postobitum
Temporary Lit Hermit
- Joined
- Feb 23, 2004
- Posts
- 179
Hokay, here is the deal. I have a story that kinda just popped in my head. It's disturbing and weird and not exactly erotica in the traditional sense...well, maybe not in any sense. It's a baby of mine though, ugly or not, and therefore I am stubbornly refusing to delete it. For whatever reasons I am hesitant to post it but I am still wanting to know what others would think about it. It's pretty good in it's own little way. Fugde it, you be the jugde and let me know. (Here's hoping it's not too long.)
Thank you -postobitum
Sweet Annalee
The russet eyes calmly stared, unperturbed and docile. Shari didn’t know what to do, couldn't think or even breathe properly. Those beautifully tragic eyes…she thought they could gaze into her soul and pick it to pieces, dissect it to bits without her being aware of it. The whites were perfect, almost too perfect. Cleanly bleached bone brushed with snow couldn't be so unpolluted, pristine. The illusion of perfection was marred only by the ragged burgundy nerves and connective tissues, shredded muscle that clung hopelessly to the each tidy orb.
"Why?" Her clear voice belied the panic seizing her chest.
"Why?" Confusion. Vacant misunderstanding.
"Yes, Annalee, why?" Shari fought to keep her breathing steady, though her heart was surely going to pound right out of her chest at any moment. In the silence that followed, the uncertain stillness, Shari casually looked to her left. Just a few yards away a group of toddlers awkwardly played in a sand box, their uncoordinated movements insistent and precious. A single dowdy woman in an outdated down jacket half-heartedly watched over the children. She looked as though she would like to stand up and leave the little boys and girls without a backward glance. She looked as though she would like to leave her life altogether. Maybe she too had shattered expectations lining her unfashionable pockets.
"Shari, are you ignoring me?" Annalee meekly asked. Her thinly elegant lips quavered ever so slightly.
Shari focused on the tiny chocolate tinted beauty mark gracing her sister's delicate unpainted cheek.
"No, Annalee, I'm not ignoring you. I am waiting for an answer, though. I need to know why you have those," Shari said, gesturing briefly to the glistening eyes in Annalee's gloved palm. To draw attention to the bizarre offering would be disastrous, unthinkably so.
"I took them for you, Shari. Don't you like them?" Annalee's gentle cobalt eyes looked troubled. She couldn't understand, would never understand.
"Annalee, there're…. very pretty. Beautiful even. But honey, you can't- it's not safe to give this lovely… gift to me here. Other people won't understand, they would think bad things," Shari said, taking her sister's arm with as little urgency as possible, guiding her to a more secluded area near a small stand of coniferous trees.
Annalee did not resist Shari's bird like grasp, following her as naturally as a child follows the ice cream truck. When the two women were partially concealed by the fragrant verdant branches she looked into her palm for the first time and sighed.
"Did I do something bad, Shari?" Annalee thought the eyes very nice. They reminded her of Shari's son Dusty, before the awful accident that ruined his eye.
"Honey, I don’t know if you did anything wrong at all. Just tell me where you found them, ok?" Shari was scared, terrified. This was by far the worst stunt yet. Annalee was…out of control, beyond any control that Shari could exert for long.
"I found them, Shari, I just found them. I really don’t remember where." Annalee continued to contemplate the eyes lying in her hand, looking into infinity without comment.
Shari sighed deeply, struggling to control the impulse to strike Annalee, pound comprehension into her misfiring mind. Instead Shari smoothed a small bare hand over her gleaming hazelnut hair and cleared her throat.
"Annalee, I need you to think. Take your time if you need to. I really want to know where you found them," she said soothingly.
Annalee began to look more than troubled. From the expression on her porcelain features it seemed Annalee was on the verge of a breakdown. A breakdown in a crowded park! Shari quickly kissed the little mole, patted her sibling's narrowly graceful shoulder and looked into the lowered gaze.
"Never mind, sweetie. I think they are gorgeous. Here, I'll take them and put them in my jewelry box at home, where I keep all my most favorite gifts. Ok?" She gritted her teeth to keep cries of disgust and fear at bay when the two vagrants were placed in her hand. They were tacky, as though not too long ago they were nice and juicy, and were being dried in the chilly wind like winter raisins. Shari quickly but smoothly transferred them to her coat pocket, being careful not to crush them in her hand or in the pocket. She wasn't sure she would be able to keep her composure if they were to burst open while in her immediate possession.
