There's Blood on the Moon Tonight (40 page)

             
Josie was sitting up on the side of her bed, facing him. By the way she was lazily stretching she didn’t appear to be any the wiser. Certainly not spurred on by outrage.

             
“Ralphie, you in the bathroom?” she yawned.

             
Startled, Tubby jumped back from the keyhole. He stood there looking at the door, too scared to answer. From the corner of his eye, he noticed Josie’s bra on the towel rack. It seemed too flimsy a thing to contain such generous treasures.
Jeepers! That’s gotta be a tight fit!

             
“Ralphie?” she called again, this time tapping on the door. “You in there or what?”

             
“Uh-yeah! I’m just using the bathroom,” he replied inanely. His voice was shaking and Josie noticed it.

             
“You all right, honey?”

             
Honey! She called me honey!

             
“Uh-sure. If it’s okay with you, though, I think I’ll take a shower.” The trembling in his voice was so pronounced he didn’t even sound the same.

             
“Hey…are you
sure
you’re okay?”

             
Her voice was full of genuine concern. It made Tubby hate himself for what he was thinking. “Yeah, Josie. I’m just tired, is all. I didn’t sleep very well last night,” he added truthfully.

             
“I’m sorry, love. The floor too hard?”

             
“No. It wasn’t that.”
Something
else
was too hard!
“I think I’ll feel better after a hot shower.”
You mean, Cold shower!
he derided himself.

             
“Sure you will. I should’ve asked you last night, but I was afraid it would embarrass you.”

             
“You’d have been right,” Tubby replied. His voice was steadier now, his heart rate slower.

             
When he was certain she was no longer standing right outside the door, he began to undress. He stared down hatefully at his pitiless penis. It stood out from his body like a traitorous exclamation point; decrying his shame.

             
Without wanking off, there was really only one way to make it go away…
right
away.

             
He slid the shower curtain aside and turned on the cold water, noticing the perfume that seemed to define Josie so well was especially prevalent in the stall. Coming from an opened bottle of strawberry scented shampoo. The cheap kind you could buy for a buck at any Dollar Store. And yet on Josie, the stuff smelled like the world’s most expensive perfume. He picked it up and snorted the scent, the same way someone might do a line of coke.

             
Still clutching the bottle, Tubby took a deep, quivering breath and went back to the keyhole, bending over slightly. A floorboard creaking as he did so.

             
Josie was standing at her dresser, looking at the bathroom door, where she thought she’d heard a creak. “Ralphie?” When he didn’t answer, she went about her business.

             
Tubby’s mouth went dry, as his hand automatically dropped down to the straining stalk between his legs. It had never before been so large. So engorged. He whimpered in anticipation, shuddering from the shame and the lust.

             
Without pausing to think on it any further he squirted some of the shampoo onto his right palm.

             
Josie pulled the shirt over her head…
and there they were!
Her breasts were heavy and round, high on her youthful chest, proud and jutting. It seemed a wonder of nature their defiance of gravity. The aureoles surrounding the nipples were the peach-colored circumference of a silver dollar, the pebbled peak of every teenage boys horny wet dream. The pearly tit flesh jiggled as she rummaged through her dresser, picking out a black
Godfather
T-shirt to wear. She stepped out of her panties and inspected the contents of her underwear drawer, finally pulling free a pink pair. Obviously a girl who liked to stay fresh.

             
Tubby’s strawberry scented hand slid back and forth. A slippery, sudsy friction. A fantasy as close to reality as he imagined he would ever attain. It was almost as if Josie was in the room with him.
Engulfing
him
…

             
He could see her fully from the side now—the full moon curve of her pale buttocks, the thick red bush between her legs. Josie turned and unwittingly presented her backside to his leering eye. A dark cleft split those precious moons so precisely. A heart shaped ass, as miraculously proportioned as the rest of Josie’s stunning figure. Ralph just managed to strangle down the cry rising from his chest, his passion building like a tidal wave now, energy on top of energy, rising ever upward and onward, eagerly racing to its explosive culmination...

             
Josie seemed to be looking for something in the drawer. The bra lying on the towel rack, Tubby assumed. She seemed to realize it at the same time and turned around to give the bathroom door a truculent look.

             
Her whole body was right in front of Tubby now.

             
OOoooohh
was his mind’s rattled response.

             
Nothing he’d seen in those old
Playboys
could compare to this heavenly vision! Josie plopped down on the bed, her meaty breasts bouncing in a way that made one aware of a Higher Power at work here. No way something that magnificent, that intensely erotic—that
perfect
in design, could have been an accident of nature. Surely God was a fan of His own handiwork. Josie slid on the fresh panties, and for two glorious seconds, Ralph Emerson Tolson saw what the mystery was all about
.

             
!!!ELDORADO!!!

             
The pink parted lips through a crisp tangle of red hair. A silk scabbard created to embrace a lover’s sword.

