She continued to hold her breath. He sensed what she was trying to do and poked her in the stomach, forcing her to exhale.
“ Naughty, naughty, trying to miss all the fun.”
She gasped, her lungs screaming for air. He shoved the joint to her lips and she drew in more of the acrid smoke, and it threw her into a coughing spasm. He stepped back and watched till she settled down and was able to breath.
“ The way I look at it,” he said, “we can do this one of two ways.” He walked naked to a rolling metal chest of drawers and withdrew two objects. “In my left hand I’m holding a standard battery operated vibrator. It can be the source of much pleasure. In the right I’m holding a standard Los Angeles police issue taser, capable of sending several thousand volts of electricity through your nervous system. It can be the source of much pain. Which is it to be?”
She didn’t answer.
He pushed a button on the taser and she saw a bolt of blue electricity jump between the two terminals.
“ It’s very painful,” he said.
“ The vibrator,” she whispered.
“ Good. Very good.” His hands went between his legs and he started to play with himself, making himself hard. He rolled the chest of drawers to the bed and withdrew a jar of oil. She wanted to struggle, but she was bound to the bed. She screamed and continued screaming as he used the switchblade to slice away the hospital gown, leaving her bound and naked. He poured some of the oil on her breasts and started to massage them. She stopped screaming.
He worked slowly with expert hands on each breast. She closed her eyes and watched the colors on the inside of her eyelids pulsating with the raging beat of her heart.
The massaging hands stopped for a minute and she opened her eyes. He turned out the light and lit a candle. The flicking flame cast him in an evil shadow. Satanic was the word that flashed across her mind as he returned with the oil and worked on her feet, sending waves of pleasure shooting up her legs. She closed her eyes in a state of terrified ecstasy.
“ I’m here, Donna,” Jim thought. “We can get through this.”
“ Can you feel it? Can you feel what I feel, like I felt what you felt?
“ Yes. You have to fight this. Be strong. We can fight it together.”
“ Come on Jim, just enjoy it.”
“ How can you say that?”
“ It’s out of our control. Right now I am completely in that man’s power. The last thing I want is the knife slicing across my throat. If that son of a bitch wants me to moan and enjoy what he’s doing, then I am going to moan. I’m going to keep my eyes closed and let him do whatever he wants and I’m going to do my level best to enjoy every bloody second, because right now my body is the only weapon I have, and I’m going to use it to try and keep myself alive.”
“ I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“ Well now that you are, enjoy yourself, you just might learn something.”
He took her advice, joining himself to her and they let the naked man send oceans of pleasure through her body.
“ Just a little Demerol in the IV. To make you enjoy it more. Demerol and marijuana, a wonderful combination, don’t you think? Nobody can resist it.”
“ Hmmmm,” she moaned.
His hands were back on her breasts. Jim quivered along with Donna, wanting more as badly as she. She arched her back against the restraints when he took a nipple into his mouth, offering him more. Every fiber of their entwined consciousness tingled in anticipation when they heard him turn on the vibrator.
And Jim moaned with her when he slid it between her legs. They arched her back, her body, and their twin desires wanting, needing more. They started thumping her buttocks against the bed, fighting the restraints, the two of them soaring to a sexual high neither had thought possible. Jim was with her, every pulse of the way, matching the thrust of herself against the vibrator, and he yelled along with her, a loud devil yell, “Yes, yes, yessssss,” when the orgasm finally struck, sending sonic booms of pleasure from her core through to their very essence. They were bound as no two had ever been bound. And they both knew that it was forever.
“ I think you might have enjoyed that even more than me.”
She opened her eyes.
He was still naked. He put down the vibrator.
“ You know,” he continued, his slitted eyes gleaming, “what Manfred is going to do to you when he gets here?”
“ When?” she whispered. She was exhausted. She could have asked, what? But she could well imagine. She was more concerned with when. How long did she have to win this man over? To get him to loosen her bonds. To get him to make a mistake, so she could get away.
“ Next Sunday, at midnight. He doesn’t want to see you before the sacrifice.” They watched as he picked up the taser. “You see he’s going to fuck you, burn you alive, then feed you to his pet.” He pressed the taser against her breast and they screamed, this time in pain, then everything went black.
It was quiet, when he opened his eyes, once more in control of what he saw. A cool breeze bathed his sweat soaked face. He was spent.
“ Are you okay?” Glenna asked. He saw the concern in her eyes.
“ I think so. It feels good to be back.” Out of Donna’s body, he no longer felt the combined effects of the two drugs. He just felt used. Raped and used. He was ashamed for having enjoyed it. He had been degraded. He vowed to find and kill that man, if it was that last thing he ever did. And, Manfred, whoever he was, the man that pulled the strings, he would kill him too. Slowly and painfully.
“ Sometime before next Sunday at midnight, I hope,” Donna thought.
“ You’re back?”
“ You didn’t think I wanted to stay with that maniac alone, did you?”
“ I thought you were going to die,” Glenna said, holding his damp head in her lap. “First you passed out, then you started moaning, and the moans started to get kind of loud, so I had to hold my hands against your mouth. I was afraid I was going to suffocate you. Then you started bouncing and moaning like you were having great sex. Then you tried to scream, but I held my hand tight, and then you went limp. I thought you were dead.”
“ She’s back.” He sat up, then told her everything that had happened while he had been away, leaving nothing out.
“ And you’re sure it wasn’t a dream? A strange nightmare? You’ve been through an awful lot.”
“ Tell her I know what it feels like to be tied down and abused. I’m not under the influence of any drugs now. Tell her how degraded I feel.”
He told her.
“ I want to believe you, I really do, but it’s all too fantastic.”
“ I think I know what he meant, when he said Manfred was going to feed her to his pet,” Jim said.
“ What?” Glenna gasped. “You mean-”
“ Yeah, that thing with the big teeth. I think that somehow it’s connected to her, or me, or both of us. It knows where we are. It can follow us somehow.”
“ That’s crazy talk, but I believe you. That thing is for real. That I know. And it followed us for over a hundred miles. It followed us and found us, but it was afraid of the cemetery. It wouldn’t come in after me. It’s not all powerful. We can find a way to kill it.”
“ Burn it. It’s the only way.”
“ She said it again, we have to burn it.”
“ How does she know?”
“ My mother told me stories about giant geckos and the underworld. They’re evil, and the only way to send them back to where they come from is to burn them.”
“ And you believe your mother’s stories?” Jim thought.
“ She’s Maori, she wouldn’t lie.”
“ She says she’s Maori and that her mother told her about giant geckos from the underworld. If you burn them, it sends them back.”