Chapter 9
After Elizabeth had carefully and tenderly soaped the young girl in the big shower off her pretty bedroom she gave Rachel the softest washcloth she owned.
"You must be licked raw down there, darling," she said in a low voice. "That big beast was making your body jerk with every lick of that horrible tongue!" She shuddered violently, thinking how that unstoppable caress might feel if she were the victim.
To her surprise and delight, Rachel giggled. She also ran the sudsy cloth between her fat young cuntlips and, although she moved in a slight jerk, she washed her pussy.
"After a while," she said, "I got so I couldn't move. But maybe I didn't want to!" She, also, shuddered, and closed her eyes at the memory of that long, practically unceasing orgasm she had enjoyed from a brute beast. "Oooooh, that devil! But was he good!" She squeezed Elizabeth's titties into two cones and bent to suck one in. "It would be so crazy-great to sixty-nine with him!"
She dried off, then sat in Elizabeth's satin slipper chair in much the same position she had employed with the dog, opening her sore little pussy for the older woman's ministrations.
"Oh, that feels so great!" she whispered, as Elizabeth's soft fingers gently laid the soothing cream along her inflamed inner lips. "Somehow, it's almost sexy!" she gasped. "But I guess anything will feel sexy to me for a while. Anything that touches my pussy, I mean." She shivered eloquently. "Wow! Maybe I ought to feel horrible, going down on a dog! But Geez, Miz Cantrell, he was so big! And so, well, sort of sweet!" She giggled. "I guess I'm still a little bit out of my gourd," she said. "I must sound crazy."
Elizabeth kissed the child on her smooth belly, just above the puff of brown hair, now dried and standing out, soft and wavy.
"Pooh!" she said. "I don't think we have a right to be so hard on ourselves. We live by a lot of rules we don't ever take time and thought to question. And we should question them!"
She rose to her feet and paced back and forth on the carpet.
"Why do we think it's so horrible for boys to play with other boys' cocks? Or to suck them? Or to have the other boy shove his dick into the first boy's rectum?" She shook her fist, laughing.
"I know, I know," she said. "It sounds like I'm trying to justify what you and I did. Licking and sucking like we did. Well, the hell with it! I think my own pussy is sweet and nice and good. What's so wrong if I think yours is sweet and nice and good, too? Good enough to eat? And that's not all!"
She stopped by the young girl, who patted her on her warm ass.
"Our parents, our churches, our sissy goddamned teachers and preachers-anything that's fun, they hate and fear. Isn't that right? Where did I hear that before?"
"My mama said it," Rachel answered, wrinkling her forehead. "She's great, all right. But I'm mad at her! And Tommy, too!"
Elizabeth dropped on her knees again, between the round, firm thighs of the girl, spread so invitingly. There was a little pool of the child's cunt juice in the hairs of her pussy, on the chair. To Elizabeth, it seemed to exemplify the sweetness, the generosity of the girl. It also seemed to be the key to all that was troubling the Burke family. Sex and its hang-ups.
She hugged the child warmly and said: "What you need is to be more open with each other. I know what's bothering you. You've found out that Tommy is screwing your mother. Isn't that right?"
The child answered with a flurry of racking sobs. And the older woman, aching with sympathy, said: "I've had a talk with Tommy. He's been worried about you. And about other guys that, uh, want you. That want to get into your sweet little pussy. And I think he's mixed up about you and your dad, too."
Rachel had ceased to sob, and sat up straighter. "Other guys?" she asked, and there was genuine interest in her voice. "What do you mean, other guys?" She giggled. "Or rather, whom do you mean?"
Elizabeth stood up. Her face was cleared of worry. "That's more like it," she declared.
"Tommy's going to be more understanding, I think. I had a good talk with him, only today. He told me about himself and your mom. And his jealousy toward your father. It's based on both his love for your mother, and a sort of misguided feeling that he needs to protect you."
The young girl looked thoughtful, the sweetness of her nature evident in her expression. "I certainly don't want anyone to be unhappy because of me," she said. But she looked at Elizabeth out of the corners of her eyes and asked again: "What guys were after me? The ones that Tommy was talking about." She got to her feet, took a step, and stopped, looking pained. "I'm still sore from that dog," she complained. "Ooooh!" and she put her hand down to her pussy. "I'm so tender, I think I'd cum if I tried to walk twenty feet."
Elizabeth put an arm around the girl protectively. "Bend over," she advised. "And spread your legs just a little. The cream I put on is supposed to have a little anesthetic action. You should feel okay in a couple of minutes. But you'd better forget about any guys, I think, baby. At least for tonight." She laughed, but she was just a bit put out by Rachel's attitude. One minute, crying and emotionally crippled because her brother, a boy she wanted, was banging his mother. The next minute, aroused by the fact that some boys, purely hypothetical as far as she was concerned, were said to be after her pussy.
Perhaps it's only me, Elizabeth thought to herself. I've had a crazy couple of days, myself.
