Covenant

by John Everson

  But tonight, He had left nothing to chance.

  Angelica stood on the side of the road, legs spread, one hand crooked on her side, the other launching a thumb into the air. Presently, she saw headlights.

  Her headache had lessened some, but now her joints were screaming with the forced posture. With the glimmer of light in the distance, she poured all her will into moving, first trying to lift a foot. She could feel the tendons shiver with exertion, but His lock on her refused to ease. Next she tried throwing back a shoulder or her head…anything just to topple her body off balance. She didn’t care what hit the ground, so long as the oncoming car couldn’t see her exposed there in the darkness.

  But nothing worked. He held her with an iron grip in the same position the whole time, as little by little, the lights in the distance grew brighter, stronger, wider.

  Her left thumb pointed outward, in the hitcher’s universal symbol, as her right hand slid from her pale ribs to tangle in the hair at the nape of her neck. He forced her back to arch so that the cones of her breasts jutted out. He kept her right leg bent, knee toward the yellow line, a universal symbol for “come hither.” She looked like a hitching stripper, posing for a pickup. And He had chosen the suitor.

  The headlights caught Angelica in their glare with a blinding intensity that ripped through the already-shredded nerves of her skull. Tears wet her face again as blood stained the stones cutting the soles of her feet.

  She realized from the height and noise level that the oncoming lights belonged to a truck. In seconds it had slowed down, then, just a few feet away, eased off the road to stop with the complaint of old brakes. The lights dimmed to parking yellow, and then she could see the rusted wreck that had “come to her rescue.” It was a ’72 Ford pickup, painted school-bus yellow and idling at a choking scream.

  Angelica knew that truck. And when recognition dawned, she started crying harder.

  The man who stepped out of the driver’s door was the reason for her tears, and her insides quivered in revolt. She pushed and strained to make her feet move until the sky ran red behind her eyes, but He wouldn’t let her run. Her feet stayed planted. This was His ultimate punishment. And pleasure.

  Angelica groaned as her hitching arm slowly dropped to her side, and the hand behind her head came down to massage and exhibit her chest for the creep walking toward her.

  The creep was Harold Palmer, local mechanic for hire. The bane of her existence since junior high. For years he had hounded Angelica for dates, cornering her at her locker in school, and later, turning up at her house for readings…and an attempt at a cheap feel. She had always—though sometimes only narrowly—avoided his advances. And now she was feeling herself up for him in a cheap, vulgar display of faux lust in the middle of nowhere. This time, Angelica knew, there would be no escape from Harold Palmer. Her stomach begged to be sick as she pinched the heavy bead of a nipple, offering it to the grease monkey moving toward her.

  Harold knew that this time, he was going to get lucky with his little Eye-tal-yan girl. She’d given him a good race, but her hard-to-get days were over. From the look of it, she was dying to deep throat him. He almost wanted to make her beg for it…but he didn’t know if he should push his luck.

  As he strutted over, fingers looped in the belt loops of his pants, he was licking his lips.

  “Well now, Angie,” he said, drawing his words out into a drawl that sounded obscene in itself. “Lookin’ reeaaal good tonight.”

  In answer, her tongue traced the outline of her lips as a slim, teasing fingernail traced the boundaries of an areola. Inside her head, Angelica began to wail. She felt like a girl trapped in glass, pounding on a surface that she could see through but couldn’t break, no matter how hard she tried.

  He was on her in a heartbeat. Angelica screamed inside as his beefy, sweaty paws groped at her chest and cupped her ass. She could feel the slime of engine grease smeared wherever his fingers roamed. His breath was sour with rancid meat, and his stubble left raw flesh behind wherever he moved his lips. And he moved them everywhere.

