Guardian Girl (The Chronicles of Staffordshire) (51 page)

“You fucking
quit
, Lena!”

“Please, Lenore… Please stop! This really hurts, Lenore! This isn’t funny!”

“You think this hurts?
How can it hurt?
You can’t even spank my pretty little ass, your arm is so fucking weak! You can’t even muster the strength to make your pathetic arm spank my sexy
ass!
How the hell are
you
hurting?”

Lena’s breathing became labored, long, slow, and shallow. She desperately urged away “The Beast,” the world-dominating temper she used to competitive effect on the court but
never
released on those she loved.

“Lenore… Don’t do this! Don’t do this to me, you bitch!”

“Why?
Because I’m telling you the goddamn, fucking truth?
Because you know you can’t win a goddamn major because of your miserable,
pathetic
body?”

Lena pressed her hands to her ears and clenched her eyes. “Stop, Lenore! Please! I’m begging you! I can’t take this!”

“‘Hit it to her right, she’ll never get it!’ I heard that coach say it on TV! ‘Go ahead… hit it to her right! Make her slide right! She’ll never return it!
She’s done!
At twenty six Lena Sardi is a has-been! Lena Sardi will never win another fucking title because
her fucking swing is shit!
”

Fists clenched, Lena groaned and cried. She raised her hands high above Lenore’s body, grappling with festering insecurities, mired in runaway hatred toward the woman she loved more than life itself.

“LENORE, GOD DAMN YOU! Don’t do this to me… You don’t mean this, Lenore…
Please
say you don’t mean any of this!
Please
tell me you love me and you don’t mean this! PLEASE, LENORE!”

Mrs. Hyde poked a sharpened stick into The Beast’s cage. “You think I don’t
mean
this? You think I don’t mean it when I say I’m sleeping with a fucking
has-been
? You think I don’t mean it when I say that I am
embarrassed
because I am in bed
every night
fucking a woman who has all the natural talent in the world but can’t win a
goddamn major
?
You don’t think I
mean it
when I say that your
pathetic fucking forehand
can’t hurt my perfect little ass?

“YOU… ARE… PATHETIC, LENA! I AM ASHAMED TO BE YOUR LOVER!”

Lena screamed, her body arching backward, her forehand and backhand coiled for a devastating return of Lenore’s grotesque volley. The Beast exploded through the bars of its weakened cage.

“FUCK YOU, LENORE! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU!”

Lena came down in a brutal flurry on Lenore’s ass, fists clenched, tenderizing Lenore’s flesh, her internationally-ranked anatomy releasing unchained fury upon the supermodel’s body. Lena shrieked profanity during the beating, swinging wildly with her hands both open and clenched. For an eternity of seconds the athlete battered and bruised her captive roommate’s haunches.

Underneath, Lenore buried her face into the mattress and screamed. “Yes! Yes! Punish me! Punish me! I
deserve
to be punished! I am a bad little girl! Whip me! Punish me!”

In her rage, Lena missed the subtle hint of Lenore’s gifted, unhinging mind taking a stroll to the outer boundaries of sanity. Lena spanked, slapped, punched, and subdued Lenore’s restrained body with a rapid-fire series of championship-quality forehand slams, backhand slashes, and two-fisted smashes. She hunched forward over Lenore’s back and came down with both fists upon Lenore’s back-bent shoulders. A blood-curdling scream exploded from Lenore’s throat as muscles and tendons and rotator cuffs stretched to their limits.

“I HATE YOU, LENORE! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU, GOD DAMN IT! How could you do this to me? Goddamn you! Why are you doing this to me? Why, Lenore?”

“Because I deserve this! I must be punished! Punish me! Castigarme! Oh Dios, SI! SI! Merezco esto! Lo siento mucho, Papá! SI! SI! Merezco azotes, Papa! SI! Merezco azotes! Castigarme, Papá! Te quiero, Papá!”

Mid swing, Lena froze, her eyes widening in horror.

“Oh God… Oh God, no… Papa? PAPA?! OH GOD! GOD, NO! NO! NO, GOD! NO!”

