Jimmy (22 page)

     “Nah, that’s okay, I really like my pen.”  With that he quickly turned and headed back down the sidewalk until he had rounded the corner near the dugout of the baseball field where a beat up garbage can stood.  Nothing but a few pop bottles and an empty pack of cigarettes was inside.  A moment later the plastic bag full of bondage tapes joined them.  A sense of loss followed them down.  He had spent so many hours acquiring those tapes, and watching them at night that he couldn’t stand to see them go. 

     Let them go he did, however, and quickly hurried back to the parking lot where Alan and Tina were waiting, the pen now in his hands, the words, “Found it,” leaving his lips.

     “That was lucky,” Alan said.

     “I know, but I had remembered hearing something drop while I was walking by the dugout, and sure enough, it was right there, so I didn’t really have to look much at all.”  He looked at the school and the mobs of students at every door being filtered inside by the deputies.  Getting rid of the tapes was a relief, though it wasn’t enough to completely do away with the fears of being caught and arrested for the abductions of Samantha and Megan.  Even worse, he doubted anything would ever do away with that fear.  Even if he disposed of the bodies really well once he killed them - something which he should probably do sooner rather than later - he knew there was always a chance someone would discover something that pointed in his direction.

     Speculation and random bits of chatter met them as they connected with the group of students waiting by Entrance Three - the school had six entrances - most of which was an unintelligible mix of gibberish due to all the different statements colliding and bisecting each other.

     “. . . probably searching for drugs . . .”

     “. . . they stole a bunch of . . .” 

     “. . . Megan Reed is missing . . .”

     Jimmy twisted around to look toward the girl who had spoken this last bit, but couldn’t figure out where the words had come from.  He also knew it didn’t really matter.  Grabbing Megan Reed had been a mistake because of her relation to the sheriff.  Any other girl and the sheriff could have still dismissed the idea of a predator stalking the teenage girls of Ashland Creek, though with growing dismay from many in the town, but with Megan he obviously wasn’t going to sit back. 

    
You had no choice,
a part of his mind said. 
She would have found the shelter.

     Or at least she might have caused interest in the Hood place that would eventually lead to the shelter being found. 

     Or maybe nothing would have come of it. 

    
What is done is done.

     Besides, he was enjoying having Megan in the shelter.  Seeing her hanging from her wrists was incredible, her body perfect for such a position.  In fact, she had looked so good that he hadn’t wanted to lower her this morning, but had done so fearing he would accidentally kill her - this based on the gasps her lungs where making when he entered the shelter in the predawn hours.  Not that he wasn’t planning on killing her eventually - this he had decided last night while lying in bed, his plan being to slowly hang her from the neck - he just wanted to make sure he was able to enjoy it rather than find out it had already happened.  Plus, if he enjoyed their deaths then at least the girls could go into the next life knowing it had meant something, even if they didn’t agree with his getting off on it.

     The three made it to the door and were ushered in by a deputy who said, “Please head into the gymnasium for an announcement.” 

     “How come?” a student behind them asked.

     “Please, just go to the gymnasium,” the deputy repeated.  “Everything will be explained to you there.”

     The three did as they were told, all of them deciding to bypass their lockers since they had no coats and would carry their bags with them to class anyway.

*  *  *

     “Fuck this shit,” Brett said.  “Let’s go.”

     “Go where?” Matt asked.

     “To your place, man.  I want to see what the fag threw out.”

     “Who cares?” 

     “I care,” Brett snapped.  “And I’ll be damned if I’m gonna sit for an hour during some stupid assembly shit while I could be watching whatever is on these tapes.”

     “Man, they’re garbage.” 

     “Yeah, and he just happened to throw them away when he saw the police at the school.  What’re you stupid?  He was worried the police would see what was on these tapes.  Probably thought the cops were searching everyone just like you.”  Brett shook his head.  “And fuck man why would you toss out that premium California shit I gave you to hold.  Do you know how much that fucking bag cost.”

     “What would you do if you saw the police at the school,” Matt snapped.  “And fuck, I was gonna grab it on the way back anyway, I just didn’t want to be caught with it at school.”

     Once Matt had seen the police at the school he had decided to throw out the bag of marijuana that Brett had given him to hold the other day, his reasoning being that his older brother would steal it.  Matt didn’t like the stuff anyway, and the last thing he wanted was to get caught with the shit right before graduation, especially that much of it.  Apparently he hadn’t been the only one tossing stuff out, though he had never in a million years expected to see Jimmy Hawthorn dumping something.  The fact that it was a bunch of VHS tapes made it even more unusual, which, of course, caused him to mention it to Brett.  Naturally Brett couldn’t let something like that slide - the guy was obsessed - and grabbed the tapes and the discarded bag of Marijuana.

     “Grab it on the way back from school,” Brett said.  “Look up, you see that sky?  You know what those dark clouds mean?  Please tell me you aren’t that fucking retarded?  God is going to be pissing on us all day from up there and you think the dope would have stayed good in that garbage can?”  Brett shook his head.  “The baggers at the grocery store are smarter than you.”

     Matt didn’t reply to this, his mind thinking he only had a few more weeks and then everything was good.  He was going away for college and Brett wouldn’t be there with him. 

     “Come on, let’s go to your place.  I know no one is home.  We’ll chill in your basement.”

     “I can’t ditch school,” Matt protested.

     “Dude, we just tell everyone we thought they wouldn’t let anyone in, that there was some sort of emergency like the time that pipe burst in the bathroom and flooded everything.”

