Chapter 18B: Wednesday March 9: Part Two

We entered soundlessly and heard noises coming from one of the front rooms that could only indicate one thing. I pointed to the door handle and nodded when Meredith indicated whether she should go in. Anne watched as I grabbed a knife from the bag and handed her one. We stood in our usual position, on either side of the doorway while Meredith walked unsurely and nervously into the room.

"Well, well, well, looks like we just can't get rid of you. Maybe you like the way you get treated bitch. I'll tell you what, if you bring me a beer from the kitchen I might just let you slide your cunt onto this. And if you're a really good girl I might just let you off without beating the shit out of you. Now fuck off and get my beer!"

As soon as I made my signal Meredith moved to one side while Anne and I stepped into the room and looked at the scene confronting us, it was a scene Anne and I were beginning to get used to. On the bed were two blokes and bouncing on and off their fat little cocks were a pair of skinny dark haired girls.

I allowed a venomous smile to drift across my face as we showed our knives. "Meredith's not going anywhere, and neither are the two of you. But you two are-" I indicated both girls "--now take your clothes and take a fucking hike, you're not part of these guy's problems."

"You and whose friggin' army dickhead?" said the guy on the near side of the bed.

"Make us," said the girls.

"Okay," I said to all four of them. "I will."

I moved quickly, too quickly for the first of the girls, grabbing her by the neck I pulled her backwards until she was far enough from the bed, turned her over and pointed the blade between the cheeks of her bottom.

The suddenness of the impact took the stuffing out of her and grabbed the attention for a second of the other three enabling Anne to get into the slightly crouched position of a knife fighter. She tossed the knife from hand to hand totally unconcerned about how far her skirt had ridden up and that her panties, and thus the groove of her pussy, were on display. "I guess the ball's in your court now." Anne looked from one man to the other. "And the girls are obviously not going to be that important to you. But the gamble you have to take is whether I'm any good with this knife."

The girl with me — I had a knee in the small of her back now as I continued to point the knife in the crack of her arse — was shaking with fear. Meredith — she was standing by the doorway — was just smiling.

"Maybe the two of you have trouble understanding plain English," continued Anne as she glanced across the bed and saw the first guy sitting up and looking as if he was about to try something. "I wouldn't if I was you. And there's always Meredith here." She turned her head for a split-second and I followed her gaze. Meredith had disappeared, maybe in search of a weapon of her own.

"I think I would follow her advice if I was you," I said. "It would be such a waste to carve this poor girl up."

The second girl grabbed both their clothes and moved to the doorway just as Meredith came back with a kitchen knife in her hand. "Come on Carol, it wasn't that special. Certainly not worth taking a knife up the arse for."

I let my girl go, and at my insistence Anne followed the girls outside. I glanced in her direction for only a second but it was fatal. The second of the men produced a gun with a silencer attached from under the pillow and pointed it in my direction.

"Put down that knife otherwise I'll shoot."

I did.

To Meredith he said, "Crouch down on the floor, head bowed."

She did.

To his mate he said, "On the floor in the corner you'll find a piece of wood. Hit this bitch over the head until she's unconscious, if she moves or if either one of them tries to stop you I'll shoot the pair of them."

'Where are you when I need you?' I mentally yelled for Colin's help.

Twice more I called out in similar fashion with an equal lack of success. For the first time in weeks, maybe even months I felt helpless while somebody else was in control of the situation.

I was left to watch as the first man picked up the piece of wood and brought it down with a sickening thud on Meredith's head knocking her out cold.

"Now go deal with the other bitch," continued the second one, "I'll deal with this prick."

I heard the front door and another dull thud and a scream as Anne presumably received the same treatment as Meredith who was just starting to come round. It was enough to make me mad, enough to make me lose all reason, dive for the knife and charge. That was when the second man fired the gun and hit me in the shoulder stopping me dead in my tracks.

