(This is the full story; you can also read it by installment.)
What surprised her the most was the roughness of the ride. This was the first time she had flown in anything with a propeller, and it was nothing like flying in a commercial airliner. Every change in wind speed and direction, every buffet of air seemed to be transferred from the plane directly to her spine.
But here--in the heart of the Alaskan wilderness--is where she needed to be. She had worked extra shifts at St. Elizabeth’s for the past six months to raise the money for this dream vacation--a four-week guided tour of the wild interior of Alaska. Over the last two weeks, she had camped, canoed, and hiked some of Alaska’s wildest places with a group of 12 other adventurers and three guides. Part of the travel package was an aerial tour of Canada’s Yukon Territory. She wasn’t too fond of flying, but she knew it was a trip that she had to take.
Charlotte knew that she was an environmentalist before she knew what the word meant. She had always had a fierce love of nature. According to her mother, Charlotte’s first word wasn’t "mommy" or "daddy," but "squirrel," not an easy utterance for an 18-month-old. Her second word, "cat," came a few days later, followed by her first sentence, "Cat kiss squirrel," when she saw her second word eating the intestines out of her first on the front porch.
Charlotte didn’t just love nature; she protected it. When she was six she told her dad that her imaginary friend, Frieda, lived in the top of an evergreen in their backyard so that he wouldn’t cut it down. It didn’t work, so at eight she put sugar in the gas tank of his chainsaw to save an apple tree from a similar fate.
That was back in 1980. Ronald Reagan had just been elected to office. During the next 12 years (eight under Reagan and four under Bush--some of the darkest years of U.S. environmental policy), Charlotte developed into one of the most notorious eco-terrorist in the country. When she was 16, she ran away from home and joined Serenity Now, a Seattle-based environmental group known for taking extreme measures to protect the environment. For the next two years, she ate granola, spiked trees and chained herself in front of the occasional corporate office. By 18 she was planning the sabotage of oilrigs, and when she was 20 she served six months in a Texas jail for criminal trespass for breaking into Texaco’s Dallas headquarters in an attempt to sabotage their computer system.
The time in jail sobered her up and made her pessimistic. She came to believe that the destruction of the earth was inevitable. In the long run, no efforts--either legal or illegal--could win out over greed and power. So she went back home, got her GED and enrolled in nursing school. She couldn’t save the world, but maybe she could save a few lives.
But now another Bush was in the White House, and she felt the sting of her old anger. That motherfucker planned on turning Alaska into one huge oil field. She needed to get back to her roots, back to nature. It was time to make that trip to Alaska.
Eddie knew he was a good pilot. Everybody he ever flew with agreed he was the most natural flyer they’d ever seen. He took his first flying lesson on his sixteenth birthday, and was a licensed private pilot within six weeks. His instructor marveled at Eddie’s skill. You only had to show him a maneuver once and he had it down pat. Eddie soloed at ten hours and was doing touch-and-goes in 20-knot cross winds before he had two weeks of lessons under his belt. He got all of his ratings at an incredible pace. Private, instrument, commercial, CFI. He was flying in the right seat of a DC-9, by his 21st birthday, and was in the left seat before he turned 24. Usually you had to be at least 30 to be a captain for United, but they made an exception for Eddie. He was that good.
But airline flying bored the shit out of him. All he did was follow directions. Air traffic control told him when to take off, when to land, how high to fly and how fast. After two years as a captain, he was burned out. So he left United and took a job as a bush pilot in Alaska for a quarter of the pay. He took up anybody willing to pay the $1,000--hunters, environmentalist, geologists--as long as they had the money, he didn’t give a shit.
He was in love with flying again. Bush flying was flying at its purest. Any moron could learn to fly an airliner, but flying bush took a level of skill the average Joe Rudder would never achieve. In six years as a bush pilot he had flown in blinding blizzards and thunderstorms with 80 mph updrafts. He had taken off and landed on streambeds no wider than a highway with potholes that would catch your landing gear and flip the plane in half a second. But he wasn’t a Top Gun pilot. He was cocky, but he was smart. He knew that even a minor mistake, especially over the Alaskan wilderness, could be his last. That’s why he was as surprised as anyone when his plane with six passengers ran out of gas 1,000 feet above the Alaskan Interior.
Charlotte lay dozing in the deep grass of a broad Alaskan river valley. She was awake, but pretending to sleep, as she listened to the two strangers talk.
"A kill a, a kill a…dead!"
These were the first words that she’d heard the youngest passenger utter. On the plane she’d noticed the tall, frightened teenager with the thick features, but she hadn’t heard him say a word until now.
"A kill a wit a mallet. Bam! Dead." Charlotte scrunched her eyes a little tighter.
During the flight the young man’s face betrayed a perpetual look of fright, from the time of takeoff, through the routine first hour of the journey, until the horrifying nose dive which just preceded Charlotte’s blacking out. She knew that all the events of the crash would come racing back to her in a flashback, but not just yet.
"You ever been with one, Leroy?" It was the other man talking now, the slender, red-faced man with the silver-gray ponytail.
"Chances are, you haven’t. Only one in every ten thousand does it. But, just between you and me, it’s probably more like one in two thousand because, if you ask a woman, she’ll lie about it." He took a quick drag from his Camel and winked at the frightened youngster. "Still, looking at you, boy, those are long odds." He cackled for a moment before the laughing fit turned into a smoker’s cough.
Charlotte peeked one eye open and glimpsed Leroy chattering his teeth into the fingertips of both his hands, like an actor in a silent movie would do to convey fear. But this habit seemed genuine in the boy; she’d seen him do it on the plane.
All seven people had survived the crash the night before, but only she and Leroy and Felix were lying by the fire now. Charlotte hoped some of the others would return soon. She didn’t feel comfortable unless the preacher and his wife were nearby.
"It’s a glorious autumn day that God has given us, my dear friends!" Charlotte didn’t raise her head, but she knew the sound of Reverend Causewell’s voice as he approached the campsite from the river.
"The Lord has spared our lives and given us fair weather," agreed Mrs. Causewell, "We should be grateful."
The preacher set down a load of two-liter Coke bottles, which he and his wife had filled with water. Felix twisted off the cap of one of them and hefted it to his lips. Mrs. Causewell sat down heavily in the wet grass with a good-natured sigh. Charlotte had noticed that she’d split the rear of her slacks when she was climbing out of the wreckage. Now she heard them rip just a little more as her heavy bottom touched ground.
"You know, through misfortune, God grants us the gift of opportunity." The cheerful look seemed never to leave her face. "Here He’s blessed each of us with the opportunity to reach out to six other beautiful living souls. Let’s get acquainted, shall we!" She grasped both her elbows tightly, cozying in, it would seem, to her particular place on the living, breathing earth. And, as Charlotte saw through slit eyelids, matting down an ever widening circle of dewy grass.