  Her body acted as if he were Romeo, responding to him as if he were the man it had been yearning for all night. She could feel her nipples harden, and the crease between her thighs grow thick and damp. Her hands fumbled at his buttons, helping him undress, and her stomach again tried to heave as his tongue entered her mouth. But instead of puking, her tongue grew fevered, trading him lick for lick, kiss for kiss. They slicked each other in spit until each backed off, short of breath. And then Angelica heard a voice that wasn’t hers coo from inside her. It stole her tongue and lauded the mechanic, begging with a stolen voice, “Oh, Harold, I’ve wanted you for sooo long. Do me from behind. Do me now!” And as she gagged on that, her hips swiveled and her body bent over, grasping the hood of the truck and mooning the object of her hatred of so many years. Drool was dripping from the corners of her mouth, but the grease monkey didn’t notice.

  Harold had barely gotten himself between her cheeks before he’d cum, but he pumped himself into her anyway and knocked off another load before he was done. He’d been waiting for this for a decade and had saved up enough spunk to nail her five times in a night, if she’d let him.

  Of course, the real Harold wouldn’t have had the stamina, but the Harold that grasped at Angelica’s tits and slapped his thighs to her ass was not the real Harold. Well, he was Harold, but with a bit of augmentation. The real Harold would have cum, cried and run away in shame. But it was no accident that it was Harold who had driven the road out of town in the middle of the night. He’d been called, whether he knew it or not.

  Flashes of knee-melting pleasure mixed with pangs of rage and humiliation as Angelica accepted his dick inside her—even encouraged him to ride her harder. Her mind was raging near insanity inside, alternately crying and yelling with Harold’s weak but penetrating thrusts. But nothing came out of her mouth. Only the thin drool of the lunatic. She willed hands that would not respond to beat on the stinking flesh that rutted with hers, that raped hers…but it was no good. Her hands only stroked his sweaty face like a true lover and toyed with the slick tool between his legs. She was his slut and nothing she could do would stop it. This humiliation would have been bad enough to break hers, or anyone’s, spirit.

  But of course, it got worse.

  Just making her fuck the most disgusting man she knew wasn’t enough for Him. He knew how to twist the knife. After they’d rolled around on a dirty blanket Harold had dragged from the bed of his truck, after he’d done his thing with her three times, until the stench of his B.O. was skunk-sprayed inside her head and she felt as if she’d bathed in his filth, they lay back from each other. Damp and naked to the night, they stared up at the stars. But they were thinking very different thoughts.

  “I’ve dreamed of you,” he whispered, “for so long, Angie. Why’d you make it so hard?”

  Angelica wasn’t sharing his reverie. As Harold reveled in the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, her hands were busy. She struggled to understand what He planned next. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d guessed. She couldn’t have stopped what He planned. She was His instrument tonight. And He was using her body to hurt her where it hurt the most.

  “You’re everything I’ve ever wanted,” Harold said to her then, and as she raised herself up on an elbow, she could see the tears running down his fat, stubbled face. He was an ugly man, far less desirable even than the nerdy kid he’d once been—the geek who’d chased her a dozen years before into high school hallway cul-de-sacs. She couldn’t help but to feel something when he said those words, charged with the longing and heartache and loneliness that two decades of obsession had fertilized.

  He was gross.

  He was ugly.

  He smelled bad.

  But all he had ever wanted was her. Angelica’s heart turned over at the pathos of it all. A spark of something between pity and compassion took root in her heart.

  That was when He struck.

  Ang
elica felt her hands raise the belt they had carefully snaked out of the mechanic’s discarded pants, and slipped it around his neck so quickly, Harold’s first thought was that she was coming down on him to kiss him full force. Then he realized that his wind had been cut off and he tried to push the object of his desires away. But it was too late. As soon as he lifted his head from the blanket, Angelica rolled over behind him, allowing Him to tighten the belt without Harold having a clear grab at his tormentor.

  Angelica’s mind screamed so hard, she felt something in her neck snap. She’d thought fucking him was horror, but killing him was worse than having his cum inside her, worse than tasting him when He had forced her to put her mouth on his fat, grotesque dick.

