Lusineh Avakian
by mrhungry
Part 1
Dear Reader, I submit this story for publication, not that I expect a single person to believe it’s true in any aspect, but because I must write it down to sort out the events that it relates, if only for my own sanity. It is for my own therapy that I write, not for your enjoyment. Comment on it as you see fit – it is of no concern to me. –Darios. 10/12/84It’s been two months since I last saw Lucy, but she is never far from my thoughts. At times she’s all that I can think of; her beautiful face, the light olive tone of her skin, her dark brown hair, sometimes concealing her deep brown eyes behind the curls. I think of how she looked when her hair fell across her face like that; so erotic, so mysterious. Mysterious would not begin to describe Lucy.
How I loved her. Love her, I should say, for I will never stop loving her. Yet, my heart aches at the knowledge that I can never have her, nor even be near her, ever again. Sometimes, though, when my heart is heavy, as it is now, I begin to think that the death that would come from being close to her, from holding her in my arms again, would be welcome.
Of all the women in the world, I had to fall in love with a serial killer.
ooOoo
It was just this past June of 1984 that my friend Jeremy and I had packed up our belongings at the frat house we occupied on the campus of the University of Minnesota, and headed back to our hometown of Trevor, Wisconsin. I say friend, but Jeremy was beginning to rub me the wrong way. Sometimes I just couldn’t stand him, and I’d begun to think of ways that I could ditch him before classes began again in the fall.
He had these big plans to tour around the country during the summer and had tried repeatedly to rope me into going with him. There was no way in hell that I was going to be stuck in a car with that guy for three months! All the way home from Minnesota he worked on me, and the more he badgered me, the more I concluded that, after all of these years, I really did hate the son-of-a-bitch.
A week after we settled in at our respective parents houses, he was gone. There were some terse words exchanged between us before he drove off, and I remember thinking what a great precursor that had been to blowing him off in the fall.
I didn’t hear anything from him until he reached New Orleans in mid-July. It sounded like he was having a good time and planned on touring through the marshlands and bayous the following week. I’m not really sure why he called; maybe he was beginning to feel a little lonely.
A few days later he called again, the connection was really poor, though, and it was quite difficult to hear what he was saying. I made out that he had gotten arrested in some little town named Melony on Highway 90, and needed money wired to him right away. There was some shouting in the background and then the connection was broken before I could get any further details. I waited by my phone to see if he would call back, but after some time I gave up and went about my business.
Trevor, Wisconsin is not the most exciting place on the map, unless you’re really into cornfields and cow shit. I brewed over Jeremy’s call for three days and then, on a whim, decided to take a little drive. Okay, 1200 miles is more than a little drive, but I figured with the interstates I could be down there in two days if I drove eleven or twelve hours a day. What the hell; Jeremy was an asshole, but he’d been a good friend when we were growing up. If he was in real trouble I guess I owed it to him to help him out.
Knowing Jeremy was a Type 2 diabetic, I stopped by his mom’s house and picked up a couple boxes of lancets, just in case he had used his up. I was glad she wasn’t home and that they still left their back door unlocked because I really didn’t want to worry her over what would probably amount to nothing. It was just Jeremy’s typical screw-up mentality manifesting itself again.
Louisiana in July was quite a bit hotter than Wisconsin. Holy crap was it hot! And with all of that water around, it was humid as well. I had cruised quite a ways along Highway 90 and hadn’t come across any towns named Melony. In fact, it wasn’t on any maps and a highway patrolman I asked was sure he had never heard of it. I was getting a little concerned that maybe Jeremy had gotten the name of the town wrong, and was even more concerned that he was in serious trouble.
I stayed overnight at some broken down roach hotel in the middle of what I had decided was Nowhere. Sitting out on the screened in porch after sunset, I happened to strike up a conversation with an old hag who had come out to smoke a cigarette and to catch the same elusive breeze I was hoping for. I smiled at the thought of the old woman wearing a witch’s hat and holding an old tattered broom. She turned out to be quite a historian though, not surprising given her 200 years on this earth. Yes, that’s an exaggeration. But her knowledge of the area was incredible and I wondered if she’d been a history teacher at some point in her long life. Listening to her describe the rich past of the Mississippi River delta was like being there myself, such was the vivid details of her musings. The conversation was lively until I mentioned Melony and then the old woman’s mind drifted off some place far away. She pulled her wrap around her shoulders a little tighter and hugged herself.
