“One. But I could prob’ly steal some cash from the Colliers.”
Michelle laughed again. “Thank God for the fucking Colliers. Come on, girl. Let’s blow this dump.”
She brushed past Abby and stalked out of the kitchen.
Abby stared after her, hesitating a moment as she watched the woman disappear through the door to the
living room. The possibility that she had perhaps made many very large errors in judgment made her guts churn.
Michelle poked her head back through the doorway. “The hell are you waiting for?”
Abby sighed.
Yeah, could be she’d made some mistakes.
But what she’d thought before was still true. She was committed now, for better or worse. Not going through with it was no longer an option. Her sister’s broken and battered body provided stark testimony to that truth.
She followed Michelle into the living room and then out of the cabin.
The right thing to do seemed obvious to Pete. They should give the Preston house a wide berth and head down the long, dirty driveway to the road beyond. Or maybe seek the cover of the surrounding wilderness, rather than staying out in the open. They could get just beyond the tree line and follow a parallel path to the road. It was the sane, safe way to go. Which probably explained Justine’s refusal to go along with it
She gripped him by a wrist and squeezed. Hard. “No.”
Pete’s face wrinkled in confusion. “Why, for fuck’s sake? And by the way, that hurts.”
She increased the pressure on his wrist. “No.”
Pete twisted his hand free of her grip. It wasn’t easy, but he managed it. He shook his hand and massaged an area where her clenching fingers had turned the flesh a bright
shade of red. “Okay. You’re crazy. We established that a while ago, but I think it bears repeating. You are fucking crazy. So how about this?You go do whatever crazy thing it is crazy people like you do in situations like this, while I head for the road.”
Justine shook her head. Long strands of dirty hair fell across her face. “Where I go, you go.”
Pete stared at her. He thought of other arguments he might make, but kept his mouth shut. There could be no talking sense to a person like Justine. He knew he should just turn around and start walking. Megan was still out there somewhere. Now was the time to break the weird hold this crazy woman had on him and get back to her.
He brushed the hair from her face and slid a palm across a sweaty cheek.
She smiled. “Megan is your past. Your future is with me.”
He just kept staring at her.
This is nuts.
I am losing my mind. Is insanity contagious?
She took his hand from her cheek and kissed his palm, making him shiver. Then she clasped hands with him and started drawing him toward the back of the Preston house. He saw lights on through the windows, but no sign of movement. As they got closer to the house, the penned-up dogs went into a new frenzy of barking and howling. He heard the chain-link fencing rattle as some of them threw their bodies against it. His breath grew short as the fear rose up inside him again, making his heart thump too fast, the way it did at the end of a longer-than-usual run. He choked down a lump in his throat and clenched Justine’s hand tighter. They went into a crouch as they reached a window.
Justine looked at him. “Stay down.”
She raised her head slightly and peered over the sill.
Pete watched her face, waiting for a reaction, but it remained impassive. He kept expecting her to duck back down, but that didn’t happen either.
“What’s going on?”
She glanced down at him. “Take a look.”
Assuming the coast was clear, Pete raised his head and saw big Gil Preston and his mother sitting in expensive-looking leather recliners. They were watching what looked like some kind of homemade porno movie on a large flat-screen TV. The flickering, unsteady image on the screen showed scrawny Carl Preston giving it to a large-breasted black woman from behind. Another well-endowed black woman lay beneath the other one on a sofa, letting those big tits bounce in her face.
Pete swallowed a yelp and ducked back down. “Jesus!”
Justine looked at him. “What’s wrong?”
Pete gaped at her. “What’s wrong!? Christ, what’s wrong with you? I don’t want those fucking psychos to see us.”
Justine smirked. “You should take another look.”
