Red - Jack Ketchum [32]
His dad approaches the woman with the rag and squeezes some soapy water out over her head. It runs down her forehead and cheek and neck all the way down to her tits. Even from here he can see that her nipples are hard.
So is he.
The woman doesn’t move. His dad is pleased.
“Good,” he says.
He dips the rag into the water again and brings it to the woman’s cheek and scrubs. Brian can see her wince at his touch.
“Look there. We got a clean spot.”
His mother says something he can’t quite hear.
The woman sneezes. The soap tickling her nose he guesses. Brian almost laughs out loud but he stifles that. She looks so miserable hanging there. He’d bet she’s never had a proper civilized soap-and-water bath in all her life.
This is awesome fun.
His dad washes her other cheek. Her forehead, then her nose and chin and around her mouth. That’s a little bit scary, this part. He remembers — and he knows his father sure as hell remembers — that she took off the tip of his finger just yesterday. She could easily take off another right now if she wanted to but she doesn’t for some reason. Then he notices that the whole right side of her looks scalded. So that was what all the screaming was about.
His dad’s tamed her. With scalding hot water. Way to go, dad.
The woman’s face is still streaked but way cleaner and gleaming wet and bright from the heat. His mother’s just standing there with the soapy rag in her hand, watching him. He wonders why she isn’t helping. He sure would.
His father’s dipped the rag again and gone on to her neck, front and back, scrubbing hard. The woman’s glaring at him now. He doesn’t seem to notice.
“Come on, Belle, give me a hand here.”
His mother dips her rag in the water but that’s all she does. It’s as though she’s afraid to move. But it‘s not that. He sees something in her posture that he’s seen before — it‘s very familiar. Something his father also doesn’t notice. His mother’s angry. It’s all bottled up inside her there but she’s angry all right.
Dad’s done with her neck. He’s working on her shoulders. Getting closer and closer to…
…those amazing tits…
~ * ~
She has known for some time now. She has sensed it and there is no need to put it to the test. In the slightest movement of her hand inside the bolt she senses it.
~ * ~
“Don’t you go getting all foolish on me, Belle,” his father says. “It’s just something’s gotta be done.”
Her shoulders are clean. He dips the rag into the water again.
~ * ~
He tries to hide it from his woman and perhaps he can but he cannot hide it from her. His heart is racing. His pulse pounding. He is focused on her breasts. He reaches out for them with the dripping cloth.
And the second he touches her, the second she feels the heat, she tears the bolt free of the wall and her hand darts to his neck like a striking snake and she is soaring, roaring with elation. Her fingers dig deep into the muscles of his neck and the man struggles, tries to pry her hand free but his two hands are not nearly a match for her single hand and the long-bred strength which resides there and she is grinning directly into his horror-struck face as he writhes and chokes and sees his death hovering in her eyes.
This is the pleasure of the hunt.
This is the will and the power and the freedom.
This is the joy of her creation.
He is going down beneath her grip.
Then the door is flung open and thunder booms.
~ * ~
He has raced back to the house for the gun and it’s all a blur, one huge red blur — it seems only an instant later he’s run past Peg and Darlin’ standing in the hall with Peg saying what?? and down the stairs and then he’s there inside the cellar, first dimly aware of his father on his knees in front of her by now, his arms limp at his sides, the woman’s hand clutching his neck and his mother simply standing there with her hands over her mouth and then the next thing he knows the .45 leaps in his own hands and a bullet ricochets off the back wall and the side wall and the stairway directly behind him.
And then he