When he was gone, Hazel observed, “What a wonderful, high-spirited old man.”

“Yeah. Poor guy’s got no hands but he’s still got a big smile on his face. Me? I pitch a fit like there’s no tomorrow if I break a nail or if Frank’s five minutes late.”

I need to have more of his outlook, Hazel thought, but she knew it was all mental talk. Even now, she was surveying the tavern, sliding her gaze over various men to fantasize about which ones she’d like to have sex with. Several men played darts in one corner, jabbering in restrained revel. Two more played billiards with serious looks on their work-worn faces.

When she blinked, she caught on a breath, and suddenly saw herself stripped, gagged, and blindfolded, with her hands tied behind her back. She’d been bent over the pool table while one sturdy man stood behind to methodically sodomize her. The other deftly plunged the fat end of a cue stick in and out of her vagina like someone churning butter...

Hazel shivered out of the vision.

Sonia was smiling coyly. “What are you so intent on?”

“What?”

“You know what I mean. Since we walked in here you’ve been eyeballing everyone in the place.”

“No, I haven’t,” Hazel blurted.

“Oh, I know. You’re looking for that guy we saw when we first drove by. The woodsman-looking guy.”

Hazel frowned, said, “I am not,” but thought, She’s right. “But now that you mention it, I don’t see him anywhere.”

“Gee, I guess that means he left, Hazel,” came some sarcasm from Sonia.

“But his truck’s still outside.”

“Ah, I see, you’re not looking for the guy but you memorized what kind of truck he has.”

Her cell phone jangled, then she moaned when she looked at the caller ID. “Damn. I should have never gave my cell number to my father.”

“That’s terrible, Hazel”—now Sonia looked genuinely annoyed. “How can you just disregard your father like that? He’s a very nice man, and you duck his calls like he’s a telemarketer.” A sharp frown. “You are going to answer it, right?”

Hazel shrugged.

“Answer it!” Sonia snapped. “Don’t be such a shit.”

“Hi, dad,” Hazel finally picked up. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

The tinny voice on the other end seemed to vibrate. “Oh, thank God, Hazel. I was so worried. I’ve been calling your home line for weeks–”

Hazel took the phone outside, for some privacy. “I’ve been real busy grading papers for the summer session. I meant to call you, but

. . . you know how it is.”

The tinny voice tempered. “I didn’t even know you had a cell phone until that fine young man Ashton gave it to me...”

Yeah, dad? You should’ve seen that ‘fine young man’ pissing on your daughter last night. She held back a laugh. “I just got the cell, dad,” she lied. “I didn’t have time to call you because right when the session ended, Sonia and I went up to New Hampshire to meet with her fiancé. We’re there now.”

“New Hampshire? How long will you be there?”

“Just a week or two.”

Disappointment seeped into her father’s tone. “I was so hoping you could come to the grand opening of the new parish, but that was two weeks ago. It’s a beautiful church, honey...”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she kept making excuses. “I forgot. But when I’m back, I promise, I’ll come and see it.”

“Hazel. You know I want you to do more than just come and see it.” The voice sounded forlorn now. “You need to come back to church, come back to God. It would make me so happy for you to be my choir director. You sing so beautifully...”

Oh, Jesus, this is a drag. “I’m really busy with school, dad. Between teaching and working on my doctorate, I really don’t have time.”

A pause, then, “There’s always time for God, honey.”

“I’ll call you in a few days, okay? And I will come and see you when I’m back, I promise,” she struggled to end the uncomfortable call.

Was her father choking up? “I love you, Hazel—”

“I love you too, dad,” she nearly whined.

“And more important than that, God loves you. But sometimes I don’t think you believe that.”

I DON’T believe that, came the instant thought. Why would God love a reckless, indulgent pervert like me? Every thought in my head OFFENDS God...

“Hazel? Are you there?”

“Yes, dad. I have to go now but I will keep in touch–”

He chuckled. “At least try to not duck all my calls.”

Hazel sighed.

“Goodbye, honey,” her father bid. “Go with God...”

“‘Bye,” she said quickly and ended the call.

SHIT! that’s so uncomfortable! She knew the reason she didn’t like talking to her father was because even the mere sound of his voice made her feel guilty. My head’s a cesspool, and he wants me to go to CHURCH! She turned despondently, leaning against a front post. How could anyone be so at odds with themself? A pickup truck parked only feet away, and out strode two more working-classers, either loggers or construction workers. All brawn and wide shoulders, muscled legs, tufts of hair spilling from their collars. “Howdy,” one said with a half-smile. Hazel eyed his crotch, said, “Hi,” and watched them enter the tavern. Go with God, she repeated her father’s words but at the same time fantasized: she’d been hauled atop the pickup’s hood. The first redneck lay right on her head and fucked her face; an elephantine penis seemed to bend down into her throat and bug her eyes out with each thrust. The other pumped her pussy with a small toilet plunger...

Sick, sick, sick, she thought.

Fwump! came a sudden sound.

Behind the tavern a large man effortlessly tossed a huge garbage bag into a dumpster. It’s him! It was the “woodsman.” This close Hazel felt tiny. He could roll me up in a little ball and just fuck me, squash me into the dirt...

“Excuse me,” she rushed. “Do you have the time—”

He disappeared through a backdoor, never having heard her.

Hazel shuffled back in, hoping her perch was ready, or anything to get her mind off the carnal muck that seemed to cover her like slime.

“Are you sure?” Sonia said from the driver’s window. “That’s a long walk in this heat.”

“The cabin’s only a couple miles. I just feel like a walk”—she patted her stomach, which was protruding now—“I need to work off some of this food.”

“Well, all right. But if you get tired, just call me on your cell and I’ll pick you up.”

“Okay.”

Hazel watched Sonia back the Prius out from amid the phalanx of pickup trucks, then drive away. She felt stuffed now, yet antsy. The call from her father, she knew, had thrown her off kilter. Yes, she knew she was a crummy daughter. She knew her father was a good man who loved her very much and would do anything for her, yet still she avoided him. He made her think of herself too much, and this frustrated her. She felt frustrated, too, in not being able to meet the woodsman, though why she couldn’t imagine. He’s just a backwoods manual laborer. She could only presume her fascination denoted some subconscious—and perverse—fantasy.

Shit...

Over the treeline, the horizon began to flame as the sun inched lower. Maybe a couple miles of walking’ll clear my head...

The winding road back toward the cabin was paved but soon Hazel found herself veering off on a wide dirt road. If she had her bearings right, it should navigate her toward Lake Sladder, which she’d love to see. Intermittently, she passed clusters of trailers set back in the woods. They seemed hidden. Flaps of laundry fluttered on clotheslines. The forest thickened the farther she proceeded, the tall pines and oaks seemed closer and closer together. Suddenly she felt uneasy, bare-legged and flipflopped when snakes and briars could be all around. Go with God, go with God, her father’s voice kept harassing her. She’d devoutly attended church up until the end of high school, long after her sexual obsessions had made themselves plain in her psyche. Did I ever really believe in God? she asked herself now but then was certain that she did. So when did I stop?

No answer.

Her father had always been a Methodist minister, and owned a small truck dealership on the side. The new parish was his dream. Hazel knew how much her father wanted her to come back to church—he blamed “liberal, atheistic university life” for steering her away—but now, in this vibrant heat and fresh outdoor air, she suddenly realized that it had not been waning faith but instead a sense of overriding self-disgust. She felt she didn’t belong in church, that for someone who so eagerly pursued sexual debauchery as herself, her presence in the pews would be hypocritical. I’ve got enough to feel bad about... Her mother had abandoned her marriage only months after Hazel had been born, and though her father had never offered details—“It was simply God’s will, and that’s good enough for me”—Hazel had overheard some relatives verifying that her mother was actually quite a tramp. Now I know where I got my sex-pot genes, she thought. Sometimes she wondered the most ludicrous things: Is my mother an Asthenolagniac? Is she a Asphyxiphile or a Maieusiophiliac? Hazel had to laugh.

Suddenly she stopped; it seemed her mind had been meandering along with her feet, for now she realized the dirt road had forked and she’d unconsciously veered with it. The trees stood surreally still around her. Up ahead—ten yards? Twenty?—a man stood with his back to her. Just...standing there.

Hazel’s eyes thinned. There’s no reason to be afraid...so DON’T act afraid. She took confident strides forward. “Excuse me, sir. I think I took a wrong turn back there. Could you tell me how to get back to the—”

Her throat sealed off the remaining words when the man quickly turned. Her purse fell to the dirt. The man wore a shabby, stained T-shirt, smudged jeans, and—

Holy shit, what IS this?

—a mask. A Peter Pan mask.

Hazel didn’t actually shriek until she turned around and found a second, taller man blocking the road behind her. This one, dressed just a shabbily, wore a Snow White mask.

The several-second pause was her biggest mistake; by the time she attempted to flee perpendicularly into the woods, Peter Pan had already had his hand gripping the back of her top. One swoop of his arm flung her into the dirt.

Stereophonic chuckling descended. A knife to her throat chaperoned words in what seemed a southern accent. “Don’t’cha make no noise or’se I’ll cut’cher throat’n bleed ya to death while we’se fuckin’ ya.”

Hazel’s heart hammered as a dirty hand hauled her top over her head. Two dirtier hands mauled her breasts while Peter Pan grabbed her hair. “What a big-ass pile’a steel wool this is,” he chortled. He rubbed her face in his crotch. The denim of his jeans smelled unmistakably of fish.

Snow White said, in a syrup-think New England accent, “Yew heerd what she said, said she eats like a pig. Well, haow ‘baout we see if she fucks like one tew?”

Someone from the restaurant, came Hazel’s frantic deduction. But, shit! The restaurant was packed!

Now a hand pawed her crotch. “Bet’cha she got a shaved pie.”

“Neeeew...”

“Shore. Young gals these days, ‘specially the collerge gals, all shave it. Bet’cha it is.”

“Aw’right, then, yew’re on. Winner gets his nut’n her fust.”

Hazel’s flipflops were flung away and her shorts were peeled inside-out and off.

“Well dew tell!” said Snow White. “I en’t never seed a chunk’a red pussy har like thet!”

Mortified, Hazel tensed when one of them grabbed a fistful of her abundant pubis plot and pulled. Pain prickled; the skin of her sexual mound pulled out.

“Big ass pussy fer such a little thing.”

“Ee-yuh. Nice big lips on it.” The eyes behind Snow White’s eye-holes leveled. “Best jew keep them eyes shut, reddy-head. Less yew see’a us, better the chance we durn’t kill ya.”

Hazel’s eyes sealed shut.

“Flip her over naow. I wanna see whar her shit come out.”

“Dag straight.”

The rough hands flipped Hazel over like a sack of flour. Her buttocks was parted.

“Shee-it!” affirmed the southern voice. “That ass is fresh cornbread right out the oven!” and a fingertip shimmied in the anal opening.

“Well-used, tew. Yew kin tell by lookin’. More like’a slit instead of a hole. Means she’s no stranger to gettin’ it in the ass.” Belt buckles clinked. “Well go on. Yew got fust dibs.”

Hazel sensed her attackers changing positions. She grunted; her cheek dragged in the dirt as her hips were hauled up. With her eyes closed, she seemed to sense more. She heard the sound of a throat being cleared, then—

Hhhhock!

A mucoid lump landed in the crack of her buttocks after which a penis of more than modest girth pushed through.

“Shee-it,” came the immediate complaint. “This stringbean’s asshole tain’t tight at all. And fer such a li’l thing?”

“Heh, heh, heh. Told ya it looked well-used. Probably had more cocks goin’ in it than shit comin’ aout.”

In spite of the reeling horror, Hazel was able to register the grievance, and—

“Ho boy!” Peter Pan delighted.

—Hazel deftly tightened her anus. So I’ve got a big asshole, huh, she managed to think. How’s this for big, you redneck garbage-pile? Her dexterity enabled her to tighten the sphincter and hold it for a considerable length.

“Aw-aw-aw, man! All’s a sudden, she’s tighter than a li’l boy’s ass!”

Snow White’s New England drawl cackled. “Haow would jew know abaout li’l boys’ asses?” and then a guttural peal of laughter fluttered up.

“Just a figgure’a speech, ya know?”

Now, with a mechanical promptitude, Hazel began to oscillate the intricate muscle without any relent at all, opening and closing at a pace that matched her heartbeat.

Her sodomizer was panting, grunting almost in distress as the penis plunged in and out. “I’se swear on my mama’s grave this is the best dang cornholin’ I ever had!” and then he began to shiver, his strokes picking up, and:

“Ah, fuck—ahhhhhhh!”

Hazel easily felt the hot spurts eddy into her bowel. She felt sickened, yet thrilled. Eventually the invading penis slid out of her.

“Cain’t believe my dick spit that fast.”

“Your dick always spits fast,” Snow White laughed. “En’t had the ‘sperience I had. Naow yew get aout my way,” Snow White said, “‘curz it’s my turn. And while I’m jiggin’ up her shit, yew best thank the lady for bein’ setch a good sport, eh? Mebbe like a Nor’east Mustache?”

“Wish I’d thunk’a that!”

As the taller man popped a considerably larger erection through her sphincter, Peter Pan pulled her face off the ground and wiped his deflated penis across her upper lip. Oh, you MOTHERFUCKER! she thought. Now she had to smell remnants of her own excrement. All the while, though, the question beat like a drum in her head: What will they do to me when they’re done?

“Well I’ll be gard-durn’t if yew en’t right,” Snow White railed, pumping her. “She larnt proper, I’se tellin’ yew. Just as I’se sarten my daddy fucked sheep, I’m durn sarten this is the tightest backside I ever buggered.”

“Tolt ya!”

“Make it tighter, reddy-head, make it tight as yew can, less yu’d ruther me’n my pal here cut yew’re li’l cupcake tits off’n choke ya tew death on ‘em.”

Hazel summoned every iota of strength in her body, focused it on her sphincter, and squeezed...

“Ee-YUH!”

More sperm slopped into her bowel; Hazel could feel that this deposit was considerably more voluminous than the first man’s. The cock spasmed in curious quivers as the assailant’s balls drew up against her vagina.

The man exhaled. “If’n this ‘un could make her asshole any tighter she could likely cut PVC pipe.”

“Or bust an empty Bud bottle, fer shore.”

