You Cannot Plow A Field By Turning It Over In Your Mind
.
I smile and take her hand. So soft. So delicate and warm.
“The blood's not mine.” I whisper. “It's okay.”
I kiss her hand and breathe in the scent of her skin and then kiss again. I feel her arm stiffen and her words become clipped.
“Richard. What are you doing?”
I tighten my grip on her wrist and kiss a little higher up her arm, enjoying the tickle of the almost transparent hairs against my lips.
“It's okay.” I assure her. “Cody's out of the way. Jane doesn't matter. It's just you and me now, Polly. Just you and me.”
She tries to pull away and I feel her skin twist beneath my grip almost as if I were giving her an Indian burn.
“You're hurting me! Let go!”
“Sshhhh. Sshhh. Be still pretty, pretty Polly. I'm here now.”
I yank her to me and I see fear reflected in her wide eyes. Or is that excitement?
She begins pummeling my chest with her free hand, scratching at my face, digging deep furrows into my skin.
“
Let me go!”
So that's how it is. That little fucking tease. Leading me on. Showing me just enough of her body to arouse my interest. Mocking me. Well, it's a new world now. A world where I'm free to just take whatever the hell I want. Whenever the hell I want it.
I throw her backward against the kitchen table, forcing her down upon its surface. She's kicking and squirming and trying to bite at me with her teeth, but this only excites me further and I laugh like a king returning from the royal hunt.
“Richard, no! No,
no, NO!”
“Richard's dead, baby. Call me Rick. Or Dick. You like Dick, don't you, Polly? Sure you do.”
Her screams echo through the kitchen, so shrill and desperate.
But it makes no difference.
It's time to claim what has always been rightfully mine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I'm trying to bunch up her skirt with my free hand while holding her down with the other. Which is a lot harder than I thought it would be. She's writhing and kicking and squirming like a woman possessed by demons and my right forearm has bloody little teeth prints embedded into the flesh.
“Damn it, lay fucking still!”
I'm trying to twist my arm away from the vicinity of her mouth, trying to make sure she doesn't get another chunk of my skin clamped between those pearly whites. But she's wily, this one. She improvises a new strategy and throws her head forward with all her might. Her forehead cracks into my left temple and little flash-bursts of light explode in my vision.
Both hands are free now and she's got her fingers hooked into claws, going for my eyes as she struggles to get away.
The table creaks and wobbles beneath our bodies and I pull my head back just in time to avoid the gouge she was going for.
With both my hands available however, the skirt becomes less of a problem and it's quickly pulled up to her waist.
Shit...
panties. She had to be wearing fucking underwear didn't she?
I've got to take some of the fight out of this feisty bitch. There's no other choice. I ball my hand into a fist and pull back even with my jaw. A shame to bloody such a pretty face. But she really brought this on herself, didn't she?
“Get the hell off her you degenerate son of a bitch!”
The voice is shrill and cuts through the struggle so sharply that for a minute I'm not entirely positive where I am. I hear footsteps running toward me and then my leg flares in pain as I roll off the table and fall to the floor. Sticking out of my thigh, I see a familiar black handle and just a hint of metal buried into the meat of my leg. I yank the chef's knife free and it clangs to the floor as I press my hands against the wound. It feels like it's throbbing in agony and spurts of blood ooze out in perfect rhythm with my heart.
“You think it's fun to... ”
I roll over onto my side and my assailant is mentally thrown off balance for a second.
“R-Richard? What... what the hell is going on?”
There's no sign of Polly. She must have cut and run the moment I no longer had her pinned to the table. I stagger to my feet and the pain feels like the muscle is being pulled from my leg fiber by fiber.
Jane stands mere feet away from me, her forehead knotted with confusion as I drag my injured leg across the floor.
Step-scrape.
Step-scrape.
I see uncertainty in her eyes. It's almost like she's silently begging for answers, pleading for the world to make sense again.
“I don't... I don't understand.”
Step-scrape.
“I know, Janey. Everything's real confusing right now, darling. It's probably a lot like the dinosaurs felt when that big 'ole asteroid first pounded into the earth, isn't it?”
She looks like she's on the verge of tears, her blue eyes as watery as two pools. This poor woman. She was never cut out for this new world. She could never understand exactly what it will take to survive.
I place my hands on either side of her head, holding her face as if I'm about to lean in for a kiss.
“Was... was that...
Polly?
”
She's in shock, I think. Probably never expected in a million years to see me. Judging by the pool of blood she picked the knife up from, she probably thought I was dead. Poor, naive thing.
“Yeah, that was Polly.”
I massage her temples with the tips of my fingers, rubbing in slow circles. Her body tenses for a moment, then relaxes as she closes her eyes.
“Did you see where she went, Janey?”
Her eyes snap open and they spark with suspicion. But even so they are still dulled by that lost look. The look that so badly wants answers but is afraid of just what they might be.
“Why?”
“I've gotta find her, baby. I've gotta clear all this up. It's all been a big misunderstanding, that's all. Now where did Polly go, sweetie?”
She opens her mouth and for a moment I think she's about to speak but then her lips close again. She seems uncertain, like she's torn between the world she has always believed in and this new reality that has swallowed her up like a tasty morsel.
In the old days, she never would have come into her kitchen and witnessed what she did.
She never would have stabbed her lover of five years in the leg with a knife.
She tries to pull back but I keep her head between my palms, keep rubbing and easing the tension away from her scalp.
“Were you... were you
raping
her?”
“No, sweetie. No, no, no. I mean, I'm sure that's probably what it looked like. But that's all part of the confusion, see? That's what I've got to explain to Polly. You just need to tell me where she went.”
“So , you weren't... it wasn't actually.... .”
