Chapter 29

Emily was having the weirdest dream.

She was in Oz, and she was Dorothy, skipping down the yellow brick road ... if Dorothy was blonde, had fantastically huge tits that bounced and heaved with every skip, and was totally naked except for a pair of ruby slippers. But Emily – as Dorothy – continued to skip down the road, until she met the Scarecrow. A Scarecrow, anyway. One dressed all in violet rags, and who had a face remarkably like her brother Jack.

Emily/Dorothy smiled at the Scarecrow. The Scarecrow smiled back. And then, the Scarecrow delicately pulled Emily/Dorothy’s long tresses of blonde hair off, unscrewed the top of her head, and removed her brain.

Emily/Dorothy giggled. It didn’t hurt.

The Tin Man was also suddenly standing there as well, his metal body covered in rusty orange. He also had a face remarkably like Jack’s. Again, Emily/Dorothy smiled at the Tin Man. The Tin Man smiled back.

And then, the Tin Man reached out, gently squeezing one of Emily/Dorothy’s boobs. Emily/Dorothy giggled again. His tin hand made her whole body tingle, in such a good, naughty way. The Tin Man turned her boob, unscrewing it off her body. When it fell off, the Tin Man removed her heart.

Courage.

Emily/Dorothy stood in the middle of the yellow brick road, looking around. The Scarecrow was gone, as was the Tin Man. Leaning against a wooden fence along the side of the road was the Cowardly Lion. He wore a sapphire collar around his neck, and he held the end of his tail in one paw, casually twirling it around. He had a face remarkably like Mr. Hill’s.

Courage, Emily, said the Cowardly Lion. It’s all you have left.

And that was when

pound pound pound pound pound

the pounding started.

pound pound pound pound pound

“Come out, come out now you GODDAMN PIECE OF SHIT!!!!”

POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND

“I’M GOING TO FUCKING KILL YOU, YOU LITTLE FUCKING ASSHOLE!!!!”

POUND POUND POUND POUND POUND

Bleary-eyed and naked, Emily woke up. She didn’t know where she was for a moment, until she realized that she was on Jack’s bed in the basement again, of course, and her head had been resting on Samantha’s soft, bare inner thigh. Lifting her head a bit, Emily could see that in turn Samantha’s lustrous mane of long blonde hair had been similarly resting on the bare inner thigh of her mother Chelsea.

The voice that had woken her up was loud, but muffled. Judging from that, and from the dull pounding noise that for once – mercifully – was not coming from inside her skull, but from somewhere upstairs...

... wait. Hang on.

That wasn’t really all that good, either.

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Emily sat up. Her head whirled around, looking for Jack, except he was nowhere to be seen. Which was super, super weird – he never left the basement in the mornings, especially not a morning after he’d enjoyed a rather intense, torrid and crazy foursome with Samantha, his own sexy sister, and his own sexy mother, Even for Jack – and for the three insatiable women he’d spent all night fucking in such deliciously depraved ways – it’d been a long, crazy, sweaty, decadent evening of filthy, shameless sex. Jack usually slept in after nights like that...

... but this morning, he hadn’t.

He was gone. Nowhere to be seen

Quickly, Emily hopped out of the bed, putting on the emergency outfit that Jack always left for her in the closet by the stairs – jeans, sweatshirt, tennis sneakers, a rubber band for a fast ponytail. Basically, the sort of ordinary, boring outfit she’d typically worn to school in what seemed like a lifetime ago, even if it was actually only weeks before. Being actually dressed for once at home felt really, really weird, but it didn’t stop

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Emily from immediately bounding up the stairs, and racing through the kitchen and the living room to the front door. Right as she reached the door, she was greeted by an even louder – and angrier – pounding on the door, and even louder bellowed threats.

“COME OUT HERE, YOU WEASELLY LITTLE PIECE OF SHIT!! COME OUT AND FACE ME LIKE A MAN!!!”

“Em?” came a quavering voice from upstairs. It was Todd. God, not now, Emily thought irritably. “Em, shit what’s happening? I don’t know ... shit, what, um, what should we –”

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“Stay upstairs, Todd, in your room,” Emily snapped. “I’ll take care of this.”

The loud slamming of a bedroom door upstairs told Emily that Todd probably heard her.