Lena shook, staring down at her white knuckled fists, slowly turning them over to unclench and peer inside. Welted palms awaited her gaze. A pronounced rivulet of blood flowed from a puncture where the nail of her left index finger sliced its way through the meat of her palm during a violent impact with Lenore’s body.

“NO! NO! NO! NO! OH GOD! WHAT AM I DOING?”

Through hazy, tear-drenched eyes, Lena focused on Lenore’s ass and back. The freaky supermodel’s glutes reflected the early signs of trauma, a greenish-blue tint spreading from olive cheek to olive cheek. On Lenore's lower back, Lena saw the distinct outline of her knuckles in a dark, red imprint just to the right of Lenore’s spine.

“Don’t stop! Punish me! I
deserve
to be punished! I
hurt
you! Don’t you
want
to punish me? Don’t you
want
to get even with me? I must be punished for what I did to you!”

The Wild Child breathed in fits, drawing in deeply only to gasp uncontrollably, lurching toward hyperventilation. Her eyes darted wildly around the room as it swirled. The walls undulated menacingly. Lena cowered, imagining the ceiling crumbling and falling upon the two tortured lovers, trapping them on a bed always saved for the most delightful encounters. Looking down at Lenore’s besieged body, Lena witnessed the bludgeoned recipient of a professional athlete’s unrestrained rage.

Wild-eyed with terror, Lena hallucinated. A thousand splintery projectiles exploded through the walls, strafing her naked body. She threw her arms over her head, shielding her face from imagined shrapnel.

“I said punish me, God damn it! DO IT! Why are you stopping? Punish me!”

“My God! What have I done to my baby? God, what have I done?”

Lena toppled sideways to the mattress. Gaining momentum, Lena tumbled downward to the floor, frantic to distance The Beast from its hapless victim. Landing with the sound of a wincing “POP!” in her left shoulder, Lena flipped to her back on the floor beside the bed. She clawed at her chest, suffocating, gasping for breath. “I didn’t know! Oh, God! I didn’t know! I’m so sorry! I didn’t know!”

Sobbing hysterically, the Wildest Child rolled back to her stomach and struggled to escape the hellish blackness of the bed. She crawled, choking and coughing on phlegmy sobs, dragging herself to safety. Wedging herself into the furthest corner of the room, Lena balled up into a narrow, chair-width crevice between her dresser and the wall and pulled her knees tightly under her arms. She wailed with apology.

“Oh God! Forgive me! FORGIVE ME! I’m so sorry, Lenore! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry! I never wanted to hurt you, Freaky! I’m so sorry, Lenore…!”

On the bed, Lenore pursued her quest for punishment, no longer screaming though no less insistent. She worked from a toolkit of suppressed, demonic instincts, supermodel seduction in full effect. Lenore hopelessly sought Lena’s continued attack with pornographic suggestiveness and luring sensuality.

“Come back, lover! I’ll eat your pretty little pussy if you just give me a little spank or two. Let me eat your pussy, Wild Child! Please! Come back to me! I promise! I will make you come!”

With ‘The Beast’ temporarily cornered against the wall, Lena fought to regain ownership of her usually-sane mind. She loathed herself for dropping her guard against Lenore’s plainly demented state, pounding the wall and dresser in frustration. Lena faced harsher attacks from other players and coaches many times over without loosing The Beast. Hearing such taunts come from her lover, though…

The tennis player windmilled with her left arm and slammed her fist into the wall, breaking through to connect with the sheetrock on the other side. A glancing blow on the edge of a wooden stud sliced open the knuckle of her left index finger.

Lena cocked her head and stared at Lenore. Her eyes darkened as Mrs. Hyde’s words filtered through the cracks in Lena’s battered heart.

“Ashamed? She’s fucking ashamed of me? Ashamed to be my lover? Ashamed of the woman who had her sexy, multi-million-dollar ass on 7 million walls? Ashamed of the woman who beat her fucking ass at Harvard? Ashamed of the woman who beats her on the revenue line and beats her bank account and beats her in every measure of success that ever counted? Ashamed of the woman she thought was fucking hot enough to seduce?”

