can be him for me, can't you?"
As the younger girl stroked and pushed her fingers into the woman's cunt, she rubbed her own hard, swollen tits around and around the woman's shoulder, neck, and against her face.
"Oh," she continued, "I wish you could suck my tits like I suck yours... like he use to suck my boobs all the time. It felt so good. I know you're getting better, Beatrice, because you can feel me suck your tits, can't you? I can tell 'cause your nipples can get hard now. They get harder and harder every time I do it any more."
Inside the woman's head her mind was screaming. She was getting better and she knew it. Soon she might even be able to move her legs enough to escape. But she didn't want, didn't dare, let the girl know it. Even though the memory of that horrible night had returned and her mind was once again clearly functioning, her body still hadn't gotten over the shock.
But it would. And when it did, she would escape. That is, if the girl's mind didn't snap completely first. The woman's eyes rolled from side to side in their sockets, watching the girl's gleeful face as her hands roamed at will over her body.
Retha is crazy, Beatrice thought. Or am I crazy? The meaning of the girl's conversations and her intense desire for daily lesbian sex was almost too much for Beatrice's newly acquired sanity and return to normal thought. The girl's meanderings were getting steadily worse each day and Beatrice didn't know why.
She only wished that the muscles of her body had recovered from the shock of that night as quickly as the processes of her mind.
The girl was talking again. Beatrice steeled herself to think only about the words in order to steel herself against the wild cravings and sensations the girls hands were causing in her reawakening body.
"The mailman was here again. He says I didn't get the mail the way I should. He says I must remember how to do it. I'll try to remember what to do next time. Your pussy is wet, Beatrice. It's soaking wet. Shall I fuck your pussy with my tongue like he used to do with his cock? Would you like that, Beatrice?" The woman's eyes rolled around in her head, following the girl around the bed. She stopped at the foot and pulled the thin cotton dress up over her head and cast it aside on the floor.
She stood at the foot of the bed directly in front of Beatrice and rubbed her naked body from the hard tips of her tits to the dripping sheen of her exposed cunt.
"My breasts aren't as big or as pointy as yours, Beatrice, but he loved to knead them and to suck them. He often told me so."
She leaned over and pulled on the older woman's ankles until she was stretched far out, flat, on the bed. Then she parted the legs as far as she could get them until the glued-up lips of the woman's cunt spread, exposing the knob of her clitoris and the seeping pink lips of her slit beneath it.
"I suppose you do have a beautiful pussy, Beatrice. I don't really know. It must be good... he loved it so. I must love it, really it's my duty to love it, I suppose. It does taste and feel good when I suck it. It gets better and better each time I suck it."
The woman was able to turn her head only a few scant inches. Her eyes darted, ferretlike, as she watched the girl soap her pussy down with the rag.
And then fear filled her eyes as she watched the girl start what had become a daily ritual- shaving her pussy.
The razor appeared as if by magic in the girl's hand. She started scraping, down across the pussy mound, carefully over the inner thighs, and then against the lips of the cunt, the tenderest part.
She always seemed to save the lips of the cunt for last. The skin there was softer and things moved around under it. The cunt fascinated the girl so she took far more time there separating the dark stubble, left from the previous day, from the skin.
It was there, around the cunt, that the girl could sense something alive inside the woman. And that was important to her. The fact that she was dead outside totally escaped her reasoning. But the pussy twitched and seemed to squirm under the application of the razor that she held in her hand.
The woman's croaking voice attempted words. The chapped lips popped together, making sounds like a chirping bird. Her head twitched, telling the girl that she had done something wrong.
She had cut her.
Her large, empty eyes stared from the little-girl face as the tiny stream of blood ran from a corner of the wound. She traced their pattern downward, across the fleshy buttock and onto the sheet.
The calm maturity that had been the younger girl's facade since entering the room fell away from her face and her stance changed as the woman's eyes found the dull spot at the front of her dress, seeming, by instinct to try and hide it.