“You go-ona back to that Wisconsin place you bin talkin’ ‘bout boy,” she said suddenly, getting up from her chair with the aid of her walking stick. “Not nothin’ fo you in Melonya ‘ceptin’ fo trouble.” I noticed how she spoke the word, pronouncing it as Meh-LONE-ia.
I followed her around to the front of the hotel, trying to pry more information out of her. Finally, she looked at me and simply said, “Twenta mile west, dirt road by St. Augustive.” The old woman stopped to look into the moonlit sky and I followed her gaze. The moon was in what is referred to as its waning gibbous stage, the full moon having passed several days ago. It was still plenty bright and lit up the sparse grass of the hotel’s front yard. The old woman shuffled through the open front door of the hotel shaking her head. “Nothin’ but trouble, you hear me boy?”
Never being one to take anyone’s advice, I set out just after breakfast the next morning to search for the church and the cutoff. The day promised to be another scorcher, or maybe just another day if you were from Louisiana. The Cypress trees whizzed by, most standing in overgrown patches of swamp, as I sped down the highway. An old white structure caught the corner of my eye and I slammed on the brakes. Backing up, I saw the wilted remains of a once proud church. Beside it was a dirt road, heading south into the swamp.
Carefully, I drove along the narrow old road. The dirt path was not much higher than the swamps that closed in on either side of it, and in places it failed in its attempt to provide a dry lane to travel on. Had Jeremy gone down this road, and if so, why? What would possess anyone to turn down this road in the first place? But Jeremy was the kind of person that would stop and turn down a random road in the middle of nowhere just to see where it went. He had the genes of a true explorer but, sadly, not the sense of direction to go along with those genes. He would quite often get hopelessly lost and waste away a day trying to find his way to a place where a straight road would’ve taken him in the first place. I had to get my mind off of those infuriating memories, or I would’ve just turned around and headed back to Wisconsin without him.
I was beginning to think the old woman had sent me on a wild goose chase as the road wound through the swamp. I even grinned, thinking how amused she must be now, knowing she had had some fun with the ‘Northern Boy’, as she had called me several times the previous evening. Seeing fresh tracks in the mud from time to time was the only thing that kept me going. The road began to gain elevation and as I rounded a wide curve in the road a small town appeared. I stopped my car and stared in what I can only describe as disbelief. What in the hell was a town doing back here in the swamps? Talk about remote! I hadn’t seen any signs, was this even Melony? Or Melonya, as the hag had called it?
There were a few people out and about, mostly walking, some sitting on benches near one of the dozen or so store fronts. A few children were jumping on and off a raised porch in front of one of the stores until a woman came to the door and shooed them away. The kids ran across the street to a playground and jumped on a small squeaky merry-go-round, sending them all into a noisy spin.
The park seemed to be central to the town, and as I watched the kids playing I saw two of the girls jump off the spinning wheel and run to what looked like a pillory! The stocks were set among a few tall trees and now I could see that there were several styles of pillories there, along with some poles jutting vertically from the grassy expanse. Laughing and carrying on, one of the girls sat down on a narrow wooden block, stretched her legs out in front of her, and placed her ankles in the lower portion of the stock. The second girl began to lower the top half of the old wood frame to entrap her friend’s ankles when their heads turned in the direction of one of the stores on the other side of the Commons.
A man had come out onto the front steps of a leather works shop and had called out something to the girls. They quickly ran back to rejoin the other children, who were now occupying three of the six swings further away from me. One of the boys jumped off of his swing in a long arc, landing smoothly on his feet. He stood and gazed across the park, in my direction.
It seemed that all activity had stopped and I realized that every person in sight was looking my way. A shiver ran down my spine at the thought that it was likely very few strangers were ever seen in this town, and they were probably assuming I was lost. I took my foot off of the brake and slowly drove into the main square, parking in front of the general store where the kids had first been playing. The woman had disappeared inside, leaving the front door open. Looking around, I saw all of the shop doors were open.