“Ee-yuh. Tew bad we en’t got one.” His hips nudged closer to Hazel’s buttocks. “Loosen up naow, reddy—theer, good.”

Hazel was cruxed. He just came so...what’s he doing now? He seemed to be adjusting his hips like a golfer just before making a shot.

“En’t done just yet,” and then—

Oh my God...

—he began to urinate.

“See, what I always larn’t was that if yew’re gonna cum up a bitch’s ass, yew might as well piss up it tew, eh?”

“Dag straight.”

Hazel winced with her face in the dirt. And I thought I was sick in the head. Heat blossomed in her lower abdomen; she could feel her bowel swell and swell–indeed, she could even feel pressurized urine tracing up the convolutions of her large intestine. After what had to have been two full minutes, the flow had not abated. For shit’s sake, buddy! Are you gonna piss all fucking day?

“Like pullin’ the truck up to the fillin’ station!” cawed Peter Pan. “Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...”

When no more urine remained, Snow White slowly withdrew. Hazel thought of a fat, shaved rat being dragged out of her ass.

“En’t much I’d ruther dew’n piss up a gal’s backside. Just sup-thin’ that tickles me pink abaout the ideer of a gal filled with piss.”

Peter Pan clapped in degenerate glee, and when he did so, his limp cock jiggled. “I’se hear that!”

Hazel collapsed to her belly. All that piss bloating her bowel made her feel buoyant. Her brain seemed like something diced into dozens of nuggets, and each nugget struggled but failed to fully reconnect with the others. She couldn’t quite contemplate the potential that she would be dead soon.

“Come tew think of it...”

Suddenly she was being dragged across the dirt by her hair, until she was arranged in a sitting position against a tree.

“Time this bitch got filled up both ways. I done filled up her ass, so’s why’n’t jew fill up her belly?”

“Yeah! It’s been a spell since I done that!”

Hazel’s skewed faculties didn’t register their intent until Peter Pan was standing with his revolting-smelling penis right in her face.

“Open up.”

Hazel glanced upward through half-closed eyes. “What?”

“Come on, red! Crank that cock-sucker open.” The smiling Peter Pan mask looked ludicrous as such words were emitted from it. “I’se gonna pee in yer mouth’n yer gonna drink it.”

Hazel blinked. Hadn’t she had enough yet? When she gazed down at herself, her lower abdomen bloated such that she looked half-pregnant herself. I’m sitting in the woods, raped and naked, with my belly sticking out ‘cos some redneck just used my ass for a urinal, she thought very concretely.

“No,” she said.

Peter Pan’s eyes looked incredulous. Snow White’s gaze slowly roved over. “Say what? ”

“I’m not going to drink your piss,” Hazel said. She shrugged. “I don’t care any more—my life’s a piece of shit because I’m a piece of shit. My father’s the most wonderful man in the world and I treat him like a bum—I avoid him because I’m too lazy and indulgent to bother. The only person I truly love—a woman, by the way—thinks we’re only ‘buds,’ and I’ve got more mental problems than an abnormal psyche text.” She held up dirt-smudged hands. “Go ahead and kill me. I’m done.”

Peter Pan flicked his knife. “If’n that’s the way ya want it—”

Hazel smiled as the blade lowered. I guess it is...and I’m fine with that.

“New, new, new”—Snow White’s hand intervened to pull the knife away. “En’t no sport in killin’ a woman who en’t afeared, and anyway, she’s just playin’ with us naow.”

“Playin’?” questioned Peter Pan.

“Ee-yuh. She don’t keer if she live’re dies, but ya knaow what?”

“What?”

“We’ll tie her up’n take her back to the shack.” Snow White got down on one knee and looked right at her through his eye-holes. “Then tonight weer gonna snatch ourselfs thet pregnant one.” He pronounced “pregnant” as preg-ernt. “Ee-yuh, li’l reddy-head heer thinks she can fuck with us. Afore we kill yew, we’ll kill yew’re knocked up friend fust.”

Hazel gulped. For the first time she opened her eyes fully and looked at him.

“I’m gonna pitchfork that snippy bitch right in her big belly. Then I’ll’se fuck her while the tot’s blood’s sloppin’ out her cooze. All while yew’re watchin’. Heh, heh, heh...” His real eye winked in the eye-hole. “Think I’m lyin’?”

“All right, I’ll do it,” Hazel shrilled and opened her mouth.

Chuckles fluttered more about her head. Peter Pan stood before her; her sitting position allowed a near-perfect alignment between the rogue’s crotch and Hazel’s mouth. Every muscle in her neck tensed from the sudden gust of crotch-stink. “Tain’t pissed all day...”

“Shuh hope yew’re thusty, hon.”

Peter Pan pinched her cheek till it hurt. “Listen up. I’se got my own system, see? You open yer mouth, I piss in it till it’s full. Then I stop and you swaller. Then ya open up agin’n I fill ‘er up agin, and we’se go like that, ya hear?”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “How methodical. So I’m to assume this isn’t the first time you’ve forced a woman to drink your piss—”

Whap!

A hard palm impacted the side of her head.

“Fust time?” cackled Snow White. “We been fillin’ tramps with piss for a coon’s age.”

“Oh, a coon’s age, huh? I’ve always been curious,” Hazel tempted fate. “Just how long is a coon’s age?”

Whap!

Hazel’s head bobbed on her neck.

“You sassin’ us?” inquired Peter Pan, the end of his limp penis poised between index finger and thumb.

“And, reddy? Heer’s somethin’ else yew need to know,” and Snow White knelt down and spread Hazel’s legs wide. “If’n yew don’t swalluh every maouthful, then—”

Smack!

—his fist pounded her sex.

“—I’se gonna punch yew in yew’re cunt.”

Hazel moaned from the impact, her groin throbbing. “All right,” she wheezed. “I got it.”

“Then git ready, reddy!” Peter Pan celebrated.

Hazel braced herself: eyes sealed, neck craned and back arched, mouth locked open. An instant later, her oral cavity was being filled with hot urine, then the stream stopped and Hazel tensed, then gulped it down.

She teetered where she sat.

“Open!”

Through a throbbing mental disgust, Hazel forced herself to adhere to the “system.” She opened her mouth and let it be filled again.

And again.

And again.

And again and again and again...

She could find no simile to apply to the taste. She could only think of it as mineralish and anti-sapid: something revolting yet in defiance of description. She seemed to be able to smell it going down her throat. But the worst sensation of all was simply all that liquid heat being deposited from mouth to stomach.

Snow White’s New England drawl piped up as if amazed: “She shuh is chuggin’ it daown like a champ, eh?”

Peter Pan eee-hawed. “And I’se got plenty more store up fer the bitch!”

Hazel shut the words out and opened her mouth again...

And again and again.

Oh my God is he ever going to finish?

On the thirteenth swallow, she hiccupped, thought, Shit! and out gushed an entire mouthful.

Smack!

Her face ballooned; she nearly threw up. The impact of Snow White’s knuckly fist to her majora felt more like a swift and very pin-point blow with a mallet. It made her kidneys and even her ovaries hurt. If he does that one more time he might rupture my uterus, she thought through the sickest daze.

“Gawd dog, I trooly dew love punchin’ gals in thur pussies.”

“Yeah, man!”

Three more mouthfuls and three more swallows ensued before Peter Pan’s bladder was at last depleted of all its contents.

Hazel felt her belly and bowel slosh when she sidled over, whining and in tears.

“Naow thet’s what I call fillin’ a bitch up. ”

“Look-it that gut!”

Indeed, all that urine made her look inflated.

“Huh belly? Shee-it! Haow ‘baout them nips on her?”

Only now did Hazel become consciously aware of this incident’s most obscene element of all: she was vibrating in a state of accelerated sexual arousal.

“I’se don’t believe it!” Peter Pan exclaimed. “Her dang nipples’re stickin’ out like the spark plugs on the boat motor!”

“Aye, they are, heh, heh, heh! T’is a very especial kind’a gal who gets horny whilse havin’ the holy ever-livin’ hail raped aout’a her, huh?”

That, Hazel thought, would be me.

The dichotomy raged. She was horrified, disgusted, and sickened unto death, yet her libido betrayed all such undisputable facts. Sodomized, beaten, and filled with urine, yes, by two men who might very well kill her, but...

She had never felt so turned on in her life.

“Hands’n knees agin,” Snow White ordered. “We en’t finished yet, girlie.”

They’re going to ass-fuck me AGAIN? she wondered. Automatonically she assumed the position ordered, then—

Pumph!

—Snow White’s workboot pressed down across her shoulder blades, the force of which rammed her face back into the dirt. “Keep thet gorgeous li’l butt stickin’ up, reddy-head, so’s ya can show us a piss gusher.”

“A piss...what? ”

“Blow alls my piss aout yew’re ass, reel hard, see? We wanna see how far it shoots.”

You’ve GOT to be shitting me! but what choice did she have but to accommodate the perverse command? She jutted her rump up, took several deep breaths, then tightened her abdomen and HEAVED...

“Ho boy!”

“Yew see thet?”

Hazel’s anus dilated, and she blew a veritable plume of sullied urine out of her bowel. It vaulted from her in a way that made her think of a water cannon.

Peter Pan giggled. “Baby, looks like you’se just shot a fuckin’ quart’a piss out’cher ass TEN FEET!”

Great...

Snow White clapped. “I’se seed a lot’a gals blow piss aout thur butts in my time, but nevuh thet far! Naow’s time tew empty huh belly as well, eh?”

“Only fittin’,” and then Peter Pan knelt beside her in the fashion of a wrestler. He put her in a headlock, forearm about her forehead, as she remained straining on her knees. “Now if’n ya bite? I’ll crack yer purdy neck, ya hear?”

“Bite...what?” she mumbled.

“And dun’t yew ferget,” added Snow White, “whut we’ll dew to yew’re pregnant friend. I’ll stick a boat-hook up her pussy and drag the baby aout by his nose, ya heer?”

He and Peter Pan guffawed.

Hazel knew the score when Peter Pan isolated two dirty fingers and pressed them to her lips. She opened her mouth, then said fingers slid in and pressed hard against the back of her tongue.

The vicious pressure took her by surprise; her gag-reflex responded like a thrown switch. Her belly prolapsed, then—

Uuurp!

She vomited up a great, caustic well of urine. It sounded like a bucket of water being upended. Her assailants cackled. Then the fingers jammed back deeper and pressed—

Hazel’s stomach spasmed and splattered another gust of hot, food-flecked urine into the dirt. Her eyes spun in her head, and her abdominal muscles cramped. “No more, please!” she sobbed—

Uuuurp!

Back the fingers went, past her tonsils this time, to trigger another release.

“That’s a good girl,” cooed Peter Pan.

“This shuh beats hail aout’a watchin’ TV.”

It had to have been some very obscure recess of her psyche that allowed Hazel to contemplate: Of all the times she’d been violated—and had invited that violation...

THIS was the most grievous.

“I curn’t BELIEVE what I’m seein’–no suh! This sick bitch is playin’ with huh-self whilse yew’re makin’ huh puke! ” Snow White railed.

After another gust, bile dangled from Hazel’s lips and spots swam before her eyes. Had she heard him correctly?

Oh, yes...

When Peter Pan’s fingers jammed back yet again, Hazel realized her right hand had come up between her legs to coddle her clitoris.

“Might as well just empty the bitch...”

Hazel convulsed through several more go-rounds. In a grand finale, then, the fingers pressed down harder than ever and, this time, didn’t let up. A frighteningly large wet spot of urine and bits of food carpeted the dirt before her. Her belly pumped and pumped and pumped and Hazel gagged and gagged and gagged. She’d long since given over to dry-heaving, yet still the invading fingers persisted. She hacked, wretched, bucked, and flopped. Nothing was coming up now, yet the fingers wanted more. When they finally withdrew several minutes later, Hazel believed she’d been just one spasm short of throwing up her stomach.

Wracked, cramping up, and dizzy to incognizance, she rolled over, wheezing, after Peter Pan at last released her. This sociopathic abuse of her body left every nerve in her body buzzing in raw lust. She lay in the great stain of her own piss and vomit, and masturbated openly.

Peter Pan chuckled. “Any other gal’d be scared shitless but this ‘un’s horny as a mare!”

“One of a kind,” Snow White remarked but pronounced “kind” as conned. Hazel played with her clitoris, slipping it between her fingers like a watermelon seed as Peter Pan seemed to marvel at her distended nipples.

“Pinch them harder!” she panted.

She half-shrieked when he obliged, twisting the areolae as if they were wood screws. Hazel’s ass clenched, she bucked, then came convulsively. In the “afterglow” she lay in a near-paralysis, as if run over.

Snow White was rummaging through her little purse. “She shuh en’t much for money. En’t got but twenty piddlin’ dollars on huh.” He stuffed the bill in his pocket, shaking his masked head.

“Do I look like a fuckin’ ATM?” she snapped at him.

“She’s got huh-self a lotta spunk, I’ll give huh thet.”

“Yeah, man.”

“What’s this heer?” Snow White asked and removed a small bottle of Pond’s.

“It’s hand lotion, Einstein!” Hazel yelled.

“Don’t get smart,” but, of course, Snow White pronounced “smart” as smot.

“Reddy-head taken everything we give huh, and she still en’t beggin’ for huh life.”

“So’s I guess that can only mean...,”

Peter Pan sealed Hazel’s mouth closed with an open palm, then pinched her nostrils shut with two fingers.

Her eyes bugged; she mewled into her closed mouth. Peter Pan’s chuckles grew darker and darker as her vision dimmed. She flopped in the dirt like a pinned frog. Her lungs expanded...

They’re killing me. For real this time.

The chuckles grew echoic as Hazel’s consciousness faded to black.

Had she died? She felt sinking very quickly, falling down an endless hole in the ground...

A faceless voice very far away whispered: Hazel, my child, I adjure you...

Her breath whistled when the hands came off her face. She hacked and sucked in air simultaneously, shuddering. But—

But—

A monstrous pressure–an obscene trespass–begat her first scream in earnest. What IS that? She heard more chuckles like some sound-effects trick that turned each utterance into a hundred, along with...

Along with a sickening wet schlucking sound. Something huge was pumping in and out of her vagina to the extent that she thought she was having a baby in reverse.

“Take a looky, reddy!” Peter Pan guffawed.

