Chapter 7

Cindy Jamison performed her prosaic household chores like a mechanized robot on Friday, just as she had on each of the other two days since that drunken, hazy party on Tuesday night. Her mind seemed to be in a perpetual state of half-torpor, as if she were filled with some kind of deadening drug to ease the pain of the knowledge she carried within her.

She finished the cleaning and sweeping and laundry shortly past four, and made herself a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Then she sat with it in the living room of their cottage, drinking but not really tasting the strong black liquid. It was going to be a long day, an even longer night; at least on the past two days she had had Howard home to talk to her, to comfort her, for he realized she was still in a highly agitated state. He had asked her repeatedly to tell him what was wrong, to confide in him, and she almost had on more than one occasion--but then her guilt and shame, her strong desire to protect him from the terrible consequences of her actions with the Polaroid photographs and from the knowledge of her infidelities, became too strong and she was unable to speak.

But tonight, Howard would not be home at all. He had called her from work shortly past noon, to tell her that Ralph had invited him to go to Monterey for some kind of dealers' meeting later that day as Auto Circus's representative. The meeting would last well into the night, so he would be spending the evening in Monterey, to return to Morriston early the next day, Saturday. She hadn't wanted him to go, did not wish to be alone for a single night, but what could she tell him to stop him, short of confessing all that was troubling her? Nothing, nothing at all. And so he was going, probably had already left by this time.

Cindy took another sip of her coffee and set the cup down. A small tremor passed through her rigid young body. Dear God, what a nightmare she had been living these past few weeks! Everything had been going so beautifully--and then the evil postal clerk, Steve Samuels, had come into her life and forced her to defile her marital bed and to perform countless perversions with his wizened, deformed body. He had left her after that single, orgiastic night and had not contacted her since... but she knew it was only a matter of time, just as she had known it all along, in spite of what Norma Taylor had told her. He would be back, demanding more from her, more disgusting and lewd acts which made her want to vomit just thinking about them. But that wasn't all; there had been the party... her agitated mental state... all the sangria she had drunk... the foggy moments with Ralph... going out to the Volkswagen Variant... drinking that bourbon... the kaleidoscopic, filmlike flashes after that, moments of lucidity to be followed by moments of complete blankness... Ralph spreading her legs, putting his penis inside her, she powerless to stop him, him heaving and bucking into her, cumming with his burning hot semen; another, shadowy figure replacing him that to this day she couldn't identify, another penis, more heaving and bucking, more torrents of hot sticky cum pouring into her tender, ravaged vagina... what she suspected had been her own crashing, spiraling orgasm, though her mind had since refused to admit such an actuality...

A low, involuntary moan escaped the soft, pink lips of the mentally tortured young woman and she put her head in her hands. All the thoughts she had suppressed the past three days came rushing into her conscious mind, bringing with them the terrible humiliation and guilt of her actions. What had happened to her innocent, well-ordered little world? Why had things suddenly seemed to turn completely against her, slowly but inexorably destroying her? What had she done to deserve all of this?

She didn't know, had no idea. She felt as if she was on a merry-go- round, forever spinning, which she could never get off of. She had never been so alone, so helpless, in her life--there was no one to whom she could turn, nowhere she could go...

Norma? Norma, who had listened and advised her before? No, no, of course not... it had been Norma's husband, Ralph, whom she had allowed in her drunken stupor to claim her body. How could she tell that woman, whose husband she now hated with a full and overwhelming passion, what had happened? No, there was no one, no one at all.

What am I going to do? she asked herself silently. I'm so afraid... afraid of that terrible postal clerk, afraid of Ralph Taylor, afraid of what has happened to my own body for I think I enjoy any sexual act--no matter what kind, and even with another man--completely and totally now. I'm a different woman, a woman I don't understand anymore, and I'm so frightened...

The sudden ringing of the telephone completely shattered her reverie and brought her off the couch in a convulsive jump, her heart hammering crazily in her chest. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut as she identified the abrupt sound, and willed her trembling body still as the bell sounded again. She walked stiffly to where the phone was located and, biting her lip, lifted the receiver.