The inside of the store was dimly lit and I went to the refrigerator section to retrieve a Coke. The woman tried to look as though she was busy with something, but I could see she was watching me closely.
“Hi,” I said as I approached the counter, grabbing a couple of bags of Cheetos and some gum on the way.
The woman didn’t speak, but moved slowly towards her register.
“I was wondering if this is Melonya? Have I found the right place?”
The expression on the woman’s face was hard to read, but it looked like a mix of surprise and… what, suspicion? Back here in the swamps, I guess both emotions would be warranted. Who the hell was I, anyway? Some stranger actually looking for this tiny town?
“Yes sir, Melonya. You’ve heard of the town?” She reached out to accept my credit card, placed in the carbon imprinter, and noisily pulled the handle forward and back to make a copy of the card information. She looked at my credit card and turned it over to look at the back.
“May I see your ID, sir?”
I pulled my wallet out and handed her my driver’s license. “Actually I was looking for a friend of mine that may have come through here earlier in the week. He’s a little taller than me, sort of shaggy brown hair? He was driving a black Ford Thunderbird.” I wiped the sweat off of my brow with my sleeve and wondered why they didn’t have the air-conditioning cranked up.
The woman looked up at me as she examined my license, not acknowledging my question about Jeremy. “One moment please, sir,” was her only response.
I watched as she walked to the back of the store and spoke to someone I couldn’t see. I heard an old door swing on its rusty hinges and the sound of footsteps running away from the store.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, hoping to get out of there and have a better look around the town.
“It’s nothing, sir, I apologize for the inconvenience. It’s just that this is not a valid ID and I’ve been given explicit instructions to follow in the event that something like this ever happened.”
Thinking back now, I have to laugh at what I must have looked like standing there with my mouth agape. The woman’s statement seemed so structured, as if she was reading it off of a card. Had she memorized that line? I was more than a little confused over her statement, though.
I put my hand out for my license, “Not valid? I don’t understand. Let me see my…”
“I’ll take that, Marie,” a voice called out as a man stepped through the front door. I looked over to see that the man was short and rather husky. He wore a uniform that passed as a lawman, but of what force could not be discerned. The gun in his holster was really the only thing I needed to see to tell me he was a cop.
The cop took the license from the woman and examined it. Then it occurred to me, I was going to go down to the County offices to get my license renewed, and had forgotten all about it! Shit, the damn license was expired and I had driven all the way down here with it!
“Would you come with me, Mr… Donelli? We’ll get this cleared up in no time, I’m sure.” The cop put his hand on my arm and turned me towards the door. Several minutes later I was being ushered into a small police station and to my dismay, directly into an iron barred cell positioned in the corner of the office area.
The cop went behind his desk and took some paperwork out of his drawer just as two men and a woman came through the front door. They looked at me suspiciously as they passed and then stood close to the cop’s desk. A discussion followed that I can only describe as tense. I could feel it in the air.
“It’s too soon,” I overheard one of the men say.
“I agree, what would we do with him?” the woman asked in a hushed voice.
“He’ll be fine here, we won’t find anyone else for her, you know that,” the cop said, glancing my way and then motioned for the others to hunker down closer to him. The rest of the conversation was muted but I could see the cop working on the paper work while looking at my expired license.
After the little meeting broke up and I was alone again with the cop, he came over to the cell and asked me to remove my belt and shoes and to empty my pockets.
“What the hell is this? My license is expired, big deal. It’s not a federal crime.” I handed my belt out through the bars and then the contents of my pockets. I stepped on the heels of my shoes to remove them and then nudged them through the bars with my toes.
“Turn around please, Mr. Donelli,” the cop said as he removed a pair of handcuffs from a pouch on his belt. I felt the cuff close around my wrist and resisted a little when the man pulled my arm back. He had a pretty good hold on me, though, and the adjoining cuff went quickly around my other wrist.
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, son,” the cop said as he unlocked the cell and led me out. “Those good ole’ boys up in Warshington keep on a comin’ up wit new and exciting laws to protect us innocent citizens. It seems it is a federal crime to use an expired ID to identify yourself.”
“But I didn’t know it had expired!” I protested, keeping the fact that I did know to myself. I was led out of the office and through a door into the rear section of the little police station where there was a short hallway lined with cells. These cells had three solid walls, but the front walls were a grid of iron bars.
