Blood Mountain

like he were fucking her mouth instead of the sweet spot between her legs, legs that were wobbling against his own as if her muscles were under incredible strain. Her skin had been flushed with warmth but it turned cold as if she were leaking heat out of her in a flood.

I’ll pump it back in you, he thought and continued his business.

Her head lolled side to side with the rhythm of his movement and she grunted like she was keeping the beat. He went faster and faster. Her body jiggled like she were dead and that was almost too much. It brought him right to the brink and he had to force the image away. If she wanted to fight him, Victor would be disappointed but he wouldn’t let that stop him from getting what he wanted. And then getting it again after he sliced her throat.

He could even fuck the stab wound. God, it would probably be so warm. Even warmer than what he was enjoying right now. He would straddle her face and rip her injury wide with his emphatic thrusts. Watch her dead eyes roll back in their sockets like she was experiencing the most intense pleasure.

That did it. The hotness rushed out of him in a long, continuous spasm. He groaned against the strain of every muscle in his body and knew he should be quiet but it didn’t matter. This was how the universe wanted it. The day had been spent in pursuit of this glorious release and now he had to be ready for what awaited him.

Consciousness returned to Mercy’s eyes as if a switch had been flipped and a scream ushered out of her that made Victor’s ears ring. He had to punch her again, break her nose, let her gag on some blood, but he was still unleashing the hot stuff and he couldn’t move, had to let it flow and flow and flow.

Mercy screamed again, louder still, and Victor did the only thing he could: he bit down on her nose and clenched his jaw with all the strength flooding his body and all the hotness gushing from him. Her scream now was of immense pain and that made him bite down even harder. Blood encircled his lips and dribbled on his tongue like something sweet.

From far away, Mercy’s father was yelling. “Baby! Baby!”

Oh, yeah, baby, Victor thought and screamed against the last fluid fleeing from his body. He knew this was the most vulnerable he could be and that he had to be prepared for her to strike back but he couldn’t keep up his cognitive or physical acuteness. Not after such an amazing orgasm. His muscles went lax, his jaw dropped from her nose, and his mind entered that hazy grey world where thoughts were amorphous blobs that flooded in an empty vastness like clouds in an eternal sky.

Mercy’s hands slipped under his shirt and gripped his chest. For a moment, he thought she wanted more and he felt himself start to grow hard again but then her fingers morphed into claws that pierced his flesh in the gaps between his ribs. She didn’t have long fingernails--he had seen those fingers and the close-cropped, smoothed ends of her nails up close--but the pain that rolled out from her attack like a flood engulfing his lungs could have been from the talons of some long-clawed feline predator.

Fire pokers scorched from raging flames pushed deeper into his skin and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t get even the smallest gasp of air down into his burning lungs. His dick went limp and fell from the warmth of Mercy’s sweet hole and that loss of connection was almost worse than the burning in his chest for a moment because it was a complete detachment from what was his and it rang of defeat and embarrassment, of all the times he had tried and failed, the times he had been ridiculed and belittled.

Then the pain blanked out everything in his mind and he was the primal beast once more. He smacked her across the face and her hands dropped from his chest. He smacked her again and laughed at how her head snapped from one side to the next.

“You dumb bitch,” he said through panting breath. “We could have been so great together.”

Mercy started to say something, some variation of “Fuck off,” no doubt, but he punched her in the face again and this time broke her nose. Blood pumped from her nostrils and Victor smeared it across her lips. “Taste it, you bitch,” he said.

Her father was at the tent, ripping at the fabric like an animal confused how to get inside, and yelling “Baby! Baby!”

Victor couldn’t help but laugh.

Mercy Higgins clamped her mouth around two of Victor’s fingers and yanked her head viciously side to side like a wild beast trying to tear chunks of meat off a carcass. He swung at her face again but the hit went wide and one of her legs had somehow gotten between his own and he had just enough time to register the danger before her knee came right up into his balls.

THIRTY-SIX

Mercy had once read a story in Reader’s Digest about a woman who had been attacked and raped in a parking lot and had thought she could simply endure it and be thankful it didn’t get any worse but when the rapist put a knife to her throat and said he was done with her and now she was done with her life, the woman fought back and tore out one of the assailant’s eyes. The article, entitled, “Eye for an Eye: A Survivor’s Tale” had seemed so fantastic that Mercy thought it must be exaggerated. No woman could be so tough after something so horrendous.

The strength that raged through her body was not born of anger or disgrace or fear. It was something far more basic, something that stretched back to the very beginning of humanity when the earliest cavemen tried to drag the earliest rape victims to their caves and those first feminists had fought back and discovered that man might be bigger and stronger but, if hit in just the right place, far more vulnerable than any woman.

Victor recoiled from the smack of her knee but he couldn’t pull completely away because she wouldn’t let up on his fingers. If some woman had gouged out a man’s eye, she could rip off this guy’s fingers. Then she’d get on top of him while he cried like a little baby and yank his ball sack right off his body. She could dangle it over his face, stuff it down his throat.

Those courageous thoughts vanished in another direct punch and she could no longer keep her bite on his fingers. He fell off to the side, however, and she had a chance to crawl out, run away, get to daddy and then she’d be safe. She heard him outside the tent, yelling for her. Why wasn’t he in here? Why wasn’t he saving his daughter?

She got to her knees and dizziness nearly toppled her. The opening of the tent was only a few feet away but the world in here was a swirling mess of dark blobs like she was dropping into a black hole. Her head felt like it had detached from her neck and was floating off into another dimension.

The flashlight was somewhere to her right. She threw herself in that direction and thought for sure she would tumble endlessly into a bottomless black pit. Instead, the hard earth stung her knees but that was okay, hell, that was great, and so much preferable to the warbling pain in her head and the throbbing misery between her legs. When she finally got to check herself down there, she feared it might be destroyed.

Her hands found the flashlight. The plastic casing was cold and fragile but solid enough. She turned it on and the beam blinded her for a moment. She spun around and there was Victor grinning at her, blood on his chin. My blood, she thought, from my fucking nose. And there was his dick, dangling between his hairy legs and getting hard again. No, please, dear Jesus, how could he be ready to go again? She had just kneed him as hard as she could. He was supposed to be disabled, unable to breathe, helpless.

She screamed or groaned or something and lunged toward the entrance to the tent. Her hands tangled in something and she thought wildly that Victor had set a trap and that there was no escape, no escape from this madman, and then she realized it was her jeans. She grabbed them.

The end of the tent flung open and there was daddy with a stronger flashlight. His whole face was wide with fear and confusion. His head whipped side to side as if the tent were huge rather than a mere few feet wide. He saw her, she knew he did, and then he looked away as if he couldn’t process what he was seeing.

“Daddy!” she cried.

“Mercy?” he said like he had forgotten what she looked like.

“Help!”

The other guy, Caleb, with the broad shoulders, was behind Daddy, almost towering over him and that was great because Victor stood no chance against both men. He might be able to fight her father but not both. They would tackle him, tie him up with bungee cords and then drag him down the mountain and call the police. She could relax now. Everything was going to be okay.

Caleb’s arm came around her father’s neck as if Caleb were trying to stop Daddy from doing something stupid and she figured that was probably smart. They couldn’t kill Victor. If they did, this would turn into some kind of