The girl's mind correlated--spot to axe... razor to red... neck to chicken... cut to death.
But she couldn't remember.
She's cut me, the woman thought. She can see the blood running down between my legs. What will she do this time? She studied the girl's dead, vacant eyes under the knitted brows and sensed the raging turmoil in the girl's twisted mind.
Suddenly her nostrils started to burn. It was the smell. Beatrice twitched her nose, and grunted her unintelligible communication.
The girl came alive and noticed it.
Without finishing the shave, she wiped the blood and the remaining lather away and piled everything back on the tray. Life came back into the eyes as they regarded the older woman. Her shoulders seemed to pull back and a warm smile crossed her lips.
"It's the chicken, Beatrice. I remember now. We'll have some soup and then I'll go over the household accounts with you. And maybe then I'll suck your pussy... and maybe we'll try again. We'll try to get your mouth to work on my cunt at the same time. Wouldn't you like that, Beatrice... to be able to suck each other's cunts at the same time?"
"You been awful quiet, kid," Steele said, his face a slumped shadow in the right front seat.
Danny sat, shoulders hunched, in a corner of the back seat. His hands gripped each other, viselike, in his lap. Now and then he would glance up, but seeing them only reminded him of Lassiter's mangled form and he would quickly dart his eyes back to his lap.
How could they be so damn calm? he thought. They hadn't just wanted to rob Lassiter, as they had told him. They had known all along that they were going to kill him. When they had hired him for the job, he was just an out of luck beach boy-ski bum. Now he was a killer, or might as well be.
Danny was scared.
Steele was calm. As he clipped his nails, he looked as if his eyes could hardly stay open. Nothing bothered Steele. Why hadn't Danny seen that in the man the night he had first agreed on such a wild, crazy deal? He could see it now, feel it, it almost filled the car--the killer in Steele.
And Crow wasn't any better. Stupid maybe, but essentially the same. He chewed the ragged end of his cigar and bobbed his head inanely in tempo with the radio's hillbilly music.
"What's the matter, Danny?" Steele asked.
Danny felt his hands shaking. He opened them and saw the palms glistening with sweat. He thought he must have four or five layers of sweat covering his whole body by now. He wanted to scream, anything to break the tension.
But he was too scared.
"I said, what's the matter, kid?" The calmness in his voice was edged with the same intense tone Danny had heard him use on the dead man, Lassiter. "You didn't have to kill him. I didn't know you were gonna kill him." There was a long, silent pause from the front seat filled only by the mournful twang of the radio and the steady clip, clip, as Steele worked on his fingernails.
"I said ya didn't have to kill him." Danny's voice rose to a shriek. "Jesus, we already had the money. You beat the poor fucker to death!" The two men in the front exchanged silent glances. "It just happened... that's all," Steele said, his voice again controlled, the delivery edged with sarcasm.
"It didn't just happen," Danny insisted, leaning forward against the back of the front seat and resting his chin close to Steele's ear. "Listen, kid... " Steele's voice fell into a low growl. "Shit!" He had cut a nail too deep. "I didn't wanna get dragged--"
"Shut up!" Steele commanded. "Hey, hot damn. There's one of them country stores open," Crow said, glad to have an excuse to break the tension. He didn't give a shit if Steele decided to waste Danny, but they needed the kid until they could find the house. "Let's get some beer." I gotta tell the kid to shut his mouth to Steele, Crow thought, as he swung the car up to the single gas pump. Steele always went a little too far when he was mad.
Steele didn't like to be crossed, in any way. Danny didn't know how soft the ground was beneath him.
They got out of the car and Crow leaned back in. "You want anything, kid?" Danny just shook his head and shrugged. "Yeah, some soda. That'll keep my energy up since it looks like I'm gonna do a lot of runnin'."