"In the kitchen--" he said to his mate on his return "--you'll find some rope, tie these two bitches up. As for you," he continued pointing the gun in my direction, "just remember that I'm a good shot. Next time it'll be your knee-caps or maybe I'll just shoot your balls off."

"What do you want?" I had my handkerchief out stemming the flow of blood.

"Money of course! I reckon that to a fat slob like you these girls would be priceless. After all what sort of a chance would you have of replacing such good sorts? But I will put a price on them. How about twenty-five thousand each? Now that's fair ain't it? A nice round fifty thousand and they're yours again. Oh and one more thing, be back by nine-o-clock tonight otherwise there will be penalties."

The tone of his voice made me take a sudden deep breath. "What do mean by penalties?"

"That's for you to find out when you come back, now fuck off while my mate and I entertain ourselves with these girls."

Given no choice I walked out of the room just as the one armed with the piece of wood put Meredith to sleep again with another belt over the head before tying her up with some rope. Out in the hallway I stepped over Anne — who was already tied up and unconscious — and walked out of the house unsure what to do.

'Well the first thing you have to do is get that shoulder fixed up Fred. The second thing is... '

'Where the fucking hell have you--?'

'SHUT UP! As I was saying, the second thing is that there's no way you're paying over fifty thousand dollars to those goons and there's no way I'm going to let anything happen, Anne is way to important to my plans.'

'Then why didn't you help earlier? Why did you let things go this far? Didn't you say that if things got sticky you wouldn't let me down.'

'Like I said it was your fight, and anyway you're still alive aren't you?' I nodded my head. 'Well stop bitching, let's go to the van and put a temporary patch on that wound. Then you can grab a burger and Coke while I have a look round. After that we can study what happens to the two girls before I decide what to do.'

It was some two and a half hours later and after fixing up my shoulder, which turned out to be nothing more than a scratch, and after a Big Mac and some fries I'd managed with the help of my brother to break into a house in Kew. We were only after one thing, a powerful crossbow that fired six-inch-long, specially sharpened and lethal steel-tipped shafts. It was a robbery that was unlikely to be reported considering the highly illegal nature of the weapon we were stealing. Neither was it going to be attributed to me. No, my brother seemed fairly positive it would be blamed on a 'close enemy' of the family.

Now though I was back in the van, close to the house and looking at another vision. The trouble was I couldn't make out what I was looking at. My brother though was only too happy to keep me informed.

'When they're not talking I'll concentrate on Anne because it's easier. She's just regained consciousness and only knows that it's pitch black and she has a splitting headache, which of course is hardly surprising considering what she was hit with. But that's not all.'

'I knew it wouldn't be.'

'She's spreadeagled with her wrists and ankles tied and a strap around her head which is resting on a rolled up piece of cloth. She understands that being unable to move her head means that they must want her to see what's going to happen to her. And she's lying on earth, she knows that because she can feel it on her naked bottom which is a bit of a shock, because if she can feel it there then it means she's nude again.'

"Anne! Are you awake Anne?"

I recognise the voice. It was tearful, it sounded nervous, sort of panicky. It was Meredith's.

Anne recognised it too. "Wh-What happened Meredith? Did they tie you up too?"

"Yes, they did. As soon as you walked out with those two sluts one of them produced a gun which allowed his mate to grab a piece of wood. He hit me over the head with it and did the same to you. When I came round Winston was calling his bluff and charging him with his knife. Only he wasn't bluffing and shot him."

"Oh no! Tell me he's not... !"

"Dead? No he was just hit in the shoulder. It was a deliberate shot, he said the next one would be aimed at Winston's groin. It scared him enough to make him go. But only long enough to bring some money back. And he has to be back by nine-o-clock tonight otherwise," Meredith stopped for a few seconds as though not wanting to continue, "otherwise for every minute he doesn't turn up they're going to... er... going to... well maybe it's better if I don't tell you."