Emily peeked through the security peephole in the front door. Standing on their front porch was an older, muscular guy, probably in his late forties or early fifties wearing a polo shirt and jean with cowboy boots. His dark greasy hair was a rumpled mess, like he’d just crawled out of bed, except the stubble on his tanned face and the dark rings under his eyes told Emily that he probably hadn’t slept that night, maybe not even in days.

The guy was also holding a loaded nine-millimeter handgun.

Surprisingly,

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Emily wasn’t particularly scared. “Really?” she muttered, peeking again through the peephole. She knew exactly what

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to do. With a sigh, she unlocked the door, and opened it.

“Hey, Mr. Grant,” Emily said, even as the older man suddenly pointed the business end of the gun right in her face with a shaking hand. “Uh, what can I do for you?”

“FUCK YOU, YOU COCKSUCKING...” The gun wavered just a few feet away from Emily’s nose. Emily didn’t blink. She just scowled instead, staring coldly at the sight of Kimmy Grant’s disheveled, angry dad, Chase Grant. Slowly, he lowered the gun, but only a little.

Well, actually, you got the cocksucking part right, Emily thought, but she chose not to actually say that. Instead, she stood her ground. “What are you doing here, Mr. Grant?” she asked. “Do you know what time it is? And ... that? Really? You’re going to shoot me? For what?”

“I ... shit, Emily, you’re Kimmy’s ... shit,” Chase mumbled, his voice momentarily dropping from a roar to a dull whisper. The furious, angry look on his face had started to melt away, replaced instead with slightly bewildered confusion. “This wasn’t how this was supposed to, um ... shit.” He rubbed the side of his head with the heel of his free hand, looking utterly lost and confused. Emily wrinkled her nose, smelling the whiskey fumes wafting off of Mr. Grant. She thought they might be strong enough to peel the paint off the front of her house.

“Put the gun away,” Emily said quietly. “Go home.” She folded her arms across her ample chest, still standing defiantly in the doorway. “We can pretend this never happened. But if you don’t go right now

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you will really regret it. I promise. Understand?”

“I...” The gun moved unsteadily to and fro in Chase’s trembling hand. “I ... no, I don’t. I don’t understand at all.” He winced and closed his eyes, as though he’d suddenly gotten a migraine, or someone had flashed an incredibly bright light in front of him. “Everything’s so weird lately. Since ... fuck, I ... I don’t know.”

The barrel of the gun crept back up towards Emily’s face, pointing right between her eyes. Emily’s lip curled in disdain.

“It’s just ... the lights, you know?” Chase asked. “I see them, all the time. I hear this whispering, too, it’s like static, though. I can’t really hear what the whispers say. And they tell me things, and then I want to do something, and then ... I’m doing something else. And those things ... they’re always bad. Wrong. Even if they feel good sometimes. So good, though. Really good.” Abruptly, he smacked himself in the side of his head with his free hand, and then glowered at Emily. “And it hurts. All the time. Do you understand?”

“Ummm...” Emily frowned. “Yes,” she said hesitantly, “yes, I think I –”

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“—no, I don’t,” Emily snapped. “You need to leave.”

“Your brother,” Chase said. He took a small step closer to Emily. “Take me to him. Now.”

“Chase, honestly, what in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

Turning her head, Emily saw her mother Chelsea standing there, with Samantha at her side. Both were also dressed now, Samantha in khaki shorts and a Princeton sweatshirt, Chelsea in a rather smart white silk blouse and a navy-blue pencil skirt. Emily had almost forgotten how good her mother looked fully clothed. Apart from a brief glimpse of her at the pep rally the other day, Emily was pretty sure she’d only seen her sexy mother either wearing slutty lingerie or simply nothing at all for the past six weeks, maybe more. Well, that, or just wearing a dog collar and a leash, which seemed to be Todd’s new thing.

“There’s absolutely no need to make a scene like this, Chase,” Chelsea continued calmly. “You said you’re looking for my son? Which one? Do you mean Jack, or Todd?”

“Jack,” Chase said through clenched teeth. The pistol moved from Emily’s face to Chelsea’s. “Your son Jack’s been fu ... been with my wife Jess lately. A lot. Too much. And, uh, my daughter Kimmy too, I guess.” A somewhat guilty expression came to Chase’s face as he mentioned Kimmy. Emily couldn’t tell if that was because his daughter was something of an afterthought, or maybe because of the shenanigans he’d gotten up to with her at the car wash.