Chapter 7
The golden days of summer had drifted by and were gone, passed into the limbo of lost time. Mark Devlin and Lilith Nordstrom were walking home from school through a prismatically painted swirl of elm leaves, blown by the first crisp winds of fall. They were arguing.
"I don't like it, Lil," he was saying. "I don't like it at all. You trapped me into this thing in the first place and then you more than half-convinced me that there was some justification for what we were doing. We were making life miserable for the adults, stinkers like Fletcher and Donovan. Well, that was okay, in a way, but what about what you're doing now? You're not hurting the grownups as much new as you are the kids themselves. Besides, you're endangering all of us who work for you. How long do you think it's going to be before we get caught peddling pot and LSD around the school?"
Lil gave him the kind of smile that a doting mother bestows on a beloved but not very bright child. Wearing an expensive beige and green outfit, her cheeks flushed from the cold and her long, blond hair shining in the penumbral light of late afternoon, she was so beautiful, the quality of her loveliness seemingly so rare and pure that it was difficult for Mark to accept the evidence of his own experience with her, to know her for the vicious, sex-crazy, masochistic, predatory bitch she really was.
"You're a worrier," she told him lightly. "Relax. Like I've said, we have protection."
Mark frowned. "Yes, I know. Those pictures I took of Donovan with Pat and Linda. I'll admit you've kept Donovan in line with them. You even got the King Street house away from him and made him continue to stand all the expense of it while you use it for a whorehouse. But all of that bothers me too. Hootch isn't the kind to let anyone get away with anything ... especially a bunch of kids. Someday he's going to land on us like a ton of rock."
"Not as long as we have the pictures."
"Maybe not. But how about this dope thing? I'll admit that marijuana and the psychedelics aren't so bad. The reason I brought this up, though, is that Sissy told me you were talking about bringing in heroin. It isn't true, is it, Lil? You wouldn't really get the kids started on the heavy stuff, would you?"
Her blue eyes laughed at him. "Boy! You are a stupe, aren't you? All summer long I've been trying to tell you and show you what I am and you still don't believe it. Look, just get it through your cement-filled skull that there isn't a fucking, goddamned thing I won't do for money. I don't give a shit if it's kids, grown-ups or who. I'm out for all I can get, and to do all I can get away with, and I don't care a fat turd who gets hurt. Can't you understand that? You think I intend to stay in this nothing town the rest of my life? Hell no! I've just had my fifteenth birthday. Next year I'll be sixteen and that's when I split out of this dump. I'm going east, where the big money is, but I'm not going broke. I'm going first class, believe me.
"You're an asshole, Mark Devlin. When I brought you into this thing with me, you were just another jerky kid who'd never even had a girl and who had to ask Mommy or Daddy every time you wanted a quarter for a soda. Now you've got about five-hundred dollars in that coffee can you keep hidden in your photo lab and you've got the prettiest, hottest girls in town to fuck anytime you feel like it. Why don't you wake up, stupid?"
"I suppose you're right," Mark muttered but the scowl on his face had deepened and his dark eyes were pools of doubt and misery.
"Oh, cheer up," Lil chided him. "Sissy isn't working tonight. Why, don't you take her to a show? You two can go up to my room afterward and fuck up a storm."
"I don't like to go to your house when you aren't there," Mark said, flushing.
"Why?" Lil grinned with sudden intuition. "I'll bet it's because of Mom, isn't it? Has she been trying to seduce you?"
Mark nodded. "Last time I waited for you up there, she came into the room with only a housecoat on. I couldn't get away from her and ... well, she sat down beside me and started kissing me and then she opened my fly and began playing with my cock, and...."
"And so you screwed her. Good for you. She's got a gorgeous body, hasn't she?"
"But it's embarrassing," Mark protested. "She's an older woman and she's your mother."
Lil laughed. "So what? Mom likes to screw as well as I do and, I hate to admit it, she's even better at it than I am. Now don't tell my you didn't like it?"
"Yes," the boy said, but his blush became even more acute. "But I felt awfully funny about it.
You keep making me do it with other girls, even encourage me to make love to your mother, and you know it's you I love, Lil. Please, let's get out of this. Let's run away together, Lil. We've got plenty of money. We can buy phony I.D. cards and I can get a job."