A hand jerked her head up, forcing her to look down between her spread legs. At the same time she smelled the absolute worst stench of her life. He’s not—He’s not really—

Snow White sat between her legs. He’d removed one of his boots; hence the stench: the appalling odor of a big unwashed-for-days redneck foot. He’d smeared the hand lotion over it, she could only guess, and now had most of his entire foot stuck up into her vaginal barrel.

“Theer ya go, ee-yuh!” he celebrated. “Theer ya go...”

schluck, schluck, schluck, went the sound.

The atrocious thing pumped in and out of her, at times broadening her vaginal lips to a stretched pink rim.

“Nothin’ like a good ole foot-fuckin’ ta break a sassy gal’s starch!” Peter Pan hooted.

schluck, schluck, schluck

“Ee-yuh, ee-yuh,” Snow White grunted. “En’t foot-fucked me a bitch in...”

“What?” Hazel yelled. “A fuckin’ coon’s age!”

The rapists burst out laughing.

“Come on,” Peter Pan egged on. “See if’n ya can get it all the way up her.”

The horrendous foot flexed inside, then Snow White raised his ass off the ground and—

“Eeeeeeeeeeee-YUH! Thar she goes!”

When the foot slunked into her all the way to the ankle, Hazel, very understandably, shrieked.

And then down came Peter Pan’s hands to seal her mouth closed and pinch her nostrils shut again.

schluck, schluck, schluck

Her convulsions redoubled. She heard a distant buzzing in her head, then once more her lungs began to expand. The chuckles flitted about like bats far away. This is it, came the calm thought through the appalling subventions. The cross on Hazel’s sullied bosom felt like a red-hot ingot over her heart, and as her life began to descend into unutterable darkness she pleaded, I’m know I’m not worth saving, God, but could You at least know that I’m sorry for my sins?

Her brain de-oxygenated, the effect of which hit her like a potent opiate, and even as her mind went totally black, she knew she was masturbating, knew even that she’d climaxed at the immediate point of de—

Turmoil. Pandemonic commotion. The hands flew off Hazel’s face. She yelped in a breath when the foot was yanked out of her plundered vagina like a lollipop pulled from a greedy toddler’s mouth. Hazel shivered in near-death as her lungs siphoned in air. What was happening? When she managed to lean up, an intense white light burned in her eyes. The light at the end of the tunnel of Death, she thought for sure, but then why were her attackers still present? Snow White and Peter Pan seemed charged into panic, swearing under their breath. “Haow yew fuckin’ like thet?” “Come on, we gotta git!” Frantic footfalls pounded the dirt, then their manic silhouettes fled into the trees.

I must still be alive, Hazel presumed.

Very slowly, her vision began to clear. Evidently the foot-game had been going on a while, for the sun had sunk lower. That’s when she realized that the intense white light in her eyes was actually a pair of headlights on a vehicle.

A huge, wide-shouldered shape approached, then lifted her up.

“Holy Moses, yew all right, miss?” came a genial yet heavy voice.

Hazel simply lay limp in arms that felt secure as metal rails. “I, I—,” was all she could say.

“Don’t’cha worry. Them men’re gone,” the thick northern drawl told her and then she felt herself being carried a short distance and placed in the passenger seat of what she thought must be a pickup truck. Her rescuer disappeared a moment, then returned with her purse and scant clothes. He placed a blanket over her. When he got behind the wheel, Hazel was finally able to say, “Thank you. You saved my life.”

His form looked fuzzy. “Aw, naow, I doubt they’d’a kilt ya but they was rough customers, all right. I’ll tell ya, though, if that one fella was doin’ what it looked like he was doin’...well, I almost wish I could’a kilt them myself.” A pause. “Lotta evil folks in this world, it seems.”

Hazel hugged herself beneath the wrap as the pickup pulled away. Had God answered her prayers, or had it merely been luck? Finally her vision came back sufficiently to make out details of her rescuer...

I don’t believe it...

It was the brawny man she’d seen taking out the garbage. The “woodsman.”

“You must be one’a the gals stayin’ up the Wilmarth place.”

“Yes,” she blurted. “My name’s Hazel Greene.”

“I’m Horace Knowles. Growed up ‘raound heer.” He shook his head, which was topped by think, straight-black hair down to his collar. “Some’a the best campin’ and hikin’ you’ll evuh find in our area.” The peaceful drawl sounded checked by anger. “Then ungodly stuff like this happens. It could drive tourists away. Curn’t ever understand why some folks are just so...bad. ”

So evil, Hazel thought spontaneously. “Oh, but my friend and I aren’t really tourists—her name’s Sonia, by the way. We just came up to meet her fiancé. He inherited Henry Wilmarth’s cabin.”

“I only met Professor Wilmarth once. Very nice man, and it’s a dag shame what happened...”

“Yes...”

“Well, best not think’a that. ‘Specially after what’choo been through. Won’t take but twenty minutes to git yew to the county sheriff’s.”

Hazel rubbed her stomach beneath the wrap; it still ached from the forced-vomit contractions. County sheriff’s...” Don’t bother, Horace. But if you could drive me back to the cabin, that’d be great.”

Only now did she note the rest of his face: chisel-jawed, dark-eyed, whiskers. He’s a redneck Adonis, Hazel thought. But Horace looked alarmed by her comment. “But, miss, you was raped, weren’t ya?”

Buddy, the shit those animals did to me make your typical rape look like babies blowing bubbles. “Yes, but I’m not really comfortable reporting it to the police. It’s impossible for me to give a description; they were wearing masks.”

Horace nodded grimly. “I think I git what’cher sayin’. Lotta women don’t report bein’ raped ‘cos half the time they en’t believed.”

She could’ve laughed. All women are sluts who ask for it. “Yeah. They didn’t cut me or anything. I’m actually very lucky.”

“The grace’a God it weren’t wuss,” Horace said.

Hazel stalled on his words. Without conscious direction, her fingers slid up between her breasts and touched her cross.

“If’n yew’re shuh,” he said, “then I’ll have ya back at the cabin in no time.”

Hazel felt cosseted in relief now. But then— “Oh, wait a minute. I’m filthy! I don’t want Sonia to see me like this; she’s pregnant and it would definitely distress her. Is there a motel around? I need a shower really bad.”

“Keziah Mason’s lodge is full up, I’m pretty shuh, but yew’re more’n welcome to get washed up at my trailer.”

“Thank you, Horace. You’re a godsend.”

Only minutes later she was walking awkwardly into a modest mobile home wrung with wind-chimes; her hand kept the blanket wrapped about herself.

Horace carried her things in behind her. “En’t much but it’s home.”

“It’s very well-appointed,” Hazel said of the interior. It didn’t look trailerish at all but cozy. Plush couch and carpet, dark walls, framed pictures.

“Right in heer,” he said and opened a narrow door. He handed her a towel. When she took it, she lost her grasp on the wrap and it fell partway open, revealing her furred pubis, her belly and one breast.

Horace immediately turned away.

“Ooops,” Hazel said.

“I’ll be in heer if’n ya need anything.”

“Thanks.”

The bathroom was a tiny compartment but to Hazel, just then, it couldn’t have been more luxurious. She felt enslimed by filth—indeed, by evil— and she needed desperately to wash off all the unmentionable grime. She imagined that she’d been dragged bare-assed by devils through a shit-trench in Hell. The scalding water in the telephone-booth-sized stall made her bristle; she moaned in delight as the layers of sweat, dirt, and urine were sloughed away. Now that she’d been removed from the danger, she grew more aware of the toll her body had taken, most especially her vagina. It ached from the horrendous insult paid to it, and when Hazel thought most objectively about exactly what had happened, she cringed. A foot. A big dirty redneck FOOT! She lathered her pubis up in a great poof of suds, rinsed it off, then relathered but still felt filthy. She wished for a douche bottle full of Listerine; she wished she could hook a hose to the shower nozzle and flush herself out like a radiator. She had to settle for inserting the bar of soap into her vaginal inlet, popping it out, then working her fingers in.

Once dried off and re-dressed, she limped back to the front room. Now her sex throbbed in a steady ache. She heard a strange swooshing sound that wavered in and out, then found Horace sitting at a potter’s wheel in a smaller room off to the side. His foot pumped a pedal which spun the wheel as his hands expertly molded a curvaceous vase out of wet clay. A kiln sat in the corner. From pegs on the wall hung an array of knives, styluses, and other clay-working tools, while shelves opposite housed multitudes of finished products: bowls, flower pots, tubular wind chimes, paperweights shaped like swans, butterflies, etc.

“You’re quite a craftsman,” Hazel complimented of the wares.

“I’m a potter,” Horace said without looking up. He pumped the pedal. “I make mainly wind-chimes, and regional knickknacks fer tourists. Lotta my stuff’s for sale at the Pickman’s Curiosity Shoppe on Main Street. Yew’n yer friend might wanna stop by’n take a look.”

“We will,” Hazel promised, gazing around at the all the displayed objects. “So this is your main occupation, and you work at the tavern on the side?”

Horace laughed under his breath. “More like the other way ‘raound. But t’ween this’n my job at the tavern I’se can pay the bills a right easy.”

Hazel didn’t hear the last of his words, for something on the top shelf snagged her eye. She reached up, took it down.

It was an intricate and very finely crafted clay box, about five inches long, four wide, and four high. Slightly lop-sided, its angles slightly off, its sides slightly unparallel. Just like the box at the cabin, only clay instead of metal... The same bizarre glyphics adorned its sides and lid: series of v’s,<‘s,^’s, and >’s, interspersed irregularly by ~’s. She felt sure that its dimensions were identical to the box at the cabin. The only difference other than its composition was an absence of the curious bas-reliefs on the sides and center of the lid: the unsettling figures. After a lengthened surveillance, too, the glyphs seemed varied in some way, or perhaps more plentiful than on the body of the cabin box.

“There’s a box very similar to this at the cabin.”

“Metal, goldish color, right?” Horace asked.

“Why, yes.”

“That was the model I used to make the template for this.” Horace pointed to the box in her hand. “See, a while back, Professor Wilmarth brought that gold box over. He said it was very old, from Egypt’re some sech place. And he wanted me to duplicate it, said the angles hadda be exact, and said he’d pay me five hunnert dollars for a prototype. Said if I did a good job he’d pay a tidy sum more for a whole bunch of ‘em—thirty-two more, he said.”

Hazel stared at the recital. “So Henry Wilmarth paid you to make this box?”

“Ee-yuh, he did. Cash money, too. Felt bad takin’ that much but he said skills like mine was wuth a respectable wage.”

“When was this, Horace?”

“Oh, last spring, I s’pose.”

“Before the Mother’s Day Storm in St. Petersburg?”

“Oh, ee-yuh. Was like in March, I think.”

She tried to get the story straight. “And he said he wanted to buy more of these from you?”

“If’n I did the job right. Said the angles hadda be exact, and, well, I’ll stake my repper-tayshun that the angles is exact”—he pointed to an array of protractors, compasses, and polycarbonate angle-stencils hanging on the wall. “They’se exact, all right. Said it didn’t need to be metal, though, clay was fine, and he said it didn’t need the same drawings on it. The metal box had these creepy drawings that looked sort’a like monsters.”

Hazel felt a modest chill when she recalled the bas-relief figures. Had the figures seemed hostile and tentacled? She shivered.

Horace pointed to a sheet of graph paper tacked to the wall. “Just the dimensions’a the box hadda be the same. But the engravings—the little and V’s and sech–hadda be different. ”

Hazel examined the graph paper, and on it noticed an off-angled exploded diagram depicting the box’s four sides and the lid. “Different,” she muttered.

“Ee-yuh. See, I even made these templates for each side and the lid”—next, he held up plastic sheets into which the glyphs had been copied and cut out.

“But he never contracted you to make the rest of the boxes?”

“New. Never heard from him directly again.” Horace set the vase aside and washed his hands in a small sink. “Kind’a weird. He was always in and aout’a taown’s what I heerd. So’s when I finished the first box I left a letter under his door, tolt him it was ready for him ta take a look at. A while later I get a letter back thankin’ me for my trouble but sayin’ he didn’t need any more of the boxes. Plus a check fer another five hunnert.”

“And when was that? ” Hazel felt driven to ask. “Was it before or after the—”

“It were after that big storm he survived in Florida, ee-yuh. Like end’a May or early June.”

Hazel gazed perplexed at the box. When she opened it she found a similar interior: seven struts supporting an egg-shaped metal band. “Did Professor Wilmarth ever say what the box was for?”

Horace dried his big, beefy hands with paper towels. Hazel stared at them, imagining one clamped to her throat and the other rockering her sex...

“I seem ta recall him saying it was a crystal box. S’posed to hold some sort’a crystal. Said he hadda bunch’a friends who wanted ‘em. What’s the word he used?” Horace squinted. “Gemologists, I’se think.”

Hazel blinked. A crystal. A gemstone? Didn’t Henry’s letter mention a STONE, that he also referred to as the “ST”?

“It’s full dark naow. I best get yew back.”

Hazel limped after him out to the truck. Storm clouds roved overhead, consuming a beautiful moon. Looks like rain tonight. She idled her thoughts as Horace drove the bulky truck out of the boondock cranny and pulled back onto the main road.

What a day... She felt strangely at ease and very definitely un traumatized in spite of the horrific scene earlier. Worse was she felt an inkling of arousal, no doubt ignited by her proximity to this handsome, strong-as-an-ox bumpkin who’d saved her.

“You’re very modest, Horace, but you know, I think those men really were going to kill me.”

“Mebbe but, new, I don’t think so. I hadda hankerin’ it was the Fish Boys, just a gut feelin’ but, shoot, I curn’t prove it.”

“The Fish Boys?”

“Couple local fellas, en’t good fer much. Rumor is they both done time fer small stuff, but even them fellas en’t got the belly fer killin’. Were probably just a couple poachers passin’ through. Lots’a poachers out, all the time hot for whitetail deer, moose’n beaver. ‘S’illegal to hunt moose’n beaver, ya know.”

Hazel sighed. “Horace, that’s not what I meant.” Her hand drifted to the marble-firm thigh filling the denim. “I meant that whether you saved my life or you didn’t, I’m still indebted to you. The only way I can think to thank you is...”

Her hand slid over a crotch that felt packed. Feels like this hayseed’s got a pound of ground beef stuffed in there. Her finger slid greedily up and down the zipper...

