Grimoire Diabolique

EVER NAT

Gray had seen the girl hitching down the Route several nights in a row. Pure-bred redneck, he could tell, but… Christ, she’s cute. Faded cut-offs, halter-top, sleek bare legs flashing in his headlights as she trod the road’s gravel edge. He’d read in the county section that prostitutes were known to hitch on the Route….

Gray worked in the city: 125k a year now, assistant programming director for UniCorp. Not bad for 40. And switching him to 4-to-12s dropped another ten percent in his pocket as a night differential. The adjustment came easy: fewer people in the office, fewer distractions and ringing phones—more time to work. Gray had no wife anymore and had never really cared about a social life; the way he saw it, work was the only way to make anything of himself. And I have, he thought now. His car, in part, was proof. An onyx-black Callaway Twin Turbo Corvette: sixty grand. A $15,000 VTL/Apogee stereo at home. And home wasn’t shabby either, a three-bedroom luxury condo, waterfront. The good things in life—that’s what he worked for….

But at times like this, during these incalculable drives, he got to wondering. What else is there? Good question after two marriages and two divorces, plus the handful of nickel-dime relationships in between. Women always wanted something, at least it seemed to him. Like I owe them a life in exchange for sex once a week. He’d had it up with the whole ball of wax. I don’t need a woman in my life, he considered, comfortable behind the padded wheel. All I need is me…

But was that really true?

There were other needs.

Four-to-12s had one more perk: no rush hour. Gray left the city at midnight, then took the Route to the interstate. With no traffic, he’d be back to his condo in less than a half hour. State Route 154 was a long winding flood emergency route through the dense woodland of south county. It was a pretty drive, scenic—especially at night, especially during the summer. The low moon followed him through the trees. Crickets and peepers issued their steady, pulsating cacophony, and the stars glimmered like luminous spillage in the sky.

And here she was again. The girl he’d seen hitchhiking several nights in a row. The girl, and that rising need.

Yes, he’d read in the paper that prostitutes often walked the Route, but not like the hookers in the city—they were all drug-addicts, scary in their empty-eyed stares and sleazy getups. These Route girls, he’d heard, were just poor rubes—white trash, for the most part—looking to make a few bucks to take back to their broken farms. And this one here?

Just last night he’d passed her, hadn’t he? She’d been walking just past the bend, and when Gray spotted her, something in his soul seized up. That trampy, hick beauty glared back in the swoosh of halogen highbeams; a freeze-frame locked in his head.

Oh, man…

All slim curves and fine lines. Frayed cutoffs satcheled sleek, spread hips. Pert breasts, large for a girl of her delicate frame, swayed braless in the faded orange halter, and between that and her beltline, Gray lost his breath at the image of her tight, sloping abdomen and the tiny slit of bellybutton. Her face seemed to beam bright as the halogens: big brown eyes; a small, robust mouth; a peaches-and-cream complexion.

Hair the color of mature straw danced at her shoulders.

And all these details, yes, he’d managed to assess in the split-second glimpse as his Corvette rounded the bend. But one more detail nicked at him, more persistent than the others, and the detail was this: Her tanned arm extended, her thumb out.

Pick her up, he thought. Maybe she’ll…

Maybe she’ll what? Proposition you?

Was that was he was looking for?

The answer must’ve been yes, because a few tenths of a mile later, Gray was pulling a U. His heart seemed to pick up in its beat as he drove, scanning the lit shoulder. But—

Goddamn it!

When he got back to the bend, another car idled at the line—a nicely refurbed ’68 Camaro, ice-white. It was a small-block, with headers and chambered exhaust. Gray could tell by the healthy chunk-chunk-chunk of the idle. But something in his spirit seemed to collapse when he saw…

The girl was getting in. A final passing glimpse showed him the driver’s face in the left window, some stubbled, longhaired redneck. Goddamn rube probably changes tires for a living, Gray thought in disgust.

So that was the end of that. Or—

Maybe not.

Here she was again, tonight, hitching along the same shoulder, barefoot, long tan legs stepping backward as she jerked her thumb out.

Pick her up…

It was something like a haze in his eyes when he pulled the Corvette right over. A shadow danced in his rearview, and then the passenger door was opening. The shadow slipped in, bringing a faintly musky scent in its wake. The door thunked shut.

“Hi,” Gray said.

“Ha,” she replied. That’s what her redneck dialect turned the word “hi” into. “Wow, this, I say, this is some really nass car.”

Nass? he thought, but then he considered the dialect again. She was saying nice.

“Thanks. So where you headed?”

“Tylersville, I means, if ya kin go all’s that way. You’s kin drops me off ’fore the highway ramp if ya’s cain’t go that far.”

Fuck. Tylersville was all the way at the end of the Route, close to ten miles probably.

“Sure,” he agreed. What else have I got to do? Gray thought. Go home? Catch the end of Leno? “It’s not that far out of my way.”

“Thank-ya, and I’se sorry if I smell like crabs.”

The comment took him aback. “Smell like what?”

“Likes crabs. See, I’se work for Stevenson’s Crabbers. They’se got a shack just up the Route. That’s where I’se walkin’ home from juss now. I’se a crab-picker. See, they’se buy crabs by the bushel down the City Dock, and we’se pick all the meat out of ’em and put it in containers ta sells ta the city restaurants so they’se can make crabcakes’n newburg’n stuff. Pay’s not bad, eithers—fifty cent over minimum wage.”

What was that? About seven bucks an hour to pick crabs in some sweatshop all day. I make that much in about five minutes, he thought.

“Sounds like, uh, an interesting job.”

“Ak-shure-lee it kinda sucks,” she admitted, “but I gots a baby an’ I don’t wanna go on the welfare.”

“Well, that’s, uh, that’s very commendable of you,” Gray struggled for a reply.

“An’, ya know, you’ll’se see me hitchin’ home from there this time most ever nat.”

Ever nat? Gray tried to decipher and remembered yet again the dialect. Ever nat. Every night.

“Yeah, I, you know, I think I saw you last night, but—”

“I saws you too. Ain’t no way I’d ferget a nice car like this. Wish ya’d picked me up, thoughs, ’cos the guy who did, it was this real cracker inna white Camaro. He weren’t very nice.”

Gray searched for a comment. What did she mean? But before he could think of something…

“’Corse I do more’n pick crabs fer money, ya know.”

Silence. Gray drove with it. It was like a companion riding in the backseat, a preceptor sitting there and waiting to see how he would gauge and then react to the remark.

This was the moment, wasn’t it? Put up or shut up.

His groin, suddenly, felt like some burgeoning thing, a husky, drooling animal dragging him around. He couldn’t control it. He hadn’t really even looked at her since she’d gotten into the car, yet something about her seemed to emanate: the musky, perspiry scent, the gentle drawl of her voice, the way her lithe shadow played on the dashboard.

“An’ I guess you knows what I’se talkin’ ’bout,” she went on unabashed, “’nless that’s, like, a summer squash ya gots there in yer pants.”

Gray, in spite of his nervousness, almost belted out a loud laugh. It reminded him of old high school jokes. Is that the Loch Ness Monster in your pants, or are you just happy to see me? Shit. Some summer squash. Six and a quarter inches, and that was on a good day. But it was time, wasn’t it? Time to get down to business.

“I’m not a cop or anything,” he felt the impulse to offer. Didn’t they usually ask that first? He’d seen it on the cop shows and in the movies. If they asked and a decoy cop said no, there was some entrapment law they’d be violating? Gray wasn’t sure.

“Oh, I know you ain’t no cop,” she said and laughed lightly. “Cops don’t drive cars like this! ’Sides, I kin tell you’s’re a nass guy.”

Hmm. So. I’m a nass guy.

“Well, thank you for saying so,” he said. “You’re a nice girl.”

“And I’se kin tell ya, cops ’round these parts? They ain’t nass. ’Specially them county sheriffs. They ain’t nass at all.”

Gray didn’t know what to say. He was too excited to pursue small-talk. The pause that followed sounded hollow, mixed with the big engine’s soft hum. He gulped and continued, “So, like how much money are we talking here, and, you know… for what?”

Her voice didn’t hitch. “I’ll’se give ya a good blowjob fer, like, ten bucks, if you’ll drive me all’s the way home.”

Ten bucks? Christ. Gray was about to offer a hundred. He fished in his pocket—there was a twenty in there somewhere. He grabbed some haphazard bills and gave them to her.

“I don’t know what that is,” he said. “Twenty, thirty, something like that. You can have it.”

“Dag, mister!” Her nimble hands counted the bills in the moonlight on the dash. “This here’s twennie, not ten. Plus a five.”

“You can have it, you know, for—”

The feel of her hand on his groin silenced him. At first it felt as though a little bird had landed there, but then the bird gave a soft rub and then a harder squeeze. Gray nearly came.

Her lilting voice hushed as she leaned over. The hand rubbed him more intricately. “I mean, I don’t wants ya ta think I’m juss some whore’re anything. But I’se never seed nothing wrong with a gal taking some money long’s she’s willing ta give something’n return. Ya know? Mue-cher-all agreement.”

Gray’s breath lodged in his chest. “I… agree…”

“Tells ya what,” she whispered. Now her face was so close to his crotch, he could almost feel her breath on it. “You’s juss keep yer hands on the wheel an’ con-ser-trates on yer drivin’, an’ I’ll’se do the rest.”

Gray gulped, nodded mutely.

He felt his buckle come undone, then heard the rasp of his zipper. A sweet shock seemed to tremor, then, when he felt her fingers push his slacks down and then prise out his scrotum and already hard penis. She gently squeezed his balls, and, next, harder, she squeezed the shaft. Gray felt a small reservoir of pre-ejaculate form at the glans.

“You’s juss drives me all the way down the Route. Turn left on 3 ta Tylersville, an’ I’se’ll suck ya the whole way.”

Gray was about to come right now, not ten miles from now, and she hadn’t even taken it into her mouth. I don’t think… I’ll quite… last that… long, he thought, his teeth grinding.

