I heard a crunching noise and froze. Another elk was my first thought. And then I heard it. “Are ye thirsty, lass?”
I turned to run, but wasn’t fast enough to escape the filthy hands that came out of the bushes and grabbed me without regard to which body part was being clutched. I ducked and squirmed, but tripped just as I managed to twist out of the vile monster’s grasp. I was knocked flat on my face, and before I could get up, three despicable heathens dog-piled on top of me.
“Keep hold of the bitch. She’s a wily one, she is.”
It was Gimpy, the one who had kidnapped me two months ago and taken great joy in spitting in my face. Only the intercession of the woman called Ma had saved me from his perverted attentions.
Gimpy’s two raggedy and stinking male companions slithered off me, but kept me pinned, each with a firm grip on a forearm and an ankle. I was splayed out like a hide to be tanned and hurting. My right arm was twisted so far around that my shoulder was ready to pop out of its socket. I was now face up, though, and able to see my assailants.
“Yup, that’s her all right,” Gimpy boasted, as if he had just captured Big Foot.
I looked at the two men holding me down. It wasn’t Abe or his erstwhile brother who had been involved in my first encounter with Gimpy, though. These two strangers were beyond help. I could see the wildness in their eyes and in their slathering mouths. A comb or soap hadn’t touched their heads...well...probably ever. The clothing they wore were literally rags and hides that had been crudely sewn together. The word dreadlocks came to mind when I saw their wild hair pulled back from their faces with something—a piece of string, a thong, a dead snake—I didn’t look that closely. Their beards were tangled and matted with leaf and twig bits, and slick and smooth under their mouths from food, drink, or I didn’t want to know what that had fallen from their mouths.
Still, I looked from one to the other with what I hoped would be perceived as a plea for help. I didn’t want to yell—at least not yet. The thought of a gag in my mouth turned my stomach. I hadn’t thrown up yet in my pregnancy, but had had a couple of close calls where mind won out over body when the reflux hit. I didn’t think that I’d be able to control myself in this situation though.
“Those bubbies look even bigger now, they do.” I tried to twist away as Gimpy reached down to grab a handful of breast. His associates grunted at me and tightened their hold which I took to mean ‘hold still.’ Gimpy reached down with both hands and yanked open my shirt, just like the first time. This time he was paying more attention.
“What?” he asked, wide-eyed and opened-mouthed, looking even more like an idiot.
‘Where’d the buttons go?’ was probably what he was thinking, but I certainly wasn’t going to explain the concept of snap closures to him—now or ever!
His confused gawk left when he looked down and saw my pregnancy-enhanced breasts crammed into my sports bra. He grabbed and kneaded them. I felt the bile rise in my throat when he flicked the nipples to make them hard. Trapped. Beneath him. Helpless. I closed my eyes and did the only thing I could: concentrated on keeping the vomit down.
He only had one hand on me now. I forced one eye open to see what had happened. My bile rose further. His other hand was on the front of his pants, clutching and tugging on his own little pull toy. He caught me looking at him, leered at me, then climbed off and moved to my feet. He grasped the hem of my skirt and raised it up and down, making it pouf out like a parachute.
“Having fun?” I sassed. Crap, me and my big mouth. What am I thinking!
“Oh, the fun is jest about to start, lassie.” He pulled the rope belt from his pants. “Here,” he said, and with that, Gimpy threw the skirt over my head.
I felt him move around to the side of me. He took over the grasp of my wrists from his minions. They still had a firm grip on my ankles, though, and when I tried to bring my knees up to my chest, they roughly pushed them back down. I never stopped struggling, but Gimpy was strong and quick. He managed to wrap the rope around my wrists, pulling the coarse cording up between them, making a sloppy knot I hoped would be easy to untie.
“Pull those pantaloons down, boys. I want to go first. Ye can have ‘er next; I dinna like sloppy leftovers.”