“Horace, pull over,” she whispered in his ear.

“Aw, well, I dun’t know, Hazel...”

“Pull over, pull over...”

Horace groaned, then pulled the clattering truck onto the shoulder.

At once she felt feverish. She unfastened his belt, opened his pants, and pulled down his fly all in a series of movements that seemed synchronized. He wore no briefs. The musky scent of a day’s work wafted up when her hand ladled out all that warm, soft meat. My God, she thought, dizzy, gently squeezing the mass of scrotum and coiled cock.

“Aw,” he muttered.

The mass came alive, an erection quickly lengthening. Hazel ringed her thumb and forefinger about the shaft to help it along and in doing so felt it swell to a column so hard it barely yielded to her pressure. A swatch of foreskin bunched at the top; she delighted in gently pulling it down and feeling all that delicate skin slide silkily up and down over the hot pillar. In the dashlight she noted veins fat and long as earthworms. Horace fidgeted in his seat as she continued to slowly stroke. Once fully hard, it began to beat; Hazel was almost flabbergasted by its size: the girth of a Red Bull can but inches longer. She wanted to suck it all down. She wanted to sit on it and let it all burrow into her. I just got raped to within an inch of my life by two guys sicker than Richard Speck, and NOW look what I’m doing...Why should she even try to understand herself?

This cock is gorgeous, she thought, stupefi ed. It’s a fucking work of art... Next, she scooped up the scrotum which filled her entire hand, was almost giddy as her fingers explored each testicle, each almost the size and weight of a hen’s egg. The excitement she induced made the balls start to draw upward on their intricate tethers, then she grabbed the shaft again and slid the foreskin all the way down, baring a plump, fat-slitted corona. Drool filled the considerable piss-slit. Even this minutia of sexual anatomy fascinated her, and due to the organ’s atypical size, she wondered if it were possible to...

Hazel held the column close with one hand, while the thumb and forefinger of the other opened the delicate slit. Horace flinched, while Hazel delighted in being able to admit the end of her pinky finger fully into the egress of Horace’s urethra, something she’d never been able to do before.

But what now?

I’ve got to suck it, I’ve just GOT to...

She leaned over to fellate him but just as her lips would meet the glans...

“Aw, ya know,” Horace pushed her away, “this en’t settin’ right with me, Hazel. En’t nothin’ ‘baout yew, it’s just...”

Hazel stared at him.

“I just curn’t let’cha dew this, much as I’d wanna.” It was with difficulty that he managed to stuff those marvelous balls and beating cock back into his trousers. “See, I got me a honey–Lillian’s her name–and, see, she’s over in the Iraq right naow. She’s in the signal corp. I’d be a low-daown dag dirty dog to fool ‘raound with another gal while my baby’s over there fightin’ fer my freedom. New sir, a fella couldn’t get no lower.”

Oh, for God’s sake! An ethical redneck!

“So I just hope yew understand and durn’t take it personal,” he said and got back on the road.

Hazel put her face in her hands and laughed. “You’re a good man, Horace, and you have no idea how lucky your girlfriend is. They sure don’t make many men like you these days.” She sighed. “And now I guess you think I’m a super slut for pulling a move like that...”

“New, durn’t worry none. We all gots our thing.”

“I just didn’t know how else to thank you...”

He raised a finger. “Come by the Curiosity Shoppe. It’d make me look good to the owner if’n ya bought something, and I’ll bet there’s plenty theer you’d fancy.”

“I’ll look forward to it, Horace.”

“And like I said a’fore.” He smiled contentedly behind the wheel. “Durn’t thank me, thank the Lord...”

The rain had just started when Hazel entered the cabin. Lights burned softly in the front room, but Sonia wasn’t there. “Sonia? I’m back.”

“Oh—In here.”

Hazel followed her friend’s voice into the small den. Sonia sat at Henry Wilmarth’s desk, studying an array of papers.

“Wow, that was some walk,” Sonia said without looking up.

“Took longer than I thought, and—”

Finally Sonia’s eyes looked up in exclamation. “What’s wrong! Are you hurt?”

Hazel limped in. Well, I just got foot-fucked, if that’s what you mean. “I guess I’m not in the good shape I thought. Sore all over. I was so tired halfway back, I hitched a ride with a local.”

Did Sonia offer a suspicious frown? Suddenly thunder rumbled, then rain began to patter the roof.

“And I got back just in time,” Hazel added. She leaned over the desk. “Looks like some serious Nosy Parkering going on here.”

“I took the liberty of looking over Henry’s papers,” Sonia defended herself.

“Feminist doctrine. Sounds good to me.” Hazel noticed lots of papers written by hand, many of which appeared to be in foreign languages. “And?”

Sonia sat back, sighing. She adjusted her position in the seat to accommodate her swollen belly. “A whole lot of really bizarre rigamarole.”

“This is definitely Latin,” Hazel said, picking a sheet up. “And it also looks like—”

“I know. Not a photocopy but an old style mimeograph,” Sonia augmented. The sheet was purple-tinted and frayed. “I haven’t seen something like that in decades.”

Hazel skimmed a few lines. “I took some Latin, but most of this is illegible. Terrum Per Me Ambula? Something about ‘walking the earth...’” She squinted. “‘Per qua spheres opportunus’ means ‘by where the spheres meet.’ And...‘Non in notus tractus tamen inter illud tractus?’ Damn, I don’t know. Maybe “Not in known spaces but between them?’”

Sonia showed her another paper. Hazel recited, “‘They frendo civis...’” She blinked. “‘They crush the cites,’ or something like that.”

“Weird.”

On the back, a Post-It was stuck. It read in cursive script: Mimeo of hand-copied intercession page of A.A. I believe someone scrivened the page from the Wormius translation of A.D. 1228. Either the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris, or the copy in Lima.

“Beats me,” Hazel said. “What about the others?”

Sonia handed her a frayed 8 x 10 photograph that looked almost as worn as the mimeograph. The back read, in the same script:

Probably illegally photographed p. of rumored copy of Greek trans. of N. (Theodorus Philatus, A.D. 950) that escaped condemnation and burning ordered by Patriarch Michael, A.D. 1050 . (Is this the copy thought to be hidden in Vatican?)

“Greek, huh?” Hazel noted. “Good luck translating that.”

“Yeah. And the notations look like Henry’s handwriting.”

“It makes sense. It’s his stuff, and something he was obviously studying with some interest.”

“Transcriptions of Latin and Greek, from the Middle Ages and older? Printing presses didn’t even exist then,” Sonia seemed stifled. “So somebody accessed original copies of the texts, which had to have been handwritten, and then copied certain parts in their own hand?”

Hazel shrugged in resignation. “I guess. But so what?”

“Henry Wilmarth was a mathematician, Hazel, and a scholar of geometry. But this stuff looks like old folklore or something. And there’s not a single number or equation on any of these pages.”

“Sonia!” Hazel blurted. “How do you say ‘I don’t give a shit’ in Greek?”

“Don’t be a smart-ass,” Sonia smirked back. “But now, look at this.”

Another dog-eared 8 x 10. At the bottom, clearly scribed in fountain pen and not in Henry Wilmarth’s hand, were the words: one of only two extant sheets of Al Azif, pilfered by Deacon M. Bari days before the fall of Const. The photo itself, however, was immediately recognizable: a hand-drawn exploded-diagram of a box whose planes were not quite even. On each plane were drawings of the same geometric shapes (v’s,>’s,^’s, >’s) that Hazel recognized from the metal box.

She took the box down off the shelf and compared it.

“It’s the same,” she deduced. “The dimensions and the symbols.”

“Yes, and isn’t that interesting?”

Hazel’s brow rose. “Actually, yes.” At once she felt animated. She was about to tell Sonia about the similar clay box that Henry had contracted Horace to craft, but thought better of it. Find out about this first. “And the ‘fall of Const.’ has to be the fall of Constantinople, right?”

“Uh-huh. The mid-1400s. This is some really old stuff, Hazel.

Now...look on the back.”

Hazel flipped the photo over and saw a brief scribing in Wilmarth’s hand: See File 293. “Looks like our work’s cut out for us now.” She strode to the file cabinet.

“It’s not there. There are no numbered files,” Sonia informed. “No folders, even.”

Hazel hauled open each drawer and found some to be empty while others appeared full of school papers. “You’re right.” Her eyes narrowed at the desk. “What about the desk?”

“It’s locked.”

“Have some initiative!” Hazel complained. She stalked to the kitchen, then returned with a broom.

“What are you—”

Hazel jammed the broom handle into the handle of the first desk drawer, and yanked hard. The lock-piece in the old wooden desk cracked easily.

“Hazel!”

“Henry Wilmarth is dead, right? And he left Frank the cabin and all of its contents, right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“So, now, this is really Frank’s desk, right?”

“Sort of, I guess, but—”

“So, by feminist doctrine, the desk is yours too.”

Sonia laughed. “Feminist doctrine, huh?”

Hazel knelt. “Honestly, what’s the big deal? The guy’s dead.” She searched the drawers, yet found nothing in the way of numbered file folders. Mostly just trade journals and old school curriculums and syllabi. Also a magnifying glass and a stapler. She went Yuck! when she lifted a bottle of Kessler’s whiskey out of the bottom drawer, then, “Oh, double-yuck!” and she lifted out a revolver.

“Is it loaded?” Sonia asked in a hushed tone.

“Don’t know, don’t know how to find out, and don’t want to find out.” She returned it along with the bottle, then reached all the way back. “Hmm.” She pulled out a digital camera.

“Check it!” Sonia said excitedly.

Hazel turned it on, then giggled, “Wouldn’t it be a riot if there were pictures of Frank and Henry Wilmarth, like, making out and doing each other?”

Sonia made an appalled face. “Hazel, you’re sick!”

“Just a thought.” She checked the menu on the tiny screen, then slumped. “Damn. The memory card’s empty.”

“So much for that.”

“And so much for the mystery of File 293.” She was about to close the last drawer but then stalled when she noticed an oddity. She leaned closer.

Scrawled in ballpoint, against the wooden side of the drawer, was this word: Yog-Sothoth.

Whatever the hell that is, Hazel declared to herself, why would Henry Wilmarth scribble it on the inside of his desk?

“Maybe the file’s up at this cottage Frank’s at.”

Sonia nodded. “Maybe, but if I asked him, then he’d know we were going through Henry’s effects.”

“He probably wouldn’t be too happy about that.”

“No.”

Then an idea occurred to Hazel, quick as a beacon going off. “Wait a minute! Maybe it’s not a paper file but a computer file!” and she hit the power button on the laptop sitting at a small table flanking the desk.

After booting up, Hazel and Sonia both said “Shit,” in near-unison. A password box flashed on the screen.

“Any idea what Henry’s birthday is?” Hazel asked.

“He was too smart—and too eccentric—for that.” Sonia mulled the thought. “What was Frank saying on the phone earlier? The father of geometry?”

Thrilled, Hazel typed in EUCLID, then received a PASSWORD INCORRECT tag. “Damn.”

“Oh, well,” Sonia gave up. “It’s none of our business anyway.”

“Of course it isn’t, but I’m dying to know what that box is all about. Aren’t you?”

“Yes, but we’ll never get into the computer. Just shut it off.”

Hazel’s hand hovered over the mouse. Hmm. I wonder... She looked back into the bottom drawer.

“What are you doing? ”

“Type as I read,” Hazel instructed, squinting at the arcane scrawl. “Y-O-G-hyphen-S-O-T-H-O-T-H.”

Sonia did so, frowning. “What’s that?”

“It’s written down here. Sometimes people write their passwords in an out-of-view place in case they forget it. I do the same thing with my bank account number for when I’m checking online.”

Sonia clicked the tab. “You were right!” she squealed.

Hazel looked up at the glowing screen background. She smiled.

“Now, let’s see what we can dig up...”

A simple search for the number “293” pulled up a directory full of numbered files, almost a thousand of them.

When Hazel opened File 293, she found it to be five jpegs, one of each side of the metal box, plus the lid.

“He scanned the box?” Sonia asked.

“Looks like it,” and she pointed to the scanner sitting above the computer. The next page showed the same five jpegs only each glyph was circled in red ink and assigned a number which corresponded to the list of chronological numbers below, and to each number was assigned another number but in degrees.

“Henry measured the degrees of every angle on the box and indexed them,” Hazel presumed.

“Scroll down, maybe there’s more.”

Hazel did so but only found the typed words: Quotients for Power Schematic of original ST carrier.

“There’s that damn S-T again,” Hazel muttered.

“I guess the degrees of each angle constitute an equation.”

Hazel peered queerly at the screen. “But for what? And what the hell is the S-T?”

“Some kind of a stone, right? Isn’t that what Henry’s instructions implied?”

Hazel nodded, then decided to tell her...”Remember the guy we saw earlier who you called the ‘woodsman?’”

“Yeah, the hunk of beefcake you have the hots for,” Sonia said with a smirk.

“Whatever. He’s the guy who gave me a ride home today, but he took me to his place first, a trailer out in the woods.”

Sonia glared. “Oh my God, Hazel! You didn’t!”

“No...”

Sonia wagged a finger. “I know you, Hazel. You’re kinky and spontaneous. In this day and age you can’t just pick up men and do them. The sexual revolution is dead, and STD’s are what killed it.”

Hazel sighed. “I didn’t fuck him, Sonia. Jesus.” All I tried to do was suck him off, THEN I would’ve fucked him...” I’m trying to tell you something, okay? The guy’s name is Horace—”

“Horace? ”

“Horace Knowles. He’s a potter, sells his stuff at a shop in town. But he had a box identical in size to this metal one, only it’s made of clay.”

Sonia’s previous perturbation faded. “You’re kidding.”

“No, and it was Henry Wilmarth who paid him to make it, last spring, before the storm.”

“Why on earth would he—”

“I don’t know, but he also indicated he might want Horace to make a whole bunch more of these boxes, but later—when he got back from Florida—he cancelled the order.”

Sonia turned the metal box in her hand. “Boxes just like this...”

“Yes, the same dimensions, the same asymmetry.” Hazel took the box from her friend and studied it, puzzled. “It’s the same size, all right, but I’m positive that the engravings are different. They’re the same types of configurations but on Horace’s clay box there are more of them, and in different sequence.”

“Now you’re losing me.”