“I know, I know, this is merely a technicality, but still, I have to do some things by the book and this is one of them. So you’ll just be our guest until this whole thing can be cleared up. Here we go.” The cop unlocked a cell door and ushered me inside. “Back up, please.”
I backed up against the door and the cop removed the cuffs. I stood and rubbed my wrists as I watched him stroll back to his office. I shook the bars, certain that nothing in this old building could be that sturdy, but found the bars were still quite solid. I wasn’t going anywhere.
ooOoo
I must have fallen asleep for several hours because when I awoke it was beginning to get dark inside the jail. A tray of food had been placed on the floor of my cell where a slot near the floor accommodated its insertion. Someone had thought to make me a bologna sandwich, and next to it on the tray was a bag of Cheetos, which were probably mine, and what looked like the Coke I had tried to buy. Great, I was buying my own prison food. I was starved though, and scarfed it down with no complaints.
Noises outside attracted my attention and I tried to look out of the little window near the ceiling on the back wall of the cell. It was pretty high up and even on tiptoes I couldn’t see too much. I grabbed a hold of the bars and pulled myself up. What I saw defied any sense of logic I ever knew.
Crossing the unkempt lawn on the side of the police station was a young woman who looked to be about nineteen or twenty years old, holding a leash. On the other end of that leash was a drop-dead gorgeous woman, naked, cuffed at her wrists and ankles, and collared. Her wrist cuffs were joined behind her back and a short length of chain connected her ankle cuffs.
As they came closer I could hear that they were having a discussion, albeit a rather terse one.
“I want to be in my cage, Veronica,” the nude brown haired woman said as she pulled the younger woman in the direction of the jail.
“But Lucy, we have a guest. It might be better if you stay at my house for the night.”
“You know I can’t, Mistress. I would never endanger you or your family like that. It’s out of the question. You know I need to be locked up at night when it’s this close to my time. You’d be safer with the stranger in your house. Besides, I’m still feeling rather sick from the other night.”
The woman holding the leash was not giving up easily and she tried to plant her feet in the damp soil. “Your time has passed, Lucy. We can care for you better at home. Please, don’t drag me around like this, listen to your mistress.”
“You can punish me tomorrow, Veronica, but I will not stay at your house, or anyone else’s either. I love you all too much to risk it.”
The two disappeared from my line of sight and then I heard a noise in the hallway to my left. I moved to the front of the cell and peered through the bars the best I could. I caught sight of the naked woman, Lucy, entering an open cell, followed by the young lady, Veronica. Veronica emerged a moment later with the leash in her hand and slowly closed the cell door. The locking mechanism clicked loudly and echoed down the short hallway.
“Tomorrow you stay with us, or with Emilie,” Veronica said, her hand reaching through the bars. I saw the woman lean against the bars, one of them running vertically between her breasts as they stuck out into the hallway. Veronica stroked the woman’s hair with obvious affection.
“Good night then, our dearest pet,” the young woman said as she withdrew her hand, tracing it along the angled jawline of the naked woman. When it reached her lips, Lucy kissed her fingers and said, “Goodnight Mistress.”
I settled back onto my cot and pondered what I had just witnessed. What the hell had I just witnessed? The love between these two was so obvious. My mind tried to work out the relationship, but… the adult had called the younger woman Mistress and the woman had called Lucy ‘our dearest pet’. Our? Not ‘my’ but ‘our”. That the young lady had been leading the naked woman by a leash was truly bizarre, too. Sure, I’d seen some things like this in magazines, but in real life? Even for a sexually active college kid, I was sort of stunned by what I’d seen.
An hour passed. No sound came from the far end of the hallway. The silence was almost too much to bear and my curiosity was making it impossible to sit there any longer without speaking.
“Hello?” I called out, but received no answer. “Lucy, right? Are you okay? What’s going on with you? Why are you naked?”
My questions were greeted with silence. I settled back onto my cot and lay down. She had no reason to talk to me, and I guess she was just exercising her right to remain silent. I hadn’t seen the cop in some time and no one had bothered to turn the lights on in the cell area. As far as I knew, we were alone in the little jail. The only light came from the moon, its rays shining brightly through the little window high upon the wall. Finally the excitement of the joint became too much for me and I fell off to sleep.