             
The orgasm was unlike any he’d ever experienced. An electric thrill igniting his every neuron. A euphoria beyond human conception. He cried out as his came against the bathroom door, his eyes squeezing shut in rapture, his seed erupting from his fevered fist in splashing torrents. The pleasure so intense, so wildly
insistent
, he was unable to stifle his ardent cries. Nor did Ralph even wish to…

             
            
 
Chapter Eleve
n
:

             
            
 
Where Terror is a Way of Life

Josie pulled up her panties just as the phone in the kitchen started to ring. She grabbed her T-shirt and was halfway out the door when she heard a strange sound inside her bathroom. She paused in flight, returning softly to the closed door. Even though the shower was still running it sounded as if Ralph was right on the other side, occupied in some industrious endeavor. She made a face at the weird noises her new friend was making in there.

             
What the feck is going on in there?

She started to ask him if he was okay but by then she’d figured it out, the soapy piston on the other side of the oak door filling in the blanks. She looked down at the keyhole and saw a shadow pass over on the other side, frantic and wild. The grunting and groaning reaching a fevered pitch now. Josie’s hand flew like a wounded bird to her mouth. She didn’t know whether to be outraged or ashamed.
No feckin’ way! In me own bathroom!?
Josie paled.
Oh, no…was he jerking off while watching me—

             
The strident ring of the telephone startled Josie, and she scurried from her room to answer it, more than willing to let that last harried thought go unanswered in her mind.

             
“Hello?” she hailed huskily into the receiver.

             
“Big Red?” the voice on the other line sighed, obviously relieved. “Good, you’re home. You should’ve woken me up before you left last night.”

             
“I didn’t want to disturb you. You looked so cute, using me boob as a pillow.” Silence on the other end. Josie imagined a lone cricket, chirping. “Buddy boy? You still there?
Heelllooo
?”

             
“Yeah. I’m here. I didn’t realize I fell asleep on your…um…your…”

             
“
Boob
, Buddy boy.
Boob.
Och, you’re worse than Ralphie! They’re just
breasts
. You got ‘em too, you know. Mine are just way prettier.”

             
Bud ignored the impulse to say something clever. “Ahem, speaking of Ralphie, did he walk you home?”

             
For one insane moment, Josie considered telling him about Tubby’s little indiscretion in her bathroom. Being the best of friends she could tell Bud anything, but their relationship had gone beyond that now. Besides, there was no telling what he’d do to poor Tubby! No, the best thing to do in this instance was to pretend it never happened. She couldn’t even mention it to Rusty. He’d really go off the deep end!

             
“Josie? Did you hear what I said?”

             
“Oh, sorry, love. I was spacing out there. Yeah, Ralphie walked me home. I had him spend the night, too. I didn’t want him walking past the Pines all by himself.”

             
“Good idea. Is he still there?”

             
“Um-yeah. He’s taking a shower. Why?”

             
Bud laughed. “
Really
? I can’t believe someone that shy would take a shower in a girl’s bathroom. When his hienie’s all nice and shiny, could y’all meet us at Peg Leg’s for breakfast? We’ve got some shit to discuss.”

             
Josie didn’t need to ask what “shit” Bud was referring to—it was that strange, red-eyed animal, possibly still loose in the woods. If Bud hadn’t killed it, then that meant there was at least one more rabid animal still on the prowl. “I guess we do at that,” she said. “Give us twenty minutes, darlin’.”

Bud hung up the phone from behind the concessions stand and leaped over to the other side. He’d had to make an important decision on his own, not wanting his friends to talk him out of doing the right thing this time. He’d made the call earlier and was relieved to have done so, the ball now in someone else’s court. Still, there were things to talk over with the gang. Things to discuss with his dad, too. The chat with the old man would have to wait, though. His pop had skipped town for the day. He’d left Bud a note, informing him that he’d be out most of the afternoon in Beaufort. Bill hadn’t left any more information than that on the Post-It he’d taped to the door leading up to the roof. He didn’t have to. Bud knew what his dad was up to, and was used to it by now. The old man was meeting with his contacts in the Beaufort County Sheriff’s department. Bilbo did that at least once a month; in hopes some new information might’ve come to light concerning his wife’s murder investigation. That meant Bud was once again responsible for running the family business.  “Hurry home, Bilbo,” Bud said to the empty lobby. “Hurry home.”

He checked the clock over the front doors. Ten till nine. The museum opened at eleven. Plenty of time for the old feedbag, with a little pow-wow on the side.

             
                            *******

After leaving a note in the kitchen for Joel, Josie knocked tentatively on her bedroom door. The mere idea of what might be taking place on the other side left her mortified and shaking. “Ralphie?”

              Tubby was coming out of the bathroom when she entered her room. He had on blue jeans and a clean gray sweatshirt—Einstein sticking out his tongue. His face was beet-red (Tubby’s, not Einstein’s), whether from the hot shower, or from…Josie didn’t want to know.

             
He rolled up his sleeves and sat down on the folding chair to put on his sneakers, glancing over at Joe as he tied the laces. “Hey. Is everything all right?”