Leroy was nibbling his fingertips again. Mrs. Causewell, with an expression so exaggeratedly pleasant that Charlotte decided it must be real, launched into a stream of ingratiating chit-chat.
"Do you go to school, young man?"
Leroy sat petrified. He looked at the preacher’s wife, then at his shoes. "A kill a bovines."
The preacher’s wife hardly let the smile wane from her face. Felix took a puff from his cigarette and said, "I don’t think Leroy’s smart enough to go to school. From what I’ve been able to tell, I think they’ve got him working in a slaughterhouse."
"Oh, how nice! . . . I mean, how sad." The preacher’s wife presented a range of facial expressions. Leroy looked straight down at his belt buckle.
"Don’t be embarrassed, young man." Reverend Causewell said. "You provide food for the table, and that’s a noble occupation. All work is holy." The preacher turned quickly to Felix. "What do you do for a living, sir?"
"I produce and direct niche-market movies in Southern California."
The preacher stoked the fire cautiously.
"Oh! A movie director," Mrs. Causewell chimed in. "My goodness, we feel honored."
"What are these movies about?" the preacher asked, wishing that he hadn’t.
"Reverend, did you know that only one woman in every ten thousand gushes?"
Charlotte tensed at the mention of the word "gush." Felix winked at Mrs. Causewell, then added, "But me and the boy here know better."
"Gush?" Mrs. Causewell tried not to show her ignorance. "Oh! Yes, yes. I see what you’re saying. Oh, you should see my daughter Amanda when she gets going. She came home from college last May, and she gushed and gushed and gushed! ‘Oh, mama, I missed you to death. You look so fabulous, I just love you soooo much!’ You should hear her, that’s the way she talks. But I didn’t know it was such a rare commodity."
Felix snickered quietly and said, "Well, it is."
"Now, the gushing…how do you make a movie out of that? What’s the story?" Mrs. Causewell loved to discuss film.
"There’s not much of a story. The gushing is the important part."
"Oh, I didn’t realize. So I guess you have to cast topnotch talent, if the performers are going to carry the film. Like a young Elizabeth Taylor or a Shirley Temple."
"Yeah, recruiting the girls is most of the job."
"How do you go about doing that?"
"Usually, I audition them myself."
"Oh, so you do some acting as well as directing."
"I guess you could put it that way," Felix said with a sly smile. "In the movie itself, I usually let the younger fellas have their way. They can maintain wood better than I can."
The preacher pushed at the burning logs with a stick and sparks flew up into the air. "Harriet, I think you should leave this man alone."
"Oh, Richard, this is just getting good. I’ve never met a movie director." She sat forward with her chin in her palm, taking on the pose of someone engaged in a deep intellectual discussion.
"Now, why would you want them to ‘maintain wood,’ as you say? If the acting is wooden, doesn’t that hurt the film?"
"Lady, if you don’t have wood, you don’t have a gush movie."
"Oh, yes, of course, I see. The wooden acting by the men plays the foil to the gushing of, say, a Shirley Temple or a Dale Evans." Mrs. Causewell tried to read whether her knowledge of dramatic terms was impressing the director. She pressed on. "Felix, as you can probably tell, I’ve done a little acting in my day. Do you think that I might be the type you’re looking for, if you were casting a film?"
"Harriet!"
"Shoosh, it doesn’t hurt to ask!"
"It all depends on whether you gush."
"Oh, I gush all right." She chuckled lightly. "Not like Amanda, though. She’s the real gusher in the family. She met her boyfriend at the airport two weeks ago, and she just gushed all over him. That Rory really brings out the gushing in her."
"Our daughter does no such thing!" Reverend Causewell was frantic to change the subject. He jabbed at Leroy and said, "You, boy! Tell us about those bovines."
Leroy was so startled he almost fell off his tree stump, but he looked up and saw the preacher waiting for him to talk. After a pause, he uttered tentatively, "One time, a fouled ma-self." He felt the eyes of everyone staring at him, and he turned as red as his Coke bottle. He promptly resumed chewing on his fingers.
The preacher groaned inwardly. Then Felix, to humor himself, said, "Mrs. Causewell, I think I’d be more interested in your daughter."
"Oh, really."
"Yes. No disrespect intended to you, but in a movie, the younger the ‘actress’ is, the better."
Mrs. Causewell made a conscious effort not to let the smile erode from her face.
"You see, I’ve done studies. Among that select group of women who gush, the younger they are, the more they gush."
"I guess that explains Amanda then," Mrs. Causewell chirped, somewhat less enthusiastically.
"That’s why I usually audition only eighteen- or nineteen-year-olds. That’s when they’re still nice and juicy."
"You don’t say."
Leroy sat up and threw a stone into the fire. "One thing a know," he said abruptly. "They’s eyes don’t close sometimes, even after a kilt a."
"You don’t say," said the preacher.
Charlotte should have been disturbed by Leroy’s insight into slaughtering cattle. She’d been a vegetarian since she was a child and, in her activist days, she’d even protested in front of a meat-packing plant once. But the boy’s comment was welcome relief from Mrs. Causewell’s humiliation of herself. Charlotte hoped silently that the true nature of Felix’s business would dawn on her.
"Now, when you say ‘juicy,’ what exactly do you mean?"
"Well, we were doing a cowgirl scene with this one young gal, and I was in close, filming a tight shot of the action, and when she gushed, I got totally drenched."
"Cowgirl. Oh! A western." Mrs. Causewell’s chin was back in the palm of her hand.
"As a matter of fact, I did have her dressed in a cowboy hat and chaps."
"And you were ‘on location’ . . . outside . . . and it started raining . . . so you got drenched. Am I right?"
Felix just smiled.
"I swear, I can read you like a book." Mrs. Causewell leaned forward on her haunches and brushed flirtatiously at Felix’s arm. "It’s so nice to have a kindred soul out here in the wild—another lover of the visual arts." As Mrs. Causewell sat back down, Charlotte heard her pants split a little bit more.
Charlotte smiled, but she knew she was stranded in a dangerous place where she could very well die if she and her companions didn’t make intelligent survival decisions. And what a group of companions they were. She wondered how such a group of people could have been formed. None of the other adventurers in her Alaska tour had chosen to take the flight out of Fairbanks, but she insisted on seeing the Canadian interior. She glanced at Leroy. What in the heck was this dim-wit doing on a Yukon Territory tour flight? And Felix. How could you explain this man being so far out of his natural habitat? She knew she would have to take a leading role if they were to find their way back to civilization. But she wasn’t ready to step forward yet; she was scared.