Annalee impulsively drew her shorter sister to her in a tight embrace. She was so pleased that Shari liked the present. It never even occurred to her to wonder why Shari was concerned with where Annalee got them, in fact the memory of any concern on Shari's part was soon nothing but an uncomfortable vapor blowing away.
Annalee was aware of the sounds of small children playing, children a few years younger than little Dusty, her favorite nephew, her only nephew. The need to watch such funny young things drove all unease from her completely, leaving nothing but a gleeful pleasure. She clutched Shari's hand and tugged her in the direction of the frolicking children.
"Come on, Shari! I want to watch the babies play!" With delight and simple childish pleasure Annalee watched the sand box kids for almost hour. The drab babysitter in charge of the small brood sensed a wrongness surrounding the strangely childlike woman with her clean but old and faded jeans and slightly ragged sweater, her long attractively unkempt silver ash hair and uncomplicated smile sitting so happily next to the smaller woman. It was the other lady, with her brooding cloud of worry and hopelessness veiling her lovely flannel eyes that at first glance should have concerned the caretaker, but with a second peek it became clear that the deepening sense of wrong and… dangerously good intent that scared her emanated from the happy one. She gathered her innocents to her like a mother hen counting her chicks and led them out of the park, trying not to break into a run.
As she reached the edge of the large children's playground and pulled the protesting kids past the alluring duck pond she felt like she had just barely escaped a danger that couldn't be seen or heard but would surely have destroyed her, and she shuddered.
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. Shari still couldn't reach into her pocket or even take her coat off. The faint solidity she could feel through the lining was enough to render her will down to the consistency of melted wax. She has already taken Annalee back to the tiny one bedroom apartment in the bad part of town, with the admonishment to stay inside for the rest of today, do some housecleaning, anything to stay out of trouble. More trouble.
Shari dropped her keys unceremoniously amidst the clutter of her son's drawings from school; bills opened and unopened, ad circulars and the everyday junk of living covering the top of her small kitchen table. She was glad her son was already at his father's for the weekend, the need to act normal for his sake might be too much for her at the moment. Those damn eyes were still in her pocket and she had to get rid of them somehow. What the hell had Annalee been thinking?
She wandered over to the gleaming stainless steel sink and tentatively slid her right hand into the coat pocket containing the macabre gift. Eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched she found the eyes with her fingertips; they were like two freezing sticky suckers covered in a thin film of jell-o. As her hand carefully closed on the eyes she fought back the overwhelming urge to throw up in the sink. Instead she flung the eyes into the sink and turned on the water, scrubbing her hands under the burning water until they were bright red and throbbing. The two eyes lay on the rubber opening of the garbage disposal, one looking down into the blades, the other casually looking up at Shari.
She turned the water on again and poked the eyes down the drain into the disposal. They didn't seem to be too substantial; from the sound of it the disposal ground them to nothing without any effort. As she rinsed the sink she could feel that one beautifully brown displaced eye watching her. It seemed to have known it's fate, known it was bound for destruction and oddly enough was at peace with the end. The other one, well, it was watching the blades when she flipped the switch, so perhaps death was not as innocent for that one as it felt the force of the water and Shari's determination push it into the whirling, chewing blades. Shari laughed as she shut the water off and stood looking down into the black depths of the sink.
"Now I'm feeling sorry for a pair of dead eyes? Like they really knew what was happening. Jesus, I'm the one losing it now," Shari said into the empty air. A deep breathe and a deeper glass of brandy would be just the thing to help her relax and think over this afternoon's weirdness.
Coat off, glass of brandy refracting light in hand, and Ella Fitzgerald filling the emptiness of the living room did help Shari feel calmer. She rested her head against the back of the soft and amazingly child resistant couch cushions, letting the music wash over and around her, the brandy warming her insides, giving her enough fuzziness to feel almost pleasant.
"Where did you get the eyes, Annalee?" Shari whispered. It was inconceivable that someone just handed them to her sister, or sold them to her at the pharmacy like a pair of condoms. She knew her sister sometimes went to the hospital to talk to some of the nurses on the psych ward. It wasn't an everyday thing and not something the nurses always appreciated since the people in that part of the hospital were more often than not emergency cases, and yet undiagnosed or waiting for transfer to better equipped and less temporary facilities. Maybe Annalee took a little side trip through some other parts of the hospital, maybe to a room where autopsies were done. Maybe she had just stolen a jar with two eyes floating in preservative…maybe she thought they were pretty and unwanted.