"H-Hello?" she said in a strangely quavering voice.

"Hello, Mrs. Jamison," a familiar, terrifying wheeze answered her, and the young wife felt a bolt of sheer terror shoot through her body like an electrical charge. She almost dropped the phone, and her heart threatened to burst through her chest cavity. Her tongue was thick with fear, and she couldn't make words come.

"Are you there, Mrs. Jamison?" Steve Samuels asked in his oily, insinuating tone. "Do you hear me?"

"Y-y-yes," she finally managed in a strangled whisper.

There was a soft, evil laugh from the other end of the wire. "You know who this is, don't you? Of course you do. Have you been thinking about me, Mrs. Jamison? Have you been thinking about what happened between us the other night? About how I put my hot thick cock far up into your asshole and fucked you and fucked you and--"

"Stopppp iiitttttt!" Cindy Jamison screamed in a voice fraught with the pinnacle of sheer mortal terror. "Oh, shut up, please shut up, oh, God don't talk to me like that!"

More high-pitched laughter, and then the venereous government employee said softly, "I want you again, Mrs. Jamison. I want you again-- tonight!"

"Noooo!" wailed Cindy.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Jamison. Tonight, at my place, at nine o'clock."

"No! Oh, dear God, no, I can't! I can't!"

"You can, and you will," Samuels told her, his voice turning harsh and ugly, as ugly as he was. "You'd better be there, or you know what'll happen to you and that husband of yours. Nine o'clock, Mrs. Jamison. Or else!" And with those sharp, threatening words, Steve Samuels slammed the receiver down in her ear.

Cindy flung her own handpiece down and fled into the living room, throwing herself prone on the couch to sob out her fear and torment and helplessness. She couldn't go through another ordeal like the one the depraved clerk had put her through ten days ago--and yet she had to. There was no alternative, short of defying him and thus relegating her and Howard to possible prison sentences. That, and--

Murder.

The single word echoed and re-echoed in Cindy Jamison's mind, and she sat up abruptly with the force of it. But, just as quickly as it had come, it vanished. She was not a murderess, could never take the life of another human being--even if that human being was the animalistic Steve Samuels. The torment, the horror, would be magnified tenfold instead of banished by such an act. No, she could not kill Samuels, much as she would like to see him dead, and she could not defy him, either.

She would go to him tonight, then, as he had instructed. Go to him in body, but not in spirit or soul.

And somehow she would endure the degradation and lasciviousness which was sure to then ensue --for Howard, for the man she loved...

Ralph Taylor arrived at the weed-choked, slumlike house of the postal employee Steve Samuels at eight-thirty that night, carrying a huge case which contained his Polaroid camera, timer, and tripod.

The venereous civil servant let him in with an expression of excited anticipation, and led him down the hallway into the living room. Samuels had made an effort to tidy it up somewhat, but the room still had an air of musky staleness, a look of cluttered squalor. He offered the automobile executive a drink, which Taylor promptly refused. Then Ralph said, "Did you make all the arrangements?"

"All of them, yes," Samuels answered quickly. "That bitch Cindy Jamison will be here at nine. The other one, Sally Reagan, will be along a little later, around nine-thirty. Oh, Christ, she was really upset about coming here tonight, that one was. She cried and begged and pleaded with me not to make her, but I said--"

"I don't give a shit what you said, you little weasel," said Ralph Taylor shortly, obvious distaste for the postal clerk on his normally jovial countenance. "Just as long as she's coming here tonight. And just as long as Cindy Jamison is coming; she's the one I'm really interested in;'

"Don't worry, don't worry, they'll be here. Just like I promised they would be."

Taylor nodded, set his case down, and-began to take the-photographic equipment out of it. He looked up at Samuels as he was doing so. "Have you got a screen or something I can set this stuff up behind?" he demanded.

"Yeah, I think so," retorted the clerk. "But what for?"

"Never mind what for, goddamn you! This is my show, and we'll run things my way or not at all! Understand?"