I grimaced as they pulled down my pants, but didn’t resist anymore. I was glad—if you could call it that—that my face was hidden under my skirt. The blue patchwork fabric covered my humiliation and shame, and the tears that had squished out of my eyes from being shut so tightly. There were three of them and only one of me. I couldn’t subdue them and had already failed at trying to run away. I wanted to tell them to hurry up and get it over with, but bit my lip to keep the words contained. I didn’t let up on the biting either. The pain and taste of my own blood was distracting me from what was going on.
Or actually, what was not going on.
I relaxed my clench and paid attention to the noise the rapists-in-waiting were making. “No, I ain’t gonna stick my pecker in that…that…thing! When they’re biggen like that, they’re likely to s’plode,” said one of the other two, not Gimpy.
“Then jest hold her down and let me show ye how it’s done. She won’t explode, ye idjit!” Gimpy didn’t sound too sure of himself, but was trying to put on a show of bravery for the other two.
I heard him fumbling with his sexual member, but—evidently—it was showing the fear his voice had been trying to hide.
Now I remembered… When I was attacked before, he was turned on by my struggling. This time, when whatever it was deep down inside me knew it was futile, I had gone limp out of self-preservation…and I guess my limpness was contagious.
“All right, all right,” Gimpy hollered, “maybe there is somethin’ to that bloated belly curse. But this’ll work.”
All of a sudden, there was bright light. He had pulled my skirt back down. “Come here, sweetie,” he cooed maliciously. “Are ye thirsty?”
And then he did it again. He spat in my face.
“Clyde, keep hold o’ her legs. Clayton, you take her arms, here, above her head, like this,” Gimpy had twisted my wrists when he tied them so I couldn’t bend my arms. Now I didn’t have the control for clawing out his eyes and blinding him—my first wish—or for escaping—second on my list.
“Slurp,” Gimpy was making a loud sucking noise, “Oooh, here’s another one,” he said, and then spat in my face, the glob landing just beneath my right eye. “We want yer purdy lil’ face to be nice and slick now, don’t we,” he mocked. Apparently, he was only aroused with gross perversion.
My jaws clenched tight. I tried not to move, but turned away from his stinky club of flesh by reflex when he poked it under my nose. He rubbed it all over my face. Almost. I’m sure he knew I would have bitten off that foul piece of misshapen reproductive organ if it came near my mouth.
He spat in my face again and again. I sought the only protection I could find: turning inward. I pulled my essence deep inside my core, away from the unholy and revolting assault on my body. I was faintly aware of the rhythmic pressure on my face, but now I was deep within my womb, keeping my babies next to me, protecting them from the sickening storm outside, the heathen battering my soulless, paralyzed-but-breathing carcass.
The booming roar of a familiar voice brought me out of my protective Zen state.
“I said, get away from her! Now!”
I opened my eyes. It was Wallace, with an enraged look that would rival that of an avenging angel. Broad shouldered and towering, he had nothing for a weapon but a clenched fist and the drawknife he had been using earlier for debarking trees. I looked away from his commanding stature back up to the creature sitting on my chest, his limp dick, now spent, in his hand. He shoved it back into his pants with one hand as he pushed down on my chest with the other, slowly swinging his leg across me to stand up.
Gimpy began babbling in fear. “We wuz jest havin’ some fun—ye ken how it is? Hey, ye wanna go first?”
Then he stopped. His attitude changed.
Gimpy’s slumped, cowering figure straightened up to stand as tall as physically possible, his chest puffed out, full of confidence. “Or ye can be the fun,” he sneered.
I moved my focus from Wallace to where Gimpy was looking. Clayton had backtracked and was standing behind Wallace with my roughly hewn baseball bat. He swung it across the back of Wallace’s knees, knocking my would-be savior face forward to the ground. The knife flew out of his hands as he reached out to try and break his fall. But the fiends were fast. One—I think it was Clyde—jumped on Wallace’s back and grabbed his hair, pulling it back hard, as if he were reining in a strong horse. The other one ran in front to kick the knife further away, out of reach. At the same time, he grabbed Wallace’s wrist, pulling and twisting it—out, away from his body. Wallace hit the ground chin first, his right arm pulled back like a wing. The weight of Clyde on his back made for a bone-cracking sound as he slammed the forest floor.