“The only thing Horace could tell me about the box is that Henry said it was supposed to hold a crystal. ”

“How...strange.” Sonia seemed flustered now, interested to an extent but addled by something. “Hazel, I’ve been sitting too long and now my back’s killing me. Help me to the bed, will you?”

Suddenly Hazel’s attentions were diverted. She helped Sonia up from the desk and carefully piloted her into the main room. Only a few lights burned out here, and the rain could be heard teeming from the open windows. “At least the rain cooled things down...” The queen-sized bed sat in one corner, while the couch, TV, coffee table, and entertainment center sat in the other. I wonder if I’ll get to sleep in the bed with her, Hazel quietly hoped. She sat Sonia on the edge of the bed.

“God, I’m so tired all of a sudden,” Sonia murmured.

Hazel’s eyes fell on her friend’s bosom, and the beautiful bolus of flesh that contained a new life. She gazed at Sonia’s drowsy face. My God I love you. “Go to sleep then. It’s been a long day.”

“I can’t, Frank’s calling at nine.” She yawned. “Wake me up at eight-thirty, will you?”

“Sure,” Hazel said, cringing on the inside. In her mind she saw herself rolling Sonia’s maternity dress up, parting her legs, and pressing her face into all that warm fur. “I’ll be in the den, prying some more into a dead man’s privacy.”

Sonia chuckled, eyes closed.

Back at the computer, Hazel took to clicking on random files—anything to get her mind off of Sonia. Many of the files were brief, typed notes, like:

File 67: invariant intervals seem to be rectilinear, which suggests a designation for dimensionality reliant on a non-existent power source. S to the 2nd power cannot possibly equal Y2 + Z2

Or: File 745: The carrier for the ST can only be a manner of uplinkage, which harnesses energy from available space, even a perfect vacuum! Yes! (See File 691)

File 691: It seems to me that Alhazred possessed only a partial understanding of quotient potential. Euclid MUST have been in possession of original box and perhaps even the ST itself, circa 270 B.C., and made notes that Alhazred copied and input along with the schematic in Al Azif...In Euclid we know that there are only 10 axioms and postulates but the schematic (File 13) PROVES the existence of an 11th. Of course Alhazred wouldn’t have understood this! He was an occultist, not a mathematician!

“All right,” Hazel groaned, and clicked on File 13...

File 13:

v = S

^ = T

< + E

> = (D)imensionality

Fluctuations of power rely on the sum total of each degree of every v, ^, <, and >

Hazel blinked. “S equals space, T equals time, E equals energy?” she asked the air.

The file’s last line read:

~ = the square root of the former times .33.

Now her head was beginning to hurt. All right, I’m bored now. I should stick to what I know: Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner. She was about to turn the computer off when she thought, Oh, what the hell?

She clicked on the very last file...

File 944:

v><<^ ~ <v ~ ^^>v^ ~ v<^>>v^<v>>^v ~ v ~ v^<v><^ ~ <>

= D + S + E + T to the 33rd power!

Thurnston! Frank! My God, this is it!

Hazel scrolled down in the body of the same file and found another exploded diagram, like a box opened up and unfolded. Unlike the first, which was a digital scan of the metal box, this was hand-drawn with the meticulousness of an architect, a veritable blueprint of another box. Each section was filled with more of the glyphs, abundantly more than the sections of the metallic box. Hazel felt certain: This is the schematic for the clay box that Horace made...

It occurred to her then that since she’d opened the very last file, why not look at the very first?

click

File #1 was another jpeg, radiant in its brightness and clarity. The picture showed an egg-shaped gemstone which at first looked black as obsidian but then, after a blink, appeared to possess the hue of dark red wine. Within the crystal’s body she thought she detected darker and lighter scarlet striations. The entire stone glimmered from hundreds of minute facets.

She held her gaze, then realized that the crystal had been photographed on this self same desk.

Below the picture was a legend that read: THE SHINING TRAPEZOHEDRON.

Hazel stared as if the screen were a chasm. Shining...Trapezohedron...

The S-T...

It had to be.

I’ve GOT to find out what this thing is... Resurged now, Hazel zipped the cursor back to the index and determined to peruse every file in the directory if need be, until she discovered the purpose of this puzzling red-black crystal.

That’s when a great clap of thunder shook the house, then all the lights went out.

Hazel flew out of the seat when the shrill shriek sounded in the other room. She plunged into nearly full darkness until lightning flashed and showed her that the bed was empty. “Sonia! Where are—”

“I’m in here—oh, damn it!”

Hazel used her cellphone to light her way toward the voice. I thought she was in bed! but then she found Sonia standing awkward and naked in the metal washtub beneath the primitive shower.

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I almost fell when the lights went out,” Sonia fretted.

“You scared the crap out of me; it sounded like a horror movie in here. You told me you wanted to take a nap.”

Dripping wet and clotted in soap bubbles, Sonia grumbled. “I know, but even as tired as I was I couldn’t sleep. Every time I’d start to drift off, I’d start thinking about Frank up on top of some dumbass mountain in the middle of a dumbass thunderstorm and probably getting hit by lightning.”

“You really are a worrywart,” Hazel laughed.

Sonia paused, looking off as if something unpleasant entered her mind. “And then, when I finally did fall asleep”—she shivered—“I had the most awful dream...”

“What happened in the dream?”

“I was covered in some kind of slime, and then-and then, this thing that I guess was an octopus tentacle started to go into–” Sonia squeezed her eyes shut hard and vigorously shook her head.

“What?” Hazel egged on. “A tentacle started to go where? ”

“Oh, Hazel, it’s too gross to talk about. Don’t make me think about it...”

Tentacle, Hazel reflected, of course recalling her own daymare in the outhouse: the atrocious, tentacled baby with a sucker for a mouth.

“So I decided to take a shower in this dumbass metal tub,” Sonia continued, “and that dumbass water pump!”

“Just stand there and don’t move; you’re liable to slip. I’ll be right back.” Honestly, Hazel thought. She’s like a little kid all of a sudden. She quickly found some candles in the kitchen, lit one, and returned. Sonia shrieked again when more thunder boomed. “Relax,” Hazel said.

“Help me finish, will you?” Sonia pointed to the crude pump-handle.

“Sure...” Hazel worked the pump as Sonia finished lathering herself.

“This is a first: a shower in spring water. But that water-heater thing works; otherwise it’d be ice-cold.”

“I feel sorry for the settlers in Colonial days.”

“They probably didn’t even bother washing. You know, the first bath tub wasn’t even invented until the 1800s.”

“Gross.” Hazel kept pumping, only allowing herself to look indirectly at Sonia’s body. Good Lord... The simple sight of her made Hazel’s groin jitter. The swollen breasts and even more swollen belly, all gleaming. Pregnancy had stretched Sonia’s nipples out to lovely dark-pink circles, inches wide; Hazel imagined herself slowly licking each circumference in an inward spiral, then stopping on the distended papillae, to suck. Her eyes followed the trails of suds as they coursed down Sonia’s shapely legs.

I can’t stand this...

“I’ll just be another minute.”

“Take...your time.”

Did Sonia grin over her bare shoulder? And did her hands linger as they soaped the milk-gorged breasts? Next, she sudsed the nest of dark hair between her legs...

Now Hazel’s sex began to moisten, in spite of all that had been done to it today. She knew she could never tell Sonia about the rape; likewise, she was surprised by how unaffected she felt now, only hours after the brutal fact. Instead, her attention remained fixed entirely on Sonia, on her shining body, all those voluptuous curves, all that perfect warm white skin. One of Hazel’s therapists had once declared her erotoscopic. “You’re much more like a man in the spontaneous way you react to sexual imagery,” the woman had said. “Not only are you erotomanic, you’re erotoscopic. A merely arousing image triggers your libidinal system...instantaneously. Very rare among women. In fact all of your paraphilic disorders are exceptionally rare among females. Consider yourself unique, Hazel.” Fuck you, Hazel had thought in response. In little more than a year she’d gone through half a dozen therapists and had wound up abandoning them all.

Still, the image of Sonia in the shower seemed to percolate in Hazel’s psyche...

“You can stop pumping now.”

“Careful stepping out.” Hazel opened a towel and wrapped it around Sonia’s shoulders.

“Thanks.” Sonia tucked the towel above her bosom, then winced when more lightning flashed in the tiny window. The candle light flickered, throwing their shadows on the wall. The shadows jerked.

“Let’s get out of here. This room’s creepy.”

This whole cabin is creepy, Hazel decided. She grabbed the candle and followed Sonia back into the main room.

Hazel let her heart slow down. Even in the frumpy towel, Sonia’s beauty raged in her eyes. She felt like masturbating, but where? Impossible. “At least it sounds like the rain’s falling off,” she remarked to distract her.

“Is it?” Sonia went to the front window. Now there was just a trickle. “Yeah, but with our luck the power’ll be out for a week.”

THUNK

All the lights snapped back on. “See what you get for being cynical?” Hazel said and snuffed the candle.

“Oh, damn it, I keep forgetting—” Sonia fished through her travel bag and withdrew a plastic bottle.

“Forgetting what?”

“This stuff.” She held up the bottle. “It’s this special lotion I saw on TV. All the stars use it. It helps prevent stretch-marks.” She took off the towel, and tossed it to the bed, again standing utterly nude before Hazel.

“Oh, let me!” Hazel couldn’t resist. She reached for the bottle but Sonia wouldn’t let her take it.

“No, Hazel, it’s not a good idea. You’d get carried away, and you know it.”

“Bullshit. The only reason you won’t let me is ‘cos you’re afraid it’ll turn you on.”

“Oh, so that’s what you think?” Sonia cast a sharp gaze, paused, then handed the bottle to Hazel.

My lucky day. She squeezed the creamy beige liquid into her palm, then gently smoothed the cream over the center of Sonia’s stomach. Hazel was marveled; she couldn’t believe how tight the fetus-filled abdomen felt, how firm it was. She rubbed in repetitious circles very slowly, then paused to trace a fingertip about the nub of her popped-out navel. When she flicked back and forth—

“Stop!” Sonia giggled. “It’s tickles!”

“Oh. Sorry.” Hazel squirted more into her hand and repeated the process, all the while growing more and more dizzy from the warmth, image, and presence of her friend. I love you so much I can’t stand it, she could’ve wept. Now she glided her hand to Sonia’s breasts and began to gently rub. When Sonia tensed to object, Hazel cut her off, “Women get stretch-marks on their boobs, too, you know.”

“Yeah, I guess they do...”

Hazel’s hand slid into the shape of each breast, very daintily caressing. She giggled, unable to help it, “These really are big, Sonia—”

“Tell me about it. They’re heavy, too. Between my boobs and junior here, I’m surprised I don’t need a backbrace.”

Hazel liberally applied more lotion—

“Come on, you’re using half the damn bottle,” Sonia objected.

“Noooo,” and then Hazel’s fingers began to tease one of Sonia’s spread, pink nipples.

Sonia snatched the bottle away. “That’s enough, thank you. I can’t get stretch-marks on my nipples—”

“How do you know?”

A coy smirk came to Sonia’s lips but before she slipped her robe on, Hazel was certain her friend’s nipple-tips were twice the size they’d been in the shower. She’s all turned on now but she’ll never admit it. At least there was some satisfaction.

“Oh, I found a picture of the S-T,” Hazel revealed. “It was the very first file in Henry’s index.”

“The S...Oh, you mean the stone?”

“Um-hmm. It’s a big crystal; Henry took a digital picture of it right on his desk.”

Sonia grabbed her arm. “Show me!”

In the study, however, the laptop sat dead. Hazel pushed the power button but only an error screen came up. “I don’t believe it! The storm crashed the computer.”

“But it’s a laptop. The battery should’ve kicked on the instant the power went out.”

Hazel lifted up one end of the laptop. “There’s the reason it didn’t—no battery.” The battery slot was empty.

“Oh, no. Frank’ll be furious.”

“Not if we don’t tell him,” Hazel reminded. “Oh, gee, I don’t know why the computer doesn’t work. Must’ve been a power spike.”

“I don’t really like lying, Hazel.”

“It’s not lying. It’s merely circumventing the truth.”

Sonia laughed. “I guess it’ll do. What else was in those files?”

“An exploded diagram for another box. The symbols on it were different, and I swear they’re the same symbols on the clay box that Horace made.”

“You and your Horace...Anyway, what did the stone look like?”

Hazel had to think about it. “It was beautiful but also kind of...

I don’t know. Disturbing? Don’t know why. Sometimes it looked black, other times maroon, and there were threads of red inside. Henry called it the Shining Trapezohedron.”

“That’s a mouthful.”

“I think a trapezohedron is a crystal whose surface is composed entirely of polygons, if I remember my geometry right.”

Sonia picked up the metal box on the shelf. “And it’s supposed to go inside this?”

“Yeah, or—I guess Henry had the clay box built for the same purpose. I got the idea that the clay box—with the new symbols—is supposed to be an upgraded version of the metal box, at least that’s what some of the text files seemed to imply.”

“Damn.” Sonia frowned at the dead laptop. “I’d love to see that picture, if only for curiosity’s sake.”

“Later I’ll go on my own laptop and read some help files about rebooting and recovery techniques—”

From the main room, Sonia’s cellphone went off. “That’s Frank!”

Sonia rushed to the room, snapped up the phone. “Hi, honey! How are you?”

Hazel followed, then stood right next to her, her ear inclined toward the phone. Distantly she heard Frank say: “‘—s’re fine up here.” Some crackling. “—damn lucky I found the cottage before the storm started.”

“Is there electricity in the cottage?” Sonia asked.

Frank seemed to laugh over more static. “No way, just candles. But you wouldn’t believe how much of Henry’s stuff is stowed away. It’ll take a long time to go through it all, I’m afraid.”

“Bullshit, Frank!” Sonia snapped. “You’re coming back tomorrow, like you promised, right?”

Hesitation, then more static. “—ght not be able to make it by tomorrow afternoon, honey. Tomorrow night, maybe.”

“Frank, that’s unacceptable!”

The crackling and static seemed to double. “—you hear me? I’m sorry, honey, but Henry left a lot of papers, and—”

“Yes, and all you have to do is destroy them like he ordered! So do it and get back here!”

“Just try to bear with me—”

“The only thing I’m bearing is your child in three or four weeks! You could at least be considerate enough to spend some time with me!”

Wow, she’s really pissed, Hazel thought.