To compose herself, she went downstairs, picked up a pair of soft drinks, and went back to where Rachel was sitting. The girl gladly accepted a Coke, and then said: "I got up and walked a little while you were away. You're right, that salve helped me. I think I maybe ought to take off for home. It's going to be dark pretty soon." She giggled. "And we don't want old Tom to worry himself too much about what happens to his little sister, right, Miz Cantrell?"
They only spoke of minor matters while the girl dressed, and when she left, they gave each other perfunctory pecks on the cheek. After all that had happened, their closeness, the wild things shared, it seemed rather peculiar to Elizabeth.
She remembered the dog, locked in the front parlor, and went to let him out. She had gone from a woman immersed in sex to one who was now shackled by old ideas. Fears of the world, of herself, of everyone she knew. Even Tommy and Rachel. And with reason.
She had lived "respectably" all her life, a highly regarded member of the community. Of a good family, with no scandals; then married to Sam Cantrell, a well-to-do citizen. If Sam's total following of his church seemed strange to her, it probably wouldn't to the rest of the town. Each religion had its own oddities, anyone would have told her.
She shuddered as she looked at the dog, who watched her carefully out of his big, amber eyes. I committed an act of sexual perversion on an animal, she told herself. Until yesterday, she had never had a man's penis in her mouth. Barely in her hand, for that matter.
She began to think of what could happen to her if either of the two Burke kids decided to confide in their friends. It made her almost physically sick to contemplate. Not just gossip and being ostracized by the good people of Bonville. Criminal action. Contributing to the delinquency of minors. Perverted acts.
The dog came up and nosed under her full skirt. His warm breath touched the sensitive skin on her inner thighs, and she leaped away from him, staring wildly. "Down, you brute!" she cried. "Heel, or sit, or get the hell out of here!" She could not remember the key words given her by Jeff Brigance. And, remembering the very cool, confident way he had dragged her into that shed of his, and raped her, he must have known what a sex-mad, middle-aged old fool she was.
She at least remembered her humanity enough to open a couple of cans of dog food which Brigance had given her, feed the dog, and let him run out in the yard.
But she had no appetite, and went upstairs to bed, lower in spirit than at any time since she had been widowed.
She did put on a shorty nightgown, a garment which always pleased her because she thought she had good legs, and, by showing them right up to the hanging fringe of hair on her cunt, it had seemed to her that she looked sexy. It was, of course, another way of telling her deceased husband that she was no longer under his control. But it only reminded her that she was over forty, getting on for middle age, and that every such foolish thing as this that she did, the more certain she was to look ridiculous. Which was a shame, really, because her legs were most admirable, and her age sat very lightly on her.
At last, wearing a high-necked, opaque nightie that came to her ankles, and only after taking two tranquilizers, she fell into a restless sleep, beset by dreams that unpleasantly reminded her of all her guilt feelings.
In her recurring dream, she saw the reddened cunt of young Rachel hanging open, and either it enlarged or she became small, because she wandered into it. All the clear cum goo was there; in fact, it was up to her knees, but she could not stand the smell of it, although it was the same warm, natural aroma she had loved.
While she was quakingly wandering in the soft-walled passageway with its drippingly pink walls, the light was shut off and she turned to see that the entire cave was closed by some convex, huge thing with one eye that moved inexorably after her. It was shiny and threatening, its single slitted eye horrible as a Cyclops, and she screamed and ran. But, as usually happens in dreams, her screams stuck in her throat, and when she tried to run, she fell down.
It was just then that she heard, far away and unreal, Rachel's panicky voice, screaming, "Oh, cum, darling! Shoot it into me, baby! Let me have your jism!"
It was frightful, but worse was to come. For, when she tried to scramble up the slippery walls, she looked back and saw a huge stream of white stuff, shooting out of that slit, which had enlarged and was strained by that awesome charge of juice which was surely going to engulf her.
She awakened, her throat aching from the strain of screaming, and shaking all over from the fright of drowning. To make it worse, she was covered by a film of sweat. It was a hot night, and the old-fashioned nightgown had been too heavy. Although she had not, of course, been slicked down by the jet stream of semen which she had dreamed, she was slippery with her sweat.
She dreamed much the same dream again, although this time the cock that came in and threatened her was bright-red and pointed, so she knew it was the dog's. But this time, too, she heard the girl's cry: "Oh, fuck me, darling! Oh, Coley! Shoot that big load up my snatch!" And once again, the dream-Elizabeth, in a sex-mad panic, had to flee before a slow-motion squirt of cum-goo that was thicker and darker than the one before.
This time, when she awakened, she thought she could smell the arousing but disgusting scent of dog-cum. She jumped out of bed in a spasm of fear as she saw something huge and dark slinking around the room. Almost dead from fear, she turned on her bedside lamp and saw that the threatening shape had only been her new dog. And, she told herself, he had probably sensed her nervousness, and had only come upstairs from the back porch to see that she was all right.
It should have comforted her, this evidence of ESP from a dumb beast that almost matched the mental telepathy she shared with Rachel. But, on the contrary, it infuriated her. She was truly drugged with exhaustion, both physical and emotional, and she was also anesthetized mentally by the pills she had taken.