Mrs. Causewell put Charlotte’s misgivings into words, though she applied a different spin to the situation.
"We’re so blessed to have a group of people such as this, experiencing this hardship together. It’s the hand of God at work."
Charlotte saw Reverend Causewell look Felix in the eye and say, "It’s the hand of the devil."
Megan Varsho sat apart from the rest of the group, staring at the ground in disbelief. "I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to this," she thought to herself. "This fucking project was cursed from the start."
Between the success of her subscription Web site and the generous support she'd received from her newly wealthy Uncle Gary, Megan no longer needed to star in porn films to make a living. She'd decided months ago that Penis and Crackerjack would be her last one.
But Penis and Crackerjack wasn't just another porno. A wealthy ex-baseball player had specially commissioned the project, and he'd given Felix a tremendous amount of money to make it. Megan stood to make more from this film than she did from all her previous films combined.
Still, Megan was right: This fucking project was cursed from the start. A baseball-themed porno set in the Alaskan wilderness? That doesn't even make sense! And the idea of involving real-life bear cubs was just sick, and quite dangerous as well.
The plane running out of gas was only the latest in a long line of disasters involving the film. Just weeks before departure, Megan’s original co-star was found dead in a Chicago apartment. And just days after that, the Alaskan animal handler responsible for the bear cubs suffered several lacerated parts in a rehearsal exercise.
Now this. Stranded in the Alaskan wilderness with a preacher and his wife, a deranged slaughterhouse boy, a prissy vegetarian, and a cocky bush pilot. If she survived this, she swore to herself, she would leave the porn business for good.
The sign outside, any of the bartenders would tell you, says it all. THE STRIPE. ALASKA'S ONLY REGGAE BAR. OPEN 24 HOURS.
It was a curious place, one that made any patron outside of the regular crowd pause with curiosity. Stripping down from the layers of clothes required by the outside elements, customers undressed into another world, as if The Stripe's doors led to another dimension. After you entered from the tiny wilderness town of Talkeetna and tossed back the fur-lined hood of your jacket and stomped snow from your boots, you stepped into a scene straight from the Caribbean. Christmas lights hung from plastic palm trees; red, yellow, and black flags and banners hung from everything else. The heads of three stuffed tigers looked down from above the bar: one had a picture of Bob Marley in its teeth, one had a picture of the Jamaican bobsled team, and one had a picture of Elvis. A cigar store Indian wearing a wig of dreadlocks stood next to the jukebox.
Women stripped to cutoff shorts and bikini tops and slurped fruity drinks injected with rum. Men draped themselves in casual wear from Tommy Bahama that was at least two summers old. Boots gathered in the boot checkroom and everyone shuffled to the sounds of that night's cover band in assorted sandals from Nike, Teva, Adidas, and Target. If they knew you and if they were tipped properly, waitresses would serve small joints with your drinks.
This was every night at The Stripe, one of 26 known reggae bars in the state. Last call was at 3 a.m.
The unspoken rule at The Stripe was that no one interrupted Marcus Liberty and Jim Hafner. You listened, you laughed, you cheered in agreement, you shouted in disagreement, but you did not interrupt, interject, or intervene. It was part talk show, part variety show, and part stupid human tricks. But it was their show.
"I swear to you, the goiter was as big as a grapefruit," Liberty yelled over the soft rhythms of that week's band, Stefan and the Rastafarians. The crowd laughed behind him; they had all heard the story before.
"W, W, W, dot Jake bags another, dot com," Hafner answered with his usual non sequitur, pounding the bar as he rattled off his URL. "It'll be the best thing on the Web. No one else is doing it."
The men laughed and the women booed.
"No one is doing it?!" Liberty shot back. "Do you know how much porn is on the Internet?"
"Do you know what industry is making money on the Internet?"
More laughter, more booing. Hafner's idea was simple: He took his life's passion-screwing women-and turned it into a moneymaking venture. In his 42 years, 27 of them sexually active, he had nailed 142 women. And after each encounter, he would excuse himself from the bed (or sofa, or floor, or tabletop) and his German shepherd Jake would take his spot next to the lucky female. Then Hafner would return with a camera and snap a picture. Hafner's collection of Polaroids-featuring strippers, barflies, divorcees, and college students, all smiling playfully and unashamedly for the camera, as if they had just had sexual encounter with a dog-originally had provided only masturbatory pleasure for Hafner and a few of his friends.
Now he was an e-entrepreneur, already with 321 subscribers to www.jakebagsanother.com. His customers paid $8.95 a month to view Hafner's conquests posed seemingly in post-coital contentment with his dog (he's on his third "Jake" now).
"I'm indexed with all the bestiality sites," he continued. "And now I've got women sending me photos with their own dogs. I'm adding to the site every week." He paused, turned to the crowd, and shouted, "Who wants to be next?"
Hafner was an electrician by trade and a pilot on the side. Women were his passion, and flying was his hobby, one he took very seriously. He had been doing glacier landings in the area for more than 10 years and he and his partner Eddie Frazier had lobbied hard against the plan that would have severely limited such flights a few years earlier. They shuttled tourists on a regular basis, sailing over the Interior and touching down on slabs of ice as big as any airport they had been to . . . all to the wonderment of their passengers. He was a celebrity in Talkeetna, for his flying, for his entertainment at The Stripe, and now for his web site.
"Really, y'all don't have to get down with me," he yelled through his laughter. "Just lie there next to Jake. Won't take you but a minute."
The news of the crash was slow to travel to Talkeetna. All news was slow to travel there. Located some 60 miles north of Anchorage, it sat exactly in the middle of nowhere. If a plane crashed more than a few miles away, news had to come via special delivery.
"Jimmy!" A shout came from the back on the crowd as the laughter died, and all anyone could hear was Stefan and the Rastafarians softly singing a Marley cover . . . "Don't worry, 'bout a t'ing. Cuz ev'ry little t'ing, 's gonna be all right. . . ." The crowd turned in surprise toward the interruption. Hafner craned to see who it was. "Jimmy! It's Eddie. They think his plane is down."
"Where?"
"Not sure. Anchorage said they lost contact."
"When?"
"Not sure. Maybe eight, 10 hours ago. I don't know."
"Survivors?"
The messenger just shrugged. Hafner ran to the door and headed for his Ford Explorer.
Jimmy grabbed Jake’s collar and pulled him into the airplane. “Common you stubborn fuck. I don’t have time for this.”
