“Shut up! I don’t believe you. You’re making it all up. Kimberly wouldn’t… She said you’re a liar. This is all a load of bullshit.”
“Anyway, Wesley knew all about Dad and Keith. You see? He knew what a couple of sick degenerates they were. So when the boat blew up… he was afraid they’d blame him and he knew how they liked to torture people. He was terrified. Not just for himself, either. He was terrified for me and Billie… all of us. Can you imagine being stranded on an island with a couple of sadistic bastards like them? He had to kill them.”
“So why did he want to kill me? I never tortured anybody.”
A strange smile tilted up one side of Thelma’s mouth. The other side, dark and swollen from the beating Wesley had given her, didn’t move. “You’d like to, though, wouldn’t you?” she said.
Which wasn’t exactly what I’d expected her to say.
“Like to what?” I asked.
“Torture somebody.”
“You’re nuts!”
“Somebody like Kimberly,” she said.
“No!”
She smirked at me. “Who are you trying to kid? It makes you hot, just thinking about it. You’d just love to take her nipples and pinch them till she wept and squirmed and begged for mercy.”
“You’re nuts.”
“Or bite them.”
“It’s time for you to go,” I said. I set the ax aside, picked up the rope again, and shuffled over to her on my knees. “Put out your hands.”
“Look at you,” she said.
She was looking at the front of my shorts.
“So what. Hold out your hands.”
Instead of holding them out, she started to unbutton her blouse.
“Stop that,” I said.
“You can pretend I’m Kimberly,” she said, and pulled her blouse open. The firelight shimmered on her huge breasts. “Here. Feel. I know you want to. You’re aching to.”
“No. Stop it.”
She reached under her breasts and lifted them, raised them toward me. “Here,” she said. “They’re all yours. You want to squeeze them, don’t you? And slap them around? Make them swing and bounce? Wouldn’t you love to take my nipples and twist them till I cry out for mercy?”
“No.”
She lowered her breasts, but only to free her hands. Then she started to finger her nipples. She pinched them, pulled at them, twisted them. While she did it, she clamped her lower lip between her teeth. She breathed through her nose, air hissing in and out her nostrils.
I watched.
“You do it,” she gasped. “I know you want to. You’d love to.”
I had to admit, I was tempted. This was sort of like the kind of thing I’d been hoping for. But only sort of. Thelma was the only woman on the island who’d never figured in my fantasies.
I couldn’t help being aroused, though. She’d been talking dirty, getting me all turned on with that stuff about Kimberly, and now she was showing me her breasts. They were huge, covered with bruises and welts and scabs. They excited me, anyway.
Frankly, I was pretty disgusted with myself. And with Thelma.
I felt like, if I took her up on the offer, I’d feel very guilty and very dirty. I’d want to wash my hands afterward.
“Come on,” she gasped. “Come on.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“I’m Kimberly. Just shut your eyes, and I’ll be Kimberly for you. Come on. Take my tits, and I’ll unzip you and…”
“Forget it,” I said. “Now stop it. Button up and hold out your hands.”
“Okay, okay. Just a minute.”
She started to get up.
“Wait. What are you doing?”
“I just want to be on my knees, that’s all. I don’t wanta be sitting down. It’s too hard to get up once your hands are tied.”
That made sense. I waited until she was kneeling in front of me, then said, “Give me your hands, now.”
Instead of obeying, she smiled at me, rubbed her hands down her thick belly and started to unbuckle her belt.
“Don’t.”
She didn’t stop. “I’ll show you what else Wesley did to me.”
“I don’t want to see.”
“Sure, you do.”
She was right, of course.
I knew I should stop her. In some ways, though, I didn’t really want to. Also, I didn’t know how. If I tried anything Thelma didn’t like, she might yell. The last thing I wanted right then, was for one of the other women to wake up and find us like this.
So I just knelt there, watching while she unbuckled her belt, un-fastened the waist button of her shorts, and pulled her zipper down.
The shorts dropped to her knees.
I expected to see panties, but didn’t.
She had no pubic hair, to speak of. Just a bulging triangle with dark whiskers like a guy might get on his jaw if he goes a day or two without shaving.
Is that what she’d wanted to show me—where Wesley’d shaved her?
Maybe there were injuries to see, but I didn’t keep looking. I turned away fast. Off beyond the fire, there was no sign of movement at the sleeping area. I thought, Thank God.
Somehow, I had to make Thelma stop all this.
I had to do it on my own.
Things had gone way too far. I never should’ve untied her hands. One thing had led to another, and now I couldn’t see how to end it. Not without shouting for help.
What would they think, if they found us like this?
What I ought to do, I thought, is back off, get away from her, grab the ax and stand up and order her, point blank, to pull her shorts up and…
Something tipped me off.
I still had my head turned and was staring toward the sleeping area. I had no intention of looking in Thelma’s direction again until I’d backed away. But something happened. I don’t know what. Maybe I’d heard a quiet sound that didn’t belong. Maybe I’d caught a movement in my peripheral vision. Sensed a change in the air. Something.
I turned my head.
Glimpsed Thelma’s hand lurching up toward my belly with a straight razor.
No fooling, a straight razor. The kind with a blade that folds into its handle—the kind of thing that nobody in his right mind would even own, except a barber. Because they’re so damn nasty, and it’s too easy to cut yourself by accident if you try to shave with one, and you can’t help but think about the sort of damage a crazy woman might do to you if she got her hands on it.
I don’t know where the hell Thelma got it.
All I know is that all of a sudden I found her with the damn thing in her hand, and she was about to run it up my belly and split me open.
I let out a yelp and threw myself backward off my knees.
She missed.
I didn’t feel anything, but saw her razor-wielding hand sweep up past my face as if she still had hopes of dividing my nose in half.
Then I flopped against the sand.
I shoved myself up with my elbows, not sure whether to kick at her or try scurrying away on my back.
For the moment, she wasn’t coming at me. Her head was turned aside.
Was Kimberly getting up?
I didn’t waste time trying to find out what Thelma was looking at. She was distracted, at least for a moment. That’s what counted.
An extra second to put some distance between me and that blade.
I dug in my elbows and heels and started scooting myself across the sand on my back.
Right away, she noticed.
The instant her eyes shifted in my direction, I cried out, “Help! Help!”
She came waddling toward me like someone whose legs had been chopped off at the knees. Her shorts were still down. They had her trapped, so she couldn’t move very fast. Not fast enough to catch me as I kept scooting away.
She was a real vision.
Lurching and flopping flesh, too well lit by a long shot, in spite of the shadows—her bruised, swollen face grinning. She waved both arms overhead as she kneed her way after me. The razor in her right hand flashed firelight.