Dimly, she remembered the reality of having sucked this big animal's penis until he had shot his staggering load of dog-sperm into her gullet. For a moment, the raw pleasure of it surged in her, stimulating every nerve in her genitals, but then the awful weight of fear and guilt came back to crush her. She was a little girl, intimidated by parents, teachers, church rules. And even the remembered adventure with that lover of long ago could do no more than add to her inner tortures.
But she did actually smell the dog's semen, at least she believed she did, so she got up and coaxed him downstairs again, and on to the back porch. It was a big, screened-in room with a stout outer door, the bottom half being of wood. She saw that Coley had water, and dragged herself back to her anguished sleep. But just as she was getting into bed, something strange happened. Her telephone rang.
Irritably, she glanced at her dressing table clock, and was amazed to see that it was not midnight, as she had thought, but only a minute or two after ten. Still, such a thing had never happened to her before, and she was almost afraid to answer the phone.
Later on, she had reason to be grateful that she had. It was a message that came to her at the right moment.
"Hello. Miz Cantrell?" It was a heavy, musical voice, vaguely familiar. "This is Brigance. You know," as she gasped and remained silent, "the dog man. Hello! Are you there?"
She managed to say "Yes!" in a strangled voice, but she was baffled as to the reason for his call. He had held her like a rag doll and raped her with no more thought than if she had been a slave or a robot. But she was too weak, too low in spirit, to be able to muster any anger. So she only said: "Yes. It's me." And she added, apologetically, "Coley's all right. I'll have a fence for him, tomorrow."
When the man exploded. "Oh, fuck Coley!" and began to laugh, she was so surprised that she laughed, too, and some of her sanity came back. It wasn't a rape at all, she suddenly realized. She had something the man wanted, and something about her had told him so. Something about her had also invited him, just as the aroma of a bitch dog in season invites male dogs for miles around. Whatever that something was, that sixth sense or aura or subtlety of aroma that says, "I'm ready, baby. It's okay. Come on." was nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it was something to feel good about, to be proud of. And all of this strange realization flashed through her mind in a split second. Her voice almost stroked the telephone as she spoke again.
"Well, I may do that, later on," she said, and giggled like a schoolgirl. "But only if he behaves. After all, I hired him to watch the house, not for anything more personal."
Brigance's laugh this time was softer, warmer.
"I've been worrying about you just a little," he said. "I wouldn't shame you by apologizing for what happened today. But I had to make sure that I didn't, well, what do I say? I had an odd sort of flash that seemed to come from you. Know what I mean?"
Elizabeth, rendered human again by this odd tribute, answered with some spirit, "You're trying to say that I egged you on! Right? I didn't, you know. I was absolutely petrified when you, well, took hold of me. But you say you worried? That's very nice."
Brigance's voice was amused but respectful. "I guess you don't even know it, Miz Cantrell. What you do to men. Or maybe you don't want to know it. A nice, high class woman like you. I don't think I'm getting through to you. It's obvious that, at least, you don't hate me. That's something. I did come on pretty strong. But again, I won't say I'm sorry. I think you're wonderful!"
His voice had a tone of finality to it, and Elizabeth, now feeling the same guilt-free spirit she had known, regretted it. So she acted instinctively. "Hold on," she said quietly. "I said I didn't egg you on. I meant I didn't do it intentionally. Now that I think back on it, if I had the chance again and knew how to do what you say I did-oh, dear! does that make sense?-I'd do it again. You didn't frighten me, not really. You frightened a dumb little girl and a dumb big girl and a dumb woman who never listened to her instincts, but only to what other people told her. Now, Mister Brigance, do you know what I mean?"
The big man laughed, comfortably. "I read you, Miz Cantrell, loud and clear and pretty. It sounds like maybe you needed me. Or someone like me. I'm damn glad. And listen-remember I said you had something pretty wonderful? I think so more than ever. And it's not just a beautiful female body or a lovely cunt." The good, strong, Anglo-Saxon word sounded rich and sweet in the woman's ears.
"What, then?" she asked.
"You have guts and kindness and good sense," Brigance said with quiet force. "You're a good person. As well as a good fuck!"
She felt her face burn, but she was delighted, more than she would ever be able to say. She had something. The man said so. Something wonderful.
He'd said that, too.
It was sweet and wonderful to have a man like Brigance say so. And mean it. But it had an even more beautiful implication.
"I have something," she said aloud. "I have it. Me. Elizabeth Cantrell. It's mine. IT'S MINE!"
The scream welled out, brazen, loud, happy, in the quiet neighborhood. "It's mine, and only mine, and I can use it any way I want to," she said in a strong and happy tone.
She jerked off the ugly, unattractive nightgown and picked up the sheer, short little bit of froth that showed her legs off so well. She held it up to her and looked in the mirror. She laid it aside again and looked at her bare body. It looked good. And it, too, was hers. Hers to do with as she liked.
"Thank you, God, for people like Jeff Brigance, that rogue!" She was smiling, and she'd never been more sincere in her life.