'You know what I like about this little brother?' Of course I responded with a negative response. 'The way Anne's confused about the whole deal. I mean she's seen you bleed at the house when those punks broke in. But she's also seen you stabbed more than once with a knife without getting hurt, seen you get hit with a piece of wood with no effect. And that's what's confusing her, she's wondering how come when push comes to shove you weren't able to maintain control of the situation. Good huh?'

'I don't know about the good part, I know just how she feels.'

'I don't think so little brother. Her relief at knowing you're still alive is tempered by the undisclosed threat of what Meredith just said. Anne's decided she would be more scared not knowing than knowing.'

"Tell me Meredith please! I'd rather know, and besides Winston wouldn't let anything happen to us trust me. What you saw last night was nothing, now that he knows what he's dealing with he'll do what has to be done."

'See what faith Anne has in you little brother, but it seems Meredith might need a little more convincing, listen.'

"Well I hope like hell you're right Anne because if Winston isn't back at the appointed time they're going to cut off a big toe each with secateurs, follow it up with the rest of them and do the same with our thumbs and fingers for every minute he's late. Then if he's still late it'll be a foot each, followed by the other foot, each hand, and if we're still alive both legs and arms! I worked it out Anne, if Winston is ten minutes late we'll be minus all our toes, if he's fifteen minutes late we'll be minus the fingers on our right hand. You know after twenty minutes we'll have no fingers or toes and in less than half an hour we'll be just a head and a torso and in all likelihood dead!"

"Do you really think they'd do that?"

"Well I sure fuck don't want Winston to be late so we can put it to the test."

Then just as Meredith finished I heard her sniffing.

So did Anne. "What's the matter?"

"Can you smell anything? I mean this is the first time I've been in this shed, in all the twelve months I was staying here it was always out of bounds."

"Well apart from the fact that the whole shed smells like a bloody toilet there's something that smells like old garbage, you know like rotten food scraps and the like, maybe old newspapers too, why?"

"It's just something that doesn't feel right. But it's not the shitty smell, the old garbage or the newspapers. No it's none of them, it's something else and it's faint, but it's there, a sort of sickly-sweet putrid smell like... er... like..."

"Rotting flesh! Yeah I can smell it now Meredith. You're not trying to say that they may have killed before are you, or that if they did they buried them in this shed?"

"That's exactly what I'm trying to say, I mean I wouldn't put anything past these two."

"But that means we're in a great deal of trouble if Winston doesn't return on time. Not that he won't of course. But at least now we know they were probably serious about the threat."

"And these pricks aren't exactly guaranteed to keep their part of the bargain, 'specially if they think there's a way they can get hold of the money and not let us go."

"Well there's fuck all we can do about that except wait."

'And Anne seems to think it's going to be a long one, especially when they have other things to worry about as well.'

'Such as?'

'It seems that a dirty shed with it's share of excrement, garbage, old newspapers and that rotting flesh that IS in there somewhere underneath where they're lying quite naturally attracts a variety of insects, mainly flies and mosquitoes. Naturally the mosquitoes are the biggest pests because of their habit of penetrating the skin and sucking out the blood. It seems that both of them are being bitten alive.

'Of course the flies are pests too, they don't bite but they can land in the most awkward spots as Anne is finding out. One's landed on her nose and is currently investigating each nostril forcing her to carefully avoid breathing through her nose just in case it tries to crawl up. Another favourite place is of course her mouth. There's two of them taking turns at walking over her lips as though daring her to open them. But that's not the best part.'

My brother then had the temerity to stop then. 'Well! Come on Colin you can't stop now you have to tell me.'

'All right then. A couple of flies have even had the cheek to land on and walk all over the lips of her pussy, but she's thinking that she could get used to that. No it's the mosquitoes that are really bothering her. She's thinking that it's bad enough they bite you, but when she can't slap them away and rub the offending itch, well there's nothing more irritating.'

And as if to prove what my brother was saying Anne spoke up. "You had any flies down there yet Meredith? Friggin' things just sit there. It's almost as if they know what they're landing on."

"Not so far. But my blood must be okay judging by the number of fucking mosquito bites I'm getting."