Her right hand cupped his balls as her mouth sucked, first the glans, then took the whole thing—all six and a quarter inches—down to the back of her throat. Gray’s cock suddenly felt cocooned in a hot, wet gulf. At the base, her lips constricted to a tight O, then drew up. This was expert, this was phenomenal. That delectable wet O drew up and down again, up and down—

Thinking about baseball worked to a point, a destructive distraction. Each time he forced an image into his head—Clemens’ twenty-second win, or A-Rod post-season record breaker—Gray’s orgasm was staved off for a moment. But he gnashed his teeth in objection—inviting such imagery seemed a horrible vandalism to the sensation. He wanted the sensation to be extended, though; hence, a brutal cycle of sabotage. He’d turn the image off and was about to come, so he turned it right back on: Swisher, Jeter, Texiera, etc. Aw, Jesus! When he summoned the image of C.C. Sabathia’s face, his erection nearly died.

“Mmm, yeah,” the girl paused to say. “You’re lastin’ a good long while. I wouldn’t mind ya fuckin’ me, neithers. Bet’cha’d make me come.”

She slowly jacked it with her hand a few times, fingers playing over slick spit. Gray had to keep his eyes ludicrously wide on the road.

“I don’t mind suckin’ fellas off,” she drawled on. “It’s kind’a fun.” She squeezed more crystal ooze out of the tip, then played her thumb over it. Gray fidgeted sharply in the seat.

“And you ain’t like a lotta guys.” More talk, more hand-play. “You know? Lotta guys talk real nasty while I’m doin’ it, sayin’ mean stuff. Like that fella last night? Kept callin’ me pig’n bitch’n whore, sayin’ ‘suck that cock, ya little whore’ and stuff like that.”

Gray’s legs were tremoring; he had trouble keeping his right foot controlled over the gas. “That’s, uh,” he gasped. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“Naw, but you are.”

Her voice was erotic—that drawl, half innocence, half experience. Sabathia’s psychological wreckage disappeared, and Gray was hard again, hard as metal pipe. She’d squeeze against the nerve-charged rigidity, slide her hand up, slide her hand down, with pain-staking slowness. A few more times like that and he’d come all over himself, probably squirt himself in the face. But just when that would happen, she let go and massaged his balls. Gray was definitely getting his money’s worth.

She seemed to be considering something when she said, “Awright, I know what I’ll do. But I don’t usually do it, just so ya’s know.”

Gray was dismayed, face bloated and popping sweat behind the wheel. What the fuck are you talking about? Keep sucking!

She held something up she’d slipped out of her pocket. Gray heard the faintest tearing sound. He pulled his eyes off the road several times, sneaking glances, and saw that she’d just slipped a condom out of its packet. The rubbery lubricant scent wafted over.

“What, uh, what are you—”

“Shh,” she replied. “You’ll like this.”

What, she’s gonna fuck me while I’m driving?

“See, fellas all like it, they just never say so on account they don’t want the girl ta think they’re queer.”

Gray remained speechless in his dismay as she rolled the condom over her right index finger. Then she was leaning over.

“What, uh, what are you—”

“In we go.” She slipped her finger right into his anus, slipped it in deep.

Gray could not reckon such turmoil; he wanted to shout. But then it occurred to him only a second later that this “turmoil” was very interesting. Gray’s entire being felt bloated in the strange, excruciating pleasure, and before he knew it she was fellating him again, with mind-boggling precision. He knew he’d last only a second longer like this, the mouth sucking his cock like she was drinking a milkshake through a straw and the finger roving. It didn’t matter that he’d last only another second, because he knew it would be the best second of pleasure in his life.

Yes, in just another—

Gray seized up in the driver’s seat and came anxiously into the hot wet wonderful spit-filled mouth. It was an explosive release. He thought of a tube of window chalk lying on its side and suddenly being smacked with a sledgehammer, its contents evacuated at once. He expected her lips to pop off at the first mammoth spurt, but they didn’t. They stayed there, more quickly now drawing up and down. Gray’s hips quivered, his asshole clenching around her finger, and then his buttocks rose off the leather seat as he struggled to remember he was driving a car down a winding road. So much semen spurted out of him he wondered how her mouth could hold it all. The orgasm supplanted him into another world; his eyes rolled in his head, and his knees shook to the point that he could barely control the foot pedals.

When she was done, she slipped her mouth off, leaned backed, and swallowed.

“Fellas like it more when a gal swallers,” she said. “Don’t know why, but’cha git used ta the way it tastes.”

Gray barely heard her, nerves firing down. He felt like a big sack of dough in the seat. Then he flinched, nearly yelped aloud, when she slipped the condomed finger out of his anus. The after-sensation radiated, and as she’d been removing her finger, he felt some mysterious leftover of sperm ooze slowly out of his urethra.

Holy motherfucking shit, he thought.

She held her hand out the window, slipped the fouled condom off her finger. It flew away into the dark like an expectoration.

“Ya feel better now?” she asked him.

Gray tried to say yes but his tongue clogged his mouth. Sucking breaths, he nodded.

“I knew ya’d like it. My brothers tolt me ’bout it, ’bout how they’ll come better during a blowjob with a finger up’n their ass. Some gland up in there, little gland that makes yer jizz er somethin’.”

Gray could fathom absolutely no response. Had she said her brothers? Her brothers had given her a lesson in rectal anatomy? Gray didn’t even want to guess, didn’t want to imagine what kind of family she might have come from. But of course she’d been right, too. Her technical intricacies had provided him the best orgasm of his life. She rubbed his testicles some more and he was still spasming down. A finger up the ass, huh? Until then the only things to ever be up Gray’s ass were turds, but he could hardly argue.

He slowed the car down, unaware until now how he’d been accelerating through the event. Finally he blurted out, “That was great.”

“I wanna do things ya like, ’cos I like ya. If I do things ya like, then you’ll pick me up agin, next time ya see me hitchin’ home from the crab-pickers.”

“Kuh—count on it.”

“Cain’t have ya thinkin’ I’m a slob,” came her next inexplicable chatter. Now she was rubbing his bare stomach, looking down at his groin. “Cain’t be leavin’ a mess on ya, ya know? I always clean up my messes.”

Gray flinched, nearly yelped again when she abruptly popped his penis back into her mouth and sucked hard, sucking off those oozing remnants. His hips and thighs tingled fiercely as the last lingering semen was drawn out. His cock felt fat, half deflated but still buzzing in luxuriant post-climax. She sucked her mouth off again and simultaneously slid her hand back up the spitty shaft, squeezed tightly with her index finger and thumb collaring his corona. A final pearl of sperm appeared and she licked it right off.

Good God…

Gray eventually managed to get his mind back on driving. Her hand lingered on his balls, a finger teasing between them. Jesus Christ, can she give a blowjob… Every aspect of his reproductive capacity—from nerve reaction to sperm supply—felt utterly drained, a bucket tipped over and emptied.

“You’s shore came a lot,” she observed next, smacking her lips, “and you gotta nice cock, a nice-looking knob, and it ain’t all bumpy like a lotta of ’em.”

All Gray could say to the most inane compliment of his life was “Thank you.”

“And you’re nice’n clean too,” she kept chattering. “No foreskin—not that I got anythin’ against ’em but—Chrast—so many fellas don’t wash it out and it’s got all that smelly stuff in it. Yuck.”

“I can’t say that I know what you mean,” he tried to joke, “since I don’t have the benefit of your experience. So I’ll take your word for it.”

The attempt at levity went over her head. Another smack of her lips, then she poised in the seat, animated. “And, ya know, yer come tastes good, not like a lotta fellas, all bitter’n all.”

My come tastes good, Gray repeated the remark in his mind. Oh dear me, is this a night of revelation or what? Maybe if he ever got a girlfriend again, he could tell her that on the first date. By the way, I have it on some very qualified authority that my sperm tastes good.

The girl stared out the windshield and stroked her chin as if pondering a puzzle. “I wonder if what’cha eat effects the taste of your come? Ya think?”

Gray’s smile of incredulity bloomed on his face. “I… don’t know. But I suppose it’s an interesting question.”

“Like, if all a guy eats bacon, does it make his come taste like bacon? Er-er-er, what if he eats lots’a candy?” Her stare beyond the glass deepened. “I wonder if it makes his come sweet.”

“Perhaps it does.” Gray could barely stifle a chuckle. This is some conversation. “You’re really great,” he finally said when he got his breath back. Now she was daintily rebuckling his slacks, tucking the shirt in, making sure the zipper’s tab was right when she pulled it up.

“There ya go…”

“Look, you know, I mean,” he began to babble, “didn’t you say said you walk this way a lot?”

“Yeah. Ever nat. Ever week-nat that is.”

“Well, see, why don’t we make a deal? I drive home this way every night too, the same time, and I was thinking that maybe I could pick you up like this and drive you home, for, you know—”

She seemed elated. “You’s’ll drive me home ever nat fer a blow job an’ gives me twennie five ta boot?”

“Yes,” Gray said. “Why not?” The quiet calculation registered: twenty-five dollars a night, five nights a week. A little over six grand a year. Piece of cake. His two ex-wives were remarried now—no more alimony. “I mean, you need the money for your baby, and I, you know, I need—”

Her hand, perhaps unconsciously, squeezed his crotch. “That’d be dandy ’cos, like, most’a the guys who give me rides ever nat, they’se only pay like five’r ten bucks an’ a lotta times they’se try to do things I never agreet to. They’se all mostly crackers, see, dirty fellas and mostly drunk. But I like you. An’ you’s say you give me twennie-five fer a blow? Ever nat?”

“Sure,” Gray said. “Every night.”

She lived way back in the boondocks, all right. An old county utility road took them deep into the woods. The moon had risen higher; it was a half-moon, a yellow lump hovering. Gray kept taking sideglances at it, for whatever reason, but it just made him more aware of the girl. For the whole time he drove, she never took her hand off his crotch. He could feel her hand’s warmth through the material. Then she was rubbing more intently as her big dark-caramel eyes wandered over the scape of the forest. It didn’t take long before Gray was hard again.