But the eyes hadn't smelled like anything, and Shari remembered from her biology and anatomy and physiology classes in high school that the preservatives used for dead tissue stunk badly. Stunk to high heaven, as a matter of fact. Did Annalee do something to someone? Did she hurt someone; kill them for their eyes? Oh, God, anything but that, anything but that. Annalee had her problems but surely she knew enough not to hurt another person.
Although there was that woman she beat in the hospital, just before Annalee was sent to Dogwood Hills. But Annalee was under the influence of some seriously bad psychotic medicines then that that quack doctor had pumped her full of. A whole cocktail of pills, enough for several huge men, they told her. Shari made sure that quack lost his license, but not before Annalee was questioned by the police, who didn't understand the situation, didn’t understand Annalee. They had threatened to send her to jail, amongst truly evil people who didn’t mind taking advantage of people like Annalee. It had taken Shari and Dr. Montrose, an old family friend who was retired, to get Annalee out of police custody and back to Dogwood Hills. Shari never wanted her sister in a situation like that again, it had taken years for Annalee to get over it, and she was still frightened of policemen. But what if Annalee had done something really bad? Where can a woman like Annalee get eyes without hurting someone to get them? Shari shook her head with a frighteningly silly laugh. Who would be giving eyeballs away anyway? Who would want them, as a matter of fact?
The questions and haunting memories, terrifying scenarios and disgusting scenes pummeled Shari until the brandy and warm air put her into a deep and welcoming sleep without dreams.
Annalee opened the door at the third knock. She had been washing the same dish and glass over and over, as the rest of the tiny apartment was spotless. She didn't want to stop cleaning, and it was so much fun pretending that a visitor was using the dish and glass. When Annalee was aware someone was at her door she was excited, maybe someone had come to visit her!
The visitor, however, turned out to be Teddy. Teddy was not a nice man. Teddy was mean and made her do things she was pretty sure weren't nice, things that hurt. She scowled at him and tried to shut the door. He grunted and easily shoved it back open, knocking her to the worn faded carpet. He towered over her, would have even if she had been standing. His scars and tattoos and dirty clothes did nothing to detract from his overly muscular frame and deep burnt coffee skin. From the open door behind him a cacophony of noise from a block party down the street filled the apartment.
"Annalee, did you take somethin you shouldn’t have? Did you, girl?" Teddy grumbled through shining white teeth. His teeth were the whitest Annalee had ever seen, and the cleanest. Teddy took very good care of his teeth, even if his clothing was stinky and old.
"No, Teddy. I was washing my dishes. Would you like to visit me?" Annalee held out the invitation in hopes that just once Teddy would smile with his pretty teeth and sit down at the tiny dinette set Shari had found for her, and cross his arms on the table while she made tea and set out little sugar cookies bought at the seven eleven down the street. Teddy didn't smile, and he didn't sit at the table, though he did shut and lock the door. With his immense stature and menacing air Annalee was sure that Teddy was not going to smile and sit and chat.
"Now Annalee, you gonna hafta tell me the truth, girl, did you take somethin or not?" Teddy took a step closer, bringing him almost on top of her.
"I don't know, Teddy, what are you looking for? I don't think I took anything at all. I don't steal. You know that," Annalee said clearly and simply. She could vaguely sense a strange memory tickling the edges of her mind, like a shadow's ghost, but she didn’t really pay much attention. She had tried in the past to track down another such psuedo-memory and it landed her in that horrible place with the woman who pissed all over herself on a daily basis just to make the nurse mad, and the man who tried to attack her, that was very bad. If she ignored the memory it would fade away completely.
By the look on Teddy's face, though, she thought maybe just once she should try to remember, because he looked very, very mad. He bent over with a grunt and took her thin arm in his beefy hand, yanking her to her feet. She was tempted to smile and giggle because it felt a little bit like a ride at the carnival with the cotton candy and the strange animals that Shari said were really just big rats with extra stuff glued to them, not aliens or mutants, but boy it sure was fun to pretend-
"Annalee! Listen to me! You gonna go too far one a these days, I fuckin swear. You sure you didn’t take nothin?" Teddy shook her, hard. Hard enough to make her teeth crack against each other and her head to hurt.
