"And no pants on, as per usual," Alice added, sounding disgusted.
"So he parades by our cages, and says how we're all going to help him set up a surprise for you."
"He called you a chickenshit motherfucking asswipe," Alice explained.
"Real nice," Erin said. "You don't have to tell him everything."
"I'd want to know it, if somebody called me . . ."
"Doesn't matter," I said. "What about the surprise?"
"He said you paid him a visit at the house, and that you ran away, but Thelma'd gone after you. He said Thelma would probably kill you . . ."
"Nail your puny little butt," Alice elaborated.
"But just in case she didn't get you, he wanted to have a surprise ready. He said you'd probably come over here to the cages, first thing. So we should be expecting you, and we'd better not yell and try to warn you off."
"He said he'd toast our twats."
"Alice! Stop it!"
"I'm just telling what he said. "
"Well, don't. For Godsake. You don't have to be so crass."
"You talk just as bad. Only not around Rupert."
"Hey, girls. Come on."
"She's got the hots for you, Rupert."
"I do not."
"Like you'd ever admit it to him. But she does, Rupert. Trust me. She told me so."
"Liar."
"You're the liar."
"I never said I had the hots for him."
"Maybe not in those exact words, but . . ."
"Can't we talk about it some other time?" I suggested. "I mean, if I don't take care of Wesley . . . Does he ever come over to this end of things?"
"Hasn't yet," Erin said. "The closest he's come is Kimberly's cage. He hasn't gotten on top of Connie's or ours."
"Not that he couldn't," Alice said.
"Yeah, he could if he wanted to. If he didn't want to move the ladder, he could always just go ahead and jump. It isn't that far between . . ."
"What ladder?" I asked.
"Our ladder," Alice said.
"He got it at our house," Erin explained. "Like everything else, just about. He's been keeping it handy ever since he put us in the cages. It's one of his things. He climbs up on top of the cages and sort of . . . messes around. You know, looks down at us. Teases us. He keeps a box of stuff up there. Things he can drop on us whenever he feels like playing 'bombardier.'"
"Mostly books," Alice said.
"He drops books on you?"
"Yeah," Alice said, "and they can hurt. Even a paperback hurts if it catches you with its spine."
"Especially a corner of the spine," Erin added. The deal is, Wesley doesn't want to bomb us with anything we might use against him. He figures we can't do much damage with a book."
"Sometimes, he bombs us with pages," Alice said. "He'll rip one out and wad it up, then set it on fire and drop it through the bars."
"You can usually dodge them," Erin said. "He just likes to hear us scream."
"And watch us try to get out of the way. He loves to make us jump around. You know, because we aren't wearing a stitch of clothes, or anything."
"He dumps buckets of water on us from up there, too."
"All kinds of stuff," Alice added.
"It'd take all night," Erin said, "to tell you everything he drops on us. I mean, he's had a lot of time on his hands with nothing to do but mess with us."
"His favorite thing, he lies down and dangles his dong through the bars. Then he'll . . ."
"God, Alice. That's not . . ."
"I'm just trying to tell what he does."
"Rupert doesn't need to hear it. You know? Jeez!"
I decided to bring us back to the subject. "So Wesley got this ladder, tonight, and used it to climb up to the top of Billie's cage?"
"Right," Erin said.
"Then what?"
"Then he pulled it up after him. And he put it across the gap between Billie's cage and Kimberly's to make it easy for him to cross back and forth. He can just use the ladder like a bridge, you know? Instead of having to jump."
"That's why he hasn't come over here," Alice said.
"I don't think he's real eager to jump. It'd be pretty tricky. There's nothing up there but bars."
"And the ladder," Alice added.
"He can get around pretty well, walking on the bars. He's had a lot of practice."
"He's part ape," Alice said.
"Thinks he's King Kong," Erin said.
"Thinks he's King Dong."
"You'll have to excuse my sister," Erin said. "She isn't usually like this."
"It's all right," I said.
"See?" Alice asked. "I told you it was okay with Rupert."
"He's just being polite."
I stayed quiet at that, not wanting to get involved in their little squabbles. The thing is, I didn't really mind Alice's language. It's hard to be offended by stuff like that when you've got a guy like Wesley nearby. It's hard to be anything except scared. But I did find myself a little bit amused, now and then. And sometimes embarrassed.
And turned on. I mean, there I was, sitting on the ground between Erin and Alice. They were stark-naked. I might as well have been naked, too, considering the condition of my shorts.
Even though I couldn't see the girls, I sort of knew what they looked like. After all, I'd had time to study every inch of Erin when she'd been in the room with Wesley and Thelma. And Alice was her twin sister. What I couldn't actually see because of the darkness, I had no trouble imagining.
On top of all that, Alice's talk about things like twats and dongs and boners only made things worse -- or better, depending on how you look at things.
Plus, I couldn't quite stop thinking about Erin having the "hots' for me. Apparently, she hadn't used that exact word. Whatever words she might've used, though, she'd made it clear to Alice that she liked me.
Interesting news. Incredible news. Wonderful news.
Too bad it had to come at a time when everyone was in so much danger that I figured we probably wouldn't all make it through the night.
Anyway, that sums up what was going on with me, and why I said that I didn't have any problem with Alice's language. I wasn't being polite, I was being truthful.
Trying to get things on track again, I said, "So you think Wesley won't try to jump from cage to cage?"
"I haven't even seen him try that in broad daylight," Erin answered.
"Doesn't mean he can't," Alice pointed out.
"If he wants to come this way," Erin said, "I bet he'll bring the ladder with him. Put it down across each gap. We'd hear that, if he tried it."
"The ladder's aluminum," Alice explained.
"So we don't need to worry about him sneaking over," Erin said.
"Unless he does jump the gaps. We'd hear him when he lands on this cage, but . . ."
"He's too smart to try it."
"Or unless he gets down off the cages," I suggested. "Then he could sneak over here on the ground . . ."
"Kimberly's gonna warn us if he climbs down."
"She's supposed to," Alice corrected.
"Yeah. We sort of set up a few tricks of our own. If Wesley does anything we need to know about, Kimberly's gonna pass the word to Connie, and Connie'll tell Alice."
"Except Connie's asleep," Alice said.
"Maybe she is and maybe she isn't," Erin said. "Anyway, he won't climb down. He's right where he wants to be, up above everything where nobody can get at him."
"I have a spear."
The girls were silent for a second or two. Then Erin asked, "Can you hit him with it?"
"I don't know."
"You'd better not even try," Alice said. "Even if you get him, he'll probably still be able to set Billie on fire. All he has to do is drop the torch."
"What if I wait till the torch goes out?" I asked.
For a couple of seconds, nobody answered. Then Alice spoke up. "I don't know."
"It might be a really long wait," Erin said. "And when it does burn out, he'll just dip it in the gas and light it back up."
"With what?" I asked.
"Huh?"
"How would he relight it?"
"Oh, he's got a couple of Dad's cigarette lighters. Keeps them in the box up there for lighting his paper wads."
"And cigarettes," Alice said. The creep smokes like a chimney. That's something else he uses on us. His butts. He gets a big charge out of flicking them at us."