The Corvette’s tires crunched over gravel. At the end of the road, a clearing opened, and a little two-story farmhouse sat wedged into sprawls of high weeds. Blistered once-white paint peeled back to reveal old, dull-gray wood, and there were dark shutters with slats falling out. An attic with one blank window peaked out of the structure toward its rear, some shingles missing from the small belfry-like roof. A large garage branched off one side, obviously a makeshift addition, and behind it, an expansive area surrounded by an eight-foot-high plank fence, more old unvarnished gray. Amid the weeds crawling around the house, Gray noticed orange bloated objects sitting lopsided, and then he realized what they were. Pumpkins, he thought. Well that’s damn appropriate, because this dump could pass for a Halloween house of horrors any day. Gray didn’t want to hang around. She had a kid, so she probably had a husband. And the husband must have a shotgun, to fit right in with the rest of this backwoods cliché.

He pulled up at the end of the gravel drive, stopped.

“Look,” she said, “I means, you been real nice’n generous to me, ’specially offerin’ ta pick me up ever nat, but, see, I lives here with my two brothers Jory’n Hull, but, see, they’se’re mechanics, they’se work on cars.”

“What about… I mean, aren’t you married?”

“Aw, no, I’se ain’t married!” she exclaimed as if at an absurdity. “I gotta baby, shore, but that was juss by some fella who raped me once.”

“Oh, wow,” Gray said. “I’m sorry.”

“Ain’t nothin’ ta be sorry ’bout ’cos she’s a beauter-full baby.” Her fingers, very daintily, tacked around Gray’s crotch. Things were moving down there again, the tent struggled to rise against the tension. “I’se don’t want ya ta think I’m greedy’re nothing, but, ya know, seein’s that yer hard again, I thoughts ya might wanna come in an’ give me a fuck.”

Just hearing the word—fuck—come from her mouth made Gray feel like he might come right there in his pants. His chest tightened. “But-but you said you had two brothers.”

“Yeah, I’se do, but, see, they’se ain’t here right now, won’t be home till tuh-marruh nat on account they had ta go ta Pennsylvania ta buy car parts at some big car convention. So’s you kin come in, an’ we’se won’t be disturbed. But, ya know, I’d have ta charge, like, maybe… forty?”

All reason was lost now. Gray turned off the motor and the lights, opened his wallet, and gave her a hundred dollars.

“Tarnations! Ya don’t have ta give me that much!”

“Take it,” he said. His words came out parched. “You’re really just so… beautiful…”

Her face leaned forward in the dark. He couldn’t see it as much as feel it—its softness, its warmth. She kissed him very lightly on the lips while her hand lingered at his crotch, his lust rekindled now full-force. Yes, so much lust for her, lust that felt like an inchoate, molten mass.

“Come on,” she whispered. “I’ll’se make ya feel real good. You ain’t even gotta use a rubber if ya don’t want.”

Rubbers were the last thing on his mind just then. In fact, everything was—everything but her. Gray got out, almost fell over in some distractive euphoria. Did she giggle? She led him into the house, holding his hand. The front door creaked open; she switched on a light.

What a dive, Gray thought. This looked like the place Jed and Granny lived in before they moved to Beverly Hills. More dilapidated inside than out, a shit-heap. But then he scolded himself. Certainly she was underprivileged. No education? Picking crabmeat? And she’d do that to support her child rather than go on welfare. In a lot of ways, she was a better person than he.

“Sorry’se ’bout the mess,” she apologized.

The words barely registered. Gray stood in a prickling fog, staring. His eyes seemed to be entities with minds of their own; he couldn’t take them off her. She nonchalantly turned, tossed her head, gave a despondent smile. Then she took off the halter and, just as nonchalantly, stepped out of her cutoffs.

God Almighty, Gray thought.

Even in this tacky place, in this tacky lamplight… she was beautiful. It was a sporadic kind of beauty, an honest kind, utterly divorced from centerfold appeal and women’s-mag chicness. Here was a real woman, however unsophisticated, full of real life. Even her flaws were beautiful: one upper front tooth slightly crooked, one distended nipple minutely larger than the other, an old scar on one knee. Beautiful, Gray thought in his daze. His mouth felt dry. She didn’t seem the least bit inhibited about standing before a perfect stranger totally naked. Fine hair showed traceably from her underarms. A plot of dark-blond fur puffed from her pubis, and within it, just barely, he could see the lovely folds of her femininity.

The large, high breasts swayed as she stepped forward. “You ready?” she asked.

“Yes,” he nearly croaked.

The vision entranced him, pulled him to his knees. Now he was face to face with the nebulous triangle of hair. Gray brushed the hair with his lips; it was so soft he barely felt it. Just as soft were the backs of her thighs, over which his hands glided until they found their way to her buttocks. His mouth urged closer, the hair tickling, and when his tongue slipped against the nugget of her clitoris, her ass clenched in his hands.

“I—I lack that,” her whisper flittered down from above.

Lack. Like. Yes, he wanted her to like it, that most irrational part of himself. The other part was buried somewhere, interred in a sepulcher of modern common sense. Licking a prostitute’s vagina wasn’t something the upwardly mobile did in this day and age, but Gray did it anyway, reveling in her sharp taste and moist heat. He could hear her breathing faster. She tweezed her clitoris between two fingertips and gently pulled up. The action extruded the little acorn of flesh more directly, so Gray could lick it better. The fingertips of her other hand pushed the back of his head. She was gasping gently now, the knowing human noise turned Gray on more, and her own excitement couldn’t be contested. He could taste it, that salty glaze beginning to flow from the folds beneath the downy hair. Gray couldn’t have been more pleased with himself. He was a techie, a computer geek, yet here he was arousing this worldly woman of obvious sexual experience. If anything, her responses were very flattering.

But his own needs were raging—the needs he was paying for.

“Now, baby—”

Gray looked up, saw her own face looking back down at him between the beautiful breasts. The face was flushed, the eyes narrowed with desire. Her hands were on his shoulders next, urging him to stand, and when he was back on his feet, the front of his pants bulging, she kissed him and ran her tongue between his lips.

“Git’cher cock out, baby,” came the next parched whisper. Gray did, and was tempted to jerk it off right there when she turned around and bent over to clear off some space on the kitchen table behind her. His eyes ran up the back of her legs, over the tight, white rump, up the sleek lines of her back. When he squeezed his penis—just once—it didn’t even feel like his. It was insanely hard, throbbing like some convulsing animal, a fat veined lizard.

Then she turned back around, almost dizzy now. She sat up on the edge of the table, lay back, and held her legs wide open for him, her feet poised high in the air. “Put it in me, baby. Juss stick it right in…”

Gray stepped up, slack and shorts down at his ankles. He eased in and out of her, biting his lip. Not again… The simple feel of her inside turned him into a hair trigger about to fall. Struggling, he summoned more baseball images.

“Hard. Do it hard.”

Gray tried but— Forget it. Not even imagining being in the showers with Randy Johnson could hold off the inevitable. Gray’s balls drew all the way up to the root; he gasped. The first spurt of his orgasm vaulted out of him and into her, a floodgate knocked down, but before he could even be aware of the second spurt—

—some blunt object cracked him on the back of the skull. And Gray’s world, as well as all of his desires and all of his dreams and all of his love, turned black.

He awoke, lying askew, on a gritty bare-wood floor. A bright light burned from above, but before it, two blurred shapes began to sharpen. “How’s it goin’ there, City Boy?” someone asked like a voice echoing from the bottom of a well.

Gray’s head barked with pain. He squinted upward and focused. Two men in overalls grinned down, stubbled faces, mouths full of black teeth.

“‘Cos that’s where you’s’re from, ain’t it? The city?”

Gray groaned at the pain in his head. Another pain, somewhere else, nagged at him, but he couldn’t place it.

“Must be from the city, Hull,” another voice, losing its well-bottom echo, speculated. “Them fancified city clothes, an’ that Callaway ’Vette? An’ he’s got credit cards too. Only city fellas have them.”

Gray strained his vision at the younger of the two overalled men. Mussed hair stuck up in spikes; he grinned as he ruffled through Gray’s kidskin wallet.

“This here’s my l’il brother Jory, and me? I’se Hull,” said the other one. This was too proverbial: these guys were hicks, hayseeds, right down to their dusty workboots and denim overalls. The girl set me up, Gray realized, bringing a hand to his head. And, Christ—what did they hit me with? A fucking refrigerator?

“Bet’cher noggin hurts,” said Hull, the older one, thumbing the straps of his overalls. Chest hair and muscles showed beneath the bib. “Jory jacked ya out a might hard.” The man tittered. “Bet’cher backside smarts too, huh?”

Only then did Gray calculate that other pain. He leaned up and saw that his X’andrini black silk shirt had been removed, and his Italian slacks—$150 at Grenadi’s For Men—had been pulled down. His anus seemed to throb in time with the pain in his head.

“What… what did you do?”

“Jory here, see, he already had hisself a nut up yer cornhole. While’s you was havin’ yer beauty sleep.”

“Tightest boy-pussy I ever had, I still say,” Jory added. He was still riffing through Gray’s wallet. “Hey, Hull! City’s got a couple hunnerts here!”

Gray groggily leaned up. The answer to his question had already been answered by the throbbing rectal pain. But Gray asked anyway. “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Are you saying that you sodomized me?”

The two rednecks belted laughter. “Sodder-mized? Shee-it, you really is from the city!” Jory exclaimed.

Then Hull: “We don’t call it sodder-mee here, City. We’se real folks, and what we’se call it is cornholin’.”

Jesus Christ…

“An’ I ’spect,” Hull went on, “Jory here’s gonna have hisself another nut up yer cornhole, like, real soon. Me, I’se usually just good fer one nut a day s’bout. But a young fella like him? Got a hard dog three, four times a day, he does.”

Gray couldn’t believe this. I’ve been abducted by homosexual rednecks. Hull, he could see, was rubbing the front of his overalls like someone in a grocery testing avocados for ripeness. Jory, on the other hand, still had his penis hanging out the front of his overalls. He flicked off a little raisinette of shit.

When Gray adjusted his position on the floor, he heard a metallic clatter, and then he made the next—decidedly grim—discovery. A steel shackle girded his left ankle, and from the shackle a chain extended. A heavy chain. The chain looked about six or eight feet long. Its other end was padlocked to an iron ring bolted to the floor.

I’m fuckin’ chained to the floor!

“Had to chain ya,” Hull explained. “Caint have ya gittin’ out. Sheriff’s station ain’t but five miles yonder, off the Route.”