"Any idea how long it's been? I mean you've been conscious the whole time since Winston left haven't you?"

"Two and a half maybe three hours since they gave you that thumping. They fucked you silly while you were unconscious, bet you didn't know that did you? Did the same to me, wanted me awake though, wanted me to enjoy it. But at least they only did it one time, had to because the other one needed to keep an eye out. Tell you it's amazing what you'll do when you're giving a blowjob to the barrel of a gun."

'Before you ask Winston you didn't get to see because we were busy stealing that crossbow. And don't ask why we're not going in now, it's just not the right time that's all.'

"Guess that explains why my cunt's such an attraction for the flies," responded Anne. "Whoops here goes another one. Big bastard too by the feel of it. Didn't land on me that's the funny part, it crawled up between the cheeks of my arse and stepped straight onto my pussy." She laughed for a couple of seconds. "Huh! Hang on for a moment, couple of its legs slipped into the slit and it's having trouble getting any sort of grip. Guess that's because I'm kind of wet down there. Hang on it's moving again."

She stopped talking for a moment and I began to wonder why.

'She's concentrating on what it is as it starts crawling over her pubes, I'd tell you what it is but that would spoil the fun. Better if you find out when she does.'

I turned my attention back to Anne.

"I'll tell you something Meredith, if it's a fly it's a fucking big one." Just then Anne stopped and her voice became a little unsteady, an octave higher. "Oh fuck! Meredith, it isn't a fucking fly!"

"Well what is it then?" There was the slightest hint of panic and concern in her voice.

"It looks like a huge black spider. Matter-of-fact now that it's walking over my pubic hairs towards my stomach I'm positive it is. Hang on it's stopped again, now it's moving, no it's stopped again."

"Whatever you do Anne," now there was just the slightest hint of amusement in Meredith's voice, "whatever you do, don't move and it should just walk off you at some point."

"Oh ha, ha, fucking ha! It's all right for you he's not on YOUR stomach crawling towards YOUR tits. And what about if he's a male spider he might just decide they're worth taking a bite of."

"Anne," said Meredith trying not to laugh, "it's a spider what the hell does it know about tits? I mean it doesn't care who you are, what you are."

'You know little brother, Meredith might be laughing but I guess it's hardly surprising that Anne doesn't think it's very funny, except maybe the part about it being a male and maybe biting her tits, but being the brave girl she is she'd decided she can't afford to laugh, can't afford to panic. So she's doing her best to keep her breathing even.'

"Most of the ones you find in Melbourne aren't deadly you know," continued Meredith after a few seconds. "Oh some of them like the huntsman that's probably on you might be big and hairy, they might even scare four shades of shit out of you and they might even give you a nasty nip if they decide to bite but they won't kill you. In fact it's probably true that we scare them more than they scare us."

"You don't fucking say, well considering you're such an expert on the ways of the arachnid would you tell me why he hasn't turned that big hairy body of his around, why he isn't running for his life and why it's me that's trembling and not him?"

'Looks like that's shut her up for a while little brother. Anyway just to keep you up to date Anne's keeping an eye on it while it crawls ever closer to her right breast. She's thinking that if only it would keep going in that direction it would be all right, especially as that direction is taking it to her right shoulder. She's worried a little more now though because it's stopped at the base of her breast and looks as if it's about to change direction.'

"What's happening now Anne?" Meredith suddenly sounded a little more concerned. "Come on you've stopped talking. What's it doing?"

"I think it's making a decision about which way to go." Anne was sounding a little more relaxed now, sounding more wary than scared. "It's stopped short of climbing up my right tit."

"Well I don't suppose it likes mountain climbing." Meredith was chuckling, she evidently thought that was very amusing.

"Oh ha, ha fucking ha! Spiders climb up walls and curtains and things, or had you forgotten?"

Meredith stopped laughing. "True, true. Anyway as long as it doesn't take a right fork and slip up between them and head towards your face." Suddenly there was a more serious tone to her voice. "What's it doing now, Anne, seeing as it doesn't fancy climbing Mount Everest?"

