Lucky's Girl (18 page)

Lucky breathed in and out, finding a rhythm and reining in his hammering heart. Since last night his chest had trembled like he’d never felt before, even after the most strenuous sport or fulfilling sex. So intense his ears were ringing. It scared him, but it wasn’t long until he knew.

He was Lucky after all.

He could read the signs, and this was definitely a sign. His God, the One True God, was calling to him.

He’d left Christie’s house early. He hadn’t been able to sleep, even with his Tribe arrayed around him, limbs intertwined in ecstasy. He’d gone straight home, avoided his parents and grabbed the pellet gun. It had taken him a while, but he snared a cat and three squirrels, now injured and bleeding in the pillow case. Whenever they squirmed too much he would kick it or slam it against a tree trunk. Not enough to kill but hard enough to crush their resistance.

He sat cross-legged under the Big Tree. He could feel its potency in his gums and teeth. Grove Island vibrated with raw power, shimmering like heat on a blacktop. The island was
alive.
This meant his True Father was pleased. Lucky’s heart raced, his skin felt like it was stretching, and a low guttural growl rose from deep inside his chest. He knew this sensation. He knew that he had to fight it. It was his True Self, the Animal Within, fighting to be born.

Not Yet
.

The Big Tree warned him to control it as he controlled other men; by
will
alone. Control was the true test. Will was the all. His Will
must
prevail or the World would fall from his grasp.

But the Animal Within thirsted, hungering with a passion and lust Lucky longed to submit to. To feel, to fight, to fuck, to kill, to die. Vital, free, alive, complete! Unbowed, unrestrained, true!

Not yet.

But one day, in this very spot, his True Self would be complete.

Ever since he’d been a child, the Big Tree had called to him. He had brought animals, to be shown what
could be
in their entrails. Other ways of reading the signs had been faint and fleeting or indecipherable. But entrails – never. They
always
told what could be, and by following this script to the letter, his Will would be done.

The Big Tree had told him to wait and watch, to become a Man amongst his people, great in stature and regard, respected by the elders of his Tribe. He had done that. He was beloved in Elton Township. He had graduated High School and was now ready to build his own Tribe, to have submissive females, and loyal, subservient men to reward when they pleased him, and punish when they went astray.

So he held the Animal in check, no matter how badly it wanted to come out, in the presence of the pure creative force of the Big Tree, His True Father, the One True God. He held it in, for his work was the work of a lifetime. He felt the animal subsiding, his mundane flesh returning to normalcy and his mind refocusing. It took discipline, it took every ounce of will, but he wasn’t like other men. He wasn’t weak, shortsighted, easily deterred or distracted.

He was Lucky.

He pulled the first squirrel out of the bag, limp until the daylight hit its eyes and the instinct to live came back into its limbs. It thrashed and screamed, but they all did that. They all wanted to live, but that wasn’t going to happen. He held it by the fur of its back, squeezing the skin tight over its belly, slicing from the sternum to the groin, opening the abdomen in a bright red splash of blood. He reached inside and pulled the entrails free as its limbs pinwheeled in agony.

He tossed the stilling animal aside, holding the viscera up to his face. What truths did it hold? As it came free of the body he received an impression.
Caution
. As he pulled open the bundle of organs, squeezing to see the glossy purples and reds, a deep feeling of
pride
came over him. His True Father was proud of him. Every fiber of his being reveled in this acclaim. It was a joy more intense than any sexual release could encompass. It was the
All
.

His hands shook, his erection pouring out his seed into his pants. His cock continued pulsing as he pulled the cat from the pillowcase to repeat the ritual. He drew the blade down its exposed belly to the music of its screams. This time the impression was much stronger.
Caution
became
danger
.

Something was amiss. But what?

Everything was going so perfectly. He had just added another member to his Tribe, a female far more useful than Mary.

He examined the organs, then tossed the carcass aside. The images and impressions continued to come. He saw Mary’s annoying tears as she told him she loved Christie and loved fucking her as much as she loved fucking Kenny. He turned his consciousness away. He wasn’t interested in Mary’s future. She was no more interesting than the cat he’d just killed. He wanted to know what the
danger
was. He continued to probe, wringing the innards. He saw Mary and Christie on his bed, Mary talking and Christie pretending to be interested.