Annalee couldn't help the tears that slid down her perfect cheeks, couldn't stop the whimpers coming out of her mouth. Teddy hated crying, and hated whimpering even more.
"Dammit, bitch, don't start that baby shit again. Remember the las time you pulled that cryin shit? Huh?"
"I didn't mean to, Teddy, I swear! You shook me so hard…"
"You weren't payin attention like you should. You better stop that shit right now!" He removed the hand from her arm and reached down to his prodigious waistline, to his belt.
"Please, Teddy, please!" Annalee sobbed. The hot tears and anxious cries flooded out of her as if trying to escape what was sure to come. "I can't stop, not if you're going to be mean to me! Please, please just come have some tea and sugar cookies with me, I'll stop I promise."
"I done told you before that's faggot shit, tea and cookies, what the fuck? I think you need a reason to cry bitch, I think I'm gonna give it to you." Teddy ripped the belt out of the few remaining loops on his dirty jeans and doubled it over on itself, making it pop with obvious pleasure. Annalee fell back to the floor and held out one trembling hand.
"Teddy, don't! No, Teddy, no! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she cried. Her piteous wails echoed in the cramped space, floated out through the thin walls so that the hookers on the corner shook their heads and told each other she should just shut up. Soon her voice was joined by the sounds of a leather belt hitting flesh, but only briefly. After three or four loud cracks a low rumble could be heard, much like an angry grizzly.
One of the more seasoned prostitutes, Vicky, also happened to know Teddy quite well, since she 'worked' for him. She was tall and overly thin from drug use, wrinkled and stained beyond her years. Vicky was sharing her corner with a younger woman, who commented that it was a good thing the noises stopped.
"No, honey, not for that girl. When things get quiet like that's when the worst starts up, for her anyways. Let's move on, I don't wanna be here when he gets done with her, might decide we need some punishment too," Vicky replied with a hint of pity in her voice. The two prostitutes walked away, leaving the corner next to the apartment full of silent agony.
Annalee should have been mad at Teddy for doing it to her again, but she thought maybe she deserved it. She could still remember the first time he did it. She had just moved into the ratty apartment, and he had come over 'to meet the new neighbor.' Annalee had thought he was very nice to want to be friends with her. But he hadn't wanted to be just friends. He wanted her to work for him, do things with men for money. Annalee had no idea what he meant. When he realized there was something wrong with her mind, that though a grown woman she was still a virgin he decided to teach her what he meant.
He had touched her breasts, squeezed her firm C cups until they bruised. She was sure he shouldn't have been touching her like that, and tried to hit him. That only pissed him off worse. He hit her in the head hard enough to make the world spin and knock her to the ground. Teddy yelled at her to shut up and be still, so she did as she was told. She didn't want to be hit again.
Teddy tore her one really nice blouse off her body, then her bra. Her breasts swung delicately like virgin breasts tend to. Teddy grinned and nipped at them with his teeth, grinding the nipples and crushing them. She had horrible purplish-black bruises all around her breasts and nipples after that. The whole time he was playing with her tits he was taking her pants off, stripping her down to nothing. He pulled at the thick patch of soft, downy pubic hair covering her pussy before reaching a finger inside the uncharted lips. He told her she was wet and held out his finger for her to see. He made her lick it.
Then Teddy did something that truly terrified her. He sat up and unzipped his jeans, releasing a monstrous thing. He told her it was his cock, and she was made to serve it. She tried again to speak out when he lowered himself back over her, touched her thigh with the huge thing. He shushed her, told her she was being bad and had to be punished for it, had to be taught. That's when he shoved it inside her special place, making her bleed and hurting her. It was the first of many rapes, mostly done because she didn't do something right or say the right thing. Annalee thought he just liked doing it to her because she couldn't stop him. He told her that's what his friends did for him, and she liked having friends. Strangely enough when she told her other friend Vicky about it Vicky had only hugged her like she felt sorry for Annalee.
The pain wasn't too bad if she didn't struggle, and on one occasion it actually started to feel good. Of course, when Teddy saw that on her transparent face he stopped, and found a new way to make it hurt. A way that made it hurt for days afterward in another pace, and made it so she couldn't poop without screaming. After that she tried hard to keep from showing any pleasure at all, even though she never truly felt it again. It never occurred to Annalee to find some other man to try it with, try to feel good all over, not have to be in pain and miserably ashamed for the episode.