It must have been several hours later that I was awoken by a god-awful howl outside the jail. I jumped up off of the cot and pressed my back against the bars at the front of the cell and stared at the little window. Whatever it was could surely not fit through that window. What the hell kind of animals do they even have in Louisiana?
I heard movement behind me and I whipped around, spooked like crazy. What the fuck? Was that thing inside the jail and not outside like I had thought? I saw a shadow at the end of the hallway near Lucy’s cell and then detected movement. Another noise to my right startled me and I slunk back against the wall just as two dark shapes moved past the open front of my cell.
Son of a bitch, it was the old hag! I recognized her long black hair and the light shawl over her shoulders that she’d been wearing the previous evening. The other shape had the hunkered down look of the cop. I moved silently towards the front of the cell and watched as the two met up with whoever was already at Lucy’s cell.
I about jumped out of my skin when a scream filled the air.
“Lusineh, easy girl,” the hag said softly.
“My stomach hurts so badly, sister.” The voice must have been Lucy’s.
“I know, I know,” the hag responded softly. “You couldn’t know the meat was tainted. It’ll pass, just hold on.”
I heard more moaning and then another muffled scream, a hand or something being used to stifle it. This was followed by gasping breaths from inside the cell and quiet words of comfort by the cop, on his knees outside the cell.
“It’s my cycle still,” I heard Lucy whisper, the sounds in the small jail carrying well in the still night air. “I feel it now, it’s still strong.”
“Just a little while longer, maybe a day or two, and your time will pass,” the hag said as she reached through the bars with both hands. The light was dim, but I could make out the three persons outside Lucy’s cage now.
“Thank you, sister,” Lucy whispered. “Thank you, Master.” A moment of silence followed, and then I heard her whisper, “You’re too kind to me.” And then, “I love you, Veronica. I love you all. Go now, I think the worst has passed for tonight. I’m really feeling better now, honestly.” Her voice was shaky, like she was still in some sort of pain and trying to repress it.
“Go on home, Roni,” the cop said. “We’ll stay for a while longer.”
The other shadow must’ve been the girl, Veronica. I heard the door at the far end of the hall open and then close as the young girl departed.
“You go on back to your family too, Henri, I’ll stay with her.”
I slipped back to my cot and quietly lay down before the cop came back my way. I heard him stop outside my cell and heard no other sound for a long time. He was obviously standing there looking in at me. Finally I heard movement and then heard the door to the front of the police station open and then close.
I lay there, bathed in sweat, my heart beating so hard I could feel the blood pulsing in my veins.
“I hear him, sister. Is he near?” I heard Lucy whisper, a quiet desperation in her voice.
“Shhh, my dearest friend. Quiet yourself now. He is near, but safe from you. Try to rest.”
I never heard the hag leave, but when I awoke in the morning the jail was quiet.
ooOoo
I scrambled off my cot and pressed against the bars, looking down the short hallway towards the cell the woman had occupied the previous night. The cell door was open. I looked the other way and called out for the cop.
“Officer! Hello! Anyone?”
After a few minutes I heard keys jangling and then the door to the office opened and the cop came through. “Good morning, Mr. Donelli. How did you sleep?”
“I slept like crap! Now, can you please let me out of here?”
The cop withdrew his revolver and pointed it in my direction as he inserted an old skeleton key into the lock on my cell door. “Sure, we’ll just be goin’ down the hall to the little boy’s room and then you’re coming right back here. You give me any trouble and this will be your last day on God’s green earth, c’est compris’?”
I didn’t know what that meant but I knew he had a gun leveled at me and I understood the rest of the sentence, so I stood back and allowed him to open the door.
After relieving myself I was directed back to my cell and confined once again.
“Hey, sheriff, don’t I get to make a call?” I called out at his back as he headed towards to his office.
He turned and said, “If and when I arrest you then, yes, you will have that right. Until then, no.”
“But if I’m not under arrest, let me out of here!”
“I have the authority under the Security Act of 1972 to hold you for as long as it takes to verify your true identity.” He reached out for the door handle.