Pete squinted at her. Even for a crazy person, she seemed remarkably calm, given their proximity to their captors. He supposed it was possible he’d missed something important. He reluctantly raised his head again. This time he saw the profusion of crumpled beer cans on the floor of a den filled with expensive toys. In addition to the flat-screen TV, there was a full bar with rows of gleaming bottles behind it, several sets of bookshelves stuffed full with shiny DVD cases, and a wide array of top-of-the-line electronic equipment. On the TV screen, Carl and the girls had shifted positions. The girl who’d been prone before was now going down on the other one while Carl pounded her from behind, sweat streaming from his sneering, hawklike face. The women were attractive, but as far as Pete was concerned, the involvement of bony,
pasty-white Carl killed any eroticism the images might have conveyed. He couldn’t imagine why the Prestons would want to watch their relative in a homemade porno. Then he remembered that they were fucking perverts. Mystery solved. But it hardly mattered at the moment, because neither Gil nor Ma Preston were seeing any of it.
Both were passed out in the recliners.
Stone drunk, with their mouths hanging open and drool running down their chins. Ma’s wrinkled, sun-weathered face was frozen in an ugly sneer. A beer can hung loose from the fingers of her left hand. Any moment now it would slide free and spill all over the plushly carpeted floor. Well, here was another mystery solved. No wonder the morons hadn’t heard the dogs losing their little canine minds.
Justine let go of his hand and stood up. “Wait here.”
Then she turned and jogged away from him. Pete turned on his haunches and watched her slim, nude body streaking toward a large toolshed some fifty yards to the left. She disappeared inside the shed and didn’t come out for a few minutes, long enough for Pete to begin to feel antsy. He glanced back at the Prestons and saw that the beer can had finally slid free of Ma’s fingers. A small quantity of cheap beer glugged out of the opening, staining the carpet. Both mother and son were still passed out, and Pete supposed they would stay that way for a while. There were so many empty cans on the floor, the place looked like a frat house in the aftermath of a wild bash.
When he glanced back at the toolshed, Justine had finally reemerged. He frowned as he watched her jog back across the yard. She was a little slower this time. Which made sense. It couldn’t be easy for a woman that small to run fast while holding a chain saw.
She was panting by the time she reached him. “Are you…ready?”
Pete’s frown deepened as he stood up. “Justine…What…exactly…are you planning to do with that thing?”
A corner of her mouth quirked. “Isn’t it obvious, Petey Pete?”
She brushed past him, and Pete turned to see her approach a small set of concrete steps that led to the back door of the house. She climbed the steps and held the medium-sized McCulloch with one hand, while her other closed around the doorknob.
Heart pounding, Pete hurried after her. “You’re not going in there!”
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I am. So are you. Come on.”
She twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open. A second later she slipped inside the house and disappeared from view. Pete stared at the empty space and didn’t move, gripped by a temporary paralysis as he recognized this moment for what it was—his very last chance to make a break from Justine. He knew that if he followed her through that door, he would be throwing away his last opportunity to run from this place and try to make his way back to his old life and remain the man he’d always been.
It was the logical thing to do.
It was what he
should
do.
He stared at the open door a while longer. He glanced at the dark woods surrounding the property. Then he looked at the open door again.
He shook his head. “Fuck me.”
He climbed the steps and entered the house.
It was as if he’d walked through a portal straight into some nightmare chamber in hell. The room was big. It had to be, to contain the abomination that lived inside it. The room stank like a sewer. Worse than that. The odor of the rankest New York City sewer was as pleasant as the aromas filling the boudoir of a high-class call girl in comparison, like a bouquet of scented candles, potpourri, and expensive perfume. The stench staggered him, made his knees go weak and his eyes water. There was no way to tell what color the walls had originally been because the paint was underneath so many layers of dried shit and vomit. A glance at the ceiling showed more of the same, only worse. Congealed columns of vomit, shit, and mucus suspended from it like stalactites. And the floor beneath his feet was sticky with the same mix of excretions. The condition of the room was vile enough, but the thing that lived in it was more than monstrous enough to overwhelm the disgust he might have felt at having to walk through that quagmire of filth and shit in his bare feet.
