Mad Love

Jimmy had her tied up by the time Kyle came back with a case of Lucky Lager and his pistol, the metal dull and brutal in the light of the cabin.  Jimmy was standing in front of the girl and looking at her intently. “What’re you doin’ Jimmy?”

Jimmy wiped his mouth.  “Well, I was thinkin’ about rapin’ her.”

Kyle looked at the girl, her legs bound up tight, no way for Jimmy to get his thing in her and do whatever it was Jimmy thought he was supposed to do with a woman.  Her blond hair was wet and pasted about her neck, and her mouth was gagged with a filthy red bandana.  Her eyes were closed and she made a low moaning sound that was coupled with a high pitched whine each time she breathed out, like a dog waiting to die.  Kyle smacked her across the head.  “Stop makin’ that sound.”

Jimmy approached the girl and touched the side of her head that Kyle had smacked.  “It’s okay, sweet thing. It’s all right.  He didn’t mean to hurt you.”

Kyle cracked open a Lucky and swilled it, and then wipe his mouth with a loud satisfying sound.  “You all fucked up in love, Jimmy.”  He was lean and hard, and had teeth like a gator. Light brown hair shot out of his head in patches here and there like bunches of dried grass.

Jimmy shook his head.  “Ain’t so.  I just wanna, you know, she’s a perdy thing, ain’t she?  Like some angel or somthin’? I mean, can’t we keep her ‘round a bit?”  Jimmy was a little bigger than Kyle, his lean muscle covered with beer fat, teeth gray from lack of care.  His blond hair wet with grease, his receding hairline concealed by a baseball cap with a filthy Valvoline patch stuck to it. He looked over at Kyle with a sad puppy expression on his face.

“So’s you can rape her?”

Jimmy’s mouth curled up in the left corner of his face and his grey teeth were exposed.  It looked more like he was in pain than smiling.  “Well, you know.  Maybe one day it won’t be like that no more.  Maybe.”

“Maybe?  You ever hear of love born outta rape, Jimmy?  Huh?  You ever?”

Jimmy reached for a Lucky and Kyle smacked his hand away.  Jimmy held his hand and whined over it like a child smacked for going after something he wasn’t allowed to touch. “Well, I don’t know.  But just ‘cause I ain’t never heard such a thing don’t make it so.”

Kyle shook his head.  “You don’t make any goddamn sense, Jimbo.  Make what so?  That love ‘n’ rape ain’t kin?”

Jimmy quickly snatched a beer and stepped back before Kyle could connect with a back hand.  He grinned and pulled the tab and the can schiltzed and beer foam ejaculated out of it.  Jimmy laughed.

“You blowin’ your wad.”  Kyle sucked at his teeth and then swirled the remainder of the beer in the can and downed it, then crushed the can between his hands and grabbed another one.  He looked out the door of the cabin, at the light moving along the tree line, the flow of green pine needles like water, calm, and restful.  “Soon as we get the money for the bitch, I’m gonna plug her.  Just like the last one.”

The girl whimpered and Kyle shot out a foot against her shin and she cried out a muffled, slobbering sound and then snuffed up through her nose and was quiet.  “Why you gotta be so mean all the time?”

Kyle spat on the ground and pulled out a pack of Old Golds and lit one.  He sucked on it, violently, and then made a big O with his lips and puffed out smoke rings.  “I ain’t mean.  I’m just the way I am.”

Jimmy tipped his beer to his lips.  “Well, I don’t see why we gotta kill her after we get the money.  I don’t see that at all.”  He looked at the girl.  “We don’t gotta waste all that perdy stuff, do we?”

The girl looked down at him, bound and gagged, her blue eyes sparkling with pleas.  Jimmy looked up at her and smiled his painful smile.  “Just the way we gotta do things Jimbo.  Just the way things are supposed to be done.”

“But she didn’t do anything.”

Kyle scoffed.  “Anything, yet.  I’m sure she’s got all kinds of horror bound up in her guts.  All kinds of terribleness she’s yet even thunk about.”

“Then she could join us.  She could be one of us?”  Jimmy looked at the girl and nodded at her and smiled.

The girl tried to nod back, but she was tired--getting more tired as she struggled against the rope tied around her hands and feet, and her legs.  Her back raw against the wood support beam that kept the roof of the cabin from crashing down.  “Ain’t a girl’s thing we do, Jimmy.  This is for men and only men.  What we do is a man thing.”