Jake hated flying, and had ever since he was a pup. The first time Jimmy took him up in a plane, he yowled and whimpered for the duration of the flight. The first two Jakes had loved flying, and Jimmy was dumfounded when Jake III turned out to be such a pussy. But he was determined to make Jake a flying dog, so he took him up every chance he got. At first, Jimmy kept things simple: gentle banks, smooth descents, greased landings. When Jake continued to cry through the easy flights, he decided to crank it up a notch. He strapped Jake into a makeshift doggie harness and went through a sequence of hammerhead stalls, barrel rolls, spins, and inverted flight. He put the pup through every maneuver the airframe could take. He hoped to scare Jake’s fears out of him. Of course it didn’t work. So in one last desperate attempt to make Jake a flyer, they took off on a moonless night during the heart of the arctic winter. Jimmy surmised that Jake wouldn’t be afraid of what he couldn’t see. But Jake didn’t need to see to be scared. The second the plane left the ground, he crammed his head under the co-pilot's seat and began to cry. Twenty minutes later, Jimmy began to cry himself when both engines of his Cessna Skymaster came to a sudden halt. Here they were, 10,000 feet above the black void of the Alaskan wilderenss; Jimmy couldn’t make out the horizon, let alone a suitable landing field. As they drifted silently down toward what he accepted as their inevitable doom, Jimmy replayed every sexual conquest in his head.
It was only through blind luck that they survived. Instead of descending into the side of a mountain, or a thick forest, the plane came down in the middle of a frozen arctic lake. Jimmy yanked back on the yolk the second his landing lights illuminated the wind-swept ice. Apart from some minor damage to the landing gear, the plane didn’t suffer a scratch.
Now Jimmy saw Jake as a good luck charm. Anytime he took off on what he thought of as a dangerous mission, Jake had to come with him. And this—to put it mildly—was a dangerous mission. In one smooth motion, Jimmy pushed the throttle to the firewall and accelerated down the runway. With a small growl and a resigned whimper, Jake stuffed his head firmly under the co-pilot's seat.
Charlotte didn’t think she could take much more of this. If the porn director wasn’t yammering innuendoes and entertaining himself by fucking with the preacher’s wife (“I’d like to see your daughter gush. Do you think she would gush over me?”), Leroy was shouting out dialogue from a slaughterhouse’s instructional video. (“Place gun hammer at back of skull. Pop, bam! Cut jugular so blood doesn’t pool in lower extremities.”) Charlotte was about five minutes from killing the lot of them, but she knew she had to stick to the plan. Thank God she brought some homegrown with her. She lit up another joint and leaned back into the deep grass.
“You shouldn’t smoke dear. It’s not healthy.” God she hated Mrs. Causewell.
“Smoking can actually inhibit gushing. I never let my girls smoke anything on the set.” She hated the porn director more.
Charlotte knew she could deal with these small annoyances. She had to keep the big picture in mind, and up to this point, everything had gone according to plan. She heard the drone of the Skymaster’s engines before anyone else. She released another deep drag and watched the smoke spiral up into a brilliant arctic sky.
Megan's left breast, fair and soft, spilled out over her C cup into the cold autumn air.
Felix had shook her awake, just before dawn, and she and the dullard had followed the pornographer out of camp, past the dozing nurse, the stern-faced reverend and his snoring wife. They didn't hear a sound.
Now, with the sun high overhead and Leroy muttering into his fingers, she watched Felix return from his scout trip to the next high ridge. She tossed her turtleneck on a log and pushed her nipple back inside the nylon and Lycra blend. As she buttoned up the front of her '69 Cubs jersey, she saw Leroy standing, staring at her. He was frightened. His chest was packed tightly within the seams of his Mets jersey, and his baseball pants lay down around his ankles. In between, his tool stuck straight out. It was much like his mind, Megan decided, thick and short and lacking any useful purpose. Mostly though, she sighed, it was just thick. The whirring of an engine invaded her consciousness slowly as she stared back at Leroy. He stood catatonic, eyes bulging, and he was crying. Then, from behind the ridge, roaring into view, came the Cessna Skymaster. Megan had a split second to decide. Wave your arms and be saved, or duck into the tall reeds at the foot of the riverbank. Did she really need the paycheck? Megan didn't know where they were. Felix said they had crashed within a day's walk of the shoot location. But he was a hippie turned smut peddler who had never set foot outside California. As a habitual if not practicing Catholic, she made the sign of the cross and hit the dirt. Looking skyward, she was close enough to see the eyes of her would-be rescuers. There was a man, and there was a dog.
The plane passed over, and there was Leroy standing as rigid as before. She thought she'd done everything in the business, until she set eyes on Leroy. Clearly he was retarded. Would he know where to stick his knob?
Penis and Crackerjack would be her last.
Purty. Like Betts.
Megan was pretty, like Leroy's sister Betty.
Bad Jeff--he hit a, hit a, hit a.
His uncle Jeff beat them after Leroy and Betty's mother died.
Stiff. Don' know wha' tha' is. Wish she'd stop lookin' at a. Stiff. Don' know why tha' is.
Leroy couldn't pull his pants up, because the pants that Felix had given him were several sizes too small. He didn't know anything about sexuality or his own body. He didn't know anything.
Teet. Seen Betts' once. Bad Jeff bit a. Bit a right off.
Uncle Jeff molested Betty.
Maw fought.
Leroy's mother wouldn't allow Jeff to abuse her children--or herself--while she was still alive.
Maw kilt.
Leroy's mother was kicked in the head by a cow.
Bovines. Bam! Dead.
Leroy always cried when he remembered his mother. He cried out of sorrow and he cried out of anger.
He was so lost in his thoughts--or visions, since Leroy didn't really have thoughts--that he didn't hear the Cessna's engines until the plane was right above the trees.
Pup. Seen a pup like that once. Et a bovine's liver. Blood dripped off 'em fangs.
Leroy stood upright, his erection waving in the breeze, as he wept for his dead mother.
Felix bought Leroy for two hundred dollars.
Jeff Hayste, a drunkard from Anchorage with an appetite for the boy's little sister, was more than happy to be rid of him. Hayste was pure evil, and Felix felt exonerated in that he had taken Leroy away from a life of beatings. That life would soon turn to death was a moral issue the moviemaker was currently struggling with. Certainly the boy was about to enjoy an experience that he would otherwise never have been afforded. Bright or dim, the mortal mind craves sexual relations. But what girl would ever have slept with Leroy? Penis and Crackerjack, in one quick stroke, would humanize a lost soul, and euthanize a body and a mind that were ready for eternity.
Felix struck his second-to-last match to light his last cigarette, but the wind came up and snuffed it out. This time Felix cupped his hands around both Camel and match, but the last match was damp and wouldn't catch. Felix tossed the cigarette down and stepped on it as he reached the top of the ridge.
They're here.
A half-mile distant, just this side of the woods, the small camp had been made. Felix saw brown canvas tents, two trucks, smoke from a fire, and a large steel animal cage with bars on its doors. His heart thumped as he trotted forward. Quickly, though, he turned on his heel and headed back down into the river valley. Get the other two first.