After another wave of static, Frank said, “I want to at least read some of this work before I destroy it, honey. Can’t you understand that?”

“No!”

“It’s my field of study. Just give me till tomorrow evening, okay?”

Sonia’s teeth ground. “Early evening!”

“Okay—”

“Promise!”

“Baby, I promise. In the meantime there’s plenty to do around there. I’m sure you and Hazel’ll have a great time. Walk the nature trails, check out Lake Sladder, go for a country drive. You could even—” but then the crackling increased tenfold.

“Frank, I can barely hear you!”

“—breaking up from the storm...bad cell reception...call you in the morning—”

“You better!”

“—love you, honey...”

Sonia was vibrating in place she was so irritated. “I love you too, but if you’re not back tomorrow night, I’m gonna kick you in the balls so hard—”

“—breaking up worse now...better go. Goodnight...”

The connection fizzed off.

Sonia snapped her phone closed and put it on the nightstand. Her face was pink in anger. “That son of a bitch just burns me up. ‘Oh, come up to the cabin, honey. We’ll have a lot of fun.’ Fun, my ass. I’m about to have a kid and he’s up in some cottage on a mountain dicking around with a bunch of geometry papers.”

Hazel rolled her eyes. “Sonia, give the man a break. All he’s really doing is carrying out a colleagues last wishes.”

“Yeah?” Sonia huffed, then sat down on the bed. “Or maybe he has a girl with him up there.”

Hazel couldn’t resist some coyness: “Oh, but I thought yours was an open relationship.”

“Only with my preapproval, ” Sonia replied, stone-voiced.

“A conditional open-relationship, I see.” Hazel had to laugh. “I wouldn’t worry anyway. Frank’s too self-absorbed to have a lover on the side. Why would he orchestrate this whole cabin-thing just for that? You really think he’s fooling around when his mentor only died a few days ago and happened to leave him the entire estate?”

Sonia settled down. “You’re right. And he is too self-absorbed.”

“So just don’t worry about it. Take some advice from a friend. You’re kind of cranky right now, so why don’t you just go to bed? You’ll feel a lot better tomorrow.”

Sonia smiled meekly, nodding. “You’re right, as always. I’m sorry my skewed hormones keep finding their way to you.” She kissed Hazel on the cheek. “Goodnight.”

“I’m going to try to fix Henry’s computer, but I won’t make a peep.” Kiss me again, kiss me again, beat the thought.

“That’s okay.”

“Oh, and...where am I sleeping?”

“In the bed, silly!” Sonia laughed. “You’re so paranoid. What, did you think I’d make you sleep on the couch?” She chuckled into the main room and started turning off the lights.

Hazel watched her raptly, then snapped out of it several moments later. My head is such a mess I can’t believe it. She typed in some recovery commands into Henry’s laptop, had no success, then retrieved her own laptop and set it up on the desk. At least it’s not the Blue Screen of Death, she thought. She left the study door cracked only an inch, and as she read through some trouble-shooting files, one eye kept glancing every so often to the bed, where Sonia lay on her side atop the sheets. How can I love someone so much and yet it’s so wrong? Nothing seemed fair. Her own sexual anomalies were unfair as well. Sick, sick, sick, she thought, remembering the orgasm she was sure she’d had even as Peter Pan had been strangling her whilst a foot had been sunk into her sex. Why can’t I just be normal? But in the back of her mind came a reply, in her father’s voice: Come back to God.

She covered her mouth to stifle a delighted squeal when she saw that Henry’s laptop was at last reloading; in a moment she was able to access the directory full of Henry’s files. When she reclicked File #1, the screen filled with the startling image of the Shining Trapezohedron.

Its undefinable color captivated her. Each facet of the complex polygonal surface glimmered. She found herself staring as her mind lost focus, but then a vertigo jolted her like two fingers snapping before her face. It had been ten p.m. when the computer got back to rights but now it was eleven. I must’ve dozed off and not realized it...

She clicked on the zoom feature and moved the cursor to a random facet. Each click thereafter brought the sparkling jpeg closer and closer, until the entire screen was a vitreous black-maroon.

The image that now filled the frame looked like nothing at first, just that odd color, but as she looked more intently...

Did she hear the piping of flutes? The music—if it could even be called that—resounded very faintly yet seemed structured and discordant at the same time. Hazel jerked her head around, then even put her fingers in her ears, but the minuscule cacophony prevailed. Aural mirage, she thought. Probably fatigue-born, probably some traumatic-stress reaction. When a breath caught in her chest, the maniacal sounds had vanished.

“What was that all about?” The more she looked at the zoomed image, the more taken by it she felt. She thought of cavemen staring in awe and wonder at a fire, or gazing at stars while having no idea what they were.

She felt droopy now, yet somehow motivated, and next thing she knew she’d opened the bottom desk drawer. Her hand glided past the revolver and without forethought from her, landed on the magnifying glass.

What am I—

She put the glass to the computer screen, began to stare...

Her mind bent, it stretched as if her skull had dissolved, leaving only her raw brain which was siphoned through her eye-holes and somehow sucked into the image on the screen. She thought of out-of-body-experiences, something she’d never believed in, had dismissed as hopeful hallucinosis, but now—

Her eyeless vision was forced to gaze; it plummeted like a stone dropped from a plane, soaring. The closer she got to whatever it was she was falling toward, Hazel saw cities, or things like cites: a geometric demesne of impossible architecture which extended in a long vanishing line of horrid black—a raging terra dementata. Concaved horizons crammed with stars, or things like stars, sparkled close against cubist chasms. She saw buildings and streets, tunnels and tower blocks, strange flattened factories whose chimneys gushed oily smoke. It was a necropolis, systematized and endless, bereft of error in its moving angles and lines. It was pandemonium. Gutters ran black with noxious ichor. Squat, stygian churches sang praise to mindless gods. Insanity was the monarch here, ataxia the only order, darkness the only light. Ingenious, unspeakable, the monarch stared back...and smiled.

Hazel saw it all. She saw time tick backward, death rot to life, whole futures swallowed deep into the belly of history. And she saw people too. Or things like people.

One of the things was waving at her, with a tentacle.

“E uh shub nleb nbb lrrg glud blemmeb,” came the words.

Hazel’s disembodied consciousness stared and drooled.

“Nub krebb nebb e uh yurgg flurp ey ftagn—”

Several of the things were now waving at her with their suckered tentacles. Their faces stared intently back, upside-down faces covered with carbuncles.

“Gub nbb grlm naabl e uh nuuurrlathotep.”

When Hazel finally shook off the terror’s glimpse, she found herself face-down on the floor. The magnifying glass lay cracked. What the hell?

A nightmare, of course. She’d fallen asleep at the screen. A tiny clock in the other room was gently chiming midnight.

Oh, shit, I feel hungover.

She dragged herself up, looked at the computer screen, and groaned. YOUR COMPUTER IS BEING SHUT DOWN DUE TO A GENERAL PRODUCTION ERROR. Then the screen turned black.

Great.

She sat back down and rubbed her eyes. The vision she’d had seemed lodged in the back of her mind like a blood clot. What WAS that? She’d been fatigued to begin with, and was likely also suffering some delayed stress from her rape. And then? I fell asleep at the screen and had a nightmare. Big deal.

But what a nightmare it was. Tentacles. People with tentacles, and upside-down faces like overcooked pies. They’d been talking to her.

“Bedtime,” she determined. She pulled off her top and stepped out of her shorts, then tiptoed into the main room where Sonia could be seen sound asleep on the bed. The fans were on, blowing air all around. She was about to get into bed herself but faltered. Oh, no... She had to go to the bathroom, and since there was no bathroom in the cabin...No way. I’m NOT going to the outhouse, she knew immediately. Not at midnight. Her only other option?

Bears pee I the woods, so I guess I can too. She found a flashlight in a kitchen drawer, then a door at the rear of the house let her out. At once she was taken aback by the dense, half-deafening chorus of crickets and peepers underscored by the dripping forest now that the storm had passed. Clouds thinned overhead, letting moonlight fall down behind the house. Oddly, she sensed she could feel the light on her nude body. Her skin prickled at a scant, tepid breeze which rustled through the woods.

She came off the short steps, wandered a moment, then squatted abruptly next to an old charcoal grill and began to urinate. Oh, that’s better... The most morbid thought struck her just then: How much of Peter Pan’s piss is coming out in mine? He couldn’t have made her throw up every drop, could he? Wouldn’t a little of it, if only a trace, have metabolized in her own body? She pursed her lips as if tasting something disgusting.

It was still coming out. Come on... In a scenario such as this, how could she not imagine herself being spied on by some night-prowling pervert? Then she closed her eyes, and all at once, the image was drilled unwillingly into her head: the Tentacle People from inside the crystal had converged on her. Two held her aloft on their ropy arms while a third positioned its corrupted face between her thighs, then opened the puffily lipped mouth that was located on its runneled forehead. It drank up her piss as fast as the stream could arc out of her, and when it began to ebb, the lips closed around her sex and sucked, until every last drop had been coaxed from her bladder and pilfered through her urethra. Hazel squirmed in the unyielding, tentacular embrace. But now that the thing had quenched its thirst on her liquid waste, waste of the solid variety was its next desire. The hideous mouth slurped lower and began to suck hard on her anus. Finally her intestines gave into the pressure and began to release their wares, and when they’d been sucked flat, the lumpen-faced monstrosity began to sloppily eat. Was the thing squealing in exuberance? Its own tentacles writhed in delight. Hazel was dropped to the wet ground then, and saw aghast that it was not only the arms of her visitors that were tentacles, but their legs too, for they wore blushing scarlet robes embroidered in gold, within whose borders were gold-stitched glyphs similar to those on the box. When the robes parted, she could see that their legs were stouter, more venous tentacles with widened, circular suction cups for feet, and, worse, their genitals seemed rolled up like gray, meaty hoses at their groins. Two of the things moved between her legs now, while the third remained at her shoulders with one of its rubbery arms girded about her throat. When it began to constrict, boa-like, Hazel’s body tensed, stretching out, then the fleshy noose tightened till her tongue stuck out and she couldn’t breathe. That’s when the other two unreeled their cocks and began to gibber in some insane excitement. Balloon-cheeked now, yet erect-nippled, Hazel peered up in the moonlight and saw the exact nature of their penises: two feet long each, and reminiscent of the ends of elephant trunks. The trunks wasted no time in burrowing into her vagina simultaneously. The eyes like pustules planted on their cheeks gazed down on her terror-rigid body; the swollen-lipped mouths panted and drooled. Hazel began to orgasm in salvoes; it was like a seizure of pleasure colliding with the terror of asphyxia. Her ass wriggled in the dirt as she came time and again, even as the netherworldly genitals pumped gouts of hot, chunky slop deep into her sex...

Hazel’s eyes snapped open at a mental lurch. She remained squatting, though she’d finished relieving herself. Just like me. A head full of perverted SHIT... What could compel her mind to manufacture such a detestable vision? She took several deep breaths, began to stand up—

“Shub nbb grlp naabl nith.”

Hazel gasped and fell backward on the verge of shrieking. It can’t be! She shot her flashlight beam in the heinous droning’s direction but there was nothing there.

I am really out of it tonight, she thought once she’d calmed down. There are NO TENTACLE PEOPLE in the woods! She went back in the cabin, locked the door, then went to bed and fell immediately into convulsive sleep laden with putrid-smelling dreams and black, mindless gibbering.

Next morning, a little local driving around led them to the none-too-surprisingly named Main Street which comprised a small downtown area. Knickknack shops, some antique, used-book, and hand-dipped candle stores, and several eateries took up most of it, plus a tiny post office and a bait shop. After rising, they’d decided to come here upon Hazel’s affirmation, “I’m so hungry I could out-eat a couple of truck drivers”; additionally, she wanted to stop by the Pickman Curiosity Shoppe and fulfill her promise to Horace. The little shop sat right on the corner.

“Interesting little downtown area,” Sonia said after breakfast at a diner called simply The Diner. They walked idly down the barely occupied street, passing shop windows. “I would’ve thought it’d be more redneckish, like the tavern.”

“I think a lot of rich people come here during skiing season,” Hazel said innocuously, but then she noticed Sonia smiling at her. In fact, she’d caught her doing that several times already this morning, even immediately upon rising from bed. Why’s she keep smiling at me? She felt skewed to begin with: a lousy night’s sleep, the dreams, the things her tired mind had imagined seeing in the jpeg of the crystal, not to mention being raped. Sonia’s periodic smile seemed scolding, the way an adult might smile at a child who’d done some minor thing wrong. Furthermore, Sonia seemed much more perky today, bright-eyed, skin glowing. She wore a colorful maternity-cut sundress bursting with floral patterns. Even her body seemed to glow obscurely through the dress.

Hazel had dressed in khaki shorts and a T-shirt tied at the midriff. The shirt displayed the face of Mark Twain and read along the bottom ENGLISH MAJORS MAKE GREAT LOVERS, and then showed the Brown University crest. “You want to look in any of these shops?”

“No. Maybe later. I’m happy just walking around with you.”

The remark made Hazel feel off-guard; it had sounded almost intimate. But then Hazel was doubly surprised when Sonia was suddenly holding her hand.

“I’m so lucky to have a wonderful friend like you,” Sonia said.

Hazel looked at her and didn’t know what to say. But she knew what to think. I love you. I love you so much it hurts...

“Oh, there’s the place you want to go,” Sonia said, and pointed to Pickman’s on the corner. “I’d be very interested in meeting this Horace fellow,” and then Sonia slipped Hazel another of her arcane smiles.

What is WITH her today? “Yeah, he’s a potter but he also works on the side at the tavern.” She passed a barber shop, a nail salon, then Hazel’s gait slowed at the next store: HAMMOND’S OUTDOOR

GEAR. Same store where Henry Wilmarth bought the rope he used to hang himself with, but then she recalled what else he’d bought: pole-climbing boots, of all things.

“Let’s cross here,” Hazel said after a car passed.

Sonia was smiling at her.

Goofy, Hazel thought. Hormones or something. Mental note: don’t EVER get pregnant. It makes you weird.

A cowbell clanged when they entered the curiosity shop. The store smelled stuffy, and the gaunt, dim-eyed man behind the counter looked stuffy. He sat poised behind the register, his thumb through a palette as he eyed a large half-painted canvas on an easel. Oddly, he wore pressed slacks, a nice button shirt, and a tie. Ever hear of smocks? Hazel felt like telling him. “Hello, ladies,” his voice creaked like an old door hinge. He dabbed at the canvas with a thin brush.