Lil stopped and turned toward him. For only a moment, something flashed in her eyes that might have been tenderness, or even longing, an ineffable sadness for the loss of all that might have been and now could never be. Then it was gone and the hardness was back, the bitter, reckless derision with which she looked out upon a world she considered as foul and puterescent as herself.
"Forget it," she told him harshly. "Armond has a date arranged for me for tonight. It's with Wharton, the one who owns the drugstore. You can use the room or not. That's up to you. I don't sleep up there anymore anyway. See you tomorrow, Mark." She left him then, turning down her own street.
"Dumb kid!" she muttered. "What a life that would be. Mrs. Lilith Devlin, with three or four little Devlins' to diaper and wipe their snotty noses. That'll be the day."
Mark's pessimism bothered her not in the least. She felt very smug, very sure of herself. She had nearly three-thousand dollars in the bank at Cypress, a town only twenty miles away, but just across the state line. She had opened the account by mail, with her father's help. She had made her parents aware of the business she was in and now had their cooper ation. They had been full of doubts and fears at first, but as time went on and they saw how well she had things organized, how apparently fool-proof her plan was, they had become her enthusiastic supporters and co-conspirators. She had even arranged several, very financially rewarding assignations for her mother, who confessed that before meeting John Nordstrom, she had engaged in a little amateur prostitution herself. She had briefly been secretary and mistress to a contractor at Valpariso, Indiana. When he had dropped her to avoid trouble with his wife, she had worked for six months as a call girl in Chicago. While engaged at this trade, Delia had lived with another girl in the same business and had enjoyed a homosexual relationship with her.
"John was as innocent as a baby when I first met him," Delia had confided to her daughter. "I told him I was a social service worker for the state and the poor dear believed me. Imagine! When we moved here and settled down, I nearly went out of my mind with boredom for the first six years. Then I met Susan Prine. She told me that she and her husband belonged to a switch party group. I got John into it by arranging to have him alone frequently with Susan. When he weakened at last, I walked in on them. They were screwing on the living room couch. After that, he could hardly refuse me the right to do the same thing and, eventually, he got so he liked going to wife swapping parties with me. So you see, Lilith, you come by your sexiness naturally. If bi-sexual tendencies can be inherited, you must have gotten those from me, too."
One result of the strange, incestuous relationship Lil had developed with her parents was that, for the first time in her life, she felt for them an affection that was the closest approximation of love of which she was capable.
Lil entered her house in her customary way, through the back door, pausing to wave at Nils Rundy, who was pruning the hedge at the side of the house.
"My, you look domestic," she said to her mother. Delia was ironing a shirt.
"I haven't gotten much done today," her mother told her. "Nils came in right after your father left for work. I wasn't even up yet. We stayed in the bedroom until noon. When he left I was worn to a frazzle, so I napped until about an hour ago."
"Oh, well," Lil said blithely, "sounds like you had fun anyway. I've got to take a shower and change. Bert Wharton is on the schedule for tonight. I'm going to lie down for awhile before I go out. Want to come in and visit with me for a bit?"
"You know I do, Lil," Delia said warmly. They both knew what Lil meant by "visit." Will you have time to do it with your Dad, too, when he comes home? He thinks you've been neglecting him lately."
"Oh, sure. Gosh, Mom, you know how busy I've been. And tomorrow's Saturday so I have to go to Cypress and pick up two kilos of pot. I'm going to give that guy I'm buying from plenty of hell, too. The last batch was all sugar bush and so coarse you could hardly roll it. The kids are bitching like the devil about it. Come in as soon as I'm through with my shower. A little loving from you and Daddy will turn me on just right for old, pot-bellied Wharton tonight."
She had showered and was stretched naked on the bed when her mother came into the room, undressing hurriedly. In a moment, the two of them were pressed tightly together, kissing and petting furiously. Then they turned end for end and began sucking each other. Both women were capable of seemingly unlimited, multiple orgasms without tiring. When her father arrived, she invited him to play sixty-nine with her and fuck her while her mother was fixing dinner.
"I wish I didn't have a date tonight," she told him. "Dinner isn't ready yet. Let's smoke a joint together, Daddy."
"I wish you didn't either," he said, bending to kiss one of her pink nipples. Then he got up and rolled marijuana in a double cigarette paper. They were companionably sharing the acrid, pungent narcotic when Delia came in to announce that dinner was on the table. Still naked, they ate with Lil sitting between them. She ate with one hand and toyed with her father's prick with the other.