Megan was down by the river putting on her '69 Ron Santo jersey--no. 10--and Leroy was standing under a tree with his willy hanging out. After walking all morning, Leroy was bewildered and becoming agitated, so Felix let him and the girl rest while he walked up the hill for a look. Before he left, Felix presented Leroy with his gift, hoping it would calm the boy down. The Mets uniform was too small for the young man's large dimensions, but Leroy was so touched he started to sob. Felix realized Leroy probably hadn't been given new clothes since his mother died. There were dark stains on his pants that must have been dried blood from the slaughterhouse.
When Leroy looked at him in this way, and Felix saw the flame of life flickering deep within his dull gray eyes, it made him feel rotten. But Felix could repel sentiment quickly. He simply would not feel guilty about taking Leroy away from Jeff Hayste.
The girl was another matter. Megan knew that a bear cub was to be used in Penis and Crackerjack, but she figured it was just another animal kink film. They'd hold it down, and she'd jack it off. That's why the money was so good.
Felix knew better, and he was worried that Megan might get hurt. He and his financier, Ron Santo, were advised by the animal trainer that a certain fish oil, soaked into Leroy's clothing, would interest the bear cub. Megan would be safe so long as Leroy was on top of her. The bear's sense of smell would target Leroy, and Megan could slip away unharmed. Then the cameras would roll from five different angles, recording the drama between Leroy and the hungry bear.
Whenever Felix thought of the scene, he felt nervous with anticipation. It would be his premier achievement in porn. It would also mean his retirement from the business. He couldn't do a movie like this more than once. These were the perfect circumstances: Leroy was the only actor he could feel justified in working with. Hey, with Leroy's size, and with the bear being just a cub, it might be a fair fight. And Santo was the only man fanatical enough, with sufficient funds, to see a project like this to its conclusion.
Felix felt a little peeved whenever he thought of Santo. The man had a unwavering vision for the film. Central to the plot would be a beautiful young virgin (Megan would have to do), who is a fan of Ron Santo and the 1969 Cubs (this would be a period piece), attacked by a New York Mets thug (Bud Harrelson, played by Leroy), whose virtue is saved (almost--Leroy would penetrate her first) by a real cub (of the four-footed variety).
But Santo micro-managed the project down to every detail, and he and Felix were often at odds. Santo had collected real uniforms from Mets teams that he played against. Apparently, he paid off Wrigley Field clubhouse attendants back in his day, and they'd steal uniforms for him. He proved to Felix that they were authentic. "You see," he'd say, "this is the anniversary patch that all baseball teams wore on their sleeves in 1969. It commemorates the 100th year of major league baseball."
Felix would just shrug. He was a director and cared only about how the costume worked in the scene. "Leroy's never going to fit into this Bud Harrelson uniform, Ron. Why don't we use the Rusty Staub or the Ed Kranepool? They seem to have been huskier fellows."
Santo would get red in the face at the suggestion. "If you want to ruin the movie, go ahead and use Rusty's jersey. Anyone knows that Rusty Staub didn't join the Mets until 1972."
"What about Kranepool, then?"
Santo hedged. "Eddie was a decent guy." The truth was that Santo would get drunk with Kranepool whenever their two teams met. "I'd hate to see Eddie get mauled by a bear. Bud was the real asshole on that team."
Felix trotted down the hill, still miffed at the thought of his last encounter with Santo. Visual evidence of Santo's bad judgment stood before him. Leroy was gawking at Megan. He had a hard-on, and he couldn't pull up Harrelson's pants.
Felix was not surprised by the roar of the airplane. He'd been listening carefully for interference from the outside world all morning. The last thing he wanted was to be rescued. He dove into a gully, pulled some thick weeds around himself, and hoped the pilot hadn't spotted the smoke rising at the edge of the woods.
He looked up and a snowflake fell in his eye. A dog seemed to be navigating the plane.
It was a bumpy descent, but Jim's wheels touched down safely in a nearby field. When the plane came to a stop, Jim reached for his cell phone and dialed.
"Mr. Santo," Jim said nervously. "We're on the ground and I spotted the group on the way down. We're about a half mile away. Everything's gone as planned."
This plan was Santo's most ambitious yet.
"Is Charlotte with the group?" Santo asked.
"Couldn't tell," Jim responded. "But the priest and his wife are there."
"Good. Any sign of the cubs?"
"Cubs? I thought it was just one?"
"Well, I arranged for a few more for the Causewells."
For all their differences, Felix and the Causewells had one important similarity: They had wronged Mr. Santo.
Spring of 1958: Young Ronnie Santo was the star of his high school baseball team, and his skills were improving every day. With every game came more home runs, more defensive gems, more game-winning hits. Word got around, and soon everybody in the area knew that he was a superstar in the making.
Best of all, young Ronnie had met the girl of his dreams. Santo loved Harriet Dunny more than anything, and not a moment would pass when she wasn't in his thoughts. Their young love was a pure love. The couple frowned upon premarital sex, choosing instead to spend their every waking moment holding hands and gazing longingly into each other's eyes. He planned to marry her after graduation. Spring of 1958, Ronnie Santo was on the top of the world. But all that changed in a matter of moments.
May 27, 1958. Ronnie had just finished warm-ups and was heading down for his traditional pre-game emptying of the bowels. He trotted cheerily through the locker room and swung open the stall door, only to see a grimacing Dick Causewell - Santo's friend and bible studies partner -sitting on the bowl. Santo's first instinct was to awkwardly utter "sorry" and quickly close the door. But then he saw the sight that would break his psyche and send him on his lifetime course of rage and deviance: the head of his beloved Harriet, bobbing up and down in Dick Causewell's lap.
Santo was never the same again.
Rupert, the head animal trainer, waved his arms to Felix off in the distance.
He then called Santo to confirm the plan: "Mr. Santo? I've procured the extra cubs, and everything is in place. Just one question: I understand why we're mauling the Causewells, but why Felix?"
"Why Felix?" Santo repeated calmly. He was screaming inside: "Why Felix? Why Fucking Felix? I tell you why Fucking Felix!!!" He took a breath and returned to a calm speaking voice. "Because no one, and I repeat no one," he said evenly, "embarrasses Ron Santo."
Still on the line, Santo's mind drifted to May of 1999. He remembered how well the day had started: Sunday brunch at Bernie's, courtesy of a fawning Cub fan who insisted on picking up the tab for his egg's benedict, side of sausage, and three bloody marys. "Fuckin' schmuck," he thought after shaking the fan's hand in thanks and heading for the door. "I earn at least five times what that guy does and he's buying me food? Asshole."
