Past The Patch Page 8

She stepped closer, still smiling. The people around them left for the party below and they stood alone. “What exactly is fun to you?” Jimmy quivered, he felt a pull in his gut and his loins, but felt the shame equally. Jimmy stammered and then said, “I don’t know.” He didn’t know, that was the damnable thing about it.

  The girl in the white mask laughed, she raised a hand to his cheek and touched him. Her touch was warm and inviting. His head spun at that instant, feeling a girl’s hand against his skin was more than he ever handled before. “Well, let me show you,” she whispered.

  Jimmy’s body tingled, but he looked around to see who was watching him. His eyes scanned for Felicia, but again, she was nowhere to be found.

  The party had moved downstairs, people dancing amidst the fire’s glow.

  Their shadows dancing against the trees. “What about Stacey?” The girl looked at him, unblinking. “What about Stacey?”

  “I kinda came here to see her.” Jimmy sighed, feeling foolish.

  “Oh. I’m sorry, then.” The girl dropped her chin and curtsied. “I’m sorry to bother you.”

  She had gotten a few steps away from him, when he grabbed her hand. He had no idea what he was doing or why he was doing it, other than he was at the mercy of the moment. She turned back and locked eyes with him.

  “Plans change.” He smiled.

  She smiled too, “So they do.”

  Felicia danced around the fire, whipping her long green cloak. The flames licked at the flinging cloth. She whooped as her hips moved with the music, swinging her hair around as well. To everyone there, she looked like a dancing fire nymph, slinging flames as she moved. Many of the men watched this dance, her eyes meeting with many of them. She flung her cloak again, this time revealing she was wearing very little underneath. Her breasts and sex were covered by a thin layer of leather underwear. She had her intentions for the night, and was set on getting it. A few of the other female party-goers groan in disgust at the sight, shouting obscenities at the dancing nymph. A few others joined her in a rather seductive dance. The ladies danced against the flames, casting exaggerated shadows upon the illuminated ground. Many men tried to hide their interest, but it was impossible, they drew ever closer.

  Jimmy walked through the party with the girl at his wrist; she was leading him into the woods. His face burned from a mixture of embarrassment and the intense heat of the pyres. The girl walked quickly, determined.

  “Where are we going?”

  The girl stopped long enough to turn around, move her mask up a little and kiss Jimmy.

  Jimmy’s head spun as if he were intoxicated. The askewed faces of the party-goers, the flickering flames, all spun into a kaleidoscope of images.

  His feet were moving again before he snapped back to reality. Again they were moving, now further from the party. The air became crisp and cool as they stepped closer into the darkness.

  “I-I don’t even know your name.”

  “Anna.” She came to a stop just behind another line of trees. She stepped over to a stump and sat down.

  The party could still be seen not far off. Women were dancing provocatively and Jimmy couldn’t care less. He turned his attention to the sitting maiden. “Anna? I like that. I’m-”

  “Jimmy,” Anna said. “I know your name, I know you in fact.”

  “How?”

  “Does it matter? Or does it matter more that I want you?” Jimmy’s eyes widened as she said she wanted him. He felt his body quivering in anticipation.

  “Do you want me?” Anna said, leaning back a little against the stump.

  “Yes.” Jimmy rasped.

  Anna giggled. “Why did you really come out here, Jimmy?”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Your real reason for coming out here with me; did you think you were going to get laid?”

  Jimmy shook his head, “I just wanted to take the chance and spend some time with someone other than my friends tonight. You captured my attention.”

  Anna nodded. Her mask looked grotesque under the moonlight; her eyes had become black, lifeless sockets that stared deep into him. “Stacey always throws these parties. Tonight’s a special occasion. The Full Moon Gala.”

  “What is that?” Jimmy knelt down before Anna, his hands slowly creeping to touch her leg. His stomach quivered as he did so, almost making him rethink his move.

  “Well, it’s no mystery that hundreds of years ago the Kell family had a supposed “witch” in their family. People ostracized her and cast her out of the town. She lived here, in the manor. Every full moon she’d have a ritual where she’d dance naked under the moon, cleansing herself for a new beginning. Every full moon.”