“Well, fucking make the call then!” I tried not to let the desperation in my voice be so obvious, but failed.
The cop turned on his heels and approached my cell. I backed up a little when I saw that he had removed his nightstick from his belt.
“Listen here, son, you watch your language or I’ll make you regret it. Believe it or not, there’s still an old law on the books in this parish that says a person can be jailed for 60 days for cussing. And my name is Officer Rousseau, a little respect will go a long way here.”
My situation was rapidly deteriorating and I knew it. The full weight of my predicament was beginning to impress itself upon me. I was locked in the jail of some backwater town that wasn’t even on the map and no one knew I was here. I leaned against the bars and felt a little lightheaded. No one knew I was here. Why hadn’t I called my mom since I’d left home? God, was I that stupid?
No, I was just some college kid from Wisconsin who thought he was free to do whatever he wanted. Not a thought of anyone else’s feelings, not a thought at all that my parents might actually care that I was okay.
Well I wasn’t okay, and I had only myself to blame. I sat down on the bunk and leaned back against the wall. And what of Jeremy? Had he sat in this same cell? I had to ask the cop about him, but I thought it best to work on developing some rapport with the man first. He had no reason to tell me anything.
It was a long hot day in the cell, and I was relieved when the sun began to set and was blessed with a cool breeze through the small window high up on the wall. I heard the door open and looked towards the front of my cell to see the cop, Henri, with a woman next to him. She held a large platter in her hands and I immediately caught a whiff of something wonderful.
“I’m sorry this ain’t much, young man, but I’m a thinkin’ it’s a might better than anything Henri could whip up for you.”
Officer Rousseau opened the cell door and the woman set the platter down on the cot beside me and removed the cloth covering it. My eyes went wide at the assortment of meats, potatoes, and veggies laid out on the plate.
“Oh my God, thank you so much!” The food looked delicious, and I was so damn hungry! I remembered my manners and thanked her again.
I was left alone to eat as the light began to fade in the cellblock. I looked up and saw that it wasn’t a matter of someone turning on the lights because there were no lights to turn on.
About an hour later I heard the door at the other end of the hall open and I leaned over to look. It was that naked woman again, still in her cell, accompanied by the young woman, Veronica. What in the hell?!!
The two spoke quietly for some time, Veronica again caressing Lucy’s hair, and to my amazement, holding her around her bare waist and lovingly stroking her waist and ass. Lucy’s face pressed between two of the vertical bars and I saw that her eyes were closed even though the two were still in quiet conversation.
“You won’t need to come back tonight, mon cherie,” Lucy said. “I can already feel that my time has passed.”
“Then come home with me,” the girl urged. “Momma has your room all ready.”
“Must we go through this every month, mai gardien?” Lucy reached her slender arm through the bars and tussled the girl’s short brown hair.
“Hey! You cut that out!” The girl pulled back and then reached through with both hands in an attempt to tickle the naked prisoner.
Veronica looked my way and saw that I was watching them and then looked back at Lucy. They both settled down and started to whisper before the young woman finally reached in and held the back of Lucy’s head and gave her a peck on the cheek before leaving through the back door.
A few minutes passed before I spoke. “Lucy, right?” I called out. “I’m Darios.”
Again, my appeal for conversation was met with silence. I leaned back against the wall and thought about the events of the previous evening and of what I had seen just now.
“Hello Darios.” Her words came to me softly, her voice low, sexy, I guess. “How do you do?”
“Well, I guess I’ve been better.”
I heard some rustling and looked out of the front of my cage to see Lucy pressed up against the bars of her cell. Her breasts jutted out from between the bars, her nipples standing erect. Her bare foot stepped onto the lowest horizontal bar and her slender leg bent outward into the hallway at the knee.
“I heard you broke some law or something. That’s unfortunate. It’s hard to keep up with them all isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But this was really stupid, and all my fault. I forgot to renew my license before I came down here.”
“You’re a hunter?” she blurted out.
I sensed a strain in her voice, like surprise, or was it fear?
“No, no, for my car, you know… my drivers license?”
“Oh, um, yeah, of course.” I thought I heard a little giggle come from her, but I wasn’t sure.
We stood looking at each other through the bars of our cells for a moment, and then I had to ask, “Why are you naked?”