By the fifth inning that day with the Cubs leading the Mets, 7-1, Santo was downright giddy.
"Hey Pat, looks like we've got another fax," Santo said over the air to his radio partner Pat Hughes.
"All right, go ahead, Partner."
"This one comes to us from a Jack Mehoff," Santo said.
Hughes turned as Santo read the name. "Come again, Partner?"
"Jack Mehoff," Santo repeated. "Jack Mehoff in Lincoln Park."
"OK," Hughes answered, smiling at the joke that still eluded Santo.
"Jack Mehoff in Lincoln Park writes, 'Ron and Pat, you guys are the best, especially Ron. . .' "
"Looks like you've got another fan."
"'…you guys are the best, especially Ron.' And then Jack Mehoff continues, 'Ron, I still love to hear you gush after Sammy hits his home runs. Do you ever get tired of gushing over Sammy?'
"Well, Jack Mehoff in Lincoln Park, how could I ever get tired of that? Sammy made me gush 66 times last year, I hope he makes me gush at least 71 times this year!"
"That would be a record, wouldn't it?" Hughes deadpanned.
"You bet it would."
Laughter spread throughout the WGN production studio and even the television crew picked up on the practical joke. Fans with radios could be heard giggling in the stands and untold thousands within WGN's range laughed at Santo.
In the seventh inning, Santo announced another fax.
"It will be tough to top that last one," Hughes said.
"You're right, Pat. All of our listeners are great and these faxes are always very complimentary and insightful. I can't say enough about these Cub fans."
"Who's this one from?" Hughes said with a straight face.
"Well, I'm not quite sure how to pronounce it," Santo said slowly. "The first name is spelled I-L-I-C-H. So it's either EYE-LICH or EYE-LICK Cox, and it says he or she is from North Avenue. Just North Avenue. I guess that's anywhere on North Avenue."
"That sounds German," Hughes said, holding back laughter. "I'm pretty sure it's EYE-LICK."
"OK, EYE-LICK it is," Santo agreed. "OK, Ilich Cox on North Avenue asks, 'Ron, do you find it hard to swallow that the Cubs keeping drawing capacity crowds even though they're off to such a terrible start?'"
Santo paused, and then answered, "Well, Ilich Cox, it's like we said right before we read your fax, the Cubs' fans are the best in baseball, they're behind when you're winning and they're behind you when things aren't going so well. So no, to answer your question, I don't find that hard to swallow, I don't find it hard to swallow at all."
More laughter emerged from the grandstand. Radio and television technicians dropped their headsets and rolled off their chairs in laughter. Hughes fought back hysterical screams and then excused himself to the restroom between innings. The media picked up the story. ESPN, FoxSportsNet and the local Chicago stations all ran bleeped-out versions of Santo's broadcast. The Chicago Sun-Times published a back-page sidebar with the headline "Jack Who? Santo a victim of on-air prank." The perpetrator was identified as Felix Mandolin, a "freelance movie producer from Los Angeles visiting Chicago to scout locations."
"I've been here a week," the newspaper quoted Mandolin, "and I keep hearing this guy stroke himself on the air with these softball faxes. I couldn't believe it. I thought it was pretty self-serving. I was just having a little fun with him. I didn't think it would become that big of a deal."
Santo declined comment, but immediately began researching the professional career of Felix Mandolin.
Santo's mind returned to the phone call.
"Embarrassed?" Rupert the trainer asked.
"Just let the cubs do what they do best." Santo answered, and then hung up.
Dear Penthouse:
I have always loved the great outdoors. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved hiking, canoeing, fishing, hunting—anything that got me away from the city and out into the fresh air. My first sexual experience happened at a church picnic when I was twelve. I still remember the look in Mrs. Fletcher's face as I shot my hot load all over her beautiful tits. In fact, all of my most memorable sexual encounters have occurred outdoors. When I was fourteen, me and my best friend had a threesome with one of our instructors at Camp Hayawatha. When I was twenty-one, I fucked the head of my college’s cheerleading squad as we road a raft down the rapids on the Colorado.
Last spring, I turned thirty-eight, and I had pretty much accepted the fact that my best sexual encounters were behind me. Then I went on a one-man hiking trip to the Alaskan Interior.
Even now, six months later, I’m not sure if what I remember actually happened. It doesn’t seem like it could be real. It’s so fucked-up, like a dream—with people and events thrown together that have no right being in the same place at the same time. A kinky menagerie of circus animals, preachers, porn stars and pilots. But somehow it almost made sense at the time. Somehow, it was beautiful. Every time I jerk off, I think back to the things I saw that day. Every time I fuck my wife, I beg her to growl like a grizzly.
I had been hiking for two weeks, working my way deeper and deeper into the Alaskan Wilderness. It had been eight days since I had seen a human face, or indeed any human sign that would indicate that I was not alone on this planet. For me, this was paradise. I remember thinking that I didn’t care if I ever looked upon another person again. That’s why I had come to Alaska: to get away from it all. To commune with nature to hear my own thoughts. I’d seen caribou and coyotes, moose and mule dear, wildflowers and wolverines—things that I couldn’t even dream of seeing in my native Chicago. But none of these sights could prepare me for what I came upon next.
I had heard the women’s screams from almost a quarter of a mile away. I dropped my pack and hustled up the to the top of a ridge, not knowing what I would find. Perhaps I’d see another hiker being mauled by a grizzly. Maybe a female adventurer had wandered too close to a wolf’s den. After running for what seemed like hours, I reached the top of the ridge, which leveled off into a flat peak. I dropped down on my belly and crawled the last few feet to the top. I wanted to gauge what I had to deal with before I took action.
The woman I saw did not need rescuing.
She looked to be about nineteen, and had one of the tightest bodies I’d ever seen. She was wearing nothing but a baseball jersey, which was opened to reveal a pair of the perkiest set of tits I’d seen since my college days. She had a beautiful ass, which was easy to judge since she was on all fours, and taking it from behind from a man who looked like a cross between Gomer Pyle and Richie Cunningham.
I’m not sure if it’s possible to feel sorry for a man who’s fucking a beautiful nineteen-year-old, but I kind of felt sorry for this guy. He looked bewildered and scared, and something more. The guy looked horrified!
But that didn’t stop him from fucking. He was pounding into that luscious pussy with shallow thrusts. It really didn’t look like he had much of a cock to work with, but you couldn’t tell that by her reaction. She was screaming like she was trying to shatter a wineglass. Now that I was closer, I could hear the man yelling too: “a kill, a kill, a kill, a kill,” he kept repeating with each thrust of his little sausage.
