Chapter 22

Readers please note: this chapter may be difficult to read and this note should really have been posted at the beginning of the last chapter.

There are elements of scatology in here that are INTENDED to be offensive yet which are necessary to the story in order to illustrate Amber’s determination to do whatever she needs to, to force Aaron’s hand and be what she wants him to be.

Somehow the story got here; it snuck up on me and I’m going to deal with what the characters threw at me, the best I can. Just read the first part quickly and try not to barf, okay?

-AA

Seeing Amber fish around in her own pile of poop was almost too much for Aaron. She did it as if it was no big thing but it definitely disgusted her as much as Aaron. He’d never thought of bodily functions as sexy and this was definitely not sexy, but his penis once again disagreed with him. Even the rank smell didn’t matter to his penis. Well, it didn’t have a nose, just the one eye, so...

Aaron knew he really needed some alone time to sit and truly examine his feelings. Some time soon when he didn’t have a boner. Whatever game Amber was playing - and had drawn her own daughter into - was way out of hand by Aaron’s standards. But Amber had stolen the one thing that could make him go crazy.

His late mother’s engagement ring was only his because he had no sister - no siblings at all - to pass it on to, but Amber hadn’t known or cared or even hesitated to try and take it from him even though she’d only get a hundred bucks, if that, by pawning it. She had to have known she wouldn’t hit the jackpot in an old rural farmhouse, he thought to himself.

Now she was carefully sorting through her own excrement to find some sort of pin she’d also stolen and shoved up her own butt. What sort of person does that? Any of it? She had to be unbalanced or something, Aaron realized.

Emily was thinking the same thing. Watching her mother divide her own shit into separate piles with her bare hands, while they were still tied behind her back, made Emily want to puke. At least her mom didn’t have to look at the mess she was making of herself as she felt around in the pile of shit, Emily thought.

Pretty quickly, considering she couldn’t see what she was doing, Amber let out an, ‘ah hah!’ and got to her feet again. She turned her back to Aaron so he could see what she had.

“Is this what you lost, Master? I don’t remember eating anything like whatever this is.”

“You didn’t eat it, fool. You stole it and shoved it up your butt!”

“Really, sir? Why would I do that?” Amber asked as if they were having a pleasant conversation.

“I don’t know why you do any of the stuff you do! I don’t know why you wrote up those rules, I don’t know why you’re a bitch to everyone and I certainly don’t know what you were thinking, getting your daughter involved in whatever this is.” Aaron said in frustration.

“I want to change. What more can I do to prove it! I just sorted through my own shit to find this stupid doodad. Punish me or drop It, okay?” Amber said in frustration.

Bring that whatever it is, with you. I’ll run the hose over it and then decide what I’m going to do.”

“I don’t need to clean it off with my mouth? Thank fuck for that!” Amber said in relief.

Aaron was understanding less and less, the more time he spent with the pair. Emily was cussing a little less, while being agreeable a little more and Amber seemed to have turned some sort of corner in her head. She was acting more like the bitch she usually was, again, despite being naked and tied up - the things she’d wanted so badly.

Aaron couldn’t even say Amber was acting that much differently than before he’d brought them outside and it wasn’t so much in anything she said, although a cuss word HAD snuck in, but something in her demeanor was again changing. He could easily picture her standing there with her middle finger raised at him and he’d just done her a favor by letting her off a punishment.

Amber was a heck of a dilemma. It was like any small inch he gave her, instead of being grateful, she took a mile and then resented it or something. She HAD to be crazy! He’d thought he had them figured out only to feel like he knew less now about how they ticked than when he’d first met them.

He decided on an experiment. Taking their rope ‘leashes’, he tugged them over to the hose. Emily went willingly but Amber was pulling at her rope as if she had better things to do than anything he wanted.

At the side of the house was a stout metal bracket that had once held a television antenna. He tied the girls’ leash to it and tested his knot. The girls were effectively secured, slightly bent over with their arms high. If their wrists hadn’t been bound, they could have easily rotated their shoulders and given themselves a lot more slack. The way Aaron had them bound though, that wasn’t an option.

He picked up the hose nozzle and turned on the spigot. With a hand on the trigger of the nozzle, he addressed the girls.

“Ladies, we have a problem. I really don’t like either of you. I’d possibly be persuaded that I hate you both right now,” he said, making a fist around the rent money he’d recovered from Emily.

Amber shrugged and Emily grinned, as if he’d made her day by admitting she got under his skin.

“So I’m going to spray you down with this garden hose. The water is cold and the pressure’s high, so you WILL feel it, but it may make ME feel better to see you shiver and squeal at the feel of this cold water.

“I haven’t played under the garden hose since I was a kid!” Amber pretended enthusiasm - but not too convincingly.

“I imagine it was a lovely hot summer’s day, Amber. There’s no sun to warm your skin once you’re wet, so I have an idea of how I’ll take care of warming you up afterwards so you don’t get sick, too. Just drop that pin thing you had up your butt.”

“I already did. I think it’s somewhere between here and where I took a shit. I didn’t know you wanted me to guard it with my life or anything. Sorry.” Amber shrugged again, even less politely than a mere minute or so ago.

Amber sounded happier to have lost it than upset that she no longer had it. In other words, not at all sorry and Aaron could do nothing but sigh. He should have known better, he told himself. Losing it this time was his fault, for not relieving her of it sooner. He decided to ignore the loss for now. He didn’t even really know what it was anyway.