"Sure, sure, don't get uptight."

"Just do as you're told, Samuels, and everything will be fine."

The wizened clerk nodded, licking his lips, and left the room to locate the screen Ralph Taylor had asked him for.

The taxicab let Cindy Jamison off in front of the run-down home of Steve Samuels at exactly nine o'clock.

She was weaving just slightly as she walked up the path to the front door, her hands tightly clenched around her handbag. She had commenced to drink straight vodka immediately after the call from the postal worker, trying to work herself into a stupor so that, as on the first occasion, she would be too drunk to be totally aware of the horror of her situation. She had succeeded in getting intoxicated only to a point, beyond which she couldn't seem to go, no matter how much she drank. Now, she felt light- headed and nauseous as she rang the bell, trying desperately to blank her mind against what was soon to happen to her.

The door opened almost immediately, and the malformed features of the government employee peered leeringly out at her. She shuddered involuntarily with revulsion, averting her eyes from that terrible, sweating face. Her stomach churned sickeningly.

"Well, well, right on time I see, Mrs. Jamison. Good, good," said the clerk in his husking voice. He reached out his talon-like fingers to take her arm, and Cindy imagined that it was the touch of something incredibly alien on her coat-covered flesh; but she didn't have the strength or the inclination to resist his hand. She allowed him to lead her down the hallway and into the living room.

The room itself was little more than a blur in the mind of the tortured young wife. She was aware of a musty smell, of a jumble of old and ragged furnishings, of a large screen which had been set up on one side of the room--but details escaped her brain completely. It might have been some medieval torture chamber, complete with iron maiden and thumbscrews and the rack, for all she knew.

Samuels said, "Sit down on the couch, Mrs. Jamison. Here, let me take your coat. Make yourself comfortable." He snickered evilly. "It's going to be a long wonderful night."

Cindy shuddered again at the implications of this depraved postal clerk's words. She hurriedly shed her coat and moved robot-like to the sagging sofa and sat down stiffly, her eyes staring glassily ahead. I have to do this, she thought numbly. I have to do it for Howard, for our future, for Howard, for our future...

Samuels hung her coat up in a hallway closet and came back to the living room, sitting down next to but not touching the soul-sick young wife. "Have a cigarette, won't you, Mrs. Jamison?" he invited unctuously. He reached out to the coffee table in front of the couch, to where a wooden cigarette box lay, lifted it and opened it, presenting the contents to the eyes of Cindy Jamison.

She knew instantly this time what the brown, crudely made cigarettes were, but instead of being further repulsed, she was almost grateful that he wanted her to have more pot, more marijuana, just as she had had the last time. Commingled with the liquor, the pot would once again put her in that half-netherworld of semirationality and the pain, the degradation, would not be as acute as it could be. Almost eagerly, she reached out and plucked one of the rough brown sticks from the box and placed it between her soft, warm, moist lips. The wizened government employee lit it for her immediately, telling her as he had before to hold the smoke in her lungs as long as she could before releasing it. She obeyed, drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly... drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly...

The first roach butt was no more than ash in her fingers, and then Samuels was handing her another, lighting it, and she was repeating the process yet again... drawing deeply, retaining, exhaling slowly... and her head began to swim and she could feel herself weaving slightly on the couch, though she was powerless to cease the movement of her body. The agony was lessening in her mind, she could feel it; it was being replaced now by that same gloating, suspended feeling of the previous encounter. She was ready to take whatever he would mete out, now, as ready as she would ever be...

She opened her mouth, forcing thick words Jut with careful enunciation, "Do you want me to take my clothes off now? I'm ready to take my clothes off, if you want me to."

"Ah, that's the attitude, Mrs. Jamison!" snickered Samuels. "That's the way to talk, you little bitch. But not yet, not just yet..."

"Why... ?"

"Because we're expecting another visitor shortly."

The drugged young wife tried to grasp the significance of that statement, but it seemed to elude her. She frowned, trying to speak again, to ask him what he meant--and in that instant, the doorbell rang.