     Matt shook his head again. 

     “Don’t be such a pussy,” Brett said while pulling out his car keys.  “Come on.”

     Matt followed him to the car. 

*  *  *

     “Wow, this is serious,” Tina said.    

     Jimmy nodded.

     “Can you imagine being grabbed like that while walking home from school?”

     “No,” Jimmy said.

     “I mean, why would they get close enough to the guy’s car?” Tina asked.  “Unless maybe they knew him?”

     “But that would mean someone in town was behind this,” Jimmy said.

     “You don’t think that’s the case?”

     “I don’t know, but if it was who would it be?”

     Tina shook her head.  “You know them better than me.  It’s scary though.”

     Jimmy felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see a teacher he recognized but had never had class with before standing in the bleacher aisle with her arms crossed.  “Pay attention,” she said.

     “Sorry,” Jimmy whispered.

     Down below the sheriff and the school principal continued to talk about staying safe and walking in groups of three and four when coming to or leaving school from now on, how leaving school for lunch was now forbidden, about the phone number that could be called if anyone knew anything, and how a temporary town curfew was being discussed - angry boos followed this last part.

     “They better not fuck up prom,” a girl below them said, her voice loud enough to turn heads all across this section of the bleacher.

     The teacher who had tapped Jimmy on the shoulder headed toward her and quietly demanded to know which one of the girls in the group below had used the dreaded ‘F’ word.  None of them confessed. 

    
Give them to me,
Jimmy thought to himself. 
I’ll make them confess.
  An image of each girl hanging from her wrists appeared in his mind, weights slowly but surely being added to their ankles to loosen their tongues.

     Instead the teacher just told all of them to see her after the assembly, probably because each one of them would have detention unless one of them came forward.  Such punishments didn’t seem right, kind of like putting a dozen people in prison unless one confessed to the store robbery or something, but no one would cry out against it. 

*  *  *

     “Man this is sick,” Matt said while watching a tied up girl in a red leather outfit being forced to suck on a flesh colored dildo.  “Turn it off.”

     “Wait, this ones probably almost over,” Brett said, his mind completely fascinated by the tape they were watching.  “The other one didn’t last too long.”

     The two were in Matt’s basement which his parents had allowed him to set up as a hangout for his friends.  Most of the time though their group would head somewhere else, the basement only used as a place of last resort due to how close the parental units always were.  During ditch days, though, the place was great.

     Horrible gagging sounds echoed from the TV as the girls head was pushed farther down the fake penis.

     Matt looked away and once again told Brett to turn it off, but his friend wouldn’t listen. 

     “Can you imagine if that was your dick,” Brett asked.  “Man that would feel so good.”

     “You really want to tie a girl up and make her do that?”

     “Fuck no.  That’s sick.  But to have a girl do that just cause she wants to.  It’s like pure heaven.”

     “Until she loses her lunch all over you.”  He watched the screen for a few more seconds.  The girl was told to stop by a leather clad woman who got up on top of the fake penis and started fucking it, the tied up girl using her tongue to pleasure the woman while she did this.  “Man, seriously turn it off.  I don’t want this shit on in my house.”

     “What’s the matter?  Is it turning you on too much?”

     “Fuck you,” Matt said and went over to the TV to turn it off.

     “Fine,” Brett said.  “Let’s see what’s on the others.”  Brett hit the STOP button while saying this and went over to the bag of tapes.  “Here, this one says SB-927 on it.  What do you think that means?”

     “I don’t know.  Man, why would Jimmy watch this shit?”

     “Because he’s a sick twisted motherfucker.”

     Brett was right about that.

     The next tape started up.

     “Great, this ones in another language to,” Brett said as something French looking was displayed across the screen. 

     “I don’t think people care what language it’s in,” Matt said.

     “You’re the expert.”

     A shot of two girls appeared, both of them in white blouses and black jumpers.  The two looked like schoolgirl students, but were probably around nineteen or twenty - Matt hoped - and were both kneeling with their heads bowed in a bright room.  The footage was grainy, almost homemade looking, and the sound, despite being in another language was soft and difficult to hear, the absences of microphones obvious.

     “Pretty cute, really,” Brett said.  “The one with the dangling earrings and the blue eye shadow kind of looks like your sister.”

     Matt glared at Brett.

     “Did your sister ever go overseas?” Brett continued.

     “One more word and I’ll fucking take that pipe over there and smash your head in,” Matt said.

     Brett must’ve heard something in his voice that startled him because he didn’t say anything else. 

     On screen the two girls shifted positions so that they were both kneeling with their butts up in the air.  An older woman, once again clad in leather, though less leather than the woman in the other video, lifted both their skirts exposing their bare butts, and began to spank them with a long thin rod.

     The girl’s screams sounded real, as did the painful looking hits.

     Two minutes into the spankings Brett hit the fast-forward button and waited.  Eventually the spanking ended and the two girls started playing with each other, and then were ordered to a large black dildo on a small round table.  Together the two started sucking on it.

     “Same storyline, different girls,” Matt said.  “That’s all this shit ever is.”

     “Yeah,” Brett agreed.

     The two continued to watch, the morning hours quickly turned to afternoon hours as they went through most of the tapes, their minds both fascinated and disturbed by what they saw.  One video was so intense that Brett was the one to turn it off, the words, “I can’t watch that shit,” leaving his mouth.  The fact that the video contained an actual enema scene made his description both literal and figurative.