“I’m always naked. It’s natural for me, I guess. I don’t know how to explain it, but after all of these years it just feels right.”
“So you’re a nudist,” I stated, wondering what she meant by ‘all these years’. The woman was not that much older than me, maybe a few years but not much beyond that. Had she been a nudist since birth?
It took a moment, and then she said, “Yes, exactly. I’m a nudist.”
I decided to press my luck and asked, “Do you mind telling me why you’re in here?”
My question was met with silence and I knew I had gone too far. Damn it! I had her talking and then I fucking blew it!
I looked down towards her cell and saw that she had retreated from the bars and I did the same, sitting again on the cot and leaning back against the wall.
I was startled when I heard her voice again. “I’ve killed people, Darios, and I’ll kill you too if I get the chance.”
ooOoo
Lucy’s revelation kept me awake for hours that night. She had killed people? Who? Why? Jeremy’s last call cycled through my head over and over. He said he’d been arrested here, and now I’d been arrested here. What the hell had happened to him? Before I had been worried, mainly because of his diabetes, but now, with a professed murderess four cells away, my concern was at an entirely different level.
I slept fitfully, maybe not wanting to fall into a deep sleep. Maybe not trusting the old locks on this cage I was trapped in.
The next morning when I awoke the heat of the day was already making its oppression known inside the open windowed jail. I heard keys jangling and then the door opened to admit Officer Rousseau.
“Good morning, Darios, you’re sort of a late sleeper aren’t you?” he asked as he turned the key in the lock of my cell door.
“Good morning, sir,” I replied, remembering our previous conversation and also trying to be less confrontational with the man. There was still the matter of why I had taken this ill planned trip to address. I had to find out about my friend, and soon.
I was led down the hall to the latrine and then, afterwards, rather than turning back towards my cell, I was led out the back door.
“It’s too hot in there, don’t you think? You can join Lucy in our outdoor confinement area.” The cop stopped to relock the back door to the cellblock and then leaned towards me. In almost a whisper he said, “I think she likes you, but let me warn you about her…”
“Yeah, she’s a killer, right?” I cut him off.
Henri looked at me and I saw a flash of anger cross his face and I instantly regretted speaking out. With some restraint evident in his voice, he said, “She told you? I guess she must like you, then.” He held my arm firmly and led me away from the little cinderblock jailhouse.
Looking off towards the Commons area, I saw the brown haired woman standing in the stocks. They had somehow gotten her positioning wrong, though, and had placed her in the vertical stocks facing away from the structure. This meant that her face looked skyward and her still naked body arched backward so that the front of her body faced away from the vertical beam. Her wrists were trapped within the holes meant for them, and as we came closer I could see that her ankles were well secured in the wooden beams near the ground.
“Listen, son. Don’t be too quick to judge her. It’s a mental disorder that she cannot control. It’s why we, as a town, have decided to keep her here with us, under our protection. There’s nothing any of those government brain tinklers can do for her, and we don’t hand our problems off to them anyways. Here we go.” The cop directed me towards one of the horizontal pillories that rested on the ground and pointed down to indicate that I was to sit.
I tripped on an exposed root from a neighboring Swamp Ash as I was distracted by the sight of Lucy, restrained in the pillory, the entire front of her gorgeous body exposed and vulnerable. Henri steadied me and shot me a glance that told me to watch myself and I obeyed, sitting on a small wooden block and placing my feet in the lower half of the stocks. The cop closed the top half of the frame over my ankles and slid a lock through the matching eyelets to secure it in place. He stepped over my outstretched legs towards Lucy, his hand touching her taut stomach and then rising up to cup her breast.
Not even processing the fact that I was locked in some medieval pillory, I looked up in disbelief as the lawman groped the bound woman’s breasts and squeezed them roughly. But that disbelief was nothing compared to what I felt when I heard Lucy say, “Thank you sir!”
“You want it girl? You know I brought Darios out to cool off with you, don’t you? Certainly you wouldn’t want it with him here.”
“Yes please, sir. The outsider can see, I don’t mind. I need it, sir. Please.”
The cop grabbed a handful of her brown curls and pulled her head back. “You’re such a pain slut aren’t you, woman? Say it. Tell me what a slut you are.”