  Harold bucked his legs and back against her as though he were a rodeo steer as she cinched the belt tighter and tighter. Her arms held on snugger than any cowboy. She strangled the life from him with a borrowed strength that pulsed through her biceps as the leather gagged the fat man beneath her.

  His voice was gargling out past his spit to beg for his life.

  That was the worst part.

  “Please, Angie,” he croaked. “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  Tears coursed down her face as she heard him pledge his love. The hatred she’d felt for him for so long had died, but now she could do nothing to save him, only watch as her arms betrayed them both. In the sterile glow of the moon she could see his face turn prune purple, his eyes flashing and bugging wildly. His arms flopped from side to side. She felt one clammy paw slap her in the belly. Another sent a jolt of pain through her chest as he hooked a finger on her right nipple and pulled hard.

  But soon his struggles degenerated into wet, weak slaps against her thigh. Through it all, Angelica’s grip never loosened on the belt.

  Eventually his choking and struggling slowed down, and she lay with her full body weight on top of his, tightening the strap even more than before.

  “I…lu…ve…d…you,” was the last thing he gasped.

  For the first time all night, He spoke to her.

  “That was sweet,” He mocked. “Give him another kiss, why doncha. Love shouldn’t go unrequited.”

  “No,” Angelica blubbered. “Please.”

  She begged Him to let her go, but it didn’t do any good. His control of her didn’t lessen. He forced her to watch as her hand toyed with Harold’s dead wood, and then her foot lifted over his thigh, positioning her cunt to straddle him. Angelica’s head twisted and locked, forcing her to see what she was doing, to stare into Harold’s dead eyes. They were wide-open, like he was looking at a ghost. Only they were already glazed.

  Gone.

  Empty.

  His face was a dark color, his mouth wet with foamy spit. But she bent down, touched her lips to his, and…

  …slid her tongue into the stinking abyss of his already cooling mouth.

  Her chest gasping with sobs, she slid herself up and down his dead body, tasting the salt of his semen, licking his ears, prodding her tongue between his rubbery lips. For an hour she crouched over him, forcing him within her until her insides were raw. She could feel herself lubricating his cock with blood, finally, and then…for a long time she was gone.

  She couldn’t watch anymore.

  She couldn’t feel anymore.

  Despite His hold on her, Angelica turned off.

  Later, she would dimly remember dragging Harold away from the road. She would shred her fingers prying up rocks and piling them over his body in a rough, thorny spot near the shore. Mosquitoes buzzed and flies stung. The sound of the surf gave her a rhythm: lift, move, drop. Lift, move, drop. Soon she couldn’t see the pale, hairy flesh bubbling out from between the rocks. The wide clay features of his face were all that was left.

  And then, the biggest rock she’d been able to lift dropped down on that face and crushed that clay to the ground. Tears wet the sand between the stones as she scooped and threw, scooped and threw. Then more rocks. Lift, move, drop. Lift, move, drop.

  Scoop and throw. Scoop and throw.

  Angelica worked for hours, until her back and legs and arms were a maze of mosquito welts and her thighs and ribs were streaked with sweat and sand.

  When even He could squeeze no more strength from her muscles, she staggered up the bank, climbed into Harold’s truck, and drove it to the other side of town. At dawn she was walking stark naked through the center of Terrel, oblivious to everything.

  She walked all the way home.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Angelica stared down into her lap, refusing to meet Joe’s eyes.

  “I don’t know how many people saw me walk through town that night, or what they thought. But nobody ever said anything to me. And nobody ever found Harold’s body.

  “It was a long time before I was right in the head after that. What He made me do that night…it was worse than dying. But it was effective too. I’ve never tried leaving Terrel again since. He made His point.”

  Angelica finally looked up, black mascara streaked down her cheeks. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Is that a good enough story for you? I don’t think the paper will publish it in Terrel.”

  “Did you ever go back to”—Joe cleared his throat— “look for the body?”

  She laughed.

