The Family Tree

by John Everson

Sherrilyn turned back to the man. “How are you feeling,” she asked, pressing her hand down upon his now extremely erect cock. He gasped and humped his hips forward, jangling the chains that held him. The Belvedere Bourbon was better than any Viagra.

  “I thought so,” Sherrilyn said. She reached up on the wall for a key that hung there, and untied the hands and one leg of both captives. She might have been able to release them completely, because at that point, neither Mr. nor Mrs. Thorne tried to pull away. Instead, they ignored their wounds and captivity and grabbed eagerly for each other. Richard was hungrily kissing his wife and their hands grasped at each other’s flesh spastically. They couldn’t get enough.

  Scott leaned farther out from his hiding place to watch. The Thornes were out of control, their tongues sloppy and prodding, their hands grabbing and stroking and scratching at each other as if they had not been together sexually in weeks. It reminded him of the night at the dinner table, when they had had too much of the Family Ale, and had ended up quickly making out on the floor.

  Sherrilyn retreated to the divan again, and discarded the last of her clothes—the tiny red panties—before she laid back, legs spread, one foot still on the ground. She slipped one hand between her legs and gave out her own moan of lust. “Nate, get me another glass, would you?”

  The couple on the couch had already spent themselves for the moment and were lying on their backs, watching the Thornes as if this were a stage show. The man took a swig from his glass and set it on the floor. “This stuff is amazing,” he said.

  Sherrilyn grinned. “That’s why we call it the hard liquor,” she said. “It’ll keep your mind in the gutter and your hands in your pants for hours.”

  The Thornes had slipped to the floor, and Richard finally broke away from her hungry kisses to kneel and position himself behind her. He grabbed her hips and Evie cried out with unadulterated joy. Whatever pain she’d felt before seemed forgotten. “Yes, take me,” she moaned. Her words were slurred, as if she were drunk.

  “I don’t feel too sorry for them,” Sherrilyn said, pulling Nate on top of her, while Billy resumed his post at her breast. “They may be feeding the tree, but they’re also going to have the best sex of their lives for the next few weeks. In a few more days, that’s really all they’ll be able to think about.”

  “Sometimes I think that’s all you think about,” Nate said, pressing himself between her thighs.

  Sherrilyn purred. “Almost,” she said.

  At that moment, something cold pinched Scott’s arm.

  He looked up to see Ellen standing over him, her hand lifting away. She was holding a hypodermic needle. He realized what the pinch on his arm had been.

  Shit.

  Ellen was frowning, as if she’d just discovered a green egg in her egg salad. Something had fouled her lunch. Scott’s world was starting to spin.

  He felt her hand on his neck, but the room grew hazy. Ellen was speaking, but it sounded as if she were very far away. Her words echoed, and he felt the need to lie down.

  “Sherrilyn, I told you to keep this door locked when you’re down here,” she said. “Now look what you’ve done…”

  And then he didn’t hear anything else for a while.

  Chapter Seventeen

  He couldn’t move. But something warm was trickling down his throat. He swallowed, and then swallowed again as the stream of liquid kept flowing.

  Scott tried to lift his arm from where it hung at his side but nothing happened. At least, he didn’t think so. He couldn’t feel anything. And his head felt funny, almost like a balloon—it was heavy yet buoyant all at the same time. He opened his eyes just in time to see Caroline step away from him. She set a glass down on a table just a few feet away. He recognized the taste in his mouth and the warmth that was already spreading across his chest. His bare chest. He craned his head to peer at his surroundings and quickly recognized the room. It was the root cellar room where Sherrilyn had found him, just before she’d taken him back to her bed. The bone room. The last time he’d been here, he had been investigating all of the bone fragments tangled in the roots of the tree in the pit beneath the proper room floor.