“Hi,” Hazel said. “We’re here to see Horace Knowles. He said he’d be in today.”

The man—who surely wore a toupee—didn’t look at her. Instead, he spoke as he dabbed more paint. “Ah, Horace. He was indeed supposed to restock today but called at the last minute. Another job came up, he claims.”

Shit. “Oh, well, we’d like to look at his pottery.”

He frowned, then fidgeted with his ear. That’s when Hazel noticed he had a hearing aid. “Blasted thing. Ah, but—yes—Horace’s work can be found on the west wall. And should you be interested in original oils, my personal gallery can be found in the east room.”

Sonia stifled a laugh at the odd man; Hazel merely smirked. East, west? Gee, I forgot my compass. She took a quick peek at the proprietor’s current canvas: a skeleton with long, flowing blond hair held an infant skeleton at her bosom.

“Madonna and child,” the man informed her. “Do you like it?”

“Uh, oh, yes. It’s very interesting,” Hazel blundered. Do you think you could come up with something less original? She grabbed Sonia’s arm and directed her toward the display shelves full of pottery.

Finely fired vases, ashtrays, and ring boxes sat arrayed on the shelves. Sonia picked up a porcelain bullfrog with abnormally large eyes. “This stuff’s pretty cool. It’s different without being cliched.”

“The stuff he had at his house was even better,” Hazel said, examining a star-fish-shaped trivet.

“I guess I’m a little...jealous...”

Hazel sighed and looked at her. Sonia was smiling that wide-browed smile of hers again. “I told you,” she whispered, “I didn’t do anything with him, and even if I did, why would you be jealous anyway?”

“Come on...” Sonia took a few steps, then stopped to look at an assortment of porcelain-tubed wind chimes. “Oh, I love these.”

“Don’t change the subject,” Hazel insisted. “What is with you today?”

Sonia only kept smiling, cocked a brow, then kept looking at the chimes.

Men are right. Women are nuts. Hazel collected a half-dozen pieces of Horace’s pottery and took them to the counter.

“I say, you must genuinely admire Horace’s work,” noted the man. “He’s a fine potter.”

What I admire more than his work is his COCK, but that’s another story. “He’s not just a potter,” Hazel insisted, “he’s an artisan. A guy with this kind of talent? He could make a fortune at the crafts shows in Providence.”

“Hmm. Ah, well...”

Hazel was deliberately talking Horace up, if only as a gesture of gratitude for his saving her yesterday. The man set his pallette aside and wrapped up Hazel’s purchases. It was during this process that Hazel’s notice was flagged by a quick, dark-red sparkle. This Mr. Pickman wore a ring quite atypical for men: a clunky polished stone the size of a small gumball. It’s color reminded Hazel of the Shining Trapezohedron.

“What an interesting ring...”

“It’s corundum, from Nova Scotia. Very rare. Said by the Druids to bring profit to the wise.”

“Oh.”

He raised his hand, eyed the ring, then Hazel. “Quite like the color of your hair, I’d say. You have lovely hair, if you don’t mind my saying so.” Then the thinnest smile came to his very narrow and very dry lips.

The words and the creaking voice made Hazel’s skin crawl. Did she feel her nipples actually shrink? “Thank you, sir. Have a good day.”

“Not interested in the gallery, I see.”

“Oh, we’ll be back later!” Hazel assured and hauled Sonia out of the store. “‘Bye!”

Sonia looked reprovingly at the large bag of items Hazel had bought. “Didn’t know you were so fond of porcelain work.”

“I just wanted to get some souvenirs,” Hazel commented.

Sonia took Hazel’s arm. “Where to now?”

“Let’s stop by Horace’s trailer.”

“Do we have to?” Sonia almost pouted. “I don’t really feel like sharing you today.”

Sharing me? Hazel didn’t get it. They wandered down the sedate, shop-lined road, back toward the car. “The real reason I want you to go is ‘cos you need to see the ceramic version of the metal box.”

“Oh. Right.”

Hazel let Sonia in the passenger side, then drove. It was hot for this early in the day; Hazel was perspiring at once. Last night’s torrential rain made everything steamy now. The paved road wound through trees in a wide swath; even the woods were misty with humidity whenever Hazel took a glance. Several dirt and gravel turnoffs passed them. FISH - HALF MILE, read a rickety wooden sign at one of the turns. Horace said...Fish Brothers? Hazel’s mind ticked. His hunch as to the identity of her rapists. Could the sign mark where they did business? Don’t be ridiculous, she scolded herself. There’re probably dozens of fishermen working Lake Sladder.

She forced her mind off the topic, to concentrate on her bearings. Here it is, she believed, then turned right onto an unpaved road.

“These woods are spooky all of a sudden,” Sonia remarked. “And look at the mist.”

Within the woods, tendrils of gaseous moisture seemed suspended. “From the rain, plus the heat,” Hazel replied, then she took an casual glance at Sonia. Sonia was smiling.

“All right. What is it?” Hazel demanded.

Sonia fingers diddled with some of Hazel’s curls. “What is what?”

“The smiling. The look. All morning long you’ve been giving me that look, ” and then Hazel tried but likely failed in mimicking it.

Sonia’s voice descended to something like a sultry octave. “You were terrific last night.”

Hazel winced. “What, fixing Henry’s computer? I wouldn’t call that a terrific job; it crashed again later.”

“Come on...”

Hazel snapped her gaze. “Sonia, you’re really goofy today.”

“Oh, I know I’m moody but you definitely caught me in the right mood last night.” Suddenly Sonia leaned over and put her lips right on Hazel’s ear. “You were just...so...good. ”

That’s it. Hazel pulled over on the shoulder, then leveled her eyes. “Sonia. What are you talking about?”

Sonia looked swoony. “It was lovely. I’ve never come like that in my life. Not even with Frank.”

Last night? Hazel’s eyes blankened. “What, uh, what—”

Sonia gave a shrill laugh. “Oh, so you’re pretending you don’t remember? That’s fine.”

Hazel continued to stare, more into vacant space than at Sonia. “Seriously. I...don’t remember...Did we...”

If one could nod lasciviously, Sonia did just that. She put her arm about Hazel’s shoulder, leaned closer, then traced the tip of her tongue up the side of Hazel’s neck. “You’re irresistible today. But then, if you want to know the truth...you’re always irresistible to me.”

Hazel began to shake very subtly. She wasn’t ready for this. Words she longed to hear but never had were being spoken to her now. We must’ve had sex last night . . . but I...don’t...remember...

“And if you don’t remember that,” Sonia said, now stroking Hazel’s thigh, “you have the worst memory in the world.” Her hand slipped up Hazel’s Mark Twain shirt; Hazel’s nipples erected like tiny hard-ons when fingertips played over them. Then the fingers spidered down to her crotch and began to gently strum.

Hazel was stewing in a repressed frenzy of bliss, lust, and love. Now her crotch was being rubbed more directly. She felt her fluids rush.

“And you’re so unselfish, sweetheart,” Sonia whispered. “You didn’t even let me do anything for you.”

“I—I didn’t?”

The lewd smile broadened. “Oh, I know! Did you get into that bottle of whiskey in Henry’s desk? That’s why you don’t remember.”

Hazel felt torn by opposites. She was being felt up and sexually stoked by the only true love-interest of her life, yet the aggravation of no recollection maddened her.

Sonia’s lips came back to her ear. “Take these shorts off. I need to go down on you—”

“In the car?” Hazel exclaimed.

“I know how you feel about me,” the whisper continued to beat. “Don’t you want me to?”

“Yes!” Hazel shot. “But...” What is going on? “But not here. It’s broad daylight.” Her nipples felt like tingling, hot stones; her sex was thumping in her shorts. This is crazy. I’ve got to get my head together. “Let’s-let’s wait...till we’re done here,” she stammered.

Sonia, ever smiling, slid back into the passenger seat. “I get it. Hard to get–”

“No, no, it’s just—”

“I know how you like games, Hazel. I don’t mind playing them...”

My God, my God... Hazel pulled back onto the road. What could account for her memory failing to recollect a love-making session? And I KNOW I didn’t drink Henry’s whiskey. I HATE whiskey. What then?

The situation was impossible; Hazel could scarcely reckon it. She pulled into the winding lane leading to Horace’s solitary trailer. Sonia’s hand continued to play in Hazel’s lap, titillating, then withdrawing, coaxing more tingles and moisture.

She’s driving me nuts...

Grass grew closer to the trailer; Hazel pulled up and cut the engine. “I just want you to see the clay box,” she made the excuse but for the life of her she didn’t know why it was suddenly so important. Perhaps it really wasn’t. She needed to sort her thoughts; either that or Sonia was playing some games herself, some cruel ones.

“Fancy place,” Sonia said, grinning. “Like the Trump Tower.”

“Be nice. Not everyone who lives in a trailer is white trash.”

“And I can imagine what went on in this trailer last night—”

“Would you stop with that!” Hazel tried to sound serious while at the same time giggling when Sonia’s finger began to tickle her belly button. “Nothing went on.”

“That’s fine. Okay, let’s go meet Horace, ” but then Sonia quickly grabbed Hazel’s shoulders, pulled her face to her, and began to kiss. The kiss delved, first ravenous, then outright lewd. Sonia’s tongue invaded Hazel’s mouth, tussled with her tongue, then actually began to suck it. All the while, Hazel began to melt in her lover’s arms. She could feel Sonia’s heat radiating from her flesh through the sheer sundress while the nipples hardened beneath the fabric to shapes like cleats. She broke off the sloppy kiss long enough to say, “Here,” and then Hazel almost shrieked when she noticed Sonia had dropped her dress straps to reveal her raging bare breasts. Hazel could’ve disintegrated at the abrupt sight of them. “To hell with Horace. Let’s go back to the cabin and fuck. ”

Hazel reeled. “Cover those up! He might see—” She cast a nervous glance at the trailer’s tiny windows, fumbling to pull Sonia’s straps back up. The frustration nearly brought tears to her eyes. Confusion and arousal seemed to pack together in her psyche like someone kneading dough. All this time I’ve wanted her more than anything and now all of a sudden—

Sonia’s hand found its way back to Hazel’s crotch. “You can see Harold later—”

“Horace!”

“So start the car, turn it around, and drive us back to the cabin. Frank’s coming back tonight, remember? Let’s spend the whole day in bed.” Sonia’s eyes glittered, but suddenly her expression lost all of its whimsey and turned dead serious. “You have no idea how much I need to be with you now.”

The words winded Hazel. “Okay—” and her hand touched the key but then the trailer door clacked, and out walked a looming, smiling, and very brawny Horace.

“Too late...”

“Guess we have to go in now,” Sonia said in sing-song voice.

Hazel wanted to bang the wheel with her fists. Why is she fucking with me like this? She tried to calm down, got out, and put on a smile. “Hi, Horace. I hope we’re not intruding.”

“New, not et all,” boomed the voice of the big man. “Quite nice ta see yew agin.”

“Horace, this is my friend, Professor Sonia Heald.”

Sonia extended her hand. “Hello, Horace. A pleasure to meet you.”

“Ee-yuh. Likewise. Gettin’ ready fer a new addition, I see.”

Sonia put a hand to her belly. “I’m looking forward to being a mother but I’m getting sick of being an expectant mother, if you know what I mean.”

“I heer ya, Miss Heald. My own ma tolt me I weighed twelve pounds when I come into the light’a day.”

Sonia focused on the very large man. “I believe it.”

“She got huh-self dag tired’a carryin’ me ‘raound. God dun’t make much easy, she said. He en’t supposed tew, I guess. But every new life is shuhly a gift from God.”

The introduction grew awkward; then a steady breeze set dozens of porcelain wind chimes into a radiant clamor. “Best we get inside,” Horace offered and showed them in.

“We stopped by Mr. Pickman’s shop earlier but you weren’t there,” Hazel said. “He said you were busy.”

“Shuh am,” Horace replied. “Durntedest thing, tew. But fust...” He slid a chair over for Sonia to sit in.

“I just wanted Sonia to see the your clay replica of the box.”

“Oh, ee-yuh. Be right back,” Horace said and disappeared into his work room.

“That man is huge, ” Sonia whispered. “You wouldn’t think a guy that big would be into pottery. ” She leaned closer. “And I can see why you’re so attracted to him. The big ones aren’t my type at all, but you? ” Then came another cunning smile.

“Stop it!” Hazel whispered back.

“And just remember. The more time we waste here, the less we’ll have to make love before Frank comes back.”

The fusion of anticipation and confoundment only dizzied Hazel more. She almost screamed when Sonia lifted out one of her breasts and said behind her grin, “Suck this for me, will you, please?”

Hazel’s hands blurred to re-cover her friend. “Why are you doing this to me?” came her propulsive whisper. “You’ve never been like this!”

“It took last night to make me realize how much I’ve taken you for granted.” Again, that dead-serious gaze. “I feel bad about that.”

“Stop! Not here...”

The trailer floor actually bobbed a little when Horace rejoined them. “Heer it ‘tis.” He passed the clay box to Sonia.

“That’s amazing,” Sonia commented, examining its asymmetrical shape. “It is just like the metal one at the cabin.”

“But all those little hieroglyph thingies are different, aren’t they?” Hazel bid.

“Yes. It looks like they’re more of them.” She looked to Horace, who stood huge, arms crossed. “This is fascinating work, Horace. And do I understand correctly that Henry Wilmarth asked you to make it?”

“Ee-yuh, ‘tis true.” He glanced to Hazel as well. “And I just took five more out the kiln. ‘Tis why I wurn’t at Mr. Pickman’s shop today. I ‘spect he’s ruther displeased.”

“Five more?” Hazel inquired. “But yesterday you said Henry changed his mind and didn’t order any more.”

Horace nodded. “It were someone else. Strangest thing, tew. Found a letter in my mailbox this mornin’ ordering thirty-two more boxes, which was what Henry asked for at fust but then decided aginst.”

“Who...was it?”

Horace shrugged. “Durn’t know, letter weren’t signed, just said he represented Henry’s gemolergy friends and they wanted more boxes. Thought it were a mite foolish, a joke mebbe, until I opened another envelope inside that had five thousand bucks in it. Cash. Curn’t say no to five thousand bucks. Lord, I en’t never had that much money in my hand at once...ever.”