“But I like her, Kyle.  I do like her more’an I ever did like any of that other cooz we trapped up here.”

Kyle snorted smoke out of his nose and flicked the burning cigarette at the girl.  It exploded against her jeans and she let out a muffled yelp.  Kyle stood up and raised his fist.  “Do it again, bitch.  Just make another noise like that one and it’ll be the last time you do that.”

Jimmy finished his beer and burped.  “Jesus Christ, Kyle.”  He leaned over and snatched another can.

Kyle looked back at the light in the trees.  He didn’t carry a watch and it was the only way he knew how to tell time, like some animal or other savage beast that followed the day light and then crawled in somewhere to sleep through the night.  “I gotta go.  Gonna meet the man.”

“Okay.”

“When I come back with the money, you’re gonna slit her throat.”  Kyle jammed the gun into the back of his pants and grabbed two more Luckys and left the cabin.

Jimmy stood up and brushed himself off.  “Slit your throat, he says.”  He looked into the girls eyes.  They were past terror, and even past surrender.  He knew that look.  He’d seen it in the eyes of every girl he had ever raped, or killed, and even the ones that were still warm though the life that had kept them that way had long passed.  “But I don’t know,” he said and reached out and touched the girl’s cheek and ran his hand soft and sweet as could be along it.  “I don’t wanna do that to you.”

The girl nodded and tried to make words through the gag.  She didn’t seem so tired now.  There was an urgency to her, a thing that Jimmy didn’t know much about.  Most of the time, they just sat like lumps of overworked clay.  Jimmy took the gag off and stepped back from her.  “You don’t have to,” the girl said.  Her lips were full and beautiful, even with the lower one split and bleeding from when Jimmy had smashed her mouth with his fist to get her to stop crying.  

“Kyle says it.  I gotta do what Kyle says.”

The girl sucked at her lip and then said, “Do you want me?”

Jimmy shook his head as if he’d been asleep and an alarm had gone off and now he was wide awake.  “Want you?”

“Jimmy, right?  You’re name is Jimmy.”

“It is.”

“Trina.”

“Huh?”

“My name is Trina.”

“Oh,” Jimmy said and sipped his beer.  “Trina.  Even got a perdy name.”

“Do you want me?”

Jimmy looked down at the floor of the cabin, at the cracks in the old wood boards and the dust and the dirt that been ground into wood by the bodies of all of those who had come before her.  “Yeah.”

“Untie me.”

Jimmy laughed.  “That’s funny.  If I untie you, you’ll just run away like them others.”

“Just my feet, Jimmy.  My legs.  Take my pants off.”

Jimmy flushed with heat when he heard her say that.  He’d never had a girl say that to him before and he liked it.  Girls didn’t talk much to Jimmy unless they were telling him to leave, or pleading for their lives.  “I just untie your legs, right?”

She nodded.  “Yes, my legs.  Take my pants off.  Hurry Jimmy.  You have to hurry or he won’t let you have me.”

Jimmy scowled and looked out the cabin door.  “He never lets me have anything.   I never get to have it.  I gotta wait.”  His mouth overflowed with spit and we wiped it along his bare arm.  “They’s still warm, mostly.”

The girl shivered in disgust.  But, she was committed now.  She had to do what she had to do.  Jimmy untied her feet and unbound her legs and then slid her pants down and stepped back and looked at her.  “Is it ready?”

“Oh yeah, Jimmy.  Baby.  It’s ready.  Come on,” the girl said, hot and heavy as anything Jimmy had ever known.

Jimmy unbuckled his pants and pulled out his cock already stiff from the girl’s words and the sight of her bound up and bleeding.  He slowly approached her as if she was the one who was dangerous, but right before he could touch her, slide inside, Kyle appeared at the door of the cabin, empty handed.  “Fuckers didn’t show!”  He didn’t even look at Jimmy, his dick out and throbbing close to the girl as he came into the cabin and grabbed a beer.  He opened it, downed half of it and then looked at Jimmy, his pants down around his ankles.  “Ah, what the fuck you doin’ now?”

Jimmy scrambled to pull his pants up as Kyle came toward him, flinging feet and fists.  “Don’t, Kyle.  Just stop.  I was just gonna have some fun.”  Jimmy stumbled and fell down and Kyle kicked him twice, hard, in his ass.