Crow shrugged and trailed Steele into the tiny store. It was a typical Mom and Pop operation with shelves full of dusty can goods, obsolete brands of soaps, dry foods, and one large, outmoded refrigerator half-full of beer and dairy products, with the emphasis on beer.
"You got any fresh fruit?" Steele asked.
The woman behind the counter glanced up with a bored look in her bleary eyes. She nodded towards the far end of one of the two aisles and listlessly returned to her magazine.
Steele strolled off down the aisle while Crow stood to the side of the counter where he could take in every aspect of the woman's face and body without her realizing it.
The tits were pendulously full, barely encased in a black bra, the outline of which shone clearly through the thin material of her white blouse.
Crow drank her in and stroked his cock through his trousers with one hand while he balanced himself against the counter with the other.
Her legs were well-formed, muscular, tapering nicely from trim ankles, to dimpled knees, up to full, rounded thighs. The cheeks of her ass were also full and somewhat underslung where they stood out tautly in the tight material of her skirt.
Suddenly his mouth watered and his cock grew harder.
Without realizing that he was watching her, she had shifted her position on the high stool. Getting more comfortable she had spread her legs, even lifting one of them slightly.
The sight was beautiful to Crow. In the back, her butt-cheeks spread, stretching the silky material of her panties even tighter over her body's fullness. In the front her smooth, flat belly seemed to come to an abrupt end where the bush of her cunt hair protruded in a ball. Between her legs the even strip of white material adhered to her body, clearly outlining the pulpy bulge of her cunt-lips. Thick black hair curled out from the sides of the white strip, its contrast so clear that he wanted to cross the room and fuck her that very instant. He yearned to pull the panties aside in order to taste the twat-nectar he knew he would find there.
All too short a time she stayed in that position. When she moved and closed her legs again over the wealth of her pulpy pussy, Crow moved on to the beer box. He was just in the process of carrying an armload of six-packs to the counter when he heard Steele spit behind him.
"You call this fresh fruit, lady?"
"Jes got it in yesterday," she said, not looking up from her magazine. "You don't like it... don't buy it!"
Steele's aim was deadly accurate. The apple hit her right at the hair line and splattered. She stood and rocked a few steps back. The stool beneath her fell on its side and rolled in front of the counter. Before she could regain her equilibrium, Steele pelted her three more times, splattering her dress with juice and pulp.
"If it's so damn fresh, why don't you eat it, lady?" Steele shouted.
Crow knew the woman was about to suffer for Danny. He also knew there was nothing he could do about it. And he didn't really want to do anything about it. She was a good- looking cunt with huge suckable tits. Crow guessed her pussy was just as good. If Steele got rid of his anger, there might be a chance he would take some time out to play.
Crow might even get to fuck her.
The woman couldn't answer Steele's demands. Even if her voice could create words, she had no idea what those words would mean. She cowered, flat against a rack of cigarettes and candy, terror in her eyes, her arms crossed in supplication over the taut fullness of her huge, bouncing tits.
She was a big woman when she stood up, taller than both men, which added a sense of ludicrousness to the placating way she looked from Steele to Crow.
They both advanced towards her. "Didn't you hear me, lady?" Steele said. He leaned across the counter, chilling her with the white-haloed blueness of his eyes. He waved a spongy cantaloupe in her face. "I said, your melons are rotten."
Still she couldn't answer. Her teeth were clamped tightly shut to keep them from chattering.
They had somehow captured her lower lip and blood trickled over her chin from the indentation.
Perhaps it was the blood, or the quivering fear so apparent in the woman's body, or the big body itself, that stirred Crow to enter into the game. A low, rumbling chuckle started deep in his chest, making his fat belly wobble under the weight of the beer cans.
"Hey, Steele," he said, nearly biting the remnant of his cigar in half. "I'll betcha all her melons ain't rotten. Huh, lady? Fact is, I'd like to see your melons."