Hazel and Sonia looked at each other. “How peculiar,” Sonia said. And Hazel, “But they just left the letter? No one knocked on the door to talk to you?”

“New. Just left the letter’n cash in my box and left. No name on the letter or nuthin’.”

“And this person said that ‘Henry’s friends’ want the boxes?” Sonia asked for clarification.

“Um-hmm.”

“A gemology club,” Hazel recalled from their conversation last night. “Isn’t that what you said?”

“Ee-yuh.”

“How curious.” Sonia pinched her chin. “Frank never said anything about Henry having an interest in gems.”

“Yeah, but he and Frank are geometry professors, Sonia,” Hazel pointed out. “Cut gemstones are covered with facets comprised of geometric configurations, just like the gemstone Henry referred to as the ‘Shining Trapezohedron.’” Hazel’ eyes again beseeched Horace. “And Henry said the box is to store a gemstone, right?”

“A crystal, he said.” Horace took the box back from Sonia. “I curn’t make much sense out’a any of it. Figure it’s just the man’s hobby, wants special display boxes for crystals. I durn’t ask questions ‘baout stuff I durn’t know. I just dew the work.”

“This is quite a mystery,” Sonia said.

Yeah, Hazel thought. It couldn’t have been FRANK who left the letter. Right now he’s up on the mountain in some ridiculous cottage. Hazel’s thoughts stalled. Or is he?

Sonia rose, a bit awkwardly, and handed her purse to Hazel. “Horace, do you mind if I use your bathroom?”

“Please dew.” Horace led her to the cramped hall. “Sorry it’s so small in theer.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks.”

The narrow door clicked. At least it beats the outhouse, Hazel mused. Or going in the backyard. “At the very least, congratulations on your new work order.”

“Thanks much. ‘Tis shuhly a lot of money someone left in my mailbox. Would ya like to see the others?”

Hazel followed him into his small workroom. The air was warmer here, from the kiln. Sitting on a tray were five more freshly fired boxes. Horace showed her his technique, holding up a plastic version of the box—an “inside-out mold,” he called it and explained how he would first oil the plastic box, then apply clay around it, after which he pressed pre-made plastic template cards on each side and the lid; this pressed in the sequences of glyphs directly into the clay’s surface. The inside-out mold was then slipped out, and the clay shell fired in the kiln. “Pretty labor intensive,” Hazel remarked.

“New, new, just the mold and templates. Once I got them right, the rest is a snap. Kind’a fun, actually.”

Hazel looked more closely at the five new boxes and was astounded by how precise they each were. Several times, though, her eyes flicked to Horace’s crotch—his packed crotch—and she found that, now, she couldn’t have been any less interested in his sexual endowment. Knowing that she’d soon be making love to Sonia seemed to sweep her mind clean of all its dirt, of all those fetishes and paraphilias and kinks and perversions. Sonia is my cure... The idea of a sexual romp with this mountain of muscle named Horace, or with any man for that matter, seemed as boring as playing solitaire.

Just then she heard a muffled cell phone ringing, not hers but Sonia’s. She pulled it out of her friend’s purse, saw that it was Frank calling, then said, “Excuse me a minute, Horace.”

“Shuhly.”

“Hi, Frank, it’s Hazel,” she answered, stepping back into the living room. “Sonia’s in the bathroom—”

“Thank God,” came Frank’s odd reply.

Hazel frowned. “What time tonight will you be back?”

“Mmm. That’s the catch. I’ve found more of Henry’s work up here—it’s spellbinding, so—”

“Frank,” she deliberated. “Answer the question. What time tonight will you be back?”

A static pause. “It won’t be tonight, Hazel. Maybe tomorrow afternoon but I can’t even guarantee that. There’s just so much sheer data up here.”

“That’s shitty, Frank!” she almost yelled. “Sonia’s pissed off enough as it is. You don’t get your ass back to the cabin tonight, you might not have a fiancé anymore.”

“Listen, listen,” he sounded desperate yet enthralled. “Make her understand. This is important to me—”

“It sounds like a crock of shit! She thinks you’ve got another woman up there with you!”

“For God’s sake, that’s ridiculous.” Did he sound out of breath as well? “Sonia can fly off-the-handle sometimes, so I need you to do me a big favor—”

Hazel’s teeth ground. “Don’t make me be the messenger, Frank!”

“Just tell her, please. If I get on the phone with her, she’ll go off the deep end. So, please, Hazel just tell her that—”

“Frank! Be a man and talk to her yourself. She’s in the bathroom, just wait a second and I’ll give her the phone.”

“No, no, it’s very important. I’ve been reading all of Henry’s notes he stashed up here at the cottage. I think-I think he’s wrong. I think the theory can actually work.”

“I don’t give a fuck about the theory, Frank,” Hazel snapped, then noticed Horace raise a brow in the other room. She scurried toward the small bathroom. “I’m passing the phone to Sonia in the bathroom right now. You tell her—”

“No. Tell her for me. Tell her my cell phone died while we were talking.”

“No! And don’t you dare hang up, you selfish, inconsiderate prick.”

“You’re a peach, Hazel. I’ll make it up to you. If you could see this work up here, you’d understand—”

“Don’t you dare—”

Frank hung up before Hazel could get to the bathroom. She slumped in the hall, then returned to the living room. She’s gonna shit a brick when she hears about this...

Sonia came out a minute later. Hazel dreaded what must come next. “Thanks for showing us the boxes, Horace. We’ve got to go now.”

“Pleasure havin’ yew. Stop by any time.”

Hazel scribbled her cell number and passed it to him. “Give me a call in a few days. We’d love to take you out to dinner or something.”

“Why, thanks much, I will.”

Back outside, Hazel opened the car door for Sonia, who looked shivery in repressed excitement. “All right, I’ve seen the box, so let’s go, ” and then Sonia couldn’t have looked more wanton over to Hazel.

Hazel stalled at the driver’s door. This is NOT going to be easy.

“Listen, Sonia...”

“What?”

“Um...”

All those lascivious edges to Sonia’s expression dulled instantly. She knew something was askew. “What is it, Hazel? I’m not liking the vibes right now.”

Hazel gulped. “When you were in the bathroom...Frank called. And I answered.”

“Oh, good. What time did he say he’d be at Henry’s cabin?”

Hazel’s flipflops shuffled in the grass. All the way down the driveway, though, there was only mud from last night’s rain. “He’s still at the cottage. He’s...not coming back tonight. Tomorrow afternoon maybe.”

Sonia’s eyes suddenly possessed a glare that could cut stone. She took out her cellphone, dialed Frank’s number, then waited. Obviously Frank’s voice mail came on, not Frank himself.

“Frank, it’s Sonia. What are you pulling? I will not be treated like this. What? You’re avoiding me? I’m too much of a pain in the ass to talk to? Well hear this: if you don’t call me back right away, I might just stick this engagement ring right up your ass.” Tears began to dot her cheeks. “You’re the one who wanted to be a father and right now my stomach’s sticking out like a pickle barrel from your kid. Call me back, or you’ll be sorry.” Then she hung up.

The incident squelched Sonia’s previous horniness like a bucket of water on a campfire. Her glare cut into Hazel across the roof of the car.

“I told him to wait for you but he wouldn’t,” Hazel said. “He was afraid you’d blow a gasket. He wanted me to tell you that his cell phone was dying.”

Sonia wiped her eyes. Her silence was the most unpleasant aspect of the event.

“I was rushing to the bathroom to give you the phone, but he hung up.”

More tense moments ticked by. Wind chimes sang innocuously. Sonia remained silent, staring her ire out into the woods.

“He said he found more of Henry’s work, important stuff,” Hazel added. “It got him all jazzed up, you know, that theory, the non-Euclidian stuff. I mean, the guy is an academician. He gets as excited about geometric principles as we get over the themes and variations of Moby Dick. ”

Sonia’s disjointed glare grew even sharper. “Don’t you stick up for him!”

“I’m not!” Hazel all but wailed. “I don’t even really like him; if I had my way, you wouldn’t even be with the jerk! I called him a selfish, inconsiderate prick!”

If only traceably, Sonia smiled. “You’re sweet, Hazel. And I’m sorry you’re in the middle of this. But you know me—better than anyone probably: I need to be by myself for several hours—”

No! Hazel’s thoughts screamed.

“I’m too frazzled and, believe me, I won’t be very good company for awhile. I’m going to drive back to the cabin and just try to decompress from this, okay?”

Hazel stared. “Sonia, please—”

“I’m sorry I led you on, but that was before Frank pulled this move.” Sonia wiped her eyes, appeared to be straining not to fall apart. “Just let me be by myself for a little while.”

“You’re going back to the cabin without me,” Hazel droned, her own tears threatening now.

“I have to. Please understand; don’t be mad. But you know how I get. Whatshisname can drive you back later, okay? Or just call me in a few hours...”

Hazel was teetering in place, staring over the car’s roof. “I’ll make you forget all about Frank.” She gulped. “I love you. Please–give me a ch–”

“It’s best this way,” Sonia said through a choke. “Just...forgive me.”

Sonia got into the car and drove away.

Hazel felt like a circuit breaker that had just been thrown off. She stared through nothing as the Prius disappeared around the bend of trees. She wanted to scream, cry, and laugh all at the same time, but instead she remained mute in place, vibrating from the crushing disappointment. One inch away from my dream coming true...and Frank had to fuck it all up...

She felt warped now, twisted; she felt as though pieces of her psyche had been cut off and absconded with. Always me, always me...

The trailer door clacked again when Horace came out; he seemed hesitant. “Wurn’t listenin’ deliberate naow but couldn’t help but heer. Yew’re friend seems quite bent aout’a shape ‘baout somethin’.”

“Yeah,” Hazel sighed, dabbed her tears.

“And yew tew. Anythin’ I can dew?”

Hazel flinched, gave a mauled smile. Shape up. “Just girl-talk, Horace. Young and dumb, that’s me. It’ll all be okay.”

“Ee-yuh, I shuh hope so.”

But would it really be okay?

Horace came down the steps and surprised her by offering a glass of ice-water. “Heer. It’s turrible hot; yew’ll likely feel better after takin’ some’a this.”

“You’re very thoughtful, Horace.” The cold water down her throat roused her; it focused her previous idea to something, all of a sudden, thrilling. Sonia’s in no condition to climb the summit...but I am... She looked up hopefully at the towering Horace. “Are you familiar with an old cottage built way up on top of the summit?”

Horace mulled the thought. With his arms crossed, his biceps bulged to the size of baking potatoes. “If’n yew mean Whipple’s Peak, well, ee-yuh. I ‘member when I was a little shaver, my gram used to talk abaout it, tryin’ ta sceer me, I ‘spose. Said it were sittin’ right at the edge’a the cliff, and didn’t have no front door.” He pronounced “door” as doe-uh. “Said it were haunted and’d been there since before white men ever came heer.”

“Built by Indians, in other words.”

“New, ‘cos that’s what I asked’n she said Indians couldn’t’a built it ‘cos they didn’t know haow ta cut stone. See, my gram said the cottage was made’a gray blocks—granite.”

Gray blocks, Hazel’s mind wandered. The Gray Cottage, that’s what Frank called it. “I’d like to go and see it, Horace. But...how do I get there?”

Horace chuckled subtly. “Ah, well naow, see, I dun’t think it really exists, Hazel. Just a wive’s tale—”

“Yeah, yeah, but let’s just say that it does exist,” she pressed him. “How would I go about looking for it?”

The large man shrugged, then pointed high to the west. “En’t no other way but to just walk all’s the way up the summit, and I’d imagine it’d be half a day at least gettin’ up there. See all that mist?”

Hazel’s eye followed the direction of his finger. It was just a tree-covered pinnacle, at least a half mile up. Mist? she thought. She strained her vision.

“Foller the line up where there en’t no trees.”

Now she saw it. There must’ve been a mudslide or avalanche of some kind, eons ago, for now she detected a swath against the summit’s most extreme rise covered only with brush, no trees. At the very top, as far as she could see, lay a blanket of pale mist.

“But I wouldn’t go up there if’n I was yew,” Horace went on.

“It’s like Sleepy Holler, and the Goat Man, yew know? Curn’t possibly be a stone cottage up there when ya think abaout it.”

“Why not?”

“Impossible to carry all them granite blocks up there.” Horace rubbed his chin. “A’course, my gram did say she saw it huh-self when she was young, though. So...who knows?”

Interesting. Hazel kept her eyes on the distant smear of mist.

“She said there was ‘sposed to be treasure in the cottage but she couldn’t get it on account she couldn’t get inside. Like I said, weren’t no door.”

A stone cottage...with no door? Could Frank really be lying that intricately? Hazel didn’t think so. The cottage MUST exist; Henry even mentioned it in his suicide note. And Frank really IS there, right now.

And if he isn’t back by tomorrow afternoon...I’m going to try to find it...

“Strange tales ‘baout that cottage, I’ll say. But every place got a few sech tales.”

“Urban legends, backwoods legends, they’re all the same,” Hazel remarked. “It’s part of human nature to tell stories but then I guess every story that’s ever existed is based in some way on fact.”

“Ee-yuh. And heer’s somethin’ else, if’n yew wanna talk abaout strange.” His big hand touched her back and urged her toward the driveway. “Tell me what’cha think, but just walk up along the edge.”

She saw what he meant; the entire driveway was a trough of mud from the rain. She’d walked gingerly along the forest’s rim.

“Them prints there are mine,” he said, pointing to a track of large footprints going to the mailbox and then back to the trailer. “But naow...see thet?”

They stood at the bulky mailbox. Footprints impressed in the mud came to, then from the box.

“Tracks from whoever left you the envelope and money,” Hazel observed. She saw nothing odd about it.

Horace held up a finger. “Stay along the edge’n yew’ll see.”

She followed him farther past the driveway’s end, into the mud-splotched road itself; all the while, Horace’s finger pointed down at the tracks. With each print left by the mysterious deliverer, Horace counted out, “One, two, three...”

What’s he driving at? Hazel wondered.

“...thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.”

Horace and Hazel stopped. But so did the tracks, nearly in the middle of the road. The tire-tracks from Sonia’s car coursed well away from them and, hence, couldn’t have covered up any additional footprints.