I felt a bulge growing between my legs, so I unzipped my pants to let my now-throbbing nine-incher breathe. I couldn’t believe my luck. Here I was, hundreds of miles from the nearest human habitation; and I was being treated to a free peepshow.
“Cut, cut, cut! What the fuck is he babbling about?” It was only then that I noticed the couple wasn’t alone. A thick growth of bushes to my right had concealed an entire movie production crew. Looking through the leaves, I could see two cameramen, a boom guy and what looked to be a movie director, complete with a black beret and a blow horn. Holy fuck! I had wandered into the middle of a porn shoot!
“Don’t say anything, just fuck her!” The porn director shouted in Gomer Cunningham’s ear. “This isn’t a goddamned slaughter house, you twisted fuck!”
“And you, bitch!” He turned his attention to the girl. “Scream like you mean it!”
I know you probably don’t believe a word I’m saying. I mean, we all know that the letters sent into these magazines aren’t real. But could I make this shit up? Most of the letters you read here are about husbands walking in on wives being banged by best friends, or women waking up one day and discovering just how good pussy tastes. But coming across a porn shoot in Alaska? That’s too weird not to be true. If you still don’t believe me, keep reading. Nobody could make this shit up.
Eddie had spent all day down by the river. Ever since he discovered that three of his passengers had wandered off before dawn he had been distraught, and now he couldn't bear to face the remaining three.
The crash must have been his fault, but he couldn't figure out why. He had tightened every nut, tested every gauge. Every goddamn warning light had been replaced. Of course, he had re-fueled—that's the first thing you do.
His state of depression grew worse as the day went on, especially after it started to snow. He sat squinting through the swirl of flakes at the swift-moving white water, pondering how long he would survive if he fell into the rapids. Then he heard the whir of the Skymaster's propeller, and he knew it was Hafner.
The plane buzzed over Eddie low in the sky and landed a couple of football fields to the west.
Jesus, he even brought Jake!
Eddie backed away from the roaring waters with creaky knees. He looked down into the foam and thought: You're not getting me yet. He saw the plane come to a stop and felt a burst of adrenaline, but his frozen limbs weren't working quite right, and it took forever to run over to the plane. Jimmy didn't help his friend much, as he sat in the cabin talking on the phone. Eddie could see him inside as he drew near. Finally, the door opened and Jim dropped out. He turned around and commanded the dog to stay inside.
"It was the damnedest thing," Eddie said, re-telling the accident, "Everything was normal, and then I was falling out of the sky. Someone must have tampered with the plane."
Hafner had an odd look in his eye.
"Jimmy, I owe you the works, old buddy. Blackjack, booze, any whore in Anchorage, it's all on me." Hafner still hadn't said anything.
Eddie craned his neck up into the cockpit. "Where's that horny pooch of yours?" Eddie grabbed Jake roughly around the shoulders and grappled playfully with him. "Bagged any bitches lately, old boy?"
Jimmy stepped up behind his old friend and pulled back the lapel of his overcoat. All Eddie saw when he turned around was the barrel.
"Eddie, I can't explain it to you," Jimmy said calmly. "I'm a little embarrassed about this, but I've got to send you flying."
The shock never left Eddie's face, even after Jake was lapping up his blood.
A body at rest stays at rest. A body in motion stays in motion.
This old rhyme from freshman physics was stuck in Charlotte's head as she awoke. Slowly.
She was engulfed in The Heat. She felt like a pot of tea warming on the stove. No, she wasn't stoned; she'd smoked the last of her grass yesterday. She slept all night long without a blanket while the Causewells huddled together shivering. She dozed right on through the departure of Felix's company, and she drifted in and out of sleep all morning long, even after the plane flew over. And this was how it always was—when she felt The Heat.
That it had started to snow made no difference. The Heat came at any time, hot or cold, indoors or out.
It was Felix who'd started it, reminded her of it. Gush. Just that word was all it took. The two phenomena were intertwined in her life; they'd always been.
Maybe the heat was from the fire. As Charlotte gathered her senses, she saw Reverend Causewell push at the burning embers, sending sparks fluttering off into the cloud-covered sky. But, no, The Heat was from within, just as it had always been.
Though The Heat had a hold on her, Charlotte's mind struggled to assess reality. There was a fire.
Reverend Causewell stood over it, tending to it. His wife sat bundled nearby, for the first time silent. But they'd used their last match this morning, and it had blown out. How had the preacher created fire without a light?
Charlotte's mind was still custard, and she could barely utter any words.
The preacher ignored her. But Mrs. Causewell screwed up a smile into the corners of her mouth and replied as cheerfully as she could: "My dear, the Lord doesn't need a match."
Charlotte shook her head gently. No. That can't be.
To tell Charlotte that the Lord had given them fire was like telling her that Santa Claus had started it. Whether she was feeling The Heat or not, religion went against her. Nature had always been her god.
"A fire without a match is spontaneous combustion." she said slowly, "And that certainly does not exist."
The preacher stood tall above her, wrapped in his black cloak.
"Fire is eternal, girl. It burns wherever it chooses."
"Charlotte, don't stray very far, honey. It's snowing, and you're all alone. Maybe the plane will come back."
Mrs. Causewell's voice already sounded distant, as Charlotte walked out of camp to relieve herself. The preacher's wife was wrong, she thought. Frieda was with her. And the snow was beautiful, covering the green grass of late autumn in an early blanket of white.
Frieda, she realized, had never been imaginary. Her friend had always been real, had always kept her warm from within. Why had it just dawned on her now that The Heat was actually Frieda? The physiological change that occurred in her from time to time was her most intimate secret, and Frieda was her most intimate friend. She smiled at the discovery.
She was out of sight of the camp now, but she strode on. She pulled off her cap, discarding it into the snow, and ran her fingers through her hair. Long dark strands clung to her touch, and she shook them off into the breeze. She ran her hand over her head again, and large clumps of hair shimmied their way out of her scalp. Charlotte thought this was strange, so she grabbed more handfuls of hair and watched them fly away with the white snow. She chuckled after she had pulled out nearly all of her hair: It hadn't hurt a bit.
Charlotte walked on and on and started to doubt that she'd ever stop. The snow piled up deeper; the sun obscured by the clouds fell closer to the horizon. And still Charlotte walked on.
A body at rest stays at rest. A body in motion stays in motion.
What would be easier, to stop or to continue? In order to stop, her brain would have to broadcast a general order to halt, each muscle in her body would have to receive the message and obey it, and then all the various recipients would have to work in conjunction to execute the order safely. She didn't want to stumble.
To continue, she needed to do nothing.
Charlotte was in a state of inertia for at least an hour, and Frieda accompanied her. Frieda also reminded her of Genevieve. Genevieve was the short-haired activist she'd shared a tent with at a Serenity Now revival.