"Are you really going to bring in heroin?"
Delia asked her.
Lil nodded. "I'm going to see about it tomorrow when I go the Cypress, but I'm just going to act as a drop for it for Chief Donovan at first. He says he's got his own pushers all lined up so I'll let him take the risk, at least until I see how it goes."
"Where will the kids get the money to buy it?" John asked her.
Lil shrugged. "I guess the girls will mostly whore for it and I suppose the boys will steal, probably from their parents. I don't give a shit where they get it. Well, time to go. Mustn't keep the cash customers waiting. Oh, if Pat calls, tell her I want her and Dora Harmon here in the morning before I leave. I've got dates for both of them for tomorrow night. Oh' yes, and Sissy Prine is scheduled to spend Sunday at Marvel Lake. Three guys from out of town have a cabin up there for the weekend. She'll get gang-banged, of course, which she won't mind and, anyway, they're paying fifty bucks apiece for her, so I don't give a damn whether she minds or not. See you."
Lil arrived at the King Street house ahead of Bert Wharton. She had already changed to a shorty nightgown and bunny slippers when he came furtively to the back door and timidly knocked.
"Come on in," she invited him, holding the door wide and conscious of the fact that the dim light behind her gave her the appearance of being entirely nude, but for the filmy aura of the blue gown. He was a little man, and pudgy, his considerable paunch overhanging his belt. He wore glasses and affected a small moustache. He religiously dyed both the moustache and his eyebrows on the assumption that this made him look younger.
The soda fountain in his drug store was a favorite hangout for the younger set. There wasn't a school girl in the town who was not aware of his reputation as an ogler of legs and bosoms. They delighted in exposing themselves as they sat on the stools at his counter, giggling among themselves in high glee at the way he covertly stared at them, his slack lips practically drooling with desire and his eyes glittering with forbidden lust. He had never once dared to make an improper suggestion to one of them, and when Armond Fletcher had hinted that, for a price, it would be possible to attain his lifelong ambition, he had jumped at the opportunity. Ordinarily a frugal, even a cheap, man, he had quickly agreed to a fee of one hundred dollars for the use of the body of Lilith Nordstrom, whom he considered, by far, the prettiest girl in town.
Lil smiled winningly at the little man, who stood with twitching facial muscles and nervously fluttering hands. She was thinking to herself with amused scorn that he was as bad as a ninth-grader on his first date. "Come on, baby," she said soothingly, "let's get the business part of this all taken care of before we start on the fun and games routine." She held her hand out, palm up and waited.
"Oh, yes, yes of course," Wharton stuttered hastily as he withdrew his wallet from his hip pocket. His hand was shaking as he handed Lil a hundred-dollar bill.
"Thank you," she murmured sweetly. "Now you may kiss me, Daddy-o." She had to bend a little to meet his lips that were soft and spongy with lack of muscle tone.
Ugh, she thought, I hope his cock is harder than that.
"I've seen you in the store a lot" Wharton told her when they were seated on the couch.
Lil laughed. "I know you have. You've been trying to look up my dress and down my blouse since I was ten. Well, now you won't have so much trouble. See?" She undid the ribbon that tied her shorty nightgown at the throat and slipped it off over her head. "There you are. Is it as good as you imagined?"
"Oh, my goodness, yes!" Wharton exclaimed. "You're beautiful, Lilith! May I touch you. I mean your breasts."
"That's what you paid for," Lil told him. "Be my guest." She lay down on the couch, her knees pointing at him and her thighs spread so that her vulva was winking at him.
He made a whining noise deep in his throat like an anxious puppy as he leaned over her, his mouth going to one of her breasts.
"Take it easy," Lil told him, "I don't want you having a heart attack on me. Why, don't you get out of those clothes? It would be cozier if we were both naked."
He nodded, too overcome to speak. She helped him disrobe, regarding his white, puffy, muscleless body with distaste. Even his penis, she saw, was hardly bigger than a young boy's and, as excited as he obviously was, it still wasn't hard. "What's the matter?" she asked him. "You have trouble getting it up?"
He reddened. "Sometimes. In the store, when I'm behind the counter and there are young girls there, it's always hard as can be. When I go home and try to do it to my wife, it goes soft. I don't understand it. I hope you can help me."
