“ Believe it,” Earl said, then he gestured toward the pills in Broxton’s hand. “Now, eat up, I don’t have all day.”
“ I’m not very hungry.”
“ Mr. Broxton, we can do this easy, or we can do it hard. I got no instructions about my wife. You want her to stay alive you eat the pills,” Earl said, as he moved the barrel of the gun till it was pointing at Maria. “Well?”
Broxton poured four of the pills into his hand and swallowed them dry.
“ Now you baby.”
Maria took the bottle from Broxton and tipped it to her lips, swallowing the last two pills, then she drank the water. “I hope they kill me, Earl,” she said. “That way I’ll never have to see you again.”
“ Baby, death is the only way you’ll ever get rid of me,” he said.
“ Now what?” Broxton said.
“ Now we wait,” he said, looking at his watch. “Tomorrow evening, at five straight up, Ramsingh will be getting his and it’ll all be over.”
“ She’s going to hit him during the dedication speech?”
“ Yeah, in front of an army of cops, pretty fucking ballsy. I almost with I was doing it, but it’s her show now. I’m out of it.”
“ It’s not too late to really be out of it, Earl,” Broxton said. “Let us go and I’ll keep you out of it.”
“ Climb up on the bed, lay down on your backs and stare at the ceiling,” Earl said.
“ You don’t have to do this,” Broxton said.
“ You’re wasting your breath,” Maria said, and she scooted on her rear till she was in the center of the bed and lay down with her head on the pillow.
“ Now you, Broxton,” Earl said, and by the time he was stretched out next to Maria she was asleep and he was out a few minutes later.
The slight breeze blowing through his hair told him it was a dream. He tried to reach a hand up, to touch it, to pull on it, to feel its texture, but his hands were locked at his sides. He opened his eyes and looked down, wind rippled through his loose clothes, tickled his bare feet and helped to keep him aloft.
“ Dani,” he moaned. He was floating above her nude body, gently coming down on top of her. He felt her breasts pushing against his bare chest, felt himself getting hard. He tried to bring a hand up to caress her, but his arms were locked iron tight at his sides.
He felt her hand take him and guide him into her. After all these years, it was happening at last. He felt her grind up to meet him and he was thrilled. He never wanted to wake, the dream was better than any reality, better than life.
He was so hard, but he couldn’t seem to find release. The dream had him in its grip and he slowly pumped into her. He came so close, but the pleasure he craved was just beyond the edge. He tried to grind into her faster and harder, but he was crippled without the use of his hands and so he was forced to match her slow, sensual rhythm and she held him on the edge of forever with her steady rocking, stomach tightening, thigh clenching motion, seeming to suck him deeper and deeper into her until he felt like his heart was going to burst.
Then she pumped her pelvis up to him to catch him as the greatest release he’d ever known ripped through him. He went and went and went and he thought he’d go on forever. “Dani, Dani,” he moaned, then he was sinking in dark waters, the surface fading away. There were sharks here, danger near, and he was moving blindly out of control, buried in black, shivering and shaking, cold one second, hot the next. He tried to see, but pain plagued his eyes, the lids weighed heavy, covering an ache that caromed through his head. To open them would be to invite in the hot chills that ravaged his body. He felt like he’d been crucified and tossed into a whirlpool, and it was sucking him down into the pit.
Reality was spinning away as the varying shades of red running inside his eyes turned into flames dancing over hot coals, leaping out from behind his eyelids and wrapping hot tongues of fire around the back of his neck, hot and clenching, choking his breath away as his lungs exploded. He gagged, trying in vain to suck air through lips that refused to part. And then he passed out again.
Later he came awake, shaking in a cold sweat. He was covered in pain. His legs felt like an army of assassins were beating on them with flaming torches. His arms were frozen, hands still nailed to the cross. Ice dripped from his armpits instead of sweat. His face was buried in snow. His mouth was nailed shut, cutting off air. The red flames inside his eyes had turned into frozen hands of clutching ice. Wicked hands, long nails digging into the back of his neck, digging deep, drawing blood, squeezing, clutching, seizing his spinal chord, snatching it away, pulling it through his throat.
Somewhere someone moaned, then his body started shaking, arms and legs vibrating and shuddering. He sensed that the source was from outside of himself, and he was powerless to control it. His right arm shot upward and came down hard, hitting himself in the leg. He felt a stab of pain as his arm was going up to attack himself again and he stiffened himself and fought against the force, slowing the attack. His midsection started jerking, spasms from outside of himself, flesh against him, pounding and rubbing, slippery and slapping. He wanted to see, but was choking, struggling to take in air, and he passed out again.
The cold was gone when he woke again, the clutching hands replaced by a dull headache, greater than a hangover, but bearable. The pain in his legs was gone, but so was most of the feeling. His bladder was screaming, but he couldn’t relieve himself. He was aching, stiff, and his tongue lay flat, dry in his mouth. He tried to move it, tried to swallow saliva and couldn’t. He had a kink in his left foot and tried to move it. Like his tongue, it was immobile. He opened his eyes.
Her eyes were inches from his own, staring unblinking. He tried to jerk away, but he was frozen in place. He fought to reclaim his raging pulse. He tried screaming, but the sound was killed in his mouth. He squeezed his eyes closed and tried to fight the fright building inside. He was attached to her and she was dead. He shivered and gagged on another scream, then his arm shot up, out of his control, and he slapped himself in the leg, but he kept his eyes closed, hoping beyond hope that he’d slipped into a nightmare and not cold reality.
He slapped himself again and he opened his eyes.
She blinked.
She was alive.
He stared into her eyes and forced his fear aside. Her nose was touching his, he could feel her warm breath on his face. She had gray duct tape stuck over her mouth. He tried to move his lips, moved his parched tongue between them, touched and tasted the tape covering his own mouth. Cold fear crept up his spine.
He closed his eyes again and inhaled a long slow breath through his nostrils. When he open them back up she was still staring at him. She cast her eyes down the length of their bodies and he followed her look and the fear so recently calmed burst through the surface, screaming and sending spikes of ice into the base of his neck.
Their arms and legs were duct taped together, wrapped several times, mummy like. They were naked, her breasts were flat against his chest, her pelvis pressed against his, their breath intermingled, their eyes sharing their combined fear. They couldn’t move, he couldn’t sit without breaking her back, she couldn’t without breaking his, but there had to be a way, he thought. There was, it was at the edge of his mind, but the drugs riding the blood through his veins dulled him and he found himself drifting into semi consciousness.
But there was a way out, he thought, as everything faded to black.
He felt the sun warm on his neck as he woke again, craving water, still stiff, still unable to move, and she was still staring, eyes so close to his. He tried to blink her away. He was still groggy from whatever drugs that were working on him, and it took a few seconds before he realized that this was no dream. He tried to talk through the tape, but his words, “Are you all right,” filtered through his dry mouth, the drug haze, and the duct tape, and came out like a cross between a moan and a groan and he knew they were as unintelligible to her as they were to himself.
He closed his eyes for a few seconds, to think, but he opened them quickly when she raised her arm up, pulling his along with it, and slapped him in the leg. He got the message and nodded his head. He wasn’t going back to sleep.
Then he remembered the dream and he knew that it had been no dream. It wasn’t Dani he’d made love to,