Poor Lenore’s unpredictable melt-downs had to stop. Lenore had to be stopped for everybody’s sake. As Lena glared at Lenore, The Beast offered a timely suggestion.

“It’s time to kill the fucking bitch.”

Thirty Four

Lena turned toward the bed, inching out of her self-imposed cage. She settled on her hands and knees, eying Lenore, a jungle cat measuring her prey, preparing to pounce on the bed and finish the beat-down.

There were plans to be made. After all, she couldn’t just get rid of a famous bitch like Lenore without a little forethought. The weapon was the easy part. A boning knife would do the trick. With one, swift plunge into the back of Lenore’s neck — just at the base of the skull — it would all be over. If she did the job just right and missed the carotid artery, there wouldn’t even be much blood. She would slip the shower curtain under Lenore first, that way she could salvage the mattress, if not the sheets.

Damn! Lena
loved
those sheets. Ah well. What the hell. She could always replace the sheets.

The important thing was that poor, pathetic Lenore would finally be free of her demons. Lena had the money and connections to make the body disappear, to make herself disappear, to become yet another unsolved mystery.

Yes, putting Lenore down would be the ‘merciful’ thing to do. Like putting a sick animal out of its misery. Killing Lenore would save everyone the trouble of putting Humpty-girl’s fractured mind back together after yet another crack-up.

Killing her beautiful, loving Freaky Baby would…

Lena shrieked.

“HOLY SHIT! WHAT AM I DOING? STOP IT! STOP IT! STOP IT, STOP IT, STOP IT!”

Lena slapped her face. She slapped it again and again. She dove back into the safety of the corner and pounded the dresser with her fists.
“
STOP IT, God damn it! Stop! Don’t move! Don’t you go near her! You have to protect her! You love her! She didn’t know what she was doing! Don’t go near her! Protect her!”

Lena gripped her legs again and pressed her face into her knees. A stream of sorrow flowed freely down her shins.

Tapping into more than a decade of endless, head-shrinking, sports psychobabble, Lena focused on loving encounters and pleasant sensations to rekindle fond memories of Lenore’s eight years of selfless care. Wrestling The Beast into submission and shoving it back to its cage, Lena fought desperately to lock away her pain.

She closed her eyes and imagined herself as a trapped free-climber, standing on a narrow ledge against a sheer, rock face with her toes and fingers dug into eroding crevices, her life one slip from disaster. Just above, someone dropped down a rope with a body-sized loop at the end, shouting, “Wrap this around you! I will pull you up!”

Lena forced herself to envision Lenore’s beautiful face looking down at her, smiling in hopeful love. The pinned climber grabbed the rope with one hand, slipping it over her head, under her arm, and across her chest. Would Mrs. Hyde’s burning daggers replace Lenore's loving, amber-brown Spanish eyes? Or would Freaky Baby drag the Wild Child all the way to safety?

In her fantasy Lena forced herself to trust, to believe the best, to remember all the times she cuddled at night with her tender, adoring, freaky roommate. She remembered rose petals on bedspreads, White Linen scented bodies, and relaxing, snuggling baths in a quiet, candlelit bathroom.

Slamming the door on The Beast’s newly constructed cage, Lena focused on the smiling face of the woman muscling her up the wall. At the top of the cliff, memories of years of kisses and caresses spilled into Lena’s heart as the Lenore pulled her over the brink and wrapped her arms around the distraught Wild Child.

Lena opened her eyes and looked back at her lover, splayed motionless on the bed. Lenore’s face stared vacantly at Lena, her lips moving but lacking speech. Locked somewhere inside Lenore’s beautiful, troubled head, Freaky Baby needed a savior. Mrs. Hyde trapped Lenore’s sweet, loving spirit in a darkened cell and threw away the key.

“God… What did I do to Lenore? Did I do this to her? God! Are you listening to me? Did I do this to her? Tell me! Help me!”

The woman Lena loved and trusted with her life had gone fully round the bend, a schism of the mind from which Lenore might never fully recover. Lenore’s only hope for returning from her road trip into madness lay squarely in the hands of the woman whose heart and soul she callously raped.