Christie wore sunglasses and they were in his bedroom at his house.

But nothing about any danger.

He went to the next squirrel. He saw Christie flinging herself around her house cutting herself, then masturbating furiously. But this wasn’t new information either. Christie’s shallow and stupid upbringing had conflicted with his truth and wisdom. This would continue until the frigid old woman inside her had died and the living girl had taken over.

He continued on to the next squirrel. Now he saw Kenny breaking down mentally, anguishing over everything and anything. So what? Kenny would be brought back in line with Christie and Mary’s pussies. That was the key to controlling men, and women. This shouldn’t be a concern either. He saw the tape they’d made with her dad’s VHS camera playing on the big screen TV in her living room. This was also nothing to be alarmed about.

So then what was it?

What was there to be afraid of?

***

Jerry got Frank’s call while filling out paperwork and listening to the drunks going through withdrawal in the tank. It was never pretty, and could be dangerous. It was not unknown for them to turn on each other or stroke out. So he stopped back by the station as often as possible to check up. Between him and his two deputies, the station was never unattended for more than a few hours, but he still needed to be real careful. During his time in Elton he’d broken up some ugly fights in there and one of the regulars had died in his sleep. All in all a messy business.

Jerry was more than a little surprised. He knew Frank had a phone but he couldn’t imagine him actually picking it up. He was his usual practically wordless self, simply asking that Jerry come over as soon as possible. Then he hung up. He didn’t sound scared, he didn’t sound like anything. But the fact that he’d bothered to call sent Jerry speeding down the road to Frank’s cabin.

Jerry found him waiting on his porch. Not on his rocking chair tending to fishing poles. He wasn’t even chewing beechnut. He was standing, waiting for him. He held his cap in his hands, wringing it anxiously. He didn’t say a word as Jerry walked up, just walked around the cabin and down the path to the pier. He motioned for Jerry to get in the rowboat.

Jerry hopped down with Frank following, untying it from the leg of the pier. He scanned out over the lake, visibly calm but still on edge. He was making sure they weren’t being watched.

Jerry broke the silence. “What are you looking for, Frank?”

Frank started rowing but didn’t answer.

Jerry waited a few minutes, watching where they were going. They were headed in the opposite direction from the river, towards the far shore of the lake. There was nothing over there. All this would give them was a view of Grove Island from the opposite side.

Grove Island
.

Jerry looked hard at Frank. “What are we doing?”

Frank held a finger to his lips and shook his head, as if someone might hear them.

They reached the far shore after a good thirty minutes of sculling. Frank skirted along the shore following the curvature of the lake and taking the absolute longest route. This was a part of the lake no one ever ventured to. There were no fish in this lake and nobody lived on this end. The town, the church, the police station, all of it was on the opposite side of the island.

The two of them walked through the woods, just out of sight of the lake.

Jerry was wondering whether Frank was taking him to a fresh dead body, that he was about to see something ripe and foul.

Luckily that didn’t happen. Instead, Frank took him to a deer blind constructed of tree branches tied together with vines placed behind a curtain of bushes. No one but Frank knew about it.

Jerry couldn’t help it. “So I guess we’re waiting for something?” he whispered.

Frank nodded and began chewing, looking out towards Grove Island every few minutes with an old riflescope carried in his pocket. Jerry knew he might as well get comfortable because Frank wasn’t going to talk. After about an hour Frank tapped him on the shoulder and handed him the scope, pointing in the direction of Grove Island.

Lucky
.

He had a pillowcase, and it looked as if there was something, or several something’s alive inside it.

***

Kenny had been hung-over before, but he’d never felt this bad. Pukey. Really pukey.
Super
pukey. He disentangled himself from Mary and Christie, running into the big bathroom connected to her parent’s room.

Jesus H Fucking Christ
.