Lucy struggled, trying to free her head from the man’s grasp. “I’ll kill you, you son-of-a-bitch, when I get outta…”
The cop pulled back on her head with one hand and lifted her an inch higher in the stocks by pulling upward on her right breast.
“Yes!” Lucy cried out. “I’m a slut! I’m your slut, master! Now please! Don’t chance it, sir!”
At this point my cock began to respond. Fucking shit! She needed what? Whatever it was, the cop was not giving it to her because he’d released his grip and had taken a couple of steps back towards the police station.
“Henri! Sir! Please, master,” there was real desperation in her voice now. I heard a strangled moan from the woman as she began to struggle in her bondage. “Don’t! Don’t leave me like this! Damn you master! I need it! You know I need it.”
Officer Rousseau turned back and lifted his arm towards the far end of the pillory’s upper cross beam. When his hand came down it held a leather flogger.
“How many?” he asked, as he dangled the thick leather tails over her breasts and wiggled the handle. Lucy squirmed and raised her hips the best she could, pressing her pubic bone upward. Henri cupped her pussy and then ran his fingers through the light covering of brown curls, pulling gently.
“Don’t play this game with me, Henri.” The woman’s voice was raspy, but then more quietly, as if she was straining to maintain her composure, she said, “Please… just begin, I’ll tell you when it’s enough. After that, you may stop when it pleases you.”
The cop took a step back and swung the flogger down across Lucy’s breasts so hard the resulting sound made me jump. In a practiced swing, the flogger came horizontally across her straining stomach and then quickly back the other way.
“Thank you!” Lucy cried out. “More! Quickly! I feel it coming! It’s close, Henri darling!” The words came out in frantic bursts between breaths.
Henri began to flog the naked woman in earnest. No part of her body was ignored for the next five minutes. Lucy was soon crying out in pain, her screams echoing across the Commons. I saw several people come out of their stores and look our way. An elderly woman came out of her house, nestled among a cluster of swamp ash, and sat in a rocker on her porch.
Lucy’s screams became more desperate and I couldn’t take it, “Stop it! Stop! You’re really hurting her!” I yelled.
The cops arm stopped in mid swing. I heard Lucy gasping for breath, a mantra of sorts coming from her lips. It sounded like, “Thank you master, thank you master…” over and over.
Officer Rousseau stepped forward and looked down into Lucy’s face. “Your friend here thinks you’ve had enough. Is he right?”
Lucy stopped her mantra and took several deep breaths while the cop wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes.
“No, sir, but soon. I’m almost there, sir.”
“Continue then?”
“Yes please.”
The cop looked at me and shrugged as his arm came back and brought the flogger around so that the leather thongs wrapped behind Lucy and cracked against her buttocks. The flogging continued until Lucy finally shouted out that it was enough. Still, the cop continued to redden her flesh, searching for those few places that were still her natural color. Lucy struggled against the ancient wooden frame and thanked the man for his attentions.
When he was done, both were wet with sweat. Henri came close to Lucy and kissed her forehead as he hung the flogger on the hook he had taken it from.
“You okay now, girl?” he asked as he gently moved the sweat-soaked hair out of her eyes and wiped away the moisture from her forehead. I couldn’t help but to observe the naked woman, bound in such a harsh manner before me. Her muscles were firm and her body soaked with sweat, moisture trickling down her body, forming rivulets between her pert breasts and across her tanned, smooth stomach. The well-toned muscles of her thighs glistened in the noonday heat.
“Yes sir, thank you, sir. May I have water?”
“Of course,” he bent down and opened a cooler near the foot of the pillory and looked up at me, “Water?”
“Yes, thank you,” I replied, and caught the plastic bottle he tossed in my direction.
Henri stood and held the water bottle over Lucy’s lips and let a little stream flow into her mouth. She nodded and he proceeded to pour the remainder over her head and down the olive toned flesh of her chest and tightly stretched abdomen.
“I’ll check on y’all in a couple of hours.”
And with that, the cop strode off across the open grass towards his office.
End of Part 1
Copyright © 2012 by mrhungry. All rights reserved. I welcome your comments. Email me at mrhungry56@gmail.com