"Having seen your wife, I don't wonder. Of course I can help you. Now don't even think about it. Just lie back and let me get you started."
Wharton did as he was bid, leaning back against the couch while Lil turned around, putting her head in his lap and taking his limber prick into her mouth.
"I ... I didn't suppose you'd want to do anything like that," he said, his tone one of amazement.
"Love it," Lil muttered, sucking him rhythmically and smoothly. She kept it up for ten minutes before she admitted that it was hopeless. Well, damned if she was going to give his money back. She'd think of something. "Hey," she said, sitting up as inspiration struck her.
"When you're in the store, looking at girl's legs, have you ever thought that you'd like to kiss their pussies?"
"No," he replied. "It never occurred to me. I guess people do do that though, don't they?"
"Well what in hell do you think of?"
Wharton looked embarrassed. "I think about hurting them," he said, his voice so low she could hardly hear it. I think about hitting them with my fist, or even burning them with a cigarette, and then ripping their clothes off and making love to them."
"Well, for Christ's sake, why didn't you say so?" Lil demanded in exasperation. "Okay, get your belt from your pants and work me over. You can hit me on the butt." She flopped around so that the hemispheres of her lovely, white ass were exposed.
"You really don't mind? I'll be careful not to hit you too hard."
"Shit!" Lil cursed. "Lay it on. If you don't hit me hard enough to make my ass bleed, you're a sissy." She heard the whistle of the belt through the air and felt the sudden pain as it flashed down against her tender flesh. Again and again he flayed her. She could hear his heavy breathing and a guttural sound he made, like a savage dog growling over a bone. She was glad her mother had told her about flagellation, and how some men could only be aroused by expressing their sadism. Getting whipped wasn't so bad, she thought. Damn him, he'd better be able to fuck her when he got through. The pain was making her so hot she couldn't lie still.
"Harder!" she groaned at him. "Harder, damn it!"
He hit her three more times and she felt the hot sting of her own blood oozing from raw flesh, then Wharton gave vent to an inarticulate cry and flung himself upon her. His prick, now hard as an iron bar, poked at her, so she reached behind her and guided it into her asshole. While he was fucking her, she found her clitoris and masturbated herself vigorously, coming in an almost continuous series of powerful orgasms. He came before long, his semen warming her anus and slopping out to sting the places where his belt had broken her skin.
"Oh, my God, but that was good!" he muttered, rolling off of her and slumping, exhausted, on the couch. "Thank you. Thank you very much, Lilith. I hope I didn't hurt you."
She laughed. "Of course, you hurt me. It wouldn't have been any fun if you hadn't. Think you can do it again after awhile?"
"I don't know," he told her weakly. "I doubt if you can take anymore whipping tonight."
"How about if you beat me with your fists?" she persisted. "That would be okay if you were careful not to hit me in the face or on my titties."
He nodded. "Maybe later. I've always wanted to do this to a girl, but I never had the chance before. I use to daydream about taking a young girl out in the woods someplace, tying her to a tree and burning her with a blowtorch, then pulling her fingernails and toenails out with pliers and finally fucking her while she was still alive and screaming."
"Then you'd kill her?"
"Yes. I could see myself choking her to death with my hands and then fucking her again after she was dead. I'd never really do anything like that, of course, but I'd get so hot thinking about it that I could jack myself off. Can I come here to see you again, Lil? I've got money saved that Myra, my wife, doesn't know about. I can get away from her once a week. That's on lodge meeting nights."
"Sure," Lil replied readily. "Glad to have you for a steady customer. You understand, though, this isn't just like regular fucking. I have to have more money. At least a hundred and fifty. And anything I want from your store," she added hastily. She patted her sore fanny and winced. "I'll probably clean out your stock of salves and ointments."
"All right," he agreed quickly. "Will you suck my cock again? That felt good, even if it doesn't give me a hard."
Lil knelt on the floor between his thighs and took his prick in her mouth. She glanced toward the kitchen and grinned to see Mark standing there, camera in hand. She was sucking contentedly on Wharton's penis when she heard the faint click of the shutter.
At first he wasn't quite sure what was happening. The sensation of her young impassioned tongue on the sensitive head of his engorged cock was driving him into an almost unconscious frenzy. But, seconds later, he realized what the click meant, and he knew he was trapped.