I’m chained, Gray thought again as if to finalize the reality. This fact probably meant that his hosts wouldn’t be letting him out of here any time soon…

“Gits my dog hard juss lookin’ at you, City,” Hull went on. “Come on, now. Hands and knees.”

Gray was incredulous. Hull was dropping his overalls, and so was Jory. “You got to be shitting me, man,” Gray remarked. “You don’t expect me to—”

Hull slapped him hard on the head; Gray reeled. Then he got into position, chain clattering.

“Hands’n knees now, like a pooch.” Hull produced a buck knife for a little extra incentive. It glinted.

“Yeah,” the other one chuckled. “Ever heard’a screwin’ the pooch? You’re the pooch.”

“Look,” Gray pleaded in a last effort, “do you guys really have to do this? I mean, you got the girl. I’m sure she’d be a hell of a lot better than me.”

Gray shrieked when Hull slapped his head again. “What-choo talkin’ ’bout!” Hull took exception. “Kari Ann? She’s our sister! That’d be insesteriss! What kinda pree-verts ya think we is?”

Gray’s brain felt like a single, throbbing blob of pain. Pardon me for making the inference, he thought, as pissed off as he was terrified, but it’s not like I’m seeing a whole lot of morality here. You just RAPED ME in the ass.

“Shee-it. I oughts ta cut me off one’a yer balls juss fer sayin’ such a dirty thing.”

“Sorry,” Gray sputtered.

But Jory railed, “Dag damn, Hull! I’se gonna have myself a good come up his this fella’s backside. Second nut’a the day’s always the best, I say.” Jory knelt and turned Gray around, jerking up at his hips. “Feel’s good!”

“Best not ta fight it, City,” Hull obliged. “We’se gonna have ya one ways’re another. Don’t make me git ta cuttin’ on ya.”

Gray’s eyes widened in more truth. What could he do? Moreover, what would they do when they were finished? It wasn’t like he was going anywhere, not chained to the fucking floor. The rationale of survival set its teeth: I’ve got no choice….

Hull flexed his hairy pecs. “You’s gonna give me a peter-suck while’s Jory here checks yer oil.”

Gray, fully on hands and knees now, nodded grimly. He winced at the sound of Jory clearing his throat and expectorating into the cleft of his buttocks. “Gots ta slick ya up some, huh, City? Give that tight l’il boy-poon a good lubin’.”

“Jory, see, he don’t much care fer a peter-suck, says it tickles,” Hull enlightened. “Pur-fers a cornholin’ any day. But me? I’se just the opper-sit. Don’t care to have a fella’s shit on my stick much, ya know? But a good peter-suck—that’s what I’se pur-fer.”

“Time to park the car in the garage,” Jory quipped, kneeling right up now behind Gray. Gray’s cheek’s billowed at the sensation: a wet nudge… forward pressure, then…

slunk

Jory’s “car” pulled deftly into Gray’s “garage.” Gray blew out more air. The pain was not nearly as paramount as the sheer pressure. Jory’s callused hands held Gray’s hips as he began to draw in and out. Christ, this motherfucker’s huge! Gray had no choice but to observe. It feels like I’m taking a shit in reverse…

“Luckys fer you that Hull don’t fancy a lot’a cornholin’, ’cos his dog’s even bigger’n mine.”

Hull chuckled. “Now come on, Jory. Ain’t ya got no manners? When yer cornholin’ a fella it’s only proper’n courteous ta at least give him a reach-around!”

Jory pumped now in a steady rhythm, each stoke seeming to reach up into Gray’s guts. “Aw, City, I’se truly do apoler-gize. That ain’t very hospital of me at all, now, is it?” Jory reached under Gray’s right hip and grabbed his penis and scrotum. He squeezed it probingly several times, as though it were an udder on a cow. “Shee-it, Hull, I say this boy ain’t got much at all!”

Gray’s genitals felt like a bag of dead flesh.

Hull grinned through rotten teeth. “He gittin’ hard?”

“Shee-it, Hull! Hard? This here city fella here? Peter on him feels about as hard as a chicken liver! And I say, his nuts don’t feel hardly no bigger’n a coupla olives!”

“Bet he don’t come much neithers.” Hull knelt before Gray’s face, inched up closer on his knees, and fully pulled down his overalls. “Well, here’s something for ya, City.” He used his full hand to extract his genitals. “Like a big hot lollipop.”

Gray’s eyes opened to the size of Kennedy dollars. You’ve got to be shitting me! If Gray, on a good day, sported six and a quarter inches, well… you could add about three more inches to that and it still wouldn’t be as big as Hull’s, and who cares if it was a good day? What hung immediately before Gray’s face was something that looked like an erect summer sausage—with a snout on the end. Folds of abundant foreskin looked like bunched lunchmeat. “You suck on this good, City,” Hull said, then flashed the point of the buck knife toward his face. “Ands if you even think ’bout bitin’ it, so helps me, I’ll’se dig yer eyeball out’n make ya eat it. Hear me?”

Gray, puff-eyed, nodded.

Hull pulled back the foreskin—a veritable sheet of loose skin—to reveal a damp pink glans with a ring of smegma girding the rim. “Git yer yap open, City, like at the doctor’s office, open wide’n say ahhh. And don’t mind the dick cheese. Hail, a l’il cheese won’t hurt ya. Give ya something ta taste, huh?”

Gray, mortified now, squeezed his eyes shut and opened his mouth, and what was then inserted into said mouth reminded him of a raw turkey neck. Only bigger. “Reach up’n give my balls a squeeze too,” Hull eloquently requested. Gray had to lean all his forward weight on one palm when he did so. And what his hand enclosed felt like two kiwi fruits.

Only bigger.

“Come on, City! Shee-it! You kins suck a dog better’n that. Suck it like yer daddy taught ya.”

This may come as a surprise to you, sir, but my father DIDN’T teach me how to suck dick… Gray reasoned that his survival just now might very well depend on the dexterity by which he performed fellatio on this unwashed hayseed. And unwashed was an understatement. With his mouth so full, he had no recourse but to breathe through his nose, and with each inhalation came the most nefarious fetors. Jesus, he thought. I’ve never sucked dick before. How am I supposed to know how to do it? But he thought about that, and came to a conclusion. Suck it the way the girl sucked you…

He tried to abstract, and formulate his own method of expertise. A few agonizing slaps to the head indicated that his initial efforts weren’t satisfactory, but then… Then he abstracted further: He pretended he was fellating himself. He kept the inside of his mouth wet, his lips tight, and his tongue firm against the basal shaft.

He thought he must be getting the hang of it but then Hull sputtered, “Fuckin’ useless piece’a shit. Might as well just kill ya now. Any guy gives head bad as you don’t deserve ta live.”

The comment was not encouraging, but at least it served as an incentive. Just… suck his dick better, for God’s sake! Gray thought. He stepped up the tempo, his mouth vised open as if by a shoe-tree. He tried to suck harder, feeling a slimy leakage begin to form on his tongue.

“Hmm. Not bad, I say. Gittin’ better. Keep goin’ jess like that an’ I might not cut’cher throat tonight. Naw, might even keep ya alive fer one more.”

The rewards of perseverance. But Gray knew he couldn’t let him get bored. Then an idea blinked on.

Like the girl, he thought.

He remembered. How could he forget?

Lubricant, came the frantic thought. The cock plungering in and out of his ass gave him the answer quite quickly. Jory had used saliva. So will I, Gray realized. He momentarily uncorked his mouth from Hull’s hot penis, then he laved his own index finger with his spit, then—

“City’s got some brains after all,” Hull chuckled when Gray reached his hand around and slipped his finger into the man’s anus. It plowed through chunky feces. Gray re-jammed the cock into his mouth, wriggling his finger.

“Yeah, City! That’s it! Now ya got it!”

“Bet Kari Ann taught him that,” Jory deduced, picking up his own tempo. Gray grimly felt Jory’s testicle’s slapping his own with each thrust forward. “Bet she done the same thing’n sucked his little peter in the car.”

“Bet so.”

“Little jizz-head’s always been dumber’n cow flop but at least we taught her how ta do somethin’ right.”

Mouth crammed with dick, Gray rolled his eyes. Didn’t these guys just crack me in the head for implying that they might be incestuous? Go figure. All that mattered at this instant was that he wasn’t getting cracked in the head again, for performing mediocre fellatio. His index finger tilled through more hillbilly shit, teasing the prostate, while his mouth was fastidiously fucked. Gray’s ass was being fucked with equal fastidiousness.

More smegma dissolved on his tongue—an acrid yet pale flavor—and he willed himself to think about smells other than those that wafted from Hull’s groin. Roses. Cranberry Lambic. Vanilla extract and his mother’s hot apple pie. Reflex, however, caused his rectum to flinch, via such an intrusive invasion, but then Jory approved, “Hull? I say this here fella’s one hail of a butt-fuck. Squeezes up his butthole real tight on my bone! Why, I’se still say this boy’s the blammed best cornholing I’se ever had!”

“And ya’s know what, Jor?” Hull replied, stroking steadily into Gray’s mouth, “he kin suck a peter like there’s no tuh-marruh!”

“Shee-it, I’se-I’se-I’se think I’se gonna come alls-ready. Pinch that butthole, boy! Squeeze it!”

Gray squeezed it, flexing intricate muscles he scarcely knew he had. Then—

Jory’s fingers dug into his hips, his strokes faltering. “Aw, yeah, I say yeah! I’se comin’ in this fella like a firehose!”

Gray wasn’t sure he agreed with the simile. More like a turkey baster full of hot egg-drop soup being aspirated deep into his bowel. Gray could feel it, he could feel the wet, gluelike heat spurt and then settle. And, next, Hull’s own strokes accelerated. “Shee-it, git it, City, git it! I’se gonna—”

The entirety of Gray’s face seemed to swell shut when Hull ejaculated into his mouth. It was a voluminous ejaculation. Long hot spurts, like velotic pieces of spaghetti, launched to the back of his throat.

“Fuckin’-A.”

There was nearly an audible pop when Hull withdrew the deflating—and elephantine—member, then his hand snatched up Gray’s chin. “Swaller it now, City. Be a good l’il cock-suck ands swaller it all. Swaller alls that good come right down inta yer breadbasket ’nless ya want yer eye digged out.”