I scrambled, moving as fast as I could, to get up to attend to him, but my hands were still bound. I didn’t know what I could do, but had leapt up to help on instinct.
That was a mistake.
“Oh, no you don’t, missy,” Gimpy growled, just as I realized that Wallace was unconscious.
Twack!
Something hit me hard across the cheek, and then I, too, saw only black.
I awoke to the sound of celebrating. I did my best—which evidently was pretty good—at keeping the sound and rate of my breathing the same, hoping they wouldn’t realize I was awake. I ventured a peek. All I could tell was that there weren’t any legs or feet nearby. The laughs and cheers were coming from the area where Wallace had fallen.
“Yee haw, let me ride, let me ride. Come on, if you canna get that thing to work right, let me try. I’ll get ‘im slick fer ye.”
It was Clyde. He had Wallace trussed over a fallen tree and Clayton was buggering him.
I rolled over and puked.
The boys were too busy whooping it up and hollering to hear my vomiting. Clyde had his fist wrapped around his stiff member, stretching and pulling it in anticipation of his turn.
“Yer sick, ye two. Dinna ye ken yer supposed to do it with a woman, and with ‘er turned over to t’other side?” Gimpy hollered. I noticed his hands were in his pants—playing with himself—even as he ridiculed the other two for enjoying sex with a man.
“Aah aah aah aah oooh!” crowed Clayton. I guessed he had just finished, because he was pulling out of Wallace’s backside. “Yer turn,” he panted as he stumbled toward the other end of the fallen tree to sit down.
I was stunned at the sight of this hedonistic display. It took place in only moments, but seemed like hours. I shook my head, trying to break the trance. I was probably in shock, but quickly coming back to reality. I managed to work the knot out of my rope handcuffs. It was a struggle to get up, but once on my feet, I found my strength.
“Get away from that man, you pigs!” I had only my voice to wield, but I had to do something. I couldn’t just sit there and let him be defiled.
Defiled again…
“Oh, the lass is jealous, is she? What’s the matter? Dinna I give ye enough attention? I still have plenty left fer ye,” Gimpy said as he held open his arms and wiggled his hips, showing the obvious erection contained in his pants.
A horrible screeching yowl interrupted us. I recognized it as a cougar, as did the others. Wallace was still unconscious—gratefully. “A painter,” the three of them said, almost in unison.
I didn’t wait for any more banter. “Lady, lady,” I called. “What’s new pussycat, whoa, a, whoa, whoa,” I practically screamed the song, terrified, but still trying to mimic the singing voice I had used when entering the cave I lived in last winter. I hoped that cat was Lady, my wounded cougar friend, who had stayed with me for those few days while she recuperated from near death.
“Yaa oww!” This time the screeching roar was closer, very close.
“Lady, help me,” I screamed, trying not to break down into tears. “Lady, oof!”
Thump. Gimpy tackled me to the ground, knocking the wind out of me. He was fast for a lame, short man, but I had also been surprised. I was trying to turn over—attempting to get his filthy, vile body away from me—when I was knocked down again, this time by someone—or something—on top of Gimpy.
Lady had attacked the man who had attacked me. I turned halfway over and could see her. Her massive mouth encompassed the entire back of his head. I watched as Gimpy’s eyes nearly popped out of his face when she crunched his skull.
I crawled out from under the two of them, scooting away as fast as my heels and hands could dig into the soft earth. Gimpy was still alive, but paralyzed—either by fear or from his skull being crushed. His mouth was the only thing moving, soundlessly opening and shutting like a fish out of water.
Lady looked at me, and then shook him quickly and hard, flipping him like a dog with a stuffed toy. I heard the distinctive ‘pop snap,’ the sound of his neck being broken.
His head in her mouth, Lady walked over to me and dropped it, and him—practically in my lap. I flashed on a house cat that would bring me dead mice as tokens of her love for me. I grimaced at the gesture—sweet, yet sickening. “Thank you,” I said to her as she backed away from the kill.