“God no, Janey. It's me... Richard. I marched with you remember? I helped out down at the shelter when you were shorthanded. Do you really think I would... do you really think I
could
do something like that?”
“I... I don't know.”
She's really crying now, her cheeks glistening with tears and she squeezes her eyes shut so tightly I can feel wrinkles form beneath the massaging tips of my fingers.
“Janey,” I say softly, evenly, “everything's all turned upside down right now. Everything's all crazy. But you gotta tell me where Polly went. It's dangerous, understand? You tell me where Polly went and I'll explain everything.”
Jane sniffles and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand.
“She... she ran downstairs. She ran outside.”
Jane falls forward and buries her head against my chest. I slowly move my left hand further up her cheek, into the tangles of her curly red hair. My right hand cups her jawline and I continue rubbing, continue working out the tension.
“What the hell is going on, Richard? I don't understand, I just don't understand.”
“It's simple really, Janey.” I whisper as she sobs against my body. “You're a fucking bitch. And your time has come.”
Before the words truly have a chance to sink in, I twist her head with a savage jerk. I hear the bone snap, feel the pop through my hand, feel the power course through my body again.
She's out there somewhere. And, by God, I'll find her.
I will find her and make her mine.
I throw back my head and let loose with a savage cry that strains my vocal chords and sounds more animal than human. It's the sound of primeval desires crashing up against the trappings of the modern world. It's the sound of generations of repression and subjugation.
It's the sound of havoc.
I am the King of this strange new world.
And my Queen is out there.
Waiting for me to claim her.
PART TWO
Climax of Brutality
CHAPTER EIGHT
The clouds in the sky seemed to dance with the distant glow of flames and the smell of smoke was thick and heavy. There weren't any buildings that had been firebombed on this block yet, but – in the brief moments of silence that sometimes settled over the city –she could hear the crackling of fire, the roar of a hungry beast that devoured homes and buildings and left nothing more than blackened skeletons in its wake. But those instances of silence were few and far between. For the most part, the night was filled with the revving of engines, with gunshots and the tinkling of broken glass; screams and cries for help that went unanswered until they were abruptly cut off mid-sentence.
It was like the whole world had gone insane and she couldn't help but wonder where the military had went. Where were the soldiers, the cops, the keepers of law and order? Shouldn't they be out there in the streets, fighting their way through this urban nightmare and protecting those who simply wanted everything to go back to the way it was? But she hadn't seen so much as a Humvee since she'd ran out of the apartment building, much less any type of organized retaliation against the anarchists who now seemed to hold the city in their grip.
What the hell was going on here?
Cody really was dead. She knew that now. At first she tried to tell herself that Richard was lying, that he was trying to gain control over her mind and emotions just as he'd tried to do with her body. But when she reached the bottom of the stairs Polly had seen his body sprawled across the foyer, sprawled in a pool of his own blood. She'd tried to look away but wasn't quick enough: the images of broken bones jabbing through his flesh and clothes, the way his head seemed completely flat on the side facing the floor, the bizarre angles his legs and arms were splayed out in. All of these things had been burned into her consciousness and returned to haunt her visions each time she closed her eyes.
But she couldn't think about that now. She had to push it all deep down inside, to swallow the pain and try to find something else to fill the void that threatened to cause her to implode. Cody would want her to survive, to go on, to fight tooth and nail if she must. And to do that she had to keep a clear head. There would be plenty of time for grief later, but for now she needed to
focus
. To stay alive.
After scrambling over the pile of bodies outside the main door, she'd made her way to the entrance of the apartment complex. The wrought iron gate that had once kept the world at bay was lying in the center of the street, the bars twisted and bent as if they had been pulled free with a force greater than a single person could ever manage. Poking her head around the corner, she saw a few people zigzagging back and forth through the darkness. But the majority of them seemed to be a block or so to the south. She could see their silhouettes, the way they dove through the air at one another, rolling across the ground as they grappled for control, bright bursts of gunfire, complete and utter chaos.
She slipped into the shadows along the wall and inched her way north instead, trying her best to stay low and quiet. She felt like her white shirt was as clear as a billboard, advertising her presence to anyone who might happen by. But she would need to replace it soon anyhow. During the struggle with Richard, it had been stretched and ripped to the point that it no longer really held its shape and kept trying to slide down over her breasts.
What the fuck had gotten into him anyway? He'd been like an animal, his lips pulled back into a snarl, that hungry look elongating his features, seeming to change him into a stranger right before her eyes. There was no doubt in her mind what he'd planned on doing to her. He'd made that abundantly clear. But how far would it have went? If she had decided to take the so-called
easy road
, like she did when she was a child, would he have been content to simply have his way and leave her crying on the table? Or did he have darker designs on her? If Jane hadn't showed up when she did, God only knows how all of that would have turned out.
Richard
. Sweet, unassuming Richard. It just didn't make any sense. Sure, she'd caught him ogling her on few occasions and at the time had thought it was kind of funny. She and Jane had used to joke about it at the club, how he had this little schoolboy crush on her, how they could probably blow his friggin' mind if she just slipped out of her clothes and hopped into bed with them one evening.
But there'd never been any indication, never any sign, that he was capable of something like this. And that, quite frankly, scared her more than anything else that had happened over the course of the last several weeks. How quickly and completely someone whom she thought she'd known could change. How he could go from being this mousy little office worker one minute to a drooling psychopath the next. And what exactly
had
happened to Cody? Had Richard been responsible for that as well? No, he couldn't have been. The gashes in his shirt, the bloodstains that had seeped all across his torso... that was definitely murder. And she couldn't believe that her best friend's boyfriend could just outright kill one of their own. In cold blood, no less..
“Yeah,” she thought, “well yesterday you never woulda pegged him for a sicko fuckin' rapist either, would you? Don't put anything past that son of a bitch, girl.”