  “You’re kidding,” Jimmy said, sitting back. “I don’t believe that.

  Witches aren’t real. Aren’t they a little too Halloween for us?” Jimmy laughed.

  “Actually, witches follow nature. There is no demon worship or bloodletting of virgin children. It’s just a belief to readmit you to the earth and be cleansed.” Anna sat up straight and grasped the front of Jimmy’s cloak and pulled him close. “Do you want to see me dance?” she whispered in his ear.

  “Y-Yes.”

  Anna got to her feet and removed her cloak. She wore a shirt and pants underneath, and she slowly lifted her shirt revealing her stomach. She stopped, “You know it’s not fair you’re seeing me without me seeing you.”

  “I can’t.” Jimmy looked around. “What if someone sees me?” Anna lifted her shirt a little higher exposing the bottom of her bra covered breasts. “Please?”

  Jimmy got to his feet and removed his cloak. As he did, Anna removed her shirt and began to remove her pants. He did the same, stopping only for a moment to feel the bitter cool chill across his bare skin. Anna stood in her panties and bra, still wearing her mask.

  “Can I see your face?” Jimmy asked.

  “No. I like it like this. We can still be mysterious. Besides, what if you don’t like my face?” She didn’t give him time to answer before she unsnapped her bra and it fell to the grass. Her breasts were not big, a high B, but Jimmy was paying full attention to them. He wanted to reach out and touch her, and stepped forward. “No,” she said. “Lose the boxers.” Jimmy looked down and realized his boxers were still on, and they were scarcely holding him back as he grew hard. He hesitated for a moment, thumbed the band and dropped them, exposing himself to Anna and the moon light. He waited for her to start laughing or for this all to be a great practical joke on him. Ha ha! Get the geeky kid naked and beat him senseless.

  Nothing happened. Anna did not laugh at him. No one came out with a camera to film this moment. Instead, she followed suit and dropped her panties. Jimmy took a moment feasting his eyes on her body; this was the closest he’d ever been to a real naked woman before. His hands reached out for her, he wanted to touch her soft flesh and hold her close. His hormones were racing and his erection was hard as a rock. “Anna, you’re so beautiful.”

  “Ha, you’re just saying that because you’re horny and you know that I want you.” She stepped backward, into the moon light. She began to rock her hips as she danced in circles. “Come on! Dance with me!” Jimmy took one look around before joining her. So what, if anyone saw him he still had his mask on, so did she. Besides, there was so much more happening at the party. He looked over for a second and a gathering around the fire told him the party was getting a little heavy. He turned back to Anna who was motioning him to come forward. His erection was subsiding due to the cold and her body prickled with gooseflesh.

  He danced closer to her, they were mere feet apart. “So do you get a lot of guys naked and dancing with you?”

  Anna said, “More than you’d think. But usually it’s in reverse. They dance then I get them naked.” She laughed as she stepped closer to Jimmy.

  He could feel the faint warmth of her body as they were almost touching. He stopped dancing, and instead she placed her hands on his stomach making it visibly quiver and suck in. She took l
ong steps around him, her hands never leaving his flesh. She was all around him, and the scent of her skin began to overthrow his senses as she danced. His eyes closed and rolled into the back of his head.

  “Oh God,” he spoke as her touch tickled his skin making him grow hot.

  “Shh…” she whispered as she circled him again and then stopped in front of him. His eyes remained closed and she moved her mask aside and pressed her lips to his. Her lips caressed his and he felt her tongue slowly slide into his mouth. He wrapped his arms around her and could feel her against him. She was cold but her mouth was hot. He began to feel himself grow again, and he tried to hide it, but was unsuccessful.

  “Jeez, persistent isn’t he?” Anna shook her head.

  “I’m sorry. In fact,” Jimmy opened his eyes and said, “I have never actually done this before.”

  “Danced in the moonlight?”

  “No, what I think we’re about to do. Well, I hope what we’re going to do.”