  “Are you kidding? At first I didn’t really want to find it, but eventually, I had to. I had to know. I was sick to my stomach for weeks—both from thinking about what I’d done, and from worrying about what the police would do to me when they found him. I took a lot of walks over that stretch of land. And every time, I felt like someone was staring at the back of my neck. I always went in the daytime, but it was like He was watching me, laughing at me. I never did see anything that looked familiar. I remember building a mound of rocks on top of him—you’d think that would be easy to spot. But, the end of that night is kind of a blur in my mind. I’m sure some of that’s deliberate. I don’t think He wants me to remember some of those details…and anyway, who would want to remember what I did?”

  A suspicion suddenly dawned on Joe—one that made him nauseous just to consider.

  “Angelica,” he said. His voice was low. “When you called me over here that night, and you were only wearing a robe…” he began.

  She looked up at him, eyes filled with pain. And tears.

  She nodded.

  There was a sinking feeling in Joe’s stomach. He knew in some way he’d been used that night, but he’d never suspected this! She hadn’t really wanted him, had she? Maybe she was even grossed out by him, like she was the mechanic. Maybe the thing in the cliff had chosen a man she found repulsive and rubbed her nose in him. Literally. The images of that night came to him like the fast-cut trailer to an adult film. Her eyes wild and wanton. Her hands moving over him velvet smooth and then digging in, claws of pleasure.

  What did she really think of him? He suddenly felt like he had to know. Did she see images of that night in her mind and have to stifle the urge to vomit? Could he ever hope to know?

  Angelica stood up then and walked over to the front window again, pushing the curtains aside slightly with the back of her hand.

  “Who are you watching for?” Joe asked. “Every time I’ve been here you’ve done that.”

  “I don’t want them to come and catch you here,” she said.

  “Who’s them?”

  “The other girls. Rhonda, Karen, Monica. If He’s aware of you, He might send them for you.”

  “Angelica…” he began.

  She turned and crossed quickly to the couch.

  “Joe, I wasn’t kidding earlier when I told you to leave town. He won’t let any of us do it. We’ve all tried. And sometimes He uses the rest of us to stop someone who’s trying to escape. If He’s already set his sights on you, it’s probably already too late. But if you can, Joe, you should go. Fast.”

  “Was it hard for you, the night we…”

  She smiled a little, lips twisted in a troubled attempt at good hum
or. Then she bent forward and kissed him softly, on the forehead.

  “Not like you think.”

  Then she pulled him from the couch. He marveled at the strength in those slender arms.

  “I’m serious, now,” she said. Her face bled desperation. “If you’ve heard Him…you have to go.”

  Just then, a piercing light flooded the living room. A car pulled up in the driveway. Angelica panicked.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” She started toward the door, then stopped, motioning wildly down the hallway.

  “Quick,” she cried. “My bedroom. Go. No one should see you here.”

  He stood to go and she turned about and grabbed his elbow, shoving him down the hall, to the left of the bead-curtained reading room. Grudgingly, he went. The door slammed closed behind him, and then he heard the knock on the front door.

  There were voices, female from the pitch. But he couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. He could hear the growing sense of upset in Angelica’s voice, though. It grew louder and sharper against the lulling murmurs of the other women. He sat down at the doorframe and rested his head to the crack. It did no good. He couldn’t make out what was going on down the hall. After a few minutes, he gave up and looked around. The last time he’d been here, he hadn’t had time to take in the sights. He’d been a bit preoccupied with its own er.

  It was a small room, or at least it seemed so with the dark oaken furniture that was crammed into it. A grandmother’s bedroom, he thought, noting the decorative carving work that had gone into the legs and edging of the heavy antique bureau that rested to the right of the four-poster bed. A bed that absorbed you into its bosom as if you were a little kid, he recalled with a smile. Then he frowned as he remembered why he knew that. After the revelation that she had been possessed, coerced into sleeping with him, it was not the kind of conquest he wanted to remember.