Only one woman in every ten thousand gushes, boy. Those were Felix's words to Leroy only yesterday.
When Frieda met Genevieve, warmth met wetness. With a boy, Charlotte's river had always run dry, but her first time with a girl, the waterfall was set loose. And it coincided with The Heat. Forever afterward, one did not occur without the other.
Charlotte stopped in her tracks. She tugged off her boots, and stepped out of one leg of her pants, then the other. She fell back into the snow, kicked her legs up into the air and wiggled out of her panties. When she started to touch herself, she remembered she had to pee.
Her bare bottom felt so good against the cold snow that she decided not to get up and crouch. She just parted her knees and let her golden waters rush. She lay back and let the snowflakes land on her eyelashes. Though the blizzard was raging, the sun was visible in silhouette, just on the other side of the white clouds. When Charlotte looked down again, the glint of old Sol refracted through her urine, and a spectrum shone between her thighs. The rainbow piss steamed down through the white snow, melting it into yellow mud.
Charlotte removed her jacket and shirt, and lay naked in the snow. Her head rested directly on the ground, uncushioned as it had always been before. When she reached up, she remembered that she was bald; she'd pulled out all her hair. And her earlobe felt like a gummy bear.
She started to tug at it, and it began to thin out at the center. The farther she pulled, the longer it stretched. She kept pulling until the thinned-out center totally gave way. She set the half earlobe down gently beside her on the ground.
The Heat left Charlotte as unconcerned about losing her ear as it had about pulling out her hair. Her mind was a pool of wax in the burned-out hollow of a candle. Though her nursing instincts told her that her body systems had gone haywire, she found this only curious.
She cupped her right breast and discovered a small puddle of milk. Just the pressure of her fingers had caused a trickle to flow from the nipple. She squeezed a little firmer and a tight burst of lactation shot down onto her tummy, dripping into her pubic hair.
She massaged the milk around her clitoris, running two fingers up along each side of the little bud. She closed her eyes and remembered her first time with Genevieve. She was moving her fingers quickly now—too quickly. The pea snapped off in her hand, still housed in its pod.
She lifted it up between her fingers and inspected it. It was pink and beautiful. After examining it for a moment, she set it down carefully next to the earlobe.
But the fire still burned below, so she inserted her fingers. This time she kept her eyes open, concentrating on a spot far off into the distant valley. There, she thought she saw the dark shape of a man plodding toward her from the north. As she kept fingering, the man kept walking, shrouded by the snow. As Charlotte became more aroused, she had a heightened awareness of each part of her body. She knew that the spaces between her toes were sweating. That the sutured scar on her knee had split open. That her bottom lip was tingling.
But she didn't know who the man was.
He was only a few feet away when he stopped. He tossed his long white whiskers to one side, and then Charlotte knew who he was. And she was ready to come.
Her climax built in intensity. At first, her dewdrops drizzled lazily to the ground, but then she felt a spasm of hot friction that propelled her gush in pulsating spurts up between her fingers and out into the air. The wet projectiles shot up into the stranger's beard and dripped down onto his large, round belly.
The man wiped the ejaculate from his chin and stared down at Charlotte. Slowly, his head began to turn to the right; then it proceeded to swivel completely around, making a 360-degree circuit. When the man faced forward again, he no longer had the face of a jolly old man; he had the face of the Queen Mum. Lightning flashed, illuminating the falling snow, and the Queen Mum's mask took on the features of a lizard. Her mouth opened with a hiss, and her reptile tongue flicked out, darting down toward the prone figure lying on the ground.
Charlotte lay back in her puddle of mud as the thunder rumbled. She never thought dying would feel this wonderful.
Charlotte's footprints were still visible, but the falling snow was working quickly to cover them. Mrs. Causewell was worried. She'd been walking for an hour. Why had the girl gone so far?
Dusk was descending when she found Charlotte's frozen cap, blown up against an evergreen. When she pulled it out of the tree, something else caught her eye. Long strands of human hair were mingled in among the pine needles. Something was terribly wrong.
Charlotte couldn't have been abducted because there was only one set of footprints in the snow. And the tracks were fading rapidly in the fresh snowfall. Mrs. Causewell knew she had to find her soon or abandon the search.
A dark spot appeared at the bottom of the hill, and the preacher's wife couldn't quite see it in the diminishing light. As she got closer it looked like the site of a campfire. The snow was melted in a wide circle, and something charred and smoking lay in the center. Mrs. Causewell stepped right into the mud before she realized what that something was.
Charlotte.
Blue flames were still nibbling at her toes, but very little flesh remained. Half of the left foot. The right elbow and part of the forearm. Two fingers. And the skeleton. The pelvis had nearly disintegrated in the fire, but the vertebrae were still intact, as was the skull.
Poor, dear Charlotte—that beautiful girl. Mrs. Causewell fell to her knees in grief. Who or what could have done this?
She was horrified, but she reached out with the back of her hand and felt the jawbone. It was warm to the touch. Then she noticed two small pieces of flesh lying on the ground. One was quite obviously an ear. But it was lying several feet distant from the skull, and nothing else above the elbow had survived the flames. The other piece was smaller, and Mrs. Causewell found the courage to pick it up. She dropped it into the palm of her hand and frowned at it. Then recognition flooded over her. Oh, Lord!
She had never dreamed of touching another woman's clit, ever! Since she married the Reverend, she had even avoided touching her own. To hold it in her hand was wicked, she knew. She must drop it this very instant. To have that darling girl's sex spot right in her palm—oh, my Lord. That beautiful, charming…busty…girl. It was imperative that she put it back immediately.
Mrs. Causewell looked back up the hill furtively. Richard wouldn't have followed her. Charlotte had gone off to pee, and modesty dictated that a woman go looking for her.
Mrs. Causwell picked it up off her palm, and looked at it closely. It was still pink, and it had retained Charlotte's warmth. When she pulled back the hood, the nub inside was gleaming. She tried with all her will to put it back down on the ground, but she felt an irresistible urge. She looked behind her again and listened. Silence.
She held it close to her face now, with two fingers. Her heart was pounding and she could see her own breath. Carefully, she brought it close enough that she could touch it with her tongue. She licked all around it, and up and down, running her tongue up through the hood. Surely, this was wicked.
A chill blew in from the north. Mrs. Causewell rolled her eyes back and shuddered, but not from the cold.
The woman crouching next to the body looked like she was eating something.
"Hello!"
The woman shot up so quickly that her pants made a splitting sound.
"You must be Mrs. Causewell," the man said, emerging from the darkness. "I'm Jim Hafner. I'm here to save you."
Hafner pulled Jake by the collar away from Charlotte's bones. He thought to himself: Spontaneous human combustion—how convenient.