"Very fucking funny. Actually it's doing bugger all at the moment. Hang on a minute. Yes it's done a left turn, you know his left my right, I think it's going to... I think it's finally going. Oh that's it, go on you big black cunt of a thing, piss off!" There was silence for a moment and then Anne making the announcement, "Going... going... gone."

Then there wasn't a sound. 'Why the silence what's happening?'

'Anne's waiting to see if Meredith says something. Now she's counting out in her mind the way she used to when she was a little girl playing hide and seek. You know the routine, one-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand etc, etc.'

Suddenly it appeared Anne couldn't wait any longer. "Meredith! You're not falling asleep on me now are you?"

"How the fuck can I fall asleep with fifty thousand pissing fucking mosquito bites all over my body. Tell you something they sure like the taste of my tits the dirty little devils. What about your hairy mate, d'ya reckon he's gone for good?"

"I promise that if he or any of his family or friends come back you'll be the first to know, but right at this moment I don't think I'd like to talk about that. Why don't we tell each other about ourselves instead. You know sort of a potted life history, good and bad. What do you say?"

"Yeah I suppose, least it would do is take our minds off these pesky things for a while." She stopped for a few seconds before continuing. "I'll start. I guess you can tell by my name what sort of a background I came from. I mean hyphenated family names like Brooke-Adams, that's Brooke with an 'e' by the way, invariably means wealth, the middle and upper classes and all the snobbery that goes with it.

"I was lucky that's what I was told, I mean it wasn't every girl who could have everything they wanted within reason. Walk-in-robes full of the best clothes money could buy, a four-poster double bed, top of the line audio-visual equipment and a computer. You know much like the stuff you've got in your room. Then there was the library, wall-to-wall books including a leather bound set of Encyclopaedia Britannica and a copy of every classic novel and book a young lady of breeding was going to need to make her mark on the world."

'Anne's just a little confused at the moment Freddie, especially considering her upbringing. She has some serious doubts whether, given those advantages, 'she'd' be in this position now.'

"So how come you... ?" It was Anne giving voice to her thoughts.

"Finished up where I was? In that place with those two? Excitement I guess, a sense of adventure. Living at home was like staying in a hospital, you understand what I mean?"

"No I can't say I do, but you'll understand why when you hear my story."

"Well let's put it this way. In hospital you have everything you need to make your stay comfortable. Staff to take you anywhere you need to go. And everything's always so clean with that slight smell of disinfectant. At home it was the same. All of those things in my room and all of those books in the library were all supposed to be all I'd need to keep me happy. And if there was anywhere I had to go or wanted to go and good old mummy and daddy couldn't take me, which seemed to be most of the time, then the chauffeur would. That is of course provided it met with their approval. I mean a girl can't just go anywhere, one has to maintain the family standards. And as for boys. They have to the right pedigree, the proper bloodlines you see. I mean if I'm to be mated then it has to be with the son of a good family. Can't have just any young boy sniffing around my well bred quim."

"You mean there was never any chance for you to do anything different? You know, break out and do your own thing? Come and go as you please?"

"Well of course, otherwise I wouldn't be here now would I?

"We used to have these dinner parties that most of the time I was required to attend. You know play the dutiful daughter and be nice to all of those boys that sniffed around my cultivated cunt in hope. And they were awful most of them, it was like as if they all came from the same mould. Hair cut short with the part on the left, their glasses if they wore them were always of the horn-rimmed variety. And their suits, oh their suits! Every one of them seemed to be cut from the same cloth and to the same design. I had this vision of one tailor catering to the middle and upper classes, this vision of a production line of expensive charcoal grey suits.

"They were idiots all of them, and so were the giggling little girls who allowed themselves to be seduced into dropping their pretty little-girl panties and spreading their legs for them. No, I decided very early on in my teenage years that if I was going to get fucked it was going to be on my terms and with somebody exciting, not one of the plum sucking arse licking nonentities whose only addition to any conversation was their own special brand of verbal diarrhoea.