I slept in Ted Tellefsen’s bed with his daughter, fucked her and Mary while they fucked each other and Lucky had recorded the whole thing with a video camera.

He looked down at the barf falling from his mouth in a steady, foul, brown stream. The stinky liquid splashed and it just kept coming. It felt like his sternum was cracking from the sheer force of the vomiting.

He felt tears on his cheeks when it was done. He cradled himself, rocking back and forth in front of the gleaming commode.
This bathroom is more expensive than the home I live in. And I put my dick in the daughter of the guy who owns this place. A girl who didn’t even acknowledge that people like me even existed, and last night I fucked her. And she’d fucked another girl, and…

None of this should even be possible.

Kenny was past anger at Lucky, past nausea at being hung-over, now he was just plain scared, because things had been set in motion that shouldn’t have happened and couldn’t be undone.

He was in Ted Tellefsen’s house. He needed to get the fuck out of here right now. What happens to a person,
a nobody
, who fucks Ted’s daughter on camera in his bed? That person probably dies.

He stood up and flushed the toilet, the noisome dreck whirling away down the drain. He stood in the bathroom doorway looking at the girls tangled on the bed, still passed out.

He walked up and shook them gently. “Mary, Christie. Wake up. Wake up, seriously.”

The girls groaned and pulled each other closer, flinging a blanket over themselves. He looked at the clock on the wall. It was one in the afternoon. He pulled the blanket off and shook them harder.

“Mary! Christie! Get up. Now!”

Mary opened her eyes, looking like a raccoon from the makeup smeared over her face. She smiled groggily. “No more drinking. Can’t. No more.”

Then her eyes fluttered closed again.

Christie grabbed a pillow and tried to block out the piercing sunlight.

“Hey, Christie, I need you to get up and talk to me. When do your parents get home? We need to be out of here by then but this place is trashed. We need to clean this shit up right now!”

Christie slowly rose, looking down at Mary and then up at Kenny in scared confusion. Everything from last night was coming back to her. She looked around the room. Her eyes moving from one terrifying discovery to another; Mary, Kenny, half empty bottles, and a VHS camera on a tripod pointed at the bed. She went catatonic and stared straight forward, rocking back and forth.

Kenny kneeled next to the bed. “Christie? Christie when do you parents get home?”

Christie slowly turned her head in his direction and fixed him with a haunted gaze. A thin line of drool slid off her lip and a quiet keening came from inside her.

Mary sat up next to her, a completely different creature. She was partied out but grinning from ear to ear. She opened her purse, pulling out a pack of cigarettes and jauntily lit up. “Kenny, I’ve got the worst taste in my mouth, can you get me something… anything?”

Then she giggled and blew him a kiss.

Kenny’s mind drew a big blank, hemmed in on all sides by fear.

Mary blew out a big cloud of smoke as she sank back in the pillows and ran a hand up Christie’s back. She looked over at him and smiled even wider. “I love you, Tonto! I’m gonna call you Tonto from now on, just like Mason! What are we gonna name sleeping beauty here?”

Kenny exhaled hard. “Mary? What’s gotten into you?”

Mary’s eyes widened. “Pocahontas! Like in that old movie!”

She shook Christie. “Your Tribe name’s gonna be Pocahontas! I love you, Pocahontas! Kenny, I love her and I love you! I love everything and we’re gonna be a big happy Tribe for the rest of our lives. Do you wanna fuck? C’mon, Kenny, me and Pocahontas are gonna fuck your brains out again!”

Mary snubbed the cig out in the overflowing ashtray on the bedside stand then started jumping on the bed naked, making hooting Indian noises straight out of a John Wayne movie. For the first time in Kenny’s life, Mary was speaking without being spoken to first, and that scared the shit out of him.

Through the big windows Kenny saw Mary’s truck, totally out of place in front of the Tellefsen house. If anyone walked by now, they would see three naked teenagers in Ted Tellefsen’s bed. He wondered if the window was open last night when Lucky had recorded everything on video.

Kenny ran to the window and closed the blinds, finally returning to Christie.

He took her face in his hands. “Christie, look at me. When do your parents get home?”