Hoke had occasionally seen news stories of guys so fat they had to be removed from their bedrooms with heavy equipment. Unfortunate fellas who crushed the scales at a thousand pounds or more. Well, those motherfuckers were positively svelte compared to Gladys Kincher. There was no furniture in this hellish space. There wasn’t room for it, and Gladys would have no need of it anyway.
She filled the room. It wasn’t just that she was fat. She was, but she had also grown well beyond the size of any normal human, even ones considered morbidly obese by normal standards. Perhaps some additional side effect of Garner’s demonic influence. The top of her enormous head nearly butted the ceiling. Two of the shiny brown stalactites hung close to her face. Her arms and legs were thick, doughy masses of wattled flesh. The upper arms and thighs were as big around as utility poles. Her obscenely bloated belly and breasts formed a rippling sea of filth-stained blubber. The mottled legs were spread wide, exposing a glistening, hairy vagina. The distended, fleshy folds were almost repulsive enough to put him off pussy forever. Her long hair hung around her face in filthy clumps, obscuring a visage Hoke was certain was several thousand shades shy of angelic.
The giant head tilted down to look at him as the freaks forced Hoke farther into the nightmare room. Her mouth opened and a phlegmy rattle of rancid breath spewed forth. His knees buckled again as her breath rolled over him, but the freaks kept him upright. They were still all around him, doing sickening things to him with their mouths and hands and…other things. He let out a whine as he felt something stiff prod against his puckered asshole. Gladys opened her mouth again and another sound emerged. It took Hoke a moment to recognize it as rumbling laughter. He tried to plant his feet beneath him and halt the forward progress, but it was useless. There were too many of them, and he just had no strength left.
Garner was laughing somewhere behind him again. “Say hello to your new lover, Hoke. Gladys hasn’t been laid in a
long
time. I’m sure she’ll make it special for you.”
Hoke shook his head and whined. “No…please…no…”
Garner laughed some more.
The freaks stopped pushing Hoke forward. They were at the juncture between the giant’s spread legs now. Bile rose up in Hoke’s throat and dribbled in thin brown streams from the corners of his mouth. The woman with the diseased third breast dropped to her knees in front of him and drew his cock into her mouth. Hoke was crying by now. He had never been so horrified or afraid in his life. But somehow the freak’s swirling tongue brought him back to hardness. Then she slipped away from him, scuttling between his legs on her hands and knees like a crab. The stiff thing prodding at his butt retreated, too. And in a moment he realized they were all moving away from him. He took a reflexive step back and would have kept on going, but Gladys unclenched the fingers of a massive hand and curled them around his back.
Hoke struggled in her grip, but it was useless.
She spread her legs wider and began to draw him toward her.
Hoke screamed.
His hands flailed at her encircling fingers to no avail. A horrible grinding sound emerged from her throat as she slammed him against her.
And
into
her.
Her fingers began to move rhythmically against his back as she rubbed him enthusiastically against her slimy middle. She groaned and arched her back. His head disappeared beneath a roll of belly fat, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe. Hoke was aware of a sensation like firecrackers going off in his head. He knew he’d probably be better off suffocating at this point, but instinct made him struggle for breath. He turned his head to the side and found a pocket of air. His penis sank into her again and again. He had to wonder how pleasurable it could really be for her. His dick was sort of pea sized for the
likes of her. It would do the job for any normal woman—or so he liked to think—but maybe not for this titanic, living atrocity.
An answer to this question was supplied shortly after the thought occurred to him. She pulled him away from her and held him tight in her fingers while she pried apart her glistening, plump pussy lips with the fingers of her other hand. Hoke started shaking his head. She lifted him off his feet and turned him so that the top of his head was facing toward her. Hoke kicked his feet and sucked in a big breath in preparation for a scream. But the sound died in his throat as she rammed him up inside her, up to the shoulders. She drew him out and thrust him back in. Again and again. She moved him up and down and wriggled him around. She pulled him out and rubbed his shiny face against her quivering clit. Then back inside that moist warmth for endless moments.
At some point the thing Garner had hoped for happened.
Hoke’s mind broke.
Permanently.
And by the time Gladys was satiated, Garner had his vessel.