"There we are, she's here," Samuels enthused, jumping up. "And right on time. Don't go away, Mrs. Jamison. I'll be right back."

Cindy sat dazed for what seemed like interminable minutes, then Samuels reappeared leading a tall, black-haired young woman whose face was streaked wet with tears. The young woman's eyes went wide, and her mouth dropped open in shock as she saw Cindy sitting on the couch. "What... ?" she began.

"Sally Reagan, meet Cindy Jamison," cackled the government employee, pushing the dark-haired girl forward.

Cindy managed to struggle up off the couch, to stand just a few feet from the new arrival; the eyes of the two women locked on one another. And in that moment, complete--if momentary--lucidity returned to the mind of young Cindy Jamison.

She knew, just as Sally Reagan knew, that they were both the same, trapped in the terrible web of Steve Samuels's depravity. Cindy's whirling brain instinctively became aware that the dark-haired girl had committed much the same type of transgression as she had, perhaps sending private photographs through the mail which Samuels had intercepted. And her brain became aware, too, that this evening would be worse, much worse, than the other--that what the venereous clerk had planned for tonight was the apex of perversion: an orgy, an impossible flesh circus of which she and Sally Reagan were to be the main performers. She began to tremble with renewed fear and trepidation, seeing that the dark-haired girl had realized the same inevitability as she just had and had begun to tremble as well.

And still the two young wives stared at each other, as if each was seeking solace in the eyes of the other, tied together more closely than the best of friends by their mutual subjugation. A mute empathy, a tight bond, was sewn between Cindy Jamison and Sally Reagan and that bond somehow made things a little less terrifying than they might have been. Now, perhaps, both enslaved housewives would be able to keep their sanity during this longest of all nights...

The next few minutes were a kaleidoscope of fragmented time for the young mate of Howard Jamison. She was told to sit down on the couch, told to have another marijuana cigarette, and she obeyed. Sally Reagan, rid of her coat, sat beside her on the dirty material of the sofa and took pot herself--one joint, two, three. The room was filled with the sweetish, almost cloying odor of the weed.

"Are we ready now?" Samuels called out finally, as if asking permission of someone else to begin, looking in the direction of the screen. Then, nodding, as if he had received his answer though neither Cindy nor Sally heard a spoken word, the evil civil servant moved to the couch, staring down at the two beautiful women who sat with glazed, perspiring faces before him.

Oh, Jesus he thought, this is really going to be something! That big bastard really knows what he's doing, all right. I couldn't have mapped out the progression of events for tonight any better myself! Goddamn, my balls are aching with my cum and the big guy is waiting behind the screen and Ringo is waiting in the kitchen... this is going to be the finest night I've ever spent, I know it! You bitches, you're REALLY GOING TO GET YOURS TONIGHT!

"Both of you!" he commanded in a panting, wheezing voice. "Take off your clothes! Strip down to your bra and panties. Hurry up, you fucking little sluts!"

Like twin marionettes, the drugged and subjugated young women stood in unison and stripped off their outer garments, leaving their underclothes on as Samuels had instructed. They stood there, side by side, staring straight ahead as the small man viewed their vibrant flesh with hungry, almost inhuman eyes.

"Now then, Mrs. Reagan," he snapped. "Roll your panties down, slowly, nice and slowly. Let's see that fine, sweet young cunt of yours. You, Mrs. Jamison. Watch her, look at her cunt. Goddamn you, do what I tell you!"

Through hazed eyes, young Cindy Jamison watched the automatonical movements of Sally Reagan as the other woman obeyed Samuels's orders, slowly rolling her panties down, down, until the curling dark triangle of her pubic hair came into view. Still lower she rolled the thin garment, down almost to her knees, and then the postal clerk commanded her to stop.

"Open your thighs!" gasped Samuels. "Open 'em wide enough to get your hand between them! That's it! Now play with your cunt, Mrs. Reagan! Put your finger on your clit, put it inside you! Get it all nice and hot while we watch, Mrs. Reagan!"