  Anna placed her finger over Jimmy’s lips and nodded. Relaxing warmth overtook him. She took his hand and laid him on the ground. “I want this as much as you do.”

  Jimmy placed his hands on her arms as she knelt before him. She kissed her way down his stomach and then took him into her mouth. He exhaled in ecstasy as she did this. Jimmy moaned as she continued, never feeling anything like this before.

  “Do you like that?” She stopped long enough to ask.

  “Y-Yes.”

  Anna stood up and Jimmy watched her as she lowered herself on top of him, and he then felt the true warmth of her body. She moaned as she slid down, and then began rocking back and forth. She ran her hands up her body, rubbing her breasts and then finally running her hands through her hair. She began to moan as then pant. “Aren’t you glad we cleansed ourselves? God this is such a sin.” She snickered as she continued to make love.

  “A sin, that feels so good.” Jimmy said in between moans.

  The ground was cool and wet, but Jimmy didn’t mind as he was growing warm. The ground seemed to hug his body. His senses were completely blown away with Anna making love to him, the smell of the earth beneath him and the smoldering fire in the distance.

  Anna’s breath became more erratic, her hips bucked with the passion and finally she climaxed with a hard thrust; her muscles squeezing Jimmy as she did. She bucked again, climaxing again and as she did this she ripped aside her mask and kissed his mouth hard. Jimmy kissed back, their tongues twirling and dancing together as their owners did just a short while ago.

  Anna was not letting up. Her kiss was getting deeper, the ground hugging him more, her struggled to move his arms, but they were planted.

  The earth was embracing them. Jimmy went to scream into Anna’s mouth but she only kissed harder. He rocked against her but she only kept her pressure on him. Their bodies comingled into the earth as it drew them in.

  Anna broke the kiss and looked down at Jimmy. Jimmy let out a terrified scream that fell short of the orgasmic moans from around the fire just a few hundred feet away. “Help me,” he cried. He turned his gaze up to Anna and began to weep. “Please, help me.”

  Anna kissed his lips again; again he screamed. She held her kiss until he stopped screaming a minute later. Her legs were planted too, but with a little effort she raised her foot out of the shallow. She wiped her lips and then stared at the spot where Jimmy was just moments before.

  “I give you this, Mother. In return, you feed on this pure heart. Heal yourself, so one day you can be as strong as you once were.” Anna kissed her hand and then touched the earth.

  Anna gathered her clothes and began to walk back to the party. She pulled her cloak back on over her naked body and adjusted the mask. Stacey was in a compromising position in front of the fire, a man was behind her thrusting, and she was face down moaning just a few feet from the flickering. Stacey’s mere acts of fornication belittled everything the tradition stood for. Her party guests slammed into each other like grotesque beasts with human flesh. The dank sweat and sex odor assaulted from all sides, compounded by the intense heat of the fading pyres.

  “Anna! Get out of here, before Mom and Dad kill me!” Stacey yelled, still in the throes of passion.

  “Sorry, Stacey.” Anna said as she scurried into the house. Anna did not look up again until she was inside the house, from there she watched where the party was, and occasionally glanced in the distance where Jimmy and her consummated.

  A faint smile crossed her lips, she would miss him.

  EDDY

  H.H. Shullith

  Preferring to talk to animals and not people, H.H. Shullith lives in a bohemian loft in the northwest, where she writes novels and delights in showing visitors her collection of fully functional diesel-powered chain-driven sex toys.

  ***

  Lomax was a prosecutor for Multnomah County and the terror of the city of Portland until he found his true calling. Time after time the conservative, capitalistic and callous Benson Lomax would swoop into a courtroom and somehow convince a mostly Democratic, extremely liberal jury plucked from liberal enclaves like Hawthorne or Multnomah Village that the accused was dangerous, unrepentant and a risk to public safety and had to be locked away. He won almost every case and took great delight in the fact that he was known in the public defender’s office as the ballcrusher.

  Lomax didn’t care about anything but money and power and what they bought him; property, prestige and pussy. It wasn’t until he was forced to appear at a benefit for special needs foster children that he realized how empty his life was and what good he could still do with the years he had left.