  This time, his arms and legs were manacled to the trunk of the tree. His last memory—of discovering the Thornes in a similar situation—flashed in his mind. Now he was naked and chained, just as they had been. And the tingling of desire was now bringing feeling back to his arms and legs. This tingling, however, wasn’t pins and needles, this was the electricity of lust.

  “Oh shit,” he said in a whisper.

  “Morning, sleepyhead,” Caroline said. She wore an electric-yellow tube top and a pair of old denim shorts. “I really wish you’d stayed with Lucy last night like I asked ya too. You wouldn’t be here right now if you had.”

  “You can’t keep me chained up here like this!” Scott said.

  She stepped up to him, and pressed her finger against his lips. “Mama can, and now she will. You’d have ended up here anyway, but you and I could have had a few more nights together in your bed where it’s more comfy if you hadn’t gone snooping.”

  She frowned, as if he should have known better. As if he had ruined her day intentionally. “Now we’ll have to do things the hard way,” she said.

  Scott pushed again and this time he felt his arms move against the hard bark. It scraped his forearms and his calves when he struggled. His vision was blurry, whether from whatever Ellen had shot him up with, or from the liquor Caroline had just fed him, he didn’t know.

  Caroline stroked her hand across his bare chest. “Now don’t make a fuss or they’ll come down here. And I want to have you all to myself for a while.”

  With that, she unbuttoned and began to shimmy out of the shorts. She set them on the table with the glass, and then returned to lean against Scott’s thighs. She felt warm and smooth against his skin, and despite his position, he suddenly wanted her more than he wanted anything else in the world. The need was palpable, almost painful. Lust rose inside him like a wave, fluid and unstoppable. He had to have her, to bend her over and slip himself inside her again and again. He wanted to take her, love her, own her. He wanted to come.

  Something warm and sticky suddenly coated his cock, and he felt her sliding his tip along the folds of her labia. And then he was engulfed in warmth, and her hands were on his shoulders.

  “I really wanted to be with you last night,” she complained, slowly bouncing herself up and down against him. His back rubbed painfully against the bark of the tree, but he almost didn’t notice, he was so focused on her and the feelings pulsing through his groin. “When Mama told me she’d put you down here, I cried.”

  “What…are…you…doing!” he whispered. Scott’s eyes flickered and the world seemed a haze of sensation and shadow, nothing more. He could barely make out Caroline’s big blue eyes as she stared into his, kissing him while she drew him into her.

  “I’m making love to you, silly,” she said. “Can’tcha feel me, or didn’t Momma’s medicine wear off yet?”

  “Yes,” he gasped, and then moaned at the spikes of sensation that jolted from his balls to his chest. It was difficult to keep his mind on what he wanted to say. He was angry. Or he had been angry. How could he stay angry when Caroline was here, sweet, sexy Caroline who made his world feel amazing? Who made his whole body sing when she touched him?

  “That’a boy,” she said. “You can rock just like that! Mmmmm.”

  He felt his moment gathering as she increased her rhythm, squeaking just a bit as she ground her crotch up and down against his, never letting him slip out from her warm, wet grip. She must have been on her tiptoes the whole time.

  “This is what we should have been doing all night in your bed,” she said, and slowly eased herself up until he was sure he was going to slip out and away. But then before he did, she pressed back down hard, until he felt himself finding even deeper, t
ighter spaces within her. She drove him hard inside her but still whispered. Her voice was choppy, but warm. “I wanted to keep you for myself, but Momma said I had to share.”

  Scott opened his eyes wide as it happened, and he screamed at the rush. “Oh my God,” he cried out. “I’m coming.”

  “Yes, baby.” She threw her head back and let out her own cries, as she jackhammered her crotch against his in a sudden frenzy. And then, after a minute of smashing his ass against the rough tree bark, she slowed down, and milked him with her hidden muscles. He could feel the pressure sucking at him below, as she leaned her head forward and kissed his lips, pushing her tongue deep inside his mouth. When she finally came up for air, her eyes glowed with a personal triumph. “Momma said I had to share, but she said I could be first.”

