“My love, my love, my love,” he kept murmuring into her neck. “Please! Now!”
“Hmm, yes, let me think . . .” As her fingers were toying with the top button of his trousers, were just about to open them—
“On second thought,” she said abruptly, “no.”
Her hand pulled away, and she gently began to push him back.
“Don’t torment me!” he pleaded.
“Wilfrud, you’re so much fun to tease!” She was grinning at him in the moonlight, her bare breasts standing right out. Then she picked up the collection bag and gave it back to him. “We’ve got to get back to our gathering.” The grin sharpened. “We’ll make love later. When we get back home.”
Wilfrud groaned, his eyes rolling in agony.
“Thinking about me more will make you want me more,” she cooed at him.
“No, it won’t! I want you now!”
“Oh, Wilfrud. You’re a wonderful husband, but honestly, sometimes you’re just like a goat. You can wait a bit longer.” And then she disappeared around a stout tree to continue her search.
Wilfrud stood like a horny fool. Women, he thought uselessly. Oh, how they love to make idiots of men.
He shuffled after her into thicker woods. Denser networks of boughs overhead drained off the moonlight—he could barely see. After a time he wanted to call out but thought better of it: he mustn’t distract her while she was divining. Instead, then, he filled his mind back up with images of her nakedness, her breasts and the pebble-hard nipples, all that smooth, warm, white skin that he could indulge in, the nest of down between her legs soft as kitten fur. . . .
Minutes more, and he still hadn’t found her. He stood and listened . . . and heard no traces of her footfalls.
“Sweetheart?” he finally called out.
Ethel didn’t answer.
“Ethel?”
Another step, then—
“Oof!”
He stumbled and fell.
What a clumsy clod. . . . He must’ve tripped on a downed limb. But when he put his hand out to push himself up it landed on a bare foot. Alarmed, he patted upward, up a bare leg. . . .
In slivers of moonlight coming though the trees, he saw Ethel lying prone on the forest floor.
“Ethel! Are you all right?” He slid up to her, got an arm around her back to lean her up.
But her head just lolled on her shoulders.
And he noticed blood on her forehead.
No!
Wilfrud felt crazed in the sudden fear. “Ethel! Ethel!” He shook her. “Please be all right!”
A voice snapped behind him. “Don’t worry, Squatter. She ain’t dead. All’s I done is conk her lights out.”
In the dimmest darkness, he spotted the figure standing over him. Enraged, Wilfrud attempted to jump up, to fight.
“Yes, sir. Conked the bitch’s lights right out with this here beer bottle.”
Conk!
The unseen swipe knocked Wilfrud out cold.
It was a harsh gagging sound that Wilfrud regained consciousness to. Grainy, sooty vision began to fire in his eyes; each time his heart beat, a heavy thud of pain throbbed in his head. In a few more moments, he could see. . . .
Ethel lay naked on her back in some deep, moonlit clearing. A beefy man humped vigorously between her sprawled legs, his overalls pulled down to show pasty buttocks.
The atrocity raged but for a split second before Wilfrud’s mind managed to separate the horror from logic. What happened to me? The pain in his head felt like a nail had been driven into his brain. He and Ethel had been gathering morels, hadn’t they? Yes, the clan cookout was coming up. And she’d dashed off into darker woods with her divining bone. That’s when I found her, he remembered. I tripped over her and—
That figure . . . All Wilfrud recalled was the stocky shadow before he’d been hit in the head with something, and now he was waking up . . . to this.
Wilfrud realized now that he’d been tied to a tree, his wrists bound behind the trunk with rope, and a shorter length of rope had been tied around his head—between his teeth—to gag him. In horrid glimpses, he noticed that Ethel had been gagged similarly. All either of them could do was croak out some feeble noises, nothing even close to a scream that could be heard by others.
The man raping his wife looked over his shoulder while his fornication didn’t miss a beat. “Oh, looky there, sweetie. Your husband’s finally woked his old ass up.” A chunky face grinned back. “Hey, Wilfrud? You don’t mind me raping the holy ever-livin’ shit outta this old bag you got fer a wife, do ya?”
Wilfrud’s eyes bugged in rage; he recognized the portly face at once: Junior, one of the Caudill boys. Wilfrud struggled uselessly against his bonds, the rope digging into his wrists, and when he tried to shout, the only vocal objection he could muster was more of the same croaking.
Worse were Ethel’s croaks. Junior was choking her with the leather cord of the pontica stone around her neck. He’d twist the cord down tight till her face darkened and her tongue began to protrude, but just before she’d either pass out or die, he’d release it—to rape her harder. He wanted her alive for the entire ordeal.
But why was he doing this?
And what would happen when he was done?
Junior began to grunt, twisting the pontica cord harder, and then his pelvic thrusts slowed and stopped.
He straggled to his feet, hitched up the overalls, and dusted himself off. “Ain’t exactly the best piece a’ ass I’ve had, but not bad fer an old box. What is this bitch, Wilfrud? About sixty? Me, I prefer ’em a tad younger, like about ten, but in a pinch? Any piece a’ ass is better than none, huh?”
Junior belted out a piglike noise that sufficed for a laugh, but then his eyes darted back down to Ethel, who now lay utterly still. “Aw, shit! Don’t tell me she’s fuckin’ dead! I need her still kickin’ for the rest a’ the party !” He dropped to his knees, slapped her face several times, then put an ear to her bare chest to listen for a heartbeat. “Whew!” he said next. “Ya lucked out, Wilfrud. Her ticker’s still tickin’.” He stood back up. “Let’s give her a splash or two a’ water in the face, to spark her up. . . .”
Wilfrud roared in his throat through the gag, surging against the bonds. Junior had opened his fly and was now urinating liberally into Ethel’s face. The revolting process did indeed revive her, soaking her.
“Well, there goes another six-pack!”
By now Wilfrud was oblivious to the pain of the flesh around his wrists grinding away. He brokenly barked out through his gag, “Cut me loose! Cut me loose!”
Junior zipped back up. “What’s that, Wilfrud? Cain’t rightly understand ya, what with the gag. Oh! You want me to cut ya loose?” Another piglike guffaw. “Come on! Why in tarnation would I wanna do that?”
Now Junior leaned against a tree, arms casually crossed. “You don’t even know this, Wilfrud, but in yer own little way you n’ this creepy old tramp are playin’ a part in a big plan that’ll make things around here a damn sight better fer everybody.” He scratched his belly. “Well, I should say almost everybody, ‘cos things just got a damn sight worse fer you and the little missus.” Junior looked up at the moon in the sky. “And I’m afraid it’s gettin’ late. Time for this party to end, don’t ya think?”
Ethel shuddered in the dirt, hacking up urine through the gag. Without a moment’s hesitation, Junior reached behind the tree and pulled out an inordinately large fire ax, then stepped up, parted his legs, hoisted it up over his head in a great arc—
“Nooo!” Wilfrud gagged.