“Fun?  You fuckin’ retard!”  Kyle slapped Jimmy’s head.  “I’ll show you fun.  I’ll show a good time, you fuckin’ shit ball.”  Kyle stopped pummeling Jimmy and went over to the girl and stood in front of her and grinned.

“No, Kyle.  Don’t.”  Jimmy struggled to his feet and pulled out a Buck knife and fumbled with the blade as he tried to pulled it out and set it to lock.

Kyle grabbed the girl by the throat with one hand and with his free hand he slid down between her thighs and was surprised to find them warm and wet and inviting.  “Well, now,” he whispered, husky and boozy into her ear.  “You just a whore, aren’t you?  All this got you hot and wet and ready, don’t it?”

The girl ground her pelvis as Kyle moved his fingers inside of her.  She let out a soft moan. 

“Yeah, just like that, huh?  You like that?”  Kyle ran his tongue along her cheek.  “I’ll give you somethin’ sweet thing.  I’ll give you somethin’ to take with you.” Kyle reached down between his legs just as Jimmy stuck him with the knife in the back, in the right kidney.  The blade went in all the way as if Kyle was never such a hard thing at all, but soft as butter left out on the table in the summer heat.  Kyle turned to Jimmy, his face confused and shocked as he reached around to touch the handle of the knife.  He staggered backward and fell, and writhed on the floor like a fish that had been run through with a spear.

“Oh Jimmy, I want you so bad,” the girl said, the words stuttering out of her as she watched Kyle go slack and still, the brown handle of the gun poking from the back of his jeans.

“I want you, first.  You’re mine, first.”  Jimmy started to work off his pants.

“My hands, Jimmy.  Can you untie my hands?” the girl said with a breathy sweetness that made Jimmy shiver.

“But you’ll run away.”

“I won’t run, Jimmy.  I want you.  I want all of you.”

Jimmy grinned his stupid drooling grin and tried to untie the knots by reaching around the girl.  He didn’t want to give up the warmth of her body against his, the skin wet and electric, but he couldn’t get the knots loose and so he went behind her and worked them free.  The girl fell forward, on top of Kyle and she reached down and pulled out the gun.  “All right, sweet thing,” Jimmy said as he stretched his arms out and walked toward her.

She squeezed the trigger and Jimmy’s left shoulder jerked back.  His face was still dreaming of getting inside of her--still unaware that he’d been shot, and he kept coming toward her.  She squeezed the trigger again and this time it went into his gut and his face contorted suddenly, confused, amazed at what was happening.  He reached down and touched the wound and held the blood up to his face and then he looked at the girl.  “You killed me?” he said, and the only thing that came out of his mouth after that was the blood when she shot him again and opened his chest toward the dimming light of the world.

She gathered her clothes, put herself together as best she could.  Jimmy’s dead eyes stared at the flood of crimson flowing across the floor.  Kyle moaned and coughed.  She went over to him and rolled him on his back, forcing the blade in even deeper, his back arching over the handle.  “Look at me,” she said.  

Kyle gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut.  “Just go on, you bitch.  Just go on and do it.”

“Open your eyes, or things are going to get worse.”

Kyle blinked.  He knew what that meant.  He’d said it so many times, and now it was his turn and it sounded all too familiar and strange at the same time.  “There,” he said as he looked at her.

She straddled him and slid the barrel of the gun into his mouth. “Do you love me?” she said.

Kyle’s face looked surprised and confused, like the girl was suddenly speaking a foreign language to him. He tried to speak around the gun, but his tongue was pushed flat and the words couldn’t form around the metal.

She leaned in close and whispered into his ear.  “I can’t hear you Kyle, you’ll have to try harder.”

Kyle tried, but the words kept getting forced apart by the gun. There was so much he wanted to tell her now, seeing her for what she really was.  Not a thing for ransom at all, but a wildness about her that he wanted to keep, to hold against the wildness inside of him, but he couldn’t find the words to fit it all together, to unlock her fingers from the gun, to pull out the knife and mend his wounds, his damaged heart.  And even if he could string the words together, weave them as perfect as a Navajo blanket, the gun wouldn’t let them get out.

“I need to hear it, Kyle,” she said.  “Do you?”

And it continued this way, with the gun in Kyle’s mouth and the metal taste of his broken words, and the sweat smell of her straddling him, working the knife deeper into his back until there was no more light on the trees, and the world outside was tossed into darkness, and the stars passed on.