Red - Jack Ketchum [45]
He went directly to his dad’s old toolbox and rummaged inside.
TWENTY-FIVE
This is the boy whose eyes hunt her through the hole in the cellar door. The boy who burned her. The boy with the gun.
His body betrays him. He walks down the stairs and over to her as though it’s nothing to him — but it is something. Something that makes him jitter inside. When he reaches out to her to do as his father as done, to remove her clothing, his hands tremble. The boy is a coward. It’s time to show him that.
She hisses. Long and hard through her bared teeth. She is a cat, a snake.
She strikes him dead with her eyes.
~ * ~
Brian lurches back. And then thinks, fuck you, there’s nothing you can do to me. His hands return to the buttons of her dress. By the time he’s finished he’s already got a hard-on. But he wants to play with her a while.
He takes a cookie out of his pocket. In the other pocket is the real toy. But for now he breaks the cookie in half and eats half of it and then holds the other half out to her. Daring her mouth. Daring those teeth.
She’s fast, he knows. But he figures he’s faster.
She won’t accept it. She turns her fucking head away.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” he says. “I mean, who doesn’t like cookies?”
So he eats that half too. He takes his time chewing, looking her over.
She’s naked underneath there. All he has to do is lift the dress.
His hard-on’s a whopper now.
He reaches into his other pocket and takes out his father’s needle-nose pliers. He shows them to her. Snaps them open and closed a couple of times just to show her what they can do. He wonders if she gets the picture. He wonders if she bruises easily.
He pokes her in the ribs.
Pokes her again. Hard this time. The pliers aren’t sharp enough to draw blood but you can bet they hurt. He pokes her in the belly. In each of her breasts. He hears the sharp intake of breath. Each time he pokes her she throws herself back against the shelf behind her but her nipples are hard now. He wonders if she’s enjoying this.
He sure is.
Isn’t that what happens to women when they’re enjoying having sex? Their nipples get hard?
He throws her dress over her shoulder just as he’s seen his dad do and stands there a moment to take her in. There’s all of a sudden this really strange, really good sensation. And not just in his cock. He feels good all over, tingly, strong. If this is what power feels like, he likes it very much.
He runs his hands over her belly up to her breasts and squeezes. Her skin isn’t as soft as he’d imagined but her nipples are huge and long as budding twigs. The woman squirms beneath his touch as though something dirty’s touching her and he doesn’t like that at all, there’s nothing dirty about him, this is only natural. He’s a guy and she’s a woman and this is what women are all about, right? So fuck her. He grabs the tits again and squeezes so hard he thinks they‘ll pop.
She growls at him and sniffs the air and spits out some words in that stupid language he doesn’t understand.
“Feoil ur! Muiceoil!”
~ * ~
“Fresh meat! Pig-meat!”
She says this with contempt and presses back against the wooden board behind her, feels it shift and give again, give a little more each time. The boy is confident now. The boy thinks he has power. If she can break this board he will not feel so confident anymore, not at all.
She can suffer his hands. The hands are nothing.
~ * ~
She repeats her words and Brian doesn’t like that one bit. He gets her goddamn tone if not the meaning of the words. It’s as though she thinks he’s beneath her. As though she’s somebody. Time to show her who’s who, Brian, he thinks. Time to seriously fuck with her.
His parents haven’t got a clue god knows but he’s seen stuff like this on the internet, exciting stuff that seemed like it was made just for him, just for Brian Cleek. There are dozens of sites — probably hundreds. They all make noises about consenting adults and role play and submission but he knows what they’re really all about. They’re all about this.
He reaches