Crow dropped the beer. It clattered to the floor and, in one step, he stood in front of the woman. He grasped her wrists with his hands and flung her arms wide. They stayed that way as if her sinews were insulated with wire tubing that could be manipulated and retain whatever shape the body was placed in. Her back arched, thrusting the tits forward in the thin material.
"Nice jugs... I mean, melons," Crow laughed His eyes were misting. Her tits had caused a sudden surge of lust to again spark interest in his cock. He remembered the flabby boobs on the previous night's whore. These wei^e bigger, fuller, and they looked a lot firmer, with their nipples making secondary bulges at the ends. He wanted to touch them, squeeze them.
Two weeks they would be holed up in some farmhouse. He'd go nuts. It would probably be just like in stir without a cunt.
He reached towards her tits with his curled hand throbbing and shaking.
"Style, Crow... style."
"Huh?"
He dropped his hand and turned to Steele. The anger was gone in the other man's face. It was replaced by a look Crow knew only too well.
"Yeah." He nearly drooled.
"Take your blouse off, lady... the skirt, too," Steele said, leaning farther over the counter until his face was practically touching hers.
She blubbered. Unintelligible sound coupled with thin drips of drooling saliva to flow from between her clenched lips.
"I don't think she heard you, Steele."
"I said, take it off, lady." He filled a motioning hand with his gun and passed it carelessly across her tits. "Take it off... now!" The gun moved downward until the hard barrel depressed an inch into her quivering stomach.
She closed her eyes, forcing the moisture trapped there to overflow and run in trickling streams down her cheeks. Slowly she reached for the buttons that held the thin garment together. She fumbled at the top button.
The blouse opened a little.
She lowered her hands and shaky fingers pulled at a second. The thread was weak. It popped off and fell to the floor. The dull sound echoed as though it had been made of steel instead of plastic.
The blouse fell open a little more, revealing a long line of dark cleavage that disappeared into the top of her lacy, black bra.
"My dear woman," Steele intoned, and without warning ran the gun down the woman's front, shredding blouse and skirt in one swift motion from her body. "You should have such morals about your produce."
Again lust clutched Crow as the bulging flesh appeared, naked above the bra, white and inviting in its soft, round, billowing fullness.
The white, sheer panties were lacy like the bra. They cinched her in and outlined clearly the bulge of her full pussy and the darker outline of her wide mound of cunt fur.
Crow pulled the rest of the woman's clothing from body and threw it under the counter.
He drooled from the corners of his mouth at the erotic sight of the near nude woman trembling in front of them.
He wanted to fuck her.
He wanted Steele to just disappear for fifteen minutes so he could wallow and gorge himself on that whimpering mass of female flesh.
To Steele, it was beginning to be a waste of time. The woman wasn't playing the game. She wouldn't talk, or beg, or scream. She wouldn't even whine. And worst of all, she wouldn't open her eyes so he could see the fear that he knew was there.
The anger he had felt toward Danny again started to fill his throat. Like Crow, he, too, wanted release and satisfaction. But he wanted it as a vent for his mind rather than his body.
To Crow she was an available and appealing receptacle for his aching cock.
To Steele, she was gross.
He removed a silencer from the inside pocket of his coat and attached it to the gun. "The bra, too," he said.
Her eyes snapped open. Again her arms closed over her tits as her head shook violently from side to side. "No... no, please go away." A constriction in her throat caused the words to come out like a foreign language.
Steele, with a grunt of disgust, moved behind the counter. Pulling her by the wrist he moved her into the open. Her big body crashed with force against the side of the counter, in passing nearly splintering its edge. Savagely, he hauled her down to the opposite end of the aisle.
She fell.
He yanked harder as she tried to regain her footing. She couldn't.
Her butt-cheeks beat a tattoo on the tiled floor as he dragged her. Kicking some cases of canned goods aside, Steele pushed her to a sitting position atop them.
"Now you take your choice, lady," Steele said, smiling down into her florid face, "a cock in your mouth or a bullet in your head."