  He never dwelled on his sudden conversion, and didn’t attribute it to conscience or God. He tried not to think about it, afraid he might jinx the joy he found in his new life.

  Lomax retired. He cashed in his chips and bought a huge spread in Montana. Once a working ranch, the Big Sky Estate became a haven for foster children who could not fit in anywhere else, children who had been shunned, locked up, and abused.

  Lomax was once razor sharp and whippet thin, as keen and dangerous as a honed blade, and just as heartless.

  Lomax was older now. He was fatter, gentler, easy to laugh, full of love and fiercely protective of the six children who were now his children.

  Lomax had lost his edge . . . at a time when that edge was needed most.

  “You sure you got the right fuckin road?” Brenda was in the back seat of the old Chevy, behind Patty, who was driving.

  “I’m sure,” Patty said. She was usually too timid for Brenda’s taste but she knew how to handle a car. Driving was why she had been locked up.

  She drove getaway for a boyfriend with two bad habits; a meth addiction and a compulsion to rob banks. The fact that the dumb shit panicked on their last job and shot an off-duty cop who tried to defuse a tense situation didn’t help.

  Patty had expected to spend the rest of her life in prison thanks to Benson Lomax, a horrible man who had seemed to enjoy ruining her life, until her sentence was reduced on a legal technicality from homicide to attempted robbery, with time served. She had gone into prison at nineteen, and had turned twenty-three the day she was released.

  Brenda looked at Liz, who sat across from Patty in the driver’s seat.

  “You sure you know how to read a fuckin map?”

  “Don’t be such a bitch,” Liz said. Liz was tiny and lovely and looked much younger than thirty-six. She had been an accountant in a law firm until her boss had grabbed her one evening, called her his little China doll, and tried to kiss her. Liz had reacted by grabbing a letter-opener on her boss’s desk, one that looked like a tiny ceremonial sword. As her boss had breathed cognac-scented breath in her face and asked if her tight slant-eye slit was getting wet yet, she stabbed him in the groin and cut him from nuts to navel.

  “I’m Vietnamese, you pig,” she’d told him them. He bled out and died before anyone could even call 911. In court, Liz tried to argue that she was only defending herself
. The prosecutor, that cold bastard named Lomax, brought up her history of failed relationships and made her look unstable and dangerous. She was put away for ten years.

  “Why don’t you lick my cunt?” Brenda was a big woman in her early fifties who often said, “Yeah, I’m a fuckin dyke, you got a problem with that?” She had beaten a man to death in a bar with her bare hands after he had seen her kissing her girlfriend at the time and had said they were the most ass-ugly rug-munchers he’d ever seen. Her lawyer was able to argue diminished capacity, Brenda was utterly shitfaced at the time, but Lomax had still put her away for twenty years.

  “That’s my job, bitch,” Marisa said, her accent heavy. Marisa was twenty-eight, unspeakably beautiful, and unspeakably mean. She was also a former member of the Norteños who had been locked up for assault, arson and grand theft. The three strikes Lomax used to send her to prison were finally reduced to one after his retirement and after she spent a year sucking off two public defenders, a local representative of La Raza who publicized her mistreatment under the law as racial injustice, and a Ninth Circuit Court judge. She was sitting in the back seat beside Brenda. Her shoes were off and she had her feet in Brenda’s lap. Brenda kissed one of her toes, and she squealed. “Ayyy, mami!”

  All of them had met in the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville. The women thought they had been screwed by Lomax. All of them thought Lomax should be made to pay. Brenda and Marisa were the most aggressive on that final point, they wanted to tear Lomax’s balls off and make him eat them. Liz was on the fence, but wanted the chance for a face to face with Lomax to plead her case and point out that he had been wrong, as pointless at that would be. Patty was just following in their wake.

  She had no friends or family and nowhere else to go.

  “Here’s the turn,” Liz said, pointing to a narrow road on the right.

  Patty turned off the state road and onto what was not a road at all, but the five mile driveway to Big Sky Estates.