Gray didn’t want his eye “digged” out, so he “swallered.” And what it was exactly that he swallered was something that reminded him of a mouthful of hot, thin snot. He winced, nearly gagged, then gulped.

And down it went.

It left a warm, strangely minty aftertrail down his esophagus.

“Hail of a come, Jory. Fella sucks a peter better’n a fifty-year-old whore.”

“Take a cock up the tail just as good, I say,” Jory elucidated. “Ain’t never, I say never, had me a cornhole so’s good. Came enough ta fill a milk bucket, I did!”

Gray pulled his finger out of Hull’s ass and was then allowed to collapse to his belly. Chain links clinked. He could smell the fresh excrement on his finger.

“Kinda neat, ain’t it?” Hull speculated. “I means he gotta belly fulla my come, an’ a butt fulla yers.”

“Yeahs,” Jory agreed. “To bad it ain’t winter. All that come’d keep him warm.”

Gray’s cheek lay against the floor. Thank God it’s over. But…

Exhausted, he turned over on his back, his Italian slacks bunched at his knees. What he saw, absurdly, appalled him. Jory was using his X’andrini black silk shirt as a rag to wipe off his genitals with.

“Man, that shirt cost two hundred bucks.”

“Worth it,” Jory grinned. “You’s the best cornhole I’se ever had, an’ this city-faggot shirt’s the best dick-wipe. Soft.”

Upside-down, Gray watched Hull stick his fat, deflated penis back into his overalls. Then he stood up. “T’was a dandy nut, City. You done good. An’ ’cos you done such a fine job’a takin’ care’a us, we’ll’se send Kari Ann up with some viddles fer ya.”

“An’ we’ll’se visit ya agin tuh-marruh,” Jory promised.

“Hopes ya like yer dinner, City.” Hull chuckled, turned, then slapped his brother on the shoulder. “Come on, Jor. Let’s git downstairs now’n git ta work on them cars.”

Their booted feet clunked down the stairs. A doorlock clicked.

Then Gray passed out.

“Wake up. Hey.”

Something in a dream patted him on the cheek, jostled him. But when Gray opened his eyes, he saw it was no dream at all. It was still the same nightmare.

Haltered breasts swayed. The girl’s face hovered over his. “Wakes up there. I’se got some food’n water fer ya.”

Gray leaned up. At least the pain in his head didn’t feel as pronounced, and as for the pain in his anus—it felt more numb than anything. When he rubbed his face, he winced; he could smell his finger. When he sat up, the chain dragged a little. He could imagine how ludicrous he looked—in spite of the horror his predicament presented: he was naked, save for his t-shirt and black dress socks.

“Here ya go. Sorry I ain’t’s got no spoon. Yer’s gonna have ta eat it with yer fingers.”

Gray’s vision focused on the object in her hand.

A bucket.

Actually, two buckets, one in the other hand. Just garden-variety buckets. Gray’s chain dragged when he sat up. For some reason, he tried to pull his t-shirt down over his exposed groin, as if he should be modest. Or could it be the fact that terror and violation had shrunk his genitals to what must look like a five-year-old’s? But the attempt was futile. He’d put on some weight lately; the t-shirt could only be pulled down to the top of his pubic hair.

“What’s in the buckets?”

“This bucket here?” She held one up, then set it down in the corner. “It’s fer— Well, you know.”

“No, I don’t know,” Gray replied testily.

“It’s fer ya to pee in, and…”

A shit-bucket, great. Well what do you know? There’s a men’s room here. I wonder if there’s an attendant to go along with it, to pump the soap for me when I wash my hands.

His sarcasm served no purpose. The wood floor felt warm on his bare, ghoul-white buttocks. But what was that smell? No, not the awful smell of dried shit on his finger—there was a pale aroma in the room.

She set the other bucket down. It steamed.

“This here’s yer dinner,” she told him, and something close to delight tickled Gray.

“Thank God, I’m starving.” After being abducted, beaten, and raped? After spending the night nearly naked and chained to a wood floor? You bet. Some sustenance was just what he needed to focus on his predicament, and think of a way to get out of here.

“What is it?” he asked. “It smells sort of familiar, but I can’t quite place it,” and then she slid the bucket to him.

“I cooked it up for ya. Don’t really know how to, so’s I figured I’d steam it.”

Gray looked in the bucket. “You’ve got to be kidding me!” he outraged.

Slabs of pumpkin lay in the steaming bucket.

“Well, I’se sorry it ain’t nothin’ better, but that’s all they’se said I could give ya. Hull says we gots ta save money, an’ these pumpkins grow all over the yard.”

Gray shot her a critical glare. “You don’t eat pumpkin, not as is. It’s just used for flavoring in pies!”

“Hull says the Indians et pumpkin all the tam—”

All the tam, Gray thought, disgusted.

“—durin’ famines’n such when the pilgrims wanted ’em ta starve.” Her eyes lit up, as if with enthusiasm. “But they didn’t starve, see, ’cos they et pumpkin.”

Gray just looked at her.

“It ain’t that bad,” she encouraged. “Er, at least, probably it ain’t.”

“Wonderful.” He pushed the steaming bucket away, no longer even mindful of his shrunken penis and scrotum. “I can’t possibly eat this.”

“Well-well,” she stammered. “Ya best eat it all, ’cos Jory says if ya don’t, they’ll come up here’n ruck ya about somethin’ fierce.”

“Great.” That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? Maximum humiliation. Rape him, make him give blowjobs. Force him to eat pumpkin. And why? For the hell of it, Gray realized. If I don’t eat it, they’ll just kick my ass some more… and that’s not the only thing they’ll do with my ass…

“‘Least it’ll be somethin’ in yer belly,” the girl suggested.

She’s right about that. Gray decided to think with some practicality. The pumpkin would provide some necessary nutrition, some energy, and he’d need that to get out of here. I’m about to eat hot pumpkin, with my hands. Or, hand, that is. The finger of one hand, of course, had been up Hull’s ass, and he didn’t want to be eating with that one. He reached in, pulled up a wedge. At least she’d seeded it. He took a bite, his face squeezing up, eating it like a watermelon.

It did not taste like watermelon.

“Is it good?” the girl asked.

Gray just looked at her. It was not good. It was slimy, no sweetness whatever, just a mushy texture. He tried to tell himself it would taste like eggplant.

But it did not taste like eggplant.

“Bet it tastes like pumpkin pie, huh?”

“No,” he groaned. She’d pronounced “pie” as “pah.” There was a pumpkin flavor, though, and at least he learned something. Hot pumpkin tastes like shit. In a constant wince, he ate the pumpkin’s whitish flesh off the orange skin, choking it down. It was awful.

The girl was on her knees, leaning over as she watched. He could see her bare breasts inside the halter but just now even the most erotic image caused no reaction. As he started in on the second wedge, she kneed around behind him, rubbed his shoulders.“Anythin’ ya want me ta do fer ya?” she offered. “You kin fuck me if ya wants.”

Gray smirked, cheeks stuff with hot mush. “No, thanks.”

“Wanna blowjob?”

“No!” A chunk of pumpkin blew out of his mouth. “I’m not exactly in the mood, you know? Those animal brothers of yours raped me. And it’s your fault.”

“It’s not!” Suddenly she was sobbing. “Just ’cos they’se bad don’t mean I am!”

“You’re worse,” Gray blurted. “You set me up. You lured me here—for them.”

“I ain’t had no choice!” she nearly shrieked. “If I don’t do whats they say, they’se’ll kill me, and my baby!”

Now she was blubbering hysterically. Swallowing more mush, Gray considered her words. She was just a stupid hill-girl, born into poverty, abused and tormented and subjugated from day one. What could Gray expect?

And don’t be an asshole, he told himself. You need this dumb cracker bitch to get out of here. “Look, I’m sorry,” he said, turning to her. He hugged her, a phony gesture, yes, but how else could he gain her confidence? “I didn’t mean to say that, and I know you’ve had it rough, especially with brothers like that. It must be horrible to have to live with such terror.”

“It is, it is,” she sobbed into his shoulder, hugging him back. “They’se always beatin’ me’n sayin’ how they’ll kill me if I act up. If that happened, it’d be the worse thing in the world, ’cos who’d take care’a my baby? Jory’n Hull hate my l’il girl anyways, an’ if I was dead, they’d juss kill her. They’d put her in one’a the drums juss sure as shit.”

“The drums?”

“That’s how they’se git rid’a folks.”

The drums, Gray reflected. Get rid of folks. He didn’t know what the hell the drums were and he didn’t want to know. The crucial information had already been relayed—something he could’ve guessed all along. They’re not just going to let me out of here after they’ve had their fun. They’re going to kill me.

But when?

“Look—what’s your name? Kelly Ann?”

“Kari Ann,” she sniffled.

“Your brothers. They’re going to get rid of me too, aren’t they?”

More sniffling as she nodded, gulped.

“How come they haven’t done that already?”

“Oh, they will, just as soon as they’re finished.”

“Finished with what?”

“Yer car.”

So that was it. Probably stripping the car down, for parts, Gray calculated. “How much time do I have?”

“‘Nuther day, probably. It don’t take ’em long. Then they-they’se’ll git rid’a ya. But if yer lucky…”

Gray’s eyes widened at the suggestion of hope. “What, Kari Ann? If I’m lucky, what?”

Her eyes were red from crying. She wiped her nose. “If yer lucky, they won’t git rid’a ya right away. They’ll keep ya around until they git another car.”

Gray thought he got it. Jory and Hull were forcing the girl to bring victims back to the house. Then they’d chain the poor bastard up here and use him for sexual relief for as long as it took them to strip the car down.

“If ya—you know,” she began. “If ya do ’em good, then they probably won’t kill ya right away.”

The realization, however grim, came as no surprise by now. It made sense. Homosexual sociopaths. I’m only worth keeping alive for as long as I’m a good fuck and suck… The more effectively Gray entertained them sexually, the better chance there’d be that they wouldn’t kill him until the next abduction.

It looked like Gray would have to be a good bitch.

“Where am I, anyway?” he asked. “Some back room in the house?”

“The attic,” she said.