  “What are you talking about?” Scott said, shaking his head to clear the fuzz away.

  “Have to go right now,” Caroline said, stepping back from him to grab her shorts from the table. As she stepped into them, she explained. “Lots of planting to do today, and everyone’s going to be moving slow after last night.”

  “Wait,” he asked. She’d already reached the stairs. “What if I need to go to the bathroom?”

  Caroline smiled and shrugged her shoulders. “I thought guys didn’t mind peeing on trees?” she said. “Just more fertilizer as far as the tree’s concerned. Let it rip!”

  And then she was gone, and Scott was left alone in the room.

  Chained to his family tree.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It felt like hours before the silence was broken again.

  Then the creak of the door opening upstairs woke Scott from dozing. He blinked himself awake to see Sherrilyn descend the stairs and stop a few yards away, arms folded across a white blouse as she gazed thoughtfully at him. Her expression was somewhere between gloating and sad. “Well, well,” she said finally, stalking towards him. “So here you are. Don’t you know that ol’ saying about how curiosity killed the cat?”

  He suddenly had a mental image of her sluttish actions in the Party Room. “I’d say something else is going to kill the cat,” he countered. He was suddenly furious with her, remembering how easy she spread her legs on the couch the night before. How sadistic she’d been to the Thornes. How following her had gotten him locked up here. This was her fault, he decided.

  “Do you just sleep with every guy who checks in here, or do you use a lottery system? I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of a little something called STDs? Your kitty is going to be the one to get killed.”

  “My pussycat will be just fine,” she said. “Grandpa Belvedere’s brew fixes everything. You should realize that by now. Oh, speaking of which—how’s your leg?”

  It occurred to Scott that someone had taken his splints off when they’d chained him up to the tree. Caroline had slapped and pressed herself all over him and he hadn’t even noticed the support was gone.

  “My leg appears to be fine,” he said. “Although it shouldn’t be. I guess maybe there is something to the whole tree sap, fountain of youth thing. Is that why you told the Thornes they’re going to be here all summer? Because the Family Ale is going to keep them on life support?”

  She nodded. “They’ll bleed every day; the tree needs blood to stay strong in the summer. But they’ll be drinking plenty of the tree’s blood too…and that means their wounds will heal right up. We could keep them alive for years if we wanted to.”

  “You’ve done this before.”

  She laughed. “We’ve done this for a hundred and seventy years! It’s how the family has survived.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The tree gives life,” she said. “But what the Indians knew was that it also needs to drink life in order to give it. They used to perform sacrifices to feed it. We developed our own system of keeping our fountain of youth flowing.”

  She stepped over to the table and retrieved the glass, filling it from a pitcher that was set on a sideboard on the far end of the room. When she returned and pressed it to his lips, he spit it back at her.

  Sherrilyn shook her head. “You can drink and enjoy this, or you can make it difficult. Either way, I’m going to use you, and I’m going to like it.”

  “What are you going to do to me?” he said.

  “Well, if you’d like the blunt and vulgar term, I’m going to fuck you,” Sherrilyn said, shaking her head. “Are you dense?”

  “You’re going to rape me?” he said. His voice was incredulous.

  “I’m going to share my ecstasy with you,” she corrected.

  “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “I’m not the one chained up,” she pointed out. “We’re going to have a good time.”

  She began to unbutton her blouse, and he laughed. “I may not be able to get away, but you can’t force me to get hard.”

  Sherrilyn’s lips formed a thin line. “I won’t have to force you.”

  She reached between his legs and ran her fingernail from his anus, across his balls, and down the shaft of his tumescent penis. And despite his declaration, he felt himself instantly growing. Call it the Pinocchio effect…he had no control over his body’s reaction to her touch.

  “Men are all alike,” she said. “Your grandfather couldn’t resist me either.”