Clyde and Clayton were awestruck—paralyzed with shock—and had forgotten to run away. Clyde was still standing behind Wallace, his mangy pants down around his bare ankles. I hoped he hadn’t yet made contact with him. Stunned and quivering, he was certainly not in any shape to do Wallace any shame now. I could also see that he had shat himself—streaks of brown goo marked the backs of his legs. Bug-eyed Clayton, panting in fear, was standing at the other end of Wallace, holding his unconscious head near the front of his pants, as if to assault him further in a different way.
In the split second it took for me to realize that those two were still touching Wallace, I was yelling at them all over again. “Get away from him or—I swear to God—I’ll kill you!”
Well, actually, I can’t remember what I said, but I remember well the heated emotions of hate and vengeance as they coursed through my body, racing ahead of each other to see which one would reap retribution first. I felt Olympian—as if I could shoot thunderbolts from my hands.
Clayton got a head start because Clyde was clutching and grabbing at his pants, trying to pull them up so he wouldn’t trip over them.
Lady went leaping after the pair, and I let her. My concern was for Wallace. He was still unconscious, or at least I hoped so. I didn’t know what I would do if they’d killed him. “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” I said as I untied his hands, trying to rid myself of the overwhelming hatred that had just flooded my spirit.
Wallace’s cheek moved away from the log at my voice. “What did you say?” he asked in a coarse whisper.
“Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord,” I repeated slowly, clearly, and with great conviction, the tears welling up in my eyes with joy that he was still alive.
“Hmph!” was his one-word, succinct reply. He set his head back down on the wood, took a deep breath, and stretched his arms out in front of him, as if he were a nude Superman flying through the air.
I quickly changed the subject. “Here, let’s get you cleaned up and find your clothes—oh, here they are.”
I turned away as Wallace painfully got off of the log, his unintentional gasps and groans stifled, but still audible. “Here, use this to knock off the bark and stuff,” I said, holding out my shawl, my head turned, averting my eyes so I didn’t see his nakedness. He took it, and I stepped away to give him some privacy.
“Just a minute,” he said. “Come here.”
I turned back and walked to him, my eyes focused high on his. He took the edge of the shawl and wiped my cheeks where the spurts of Gimpy’s joy were still on my face.
“Close your eyes,” he said. Just a couple seconds more, and he was back at cleaning my face, this time with water. “There’s a puddle on the rock—don�
�t worry, it’s clean.”
“Thanks, I’ll just wait here for you,” I said. I heard him, brushing tree litter from his body with the cloth. I blurted out, “Oh, Wallace, I am so sorry,” trying not to cry.
“Sorry? What did you do? Here, would you wet this and wipe off my back?”
“Uh, okay.” Wallace stood perfectly still as I wiped off his shoulders and middle back. “How far down should I go?”
“Get as much of the filth off as you can,” he said resolutely as he bent over, presenting his backside to me.
And that is when we heard him.
“What in the hell is going on?” he roared.
It was Julian, red-faced and fuming. He glared at me—wiping Wallace’s fanny—then looked down at the body on the ground. His scarlet countenance quickly paled as he took in Gimpy’s contorted face and bulging eyeballs, obscene in its death scowl.
I handed Wallace the shawl to cover himself, but before either of us could speak, we heard two men screaming and the yowl of a cougar—my Lady.
Wallace grabbed my elbow and pulled me to him, clutching me close to his tense chest, while we waited for the terrifying noise to finish. I wasn’t afraid. The feel of his skin on my face—cold and fuzzy on top and hard muscles, heated by anger and excitement, beneath—distracted and comforted me.
Julian was doing a pirouette—spinning around in confusion—trying to find the source of the commotion. Then the source came prancing up to greet me.
Lady looked from side to side, taking in the new addition to our little group. Seeing that I was at ease, she continued with her entrance. Julian looked pop-eyed at her as she walked past him with something in her mouth. She stopped in front of me and, very ceremoniously, deposited her present at my feet.
Naked in the Winter Wind Page 26