Gray looked at the room’s one window, then remembered the single window in the dormer-like room at the back of the house that he’d noticed when they pulled up. That window must be this window… As he recalled, it overlooked an area of the backyard surrounded by plank fencing. I’m upstairs. So how do I get out? Again, his only hope was the girl.

“Jory and Hull—they’ve been abusing you, haven’t they?” he started. “Incestuously, I mean.”

“Oh, no,” she answered. “Just blowjobs’n fuckin’ me in the ass. Hull says that ain’t incest, on account of no come goes in my pussy.”

Oh, so that’s how it works.

“But after they started doin’ the car thing, they took ta fellas more, so they’se don’t do stuff like that ta me anymore. They just beat me a lot.”

“And the father of your daughter,” Gray went on. “Didn’t you say—”

She looked down in shame. “Well, I’se lied ’bout that. Just said I got raped so’s you’d feel sorry for me. He was some fella I been seein’, but when I gots knocked up, Jory’n Hull kilt him.” Then she broke out into more tears and hugged him. “I’m so sorry. It’s juss that I’m so scared all the time, I have ta do what they say. I cain’t let ’em kill my baby!”

“That’s all right,” Gray consoled. “I understand. You had no choice. But maybe in some weird way, this is all a good thing—us being brought together.”

“What-what’cha mean?”

Make this good, Gray warned himself. “I can tell you’re a special kind of girl. You’re the kind of girl I’ve been searching for for my whole adult life.”

She looked up, teary eyed. “Yuh-yuh-ya really mean that?”

“Of course I do. And I can only imagine what kind of life you have here… with your brothers.”

“It’s pretty bad,” she sniffled. “But I gots ta do what they say so’s they don’t hurt my baby.”

Gray took her hand in a performance worthy of an Oscar. “I understand all that, and it’s okay. Any woman would do the same thing—they’d have no choice. But there’s something I’ve got to tell you, Kari Ann, and I mean this. I think—I think I’m falling in love with you.”

Her gazed groped for him, confusion merging with something that had to be hope. “We should be together,” Gray continued. “I make a lot of money, Kari Ann. I could take you away from all this. But you have to help me.”

“I-I couldn’t—”

“You have to unlock this chain from my ankle, and when you go back downstairs, you have to leave the door unlocked. Then I’ll get you and take you away from this place, you and your daughter. Then you’ll have the kind of life you deserve.”

She started with her waterworks again. “My brothers’d whup me! They probably kill me.”

Gray whispered soft. “But that won’t happen, Kari Ann. Because they’ll never know. You won’t have to worry about your brothers anymore. I’ll take care of you, and your baby. It’ll be wonderful.”

Her lower lip trembled. Tears welled freely in her caramel-brown eyes. “I cain’t! I cain’t! I gotta go!”

Flustered, she grabbed the bucket full of pumpkin skins, then she whisked away, closed the door and padded barefoot down the steps.

Why me, God? Gray thought. Why me?

Gray slept horribly, wakening in the dark from horrific nightmares only to find himself alive in a worse reality. When the moon was high in the room’s only window, he rushed to the bucket, voiding his bowels just in time. His pumpkin dinner soared through him; if felt like he was shitting hot broth. The abrupt discharge splattered against the bucket’s bottom, and splashed back up to dot his rump. Nothing to wipe with, of course, so he dragged himself back across the wood floor, back into sleep, wet-buttocks’d. Later he rose again, to urinate, and—thanks to the single ceiling light that remained on through the night—had no choice but to watch the hard stream of his pee churn foam into the pale diarrhea. The smell of the room made him recall the outhouse at summer camp when he was a boy.

Birds chirped cheerily at daybreak, sunlight invading Gray’s prison. He heard a racket outside, and voices. The chain, he found, was just long enough to let him get to the window.

Maybe I can see what’s going on….

He had to crane his neck but was able to look outside. Down behind the house. From this vantage point he could see into the plank-fence enclosure. There was a garage back there, and a large tarp propped up by tent poles, cover against rain, he supposed. Gray saw several cars within the fencing, including a black-lacquered ’68 Camaro and his own Callaway Corvette with the windshield and glass taped over. What are those assholes doing to my car! his thoughts screamed. They’d painted it cotton-candy pink. And there was Hull in the background, putting on a coat of lacquer with an airbrush. More customization had been previously added; silver cursive letters on the back fender read: KICKIN’ ASS, AIN’T TAKEN NO NAMES. Oh, man, Gray screamed. They’ve turned my beautiful car into a dick-wagon! They didn’t even spell ‘takin’’ right! It looked like a pimp’s car now.

Hull glanced over to Jory. “Come on, Jor. Git that cracker cut up’n outa here.”

Gray’s eyes moved right. “Shore, Hull. I’se just sharp’nin the blade.” There was Jory at a grinding wheel, honing the blade of a frightfully large ax. Then he pulled some more tarp up on the ground.

Beneath the tarp lay a naked corpse.

“Yeah, this here fella weren’t much good fer nothin’.”

“Ain’t kiddin’, Jor. Couldn’t suck a peter fer shit.”

Then came a rubato thwack-thwack-thwack

Gray’s belly squirmed as the ax rose and fell.

“Not like that city fella we gots upstairs, huh? Ooo-eee!” Hull celebrated. “Like ta suck my dick so hard I felt air goin’ in my asshole.”

Jory grinned, setting down the dripping ax. “Too bads you ain’t inta cornholin’, Hull. ’cos that boy? Like fuckin’ a chicken’s how tight’a butthole he got. Shee-it!”

Now Jory leaned over, stacking pieces of limbs neatly in the tarp. A forearm here, a shin there. Hands and feet. And finally the head.

And it was a head Gray recognized…

That redneck I saw the other night, picking up the girl. And that’s his Camaro there, only they painted it black….

Just then, the girl wandered out of the garage, her halter top off. In her arms she cradled a naked mulatto baby sucking noisily at her nipple.

Hull glared, paint gun in hand. “Git that tar-baby outa here, girl! Cain’t’cha see we’se tryin’ ta work!”

Gray looked harder at the baby. It squalled, naked, in her arms, less than year old. It looked mostly Negro but…

Jesus…

Closer examination reveled morose defects: a Down’s head, one little foot smaller than the other, uneven ears, eyes way too close together. Kari Ann stuck a distended nipple into its drooly mouth, and that quieted it down. But Kari Ann seemed contemplative, her eyes cast to the ground. “But, Hull, I gots ta talk to ya. I means, do we really gots ta kill that city fella? Cain’t we just let him go?”

“I’ve a mind ta slap you upside the head! Gals shore don’t come no dumber.”

“We gotta kill him, Kari Ann,” Jory interjected. “We let him go, he’ll tell the cops on us.”

The girl’s lip quivered. “But what if, ya know, what if he promised not ta?”

“Girl, you musta been standin’ in the shit line when they’se was passin’ out brains!” Hull roared. “Now git!”

Jory grabbed the severed head by the hair and bolted after the girl. “Hey! Hey, Kari Ann! Come give yer sweetheart a kiss!”

The girl shrieked. “Git that head away from me!”

“Bet if it were some nigruh’s head, she’d kiss it!” Hull contributed.

Jory chortled, shaking the head. “Come on! Pucker up!” Then he commenced to chasing her around the enclosed yard with it. “Hull!” she screamed. “Make him stop! He’s scarin’ the baby!”

“Hail,” Hull chuckled back. “Ain’t nothin’ could scare that shit-baby retart critter, but it’s shores scarin’ the shit outa you!”

“Bet she’se’ll poop herself, Hull!”

Her shrieks followed her like a banner until Jory chased her out of the yard. She stormed back into the house, the baby shrieking. Hull honked echoic redneck laughter.

Yes sir, Gray thought. Life’s a holiday on Primrose Lane.

“Hey, Hull! Gander this!” Jory, then, expertly drop-kicked the head across the yard, where it—thwack!—bounced off the wood-plank fence and landed on the chopped body parts piled on the tarp.

“Touchdown, Hull!”

“Shee-it, boy,” Hull remarked, shaking his head. “You’se shore are somethin’. Come ons, we’se finished fer now. Gotta let this lacquer dry ’fore I’se kin put on the next coat.”

“But what about this cracker I done just chopped up? Should I’se put his parts in the drum so’s we kin dump it?”

Hull hocked in the dirt. “Naw, it’s kin wait. That cracker fella with the Camaro’s skinny,” he appraised, looking at the chopped body parts. “Wait’ll we kill the city fella, that ways we kin stick him in the same drum. Looks ta me they’ll both fit. Then we’ll dump ’em both the same tam. Tuh-marruh.”

Tuh-marruh, Gray thought. Tomorrow. They were talking about him. He even saw the large metal drum in the yard, easily big enough for two dismembered bodies. Gray’s gut quaked.

They’re going chop me up and put me in that drum. Tomorrow.

But ‘tomorrow’ lengthened into two more days and nights. Gray supposed the inexplicable reprieve was something he should be grateful for. Hull mentioned that he’d run out of clear lacquer and he wanted ten full coats. This was good.

What wasn’t so good was how Gray was forced to spend his temporarily extended life. He was promptly sodomized by Jory each night, while having to simultaneously admit Hull’s rank penis into his mouth. The brothers were having a hootenanny, and Gray’s mouth and rectum were the party favors. But he took it like a man: on hands and knees, doing the job.

Each night, too, he was forced to eat steamed pumpkin. Gray guessed there was more purpose to it than mere cruelty: it produced bowel movements that were essentially liquefaction, the remnants of which left him slick back there, easier to penetrate. After each violation, he’d sit on the bucket and pour forth more pale diarrhea marbled with Jory’s sperm. A terrifying question nagged at him: what would happen when the bucket was full? Would Kari Ann empty it, or would he be dead before that eventuality?

On the second night Gray noticed threads of blood laying in the septic stew. No surprise there, not after the job Jory had done on him just after dark. He’d been really riled, really ready to get it on, and had plungered Gray’s asshole like a stopped toilet. Hull’s finger-up-the-ass blowjob hadn’t been much easier. Hull had been holding back—Gray could tell—staving off his release for as long as possible. Probably thinking about goddamn Randy Johnson, Gray thought. Works pretty well, huh, Hull? Fuck. The nail on Gray’s index finger remained permanently lined with shit. There was no way for him to sufficiently clean his finger—they wouldn’t let him wash (and he wondered if they did themselves), so now the dirty finger haunted hm. Any time he’d unconsciously scratch an itch on his nose, that horrible shit-and-spit smell was there. There was no hope.