  Scott cringed inside. He was not going to let her win this one. He refused to let his erection betray him. He tried to think of as many nonsexual things as possible. Crying babies and yowling puppies and cutting the lawn. When that didn’t work, he pictured horrific scenes of butchery, a warzone of mangled bodies and bombs going off. The painful screams of the injured. A mother with a blackened face carrying a bloody blanket with something horrible inside. Her tears left trails of white down her face. He focused on the scenes he’d watched once on the History Channel in a documentary on the Concentration Camps of World War II.

  The gambit worked.

  Even as Sherrilyn stroked him, and then took him into her mouth, his cock retreated instead of grew harder. After a few minutes, she gave up and stood, glaring at him.

  “You will perform,” she said. “I promise you. You have to drink, and the only thing you’re going to get to drink is distilled from the sap of the tree. Keep enough of that in your system, and it’s like that Viagra stuff they’re always advertising on television. So like I said before…you can enjoy this, or make it difficult. Your choice.”

  She picked up the glass and held it to his lips once more.

  Scott blew as hard as he could, spattering her face with amber drops. “Go fuck yourself,” he said.

  Sherrilyn shrugged. “We’ve got time. All the time in the world.”

  She rebuttoned her blouse and walked back up the stairs, leaving him in silence.

  Almost as soon as she was gone, Scott felt his erection reassert itself. Her words echoed in his head about Viagra. He’d had a pretty steady diet of Family Ale and Belvedere Bourbon. He had been feeling increasingly horny for the past week, which was really the only reason he would ever have fallen into the triple trap of Caroline/Sherrilyn/Rocky. He’d felt the dizzying effects of its aphrodisiac.

  He would never have been so reckless at home.

  If only he would have stayed there.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The hours passed slowly, and Scott drifted to sleep a couple of times, only to awaken with a jolt. His stomach had been growling for quite some time when he heard footsteps descending the stairs. The smell of food reached him almost before he could make out who brought it.

  “Doesn’t look like you’ll be going hiking with us anytime soon,” a female voice said.

  Rocky.

  “We’ll miss you on the trails.”

  “Then let me out of here,” he said. Almost a dare.

  She smiled and shook her head. “Can’t do that, stud. Ellen’d have my head. But I
can at least bring you some food and make sure you stay big and strong. She’s bound to let you out eventually, right?”

  Rocky moved a small table until it was in front of him and then reached out to his side to put a key into the lock on the manacle of his left hand. She stepped back out of his reach as soon as the clasp popped open. She needn’t have bothered…his arm felt leaden and asleep as he lifted it and then leaned it on the table. She may have freed his arm so he could eat, but he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to use it.

  The plate held a healthy slab of meatloaf alongside mashed potatoes and some steamed heads of broccoli. Nothing too exciting, but Scott’s stomach felt like it was going to leap out of his throat when he took it in. He was starving. And while he considered protesting for a moment and refusing to eat, as he’d refused to drink earlier, he soon dismissed that idea. He had no chance to find a way out of this if he didn’t keep his strength. So he dug in, one-armed, as Rocky stood by watching. When he was nearly done, she walked across the room to where she had set a pitcher. She filled a cup and brought it to him.

  He instantly smelled the familiar scent of the Family Ale.

  “Not drinking that,” he said.

  “I don’t think Ellen’s going to send you anything else,” Rocky said. “But suit yourself.”

  She sat down cross-legged on the ground a few feet away, and picked at her fingernails, ignoring him. After a bit, she began doing leg stretches.

  He finished the last few bites of his potatoes, and realized how salty the whole dish had been. He was dying for something to wash it all down, after not drinking anything for probably twelve hours. How impaired could a mug of the ale make him? After all, he’d been drinking it for the past week and while he’d definitely lost his inhibitions a lot more than he would have otherwise, he hadn’t lost his faculties completely, like some sex-crazed zombie. Like the Thornes had. He had been unnaturally drawn to Lucy at the Last Tap, but in the end he’d been able to walk away.