"There were other times you see when my presence was considered superfluous, when I was considered an embarrassment to have around. Then I was allowed out to go to the cinema, usually it was just the local multiplex but occasionally I hit the jackpot and was allowed to go to the city. The driver would drop me off, arrange to be back at a certain time, wait until I walked inside and then drive away. Of course I would wait until he had driven off and then walk out to where the nearest video games were.

"Now they only ever gave me enough money for the price of a movie ticket, some popcorn and a cheeseburger and fries from McDonalds. But that's one thing about having parents who are a little blasé about money, particularly mum, she'd leave it all over the place, different compartments of her handbag, on the dresser, in the second drawer, even in her clothes. I guess she was a little absent-minded about things like that. Not that that was a bad thing mind, you see even though I had that thousand dollars I told you about I really had nothing because they kept the bank book and the card.

"Not that it was really hard to find with mum looking after it, I just needed to know where it was. Especially with my eighteenth birthday coming up. That was something like fifteen months ago. It was on a Saturday, not that it mattered what day or how old I was, we never celebrated my birthday. And on that day of all days they had a small but important, or at least that's what they told me, dinner party for a few friends. Now you would think that on a special occasion like that I might have been allowed to stay, that they might have included my birthday into the dinner party. But oh no I was told early in the week that there would be a little get-together in the afternoon, not a party you understand, just a means of handing out presents with as little inconvenience as possible. I was also told I would be going to the pictures that night so they could entertain their friends.

"It was when I was told that that I made up my mind to have a little celebration of my own. I located my bank book, went up to mum's room when there was no one around and found a hundred and fifty dollars in one of her drawers. Isn't that disgusting? Some people barely have a few coins to rub together and here's mother forgetting about an amount like that. Still who am I to complain I certainly made good use of it.

"That night I did the usual thing and walked out of the cinema as soon as the driver left, only this time instead of heading to the video parlour I went to a hotel armed with my ID and waited for some action. And it soon came, mostly though it was from the dregs. You know, bottom of the barrel, forty something and fat you must be desperate sort of stuff that didn't know how to take no for an answer. At first I thought I'd have trouble getting away, then when I did manage to free myself from the hands on my thigh below the hem of my mini-skirt, which by the way was a good eight inches above my knee, I thought I might have to go somewhere else. But that's when this guy came up and took me straight to the dance floor without even waiting for a yes or no. It was clear from the way we moved, or more like didn't move, and the way his hand roamed all over my arse through my skirt that he wanted to do more than just dance.

"I made up my mind that he was going to be the one to take my virginity. Not that my hymen was intact, I think that got busted the second time I rode a horse. And anyway if it hadn't busted then all the poking and prodding I did with my fingers and other things would certainly have finished the job, so all he was getting was my metaphorical virginity.

"We went back to the table he was sharing with another guy and a girl and the three of them suggested that maybe we could find somewhere else to party and sensing a little adventure I wasn't about to disagree."

A moment's hesitation gave Anne the opportunity to jump in and she took it. "Hang on, if what you said before was right, then you probably haven't been home since?"

'She's thinking about all of those things in Meredith's room little brother, all of that family money. Thinking that surely there would have been enough love in a family like that to have been able to work things out, especially given the way things are these days.'

"I mean wouldn't your parents be... ?"

"Missing me?" Interrupted Meredith. "You've got to be joking. I took the three from the pub up to meet the driver where I told him that I wouldn't need him any more for the night and to tell my parents I would either be home or in touch the next day. You see it just so happened the three of them shared a flat, the bills and each other, perfect for a girl keener than ever to lose that metaphorical virginity I was talking about.

"I guess after my parents and the restrictions of living at home I was just in the mood to move in with them and except their lifestyle. And that's just what I did, so I phoned my parents and told them so. That's when they told me that unless I came home that they would write me out of their will, out of their lives and that it would be like I never existed."