Or was there?

He’d overheard her, hadn’t he? Kari Ann? Trying to talk her brothers into letting him go.

At least that meant she was thinking about it.

The third night, they came up twice. It was hard to concentrate with Hull saying “Wiggle that finger, bitch” and Jory saying “Make that cornhole tight!” both at the same time. Jory fondling Gray’s testicles didn’t help. In time, Gray gulped down another liberal dispensation of Hull’s sperm, while Jory came in his ass like a squirt gun.

When Jory inched out, he slapped Gray hard on the ass. “That’s a good girl!” he celebrated. He reached forward and pinched Gray’s nipple. “You’re one great fuck. Fuckin’ you’s like fuckin’ a l’il school girl.”

Hull bopped Gray’s temple with his knuckles. “Say thank ya when my brother comp-ler-ments ya.”

Gray rolled his eyes. “Thank you.”

“You know, Jory,” Hull said. He remained standing, his overalls still down. “I’se feisty tonight.”

“Yeah?”

Gray felt disconcerted when he saw what Hull was doing. He was tugging on his deflated penis. What? Again? Gray thought.

Hull went on, “I don’t usually fancy to it but I think, I say, I think I might like ta have me a piece’a his ass, too. Ain’t had me a good butt-fuckin’ in a while. Now if I kin just get my dog hard again…”

Hull kept playing with himself. Gray prayed, Please, please, DON’T get hard again…

Hull got hard again.

“Tear yourself off a piece, brother,” Jory said.

For the love of God, Gray thought. He knew there was no way his rectal cavity could accommodate an erection the size of Hull’s. Something would have to give, the same way as if you stuck a cucumber in a donut hole. Gray’s anus was the donut hole.

I’ll bust! he thought.

“Yeah, boy!” Jory rooted. “Git it, brother! Stick that dirty girl!”

Hull kneed right up and pushed the baby-apple-sized glans into Gray’s asshole. He shoved. Hull’s dick went into his colon, and Gray threw up digested pumpkin mush. It felt like Hull had his entire forearm up there. All Gray could do was squeeze tears from his eyes and shudder.

“Like that, City?” Hull asked and reached forward to squeeze Gray’s “tit.”

“Bet he does,” Jory speculated. “Bet he’s gittin’ hard hisself.”

“Naw,” Hull confirmed. He grabbed Gray’s genitals, which were limp as a handful of Jello.

Hull was rocking, driving into him, back and forth. Gray felt skewered. His mind raced against the pain and monumental pressure. “Aw, yeah, aw, yeah…” Gray was nearly unconscious when Hull had his moment. He came like a gila monster vomiting, and when he pulled out, Gray thought he was shitting a coffee can. He collapsed and rolled over, exhausted.

“Sleep tight, hon,” Jory chuckled.

“This’ll be yer last nat, boy,” Hull informed.

“My last… night?” Gray mumbled.

“I’ll’se be pickin’ up the rest’a the clear-coat tuh-marruh. Then we’ll be finished with yer car.”

Jory was rebuckling his overalls. “But don’t’cha worry none. We’ll be shore ta fuck ya one more tam ’fore we kill ya.”

The brothers left laughing, slamming the door behind them. Gray lay paralyzed. Now he knew what women felt like after being raped; it was far more than the physical violation. It was something psychical, too. His soul didn’t matter. He was just a body to be utilized for primal pleasure. He was the Kleenex they were using to blow their noses into.

And tomorrow they would throw the Kleenex in the trash.

When they were done “tricking” up his car, they’d simply sell it and would, hence, need a new one. They’d have to get rid of Gray to make room for the next poor sap.

And now he saw the cruelest truth for the first time. Could he really blame Jory and Hull for their crimes? Could he really blame the girl?

In truth, no. He could only blame himself. I got myself into this nightmare. It’s all my fault. Nobody’d put a gun to his head the night he picked Kari Ann up. He’d done it on his own accord, for lust, for sex. Because she was available to use.

God, he thought now. Yes, God. Of all things, his thoughts turned again to his Creator. Why shouldn’t God be infuriated with him? This was his punishment, the tables turned. Blood and sperm seeping out of his ass, he thought about his life now in an entirely different way. Gray had willingly turned his back on the way life was supposed to be, hadn’t he? He hadn’t really loved his first two wives, he’d married them for their looks. And his other relationships? Same thing. All the wrong reasons. People were supposed to be together for a reason.

To be a part of each other’s life, to love each other and have kids and raise them to the best of your ability. That’s what life’s all about, not going to strip joints and picking up hookers. Gray saw it now: if there really was a God, Gray’s entire existence was an offense. He’d chosen irresponsibility over commitment. He’d chosen crude pleasure over morality.

There was a price to pay for that, and right now Gray was paying it.

He clasped his hands together, futilely. He hadn’t forgotten about the final strand of possibility. Kari Ann. Maybe she wouldn’t abandon him. Maybe—by the grace of God—she’d find a way to get him out of here.

Please, God, he prayed. I know I’ve been a lousy person and have offended Your laws, but please, PLEASE forgive me. I’m a hypocritical chump, I KNOW that, but I promise if You can find some way to forgive me, I’ll make good. I’ll change my life, I swear. Let Kari Ann get me out of here and I SWEAR TO YOU, I’ll marry her and be the father of her child, and I’ll do EVERYTHING IN MY POWER to live a Christian life. I swear…

Gray sat against the wall, fallow in the muddy flavescent light. When he closed his eyes, he saw skiagraphic shapes that all seemed to eventually meld into ax-forms. When he drifted off to sleep, he dreamed of being raped by devils. If he died during the dream, what would happen? Would he just stay there with the devils forever? If so, he knew he’d deserve it.

“Hey.” A nudge. “You asleep?”

Did he smell hot pumpkin in the dream?

“Tam fer dinner…”

When Gray opened his eyes, Kari Ann was kneeling next to him with the next bucket of pumpkin.

“Oh, Kari Ann…” Gray fell apart, hugging her. “I can’t take this any more. You’ve got to help get me out of here. I swear, I’ll make you my wife. Everything I do will be for you, and I’ll be a father for your baby. I’ll never lie to you or cheat on you, I’ll devote my entire life to you.” And it all came pouring out. Gray clung to her, crying. “I promise, I promise—I even promised God. We’ll live life the way it’s supposed to be lived, and we’ll go to church and stuff like that. And as for your baby…” Shit, he remembered. The kid’s fucked up, got birth defects and a warped head… It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter to God, so why should it matter to Gray? He took her hand, squeezed it, still sobbing into her lap. “I make great money, Kari Ann. I’ll send your baby to the best special schools, I’ll get her the best possible care. I’ll be the father she never had.”

Kari Ann had tears in her eyes too. She stroked Gray’s cheek, unmindful of the nearly full bucket of diarrhea, unfazed by his body odor. “I know you’d do all those things, I kin see it in ya.”

“Then help me! All you’ve got to do is call the police!”

“Cain’t. Ain’t got no phone.”

Gray began to tremble.

“But here’s what I can do,” she began. She kissed him on the forehead. “I been thinkin’ ’bout it, an’ it’s real risky… but I’m gonna do it…”

Gray didn’t sleep the rest of the night. He was too excited, he was pumped. No, the lack of a phone would prevent Kari Ann from calling the police, but she’d told him what she was going to do. She wouldn’t need to call them; instead she’d go to them directly. Today, when her brothers thought she was hitchhiking to work, she was going to hitchhike to the police station instead. There was a county sheriff’s department only a few miles away.

Just be ready.

The way Gray saw it, God was going to give him a break, and Gray would keep his end of the bargain. It was time to give something back.

There was enough chain to let him just get to the window. The window wasn’t locked—why should it be? He was chained to the floor. He couldn’t climb out, of course, but—

I can sure as shit open it.

The wood had part gone to rot; the frame had swollen. It took Gray until a few hours after sun-up to work it free. Huffing and puffing, he kept pushing upward until it began to give. A few times he feared the window might pop out of the frame and land outside in the yard (that would’ve been the end) but luck—or God—stayed on his side. Gray pried the old window up a few inches, enough to be heard through if he shouted.

He didn’t know what time it was but he guessed it must be early afternoon when he heard the crunch of tires rolling over gravel. Earlier, Jory had dropped the dismembered remains of the redneck into the metal drum. Meanwhile Hull had applied the final coat of lacquer to Gray’s formerly black Corvette.

Every false hope occurred to Gray: the vehicle he heard coming up the weedy drive would just be the mailman, or some shady business associate of Jory and Hull’s.No one on the driveway would be able to see the horrific shenanigans going on in the yard, due to the fence. But Jory and Hull heard the vehicle, too. They both froze at once.

Then Gray’s heart sang. A county sheriff’s car stopped in front of the house.

A deputy sheriff got out. So did Kari Ann, from the driver’s side. Within the fence, Gray saw Jory and Hull peeking through the slats. They looked worried.

“Where?” the sheriff demanded of Kari Ann. “This sounds like a bunch of bull.”

“Up there!” Kari Ann wailed. “That’s where they’se got him chained up! In the attic! They’se been rapin’ him!”

Gray’s dream came true. Jory and Hull were scrambling in the fenced yard. And the cop?

He stood with his hands on his hips, staring right up at the window.

“Damn,” he said. “I think—I think I see someone there.”

“HEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!” Gray’s throat belted out the plea like a cannon shot. He waved frantically then rammed his elbow into a glass pane, shattering it. The pieces flew out into the air.

“HELP ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE! I’VE BEEN IMPRISONED UP HERE!”

“I don’t believe it,” the cop said bewildered to Kari Ann. “Wait here. I’m going up…”

Then the cop drew his revolver and entered the house.

Gray’s adrenalin was practically dripping off his fingers. He stomped up and down, shouting, when he heard the cop’s footsteps racing upward. Gray glanced down in the yard again. There was no sign of the brothers. They’re already heading for the hills! he thought.

