couldn’t keep us apart. We filled the spaces between them with our warm, bare flesh.
It was as if Billie had been waiting for me, needing me.
We didn’t talk. We hugged and kissed fiercely. It started with the solemn urgency of two survivors finding each other after long and lonely wanderings. There was joy and relief, and a terrible sadness for all that had been lost.
Then that changed, shifted into an urgency of lovers. Hearts pounding, we explored each other with hands and mouths. Caressing, squeezing, delving deep, stroking. We licked each other, sucked and tasted. Gasping for breath. Moaning and sighing. Whispering no words except, “Yes,” and “Oh, there,” and “God.”
I won’t even try to describe all we did.
We were together for hours. Sometimes, we simply embraced and quietly talked. Then we would get started again.
Eventually, Billie managed a contortion that allowed us to make love between the bars. It was a hell of a trick, and took a lot of strength on her part. She couldn’t hold the position for very long.
It drove me crazy to be inside her that way. I’d never felt anything like it. So soft and warm and tight and slidy. And how it made me feel as if we were almost the same person for a while.
We’ve done it plenty of times since. I’ve learned to help by reaching through the bars and clutching her. That way, she doesn’t need to work so hard at holding herself up.
It has been wonderful.
Kimberly’s concrete tomb gives us sorrow, but also reminds us that life is a gift and we need to savor every moment that we’re given.
Though they’ve been imprisoned in the cages for three weeks now since the deaths of Wesley, Thelma and Kimberly, all four of my women are doing well. I have provided them with clothing, blankets and pillows, plenty to eat and drink. I clean them regularly by pouring water onto them from the tops of their cages. They have soap, washcloths, drinking cups, toothbrushes. They have hung blankets to make cubicles for privacy.
Their toilet buckets cannot be removed from the cages, so we came up with a system of lining the buckets with plastic bags. The used bags are passed between the bars for disposal.
I give my women whatever they ask for: combs, brushes, mirrors, sanitary napkins, books, magazines—even a Gameboy and a portable radio, both of which run off rechargeable batteries. I have become a fairly good cook. The mansion has provisions enough to last us for a few months, so there is no need to worry about starving. I don’t even ration the food.
My women want for very little, except their freedom.
It became obvious, after many tries during the first few days, that their cages were impregnable. I couldn’t pick the locks. I couldn’t force the doors or hinges. I had no saw or file capable of cutting through the bars. With a pickax, Billie tried to break out through her floor—only to find iron bars imbedded in the concrete.
Nobody treats me like a leper, anymore. Connie and the twins quickly got over their shock at what I’d done to Wesley. I couldn’t be all that terrible, they must’ve supposed, since I was being so good to them. Besides, they knew that Wesley deserved everything he got.
The twins are great. They quarrel a lot between themselves, but they have become my great friends. Erin seems to be madly in love with me, which Alice thinks is ridiculous. They have been healing nicely (as have Connie and Billie). They are both incredibly beautiful, and continue to go around in their cages most of the time wearing few or no clothes.
Which certainly catches my attention. We don’t fool around in any sexual ways, though. They are too young for such things. Also, I love Billie so much that I never seem to work up very much excitement over Alice or Erin.
As for Connie, she remained sullen and surly for about a week. She knew that she was to blame, at least partly, for Kimberly’s death. She also found out, soon enough, that her mother and I were lovers. She gave us quite a hard time with that mouth of hers.
She seems to be over it, though. I think she has accepted the fact that it’s stupid to be jealous over someone you never really liked that much in the first place. I was her boyfriend of convenience who’d stumbled into her life by an accident of the alphabet. I was not, and never had been, any great catch. So let her mother have me.
That’s how I think she looks at it. We haven’t actually discussed the matter.
It’s hard to know what she feels. Lately, though, she has been a lot less snotty than usual. Eventually, we might even become friends. Who knows?
I could go on and on about Connie, Alice and Erin. And especially about Billie and me. I could write in lavish detail about all we’ve done, what we’ve said and how they’ve looked. The real story, though, pretty much ended with the death of Wesley.
Also, I’ve been spending too much time away from my women, writing in the privacy of Erin’s room for hours each day.
Now that I’m caught up to the present, I’ll be able to spend more time with them.
Eventually, I’ll set them free.
The keys to their cages are bound to turn up, somewhere.
Maybe under the mattress where Wesley said they’d be.
So long for now.
Richard Laymon is the author of over 30 novels and 65 short stories. Though a native of Illinois and a longtime Californian, his name is more familiar to readers in Great Britain. Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the world (where he is published in 15 foreign languages) than it is to most Americans. He has written such novels as
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