When the door burst open, the deputy sheriff stared, gun poised. “God almighty,” he muttered when he saw Gray standing there: chained, filthy, wearing just the soiled t-shirt and black socks. “It’s true… The girl wasn’t bullshitting. Those assholes have got you chained up here.”

Gray wanted to rush to the cop and hug him, but the chain wasn’t long enough. “Thank you thank you thank you! Jory and Hull—they’ve been keeping me up here for almost a week! They’re stealing cars and repainting them! And they’ve been… abusing me…”

“Well don’t you worry, fella—” the cop began.

Gray’s heart nearly stopped when the shadow entered the room from behind. Over the cop’s shoulder, Gray saw—

Hull.

He was grinning through bad teeth, stealthily stepping up from the doorway.

“Look out!” Gray bellowed, spit flying. “Behind you!”

The cop spun. “What the hell are you guys doing? You’ve got this guy chained up here?”

“That’s a fact,” Hull replied.

Shoot him! Shoot him! Gray thought.

“And you didn’t even tell me?” the cop went on. “What a bunch of selfish assholes. Bet you’ve been stickin’ him every night.”

“Yes siree, ever nat.”

“Hoggin’ all the ass for yourselves.”

“Well, shee-it, Bobby. We didn’t know you was inta boy-cherry. But now that we knows, you’s kin help yourself any tam.”

“Fuck,” the cop grumbled and began to unbuckle his trousers. “I’m so horny I could fuck a hole in the wall.”

Hull winked at Gray. “Well that there’s yer hole.”

Gray’s soul felt like a stone transom whose keystone had just been knocked out by a hammer. The rest just crumbled down.

“Belly to wall, bitch,” the cop ordered. “I’m in a swivet, I need to come so bad.” No time even for hands and knees, the cop shoved Gray against the wall and prepared to fuck him standing up. He rubbed his bare groin against Gray’s buttocks, reaching around to pinch his nipples. “Yeah, I’m gettin’ hard quick. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good hell-for-leather ass-fuck.”

“Well, he’s a good un’. Makes his asshole twitch whiles yer cock’s in him. Sucks damn good dick too, Bobby. Damn good…”

During the preludial molestation, Gray’s face was pressed against a window pane, and as his buttocks was thumbed open and spat on, he could see down into the yard.

“Looks like Kari Ann done fell for ya, City,” Hull said behind him. “Bet’cha promised to take her aways from here if she helped ya, huh? Jory’ll be punishin’ the dumb bitch presently. Cain’t have no shit like that. It’s a sad day whens yer own sister’ll betray ya. But how’s that fer some luck, City? Of all the cops she could’a ratted us too, she picks the one we’se in business with.”

Gray didn’t hear anymore, as he was penetrated. Bile raced up his throat, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard, his teeth clicked. One eye seemed to rove independently of the other, as if divorced from the outrage. It looked down into the yard and saw that Jory had already beaten Kari Ann to the ground. She looked up, screaming bloody-mouthed. Jory was chuckling, throwing her baby up into the air, spinning it around like a ball of pizza dough. Eventually, he hooked-shotted it directly into the metal drum, then began to hammer the lid on.

And Gray?

Gray was fucked in grand style. The only difference between being raped by Hull and being raped by this cop was singularly noticeable. The cop’s cock was bigger than Hull’s.

Gray felt stuffed from both ends. “Sheeeee-it!” Hull whooped, his penis burrowed in Gray’s mouth. Jory busied himself at the other end, with deft sodomy. “Gawd-damn, Hull! I’se swears this boy’s even tighter’n he was last nat!”

Gray tried to remove his psyche from the scene: it wasn’t his mouth sucking Hull’s penis, nor was it his rectum at the receiving end of Jory’s. Pretend it’s happening to someone else….

“Aw, yeah! I’se gonna dump me a fuck up this boy’s tail! I’se gonna come so much my spunk’ll be drippin’ out his nose!”

“Here comes supper, City,” Hull forewarned. Gray wasn’t sure, but the brothers seemed to climax simultaneously. He felt the warm gush deep in his bowel at the same moment Hull released a flabbergastingly large allotment of sperm into his mouth. Gray swallowed it, without hesitation this time. It slid down his belly like a long, hot worm. Then Gray’s hands and knees went out, and he collapsed procumbent to he floor.

Thanks a lot, God, he thought. Thanks a hell of a lot…

“Yeah,” Hull guttered. He gave his penis a final squeeze, perhaps for posterity. “I’se said it before’n I’ll’se say its again: this fella here is the best cock-suck I’se ever had.”

“Best cornhole too.” Jory gave a hick giggle, then withdrew his own reproductive architecture from Gray hind quarters. “Hope it don’t git worn out, now that Bobby’s in on the action.”

“Yes sir, Kari Ann shore brung us a winner this time. He sucks dick like a reg-ler champ, and he’s got a great car.”

Gray slid to the wall and sat up. “And that’s the scam, isn’t it? You make the girl lure the drivers back here, then you guys take over. You got a remake shop.”

Hull scratched his belly, then hitched his overalls up. “That’s right, City. We’se paint the cars all diff-urnt colors, then drives ’em up to our fence. And that purdy ’Vette’a yers? It’ll fetch us some fine scratch. Three, four grand at least.”

Even in his plight, Gray was appalled. “Three or four grand? That car cost sixty-three thousand dollars! You guys are getting ripped off.”

“Aw, we’se ain’t greedy here,” Hull said. “We likes ta keep things simple’n safe.”

Jory, yet again, was wiping his sullied genitals off with Gray’s silk shirt. “The fence takes most’a the risk, see. We just delivers the cars. He moves ’em ta buyers.”

“So how many have there been?” Gray saw no harm in asking. They were going to kill him anyway, so why wouldn’t they tell him? “How many other guys have you pulled this number on?”

Hull stroked his stubbled chin. “Over the years? Shee-it. Probably over a hunnert.”

“A hunnert’n fifty’s more like it,” Jory augmented.

“And way back here in the hills,” Gray added, “no one suspects a thing. The cars are repainted and resold. And that county sheriff probably keeps the heat out of here, helps cover your route to your fence. The bodies are never found.”

“Right again, City,” Hull asserted.

“An’ Kari Ann done tolt us ’bout yer little scheme. Promisin’ ta marry her, help her raise her kid. Shee-it, what’choo think we is, City. Stupid?”

Who was the stupid one?

Gray was dragged by the hair to the corner. Just as he realized what they were going to do, he snatched in a quick breath. Then—

plup!

—his head was quickly submerged into the bucket full of his waste.

“Down ya go, City. Blub, blub, blub.”

Gray was too exhausted to resist. He had no strength, nothing left in his muscles and nothing left in his heart. Were there bugs in his diarrhea? Little things seemed to be swarming in it, tickling his face, but Gray told himself it was just his imagination. He even came to grips with the circumstance now. They were going to kill him, they were going to drown him in his own diarrhea, but then it would all be over. He felt confident that God wouldn’t send him to hell after all of this.

His lungs expanded; soon they would burst. He doubted that he’d pass out before reflex forced him to inhale his first mouthful. But that didn’t matter, either. I’ll be dead in another minute, and you know what? I’m ready.

He sidled over, drenched, and gulped air like a grouper on a pier when they pulled him out. All those liquefied bowel movements dribbled down his face. When he realized that they’d pulled him out one heartbeat short of drowning, he actually yelled up at them: “Come on! Just kill me and get it over with!”

“Kill ya? Kill ya?” Jory said.

“Naw, that were just yer punishment fer fuckin’ with us,” Hull added, “plottin’ behind our backs’n such.”

“Yer diff-urnt, City. You’s the best we ever had.”

“No lie, the dang best.” Hull gave his crotch a squeeze. “I’ll be dagged-damned if I ain’t gittin’ hard again thinkin’ ’bout that sure-fire cock-suck mouth’a yers.”

“You knows, Hull?” Jory offered. “You’s’re right. I’se gittin’ hard again too. What say we have ourselfs another nut?”

Hull whipped it out. “Shee-it, yeah. Come on, City. Let’s make some more whuppie.”

“Aw, Jesus,” Gray groaned. His face dripped shit. Not again!

Yes. Again. Wearily, Gray crawled forward onto hands and knees, a human coffee table. His mouth engulfed Hull’s fattening manhood, and after only a moment of adroit fellatio, it turned hard as a billy club. Behind him, Gray felt the familiar wet splat as Jory expectorated into his buttocks and inserted a billy club of his own.

Hull gripped Gray’s ears as though they were handles. “This shore is the life, ain’t it, Jor?”

“Dag straight, Hull,” Jor agreed, pumping vigorously. He slapped Gray’s right buttock. “Come on, City. Squeeze that butthole like you do.”

Gray constricted his sphincter—

“Yeah! That’s it! Gawd-dag that feels good!”

Gray could only listen with his mouth jam-packed with Hull’s cock.

Hull chuckled, patting Gray’s head. “Shee-it, City. All them other fellas, we kill ’em lickety-split. But we ain’t gonna do that ta you.”

“We’se done decided!”

“We’se gonna let you live.”

Gray’s eyes widened.

Jory stroked away, plunging in an out. “That’s right, City. Me’n Hull’s already talked it over. We’d be out of our ever-livin’ minds ta kill you.”

“‘Cos yer so good is why.”

“It’d be a waste’a good boy-poon.”

“An’ good mouth-lovin’.”

“So’s instead’a killin’ ya like we done them other fellas, we’se gonna keep ya here.”

“But don’t’s ya worry none. Kari Ann’ll bring ya up viddles’n water ever day.”

Hull chortled. “An’ me’n Jor, we’ll’se bring ya up our peters ever nat.”

Ever nat, Gray thought as he sucked. Every night.

“That’s right, City,” Hull said, caressing the top of Gray’s head. It was almost affectionate. “You’se gonna suck my dick. Ever nat.”

Then Jory: “And you’se gonna take mine up yer cornhole.”

“You hear that, City? Ever nat.”

“That’s right, City. Ever nat.”

“Ever nat.”

“Sheeee-it! Ever nat fer the rest’a yer life!”

Gray got the message. He didn’t even bother listening any more. He just pinched his sphincter again, and sucked.