This time Teddy seemed to be especially made at her. With every powerfully reckless thrust she had to bite back the cries. Making noise only made it worse, it made him angrier. And tonight it was clear she could not afford to make him any angrier. He always did it perfectly silent, always, and he never kissed her. Occasionally he would do it with his fingers, trying to shove as many into her as he could. That seemed to hurt more than when he used his dick, maybe because of the way he moved his fingers in her, reaching and poking and scratching. One time he managed to get his entire hand in her, closed it in a fist and tried to pump it roughly but she had started bleeding. It had scared him so badly he dropped her off at the emergency room, but she was scared of being put back in That Place, and skulked away with her legs clamped as tight as she could keep them. The next day she was feverish and still bleeding a little. Annalee wasn't sure how long she had bled but it was a long time and several times she thought she was going to die from the pain, fever, and bleeding. If Vicky hadn't brought her some little white pills she probably would have died. Teddy hadn't come back for a long time after that.
Suddenly Teddy broke the silence.
"You sure you didn't take nothin?" His words shocked her.
"Ye-yes, I'm sure Teddy," she replied quietly.
He continued pumping with deeper intensity, thinking over her answer. All of a sudden he stopped and pulled out of her. She thought she was saved for a split second, but then he flipped her over and was between her legs before she could close them.
"You better not be lyin to me, or I won't even spit on it before I dig in. And I don't think I'll be done for a long while, little girl." He murmured in his gravelly voice, his sour breath streaming over her face, making her gag.
She wondered how his teeth could be so nice and his breath so rancid. She also wondered if she could die from it. It hurt so badly the last time he did this to her. She felt him push against her ass with enough force to open her a fraction. The pain was exquisite, blinding, choking her breath and bringing fresh moisture to her eyes. She bit her lip, tasting salty hot blood.
"You lyin?" Another small push against her tightly shut opening, another fraction opened for him to take if he chose to. "I hope for your sake you ain't lyin about them eyes, bitch." A harder push and his swollen head was inside her, causing her to grasp the tangled sheets beneath her and spit red tinted saliva.
She tried not to move or breath; couldn't do anything to stop him but wouldn't do anything to help him either. Oddly enough he wasn't moving. As Annalee tried to block the pain his penis was causing she had a moment of clarity, of remembrance.
"Did you say…eyes?" She whispered.
Teddy jerked, surprised at her meek query with its undertones of pure understanding. For once she seemed to comprehend something. Unfortunately when he jerked he inadvertently shoved another inch of his massive cock into her ass, and he felt her quietly pass out beneath him. He groaned in frustration. Just as he seemed on the verge of getting useful information out of her she blacks out.
"Fuck!" He forced himself in all the way, not caring if he was hurting her or not. She couldn't feel anything anyway, she was out cold, and he was so hard, so pissed. If he couldn't get what he wanted, he would at least finish getting off. All it took was a few more fast thrusts lubed by blood and sweat and he was done. He pulled out and stood, panting heavily and so tired. His ten-inch cock was painted red, as were Annalee's thighs and ass. The bed sheets beneath her were soaking wet and stunk like piss. Her bladder must have let go just before she passed out. He grinned when he saw her asshole, still gaping and raw, resembling an open mouth ready to gobble him right up. His dick was already starting to go soft, but that didn't mean he couldn't have some fun…
Shari woke with a start, visions of disembodied eyes taunting her, stalking her every move. In her dreams she realized the only way to stop them was to eat them. She grimaced at the memory of the dream eyes popping like ripe grapes in her mouth, tasting faintly like sweet berries dipped in rotten milk.
The glass on her coffee table still contained a swig or two of brandy, which she slammed down in a gulp, trying to use the burning liquid to erase the horrible thoughts still in her head. Her temples pounded, her neck was aching and her whole body felt abused from the tiring day that ended on such a terrifying and strangely sad note. She still had no answers as to where Annalee got the eyes, or even why for that matter.
Shari stood and stretched long and hard, feeling and hearing bones crack and tendons groan. She wasn't drunk and she wasn't sober, but she was sure she could drive to Annalee's apartments for answers. Shari didn’t look forward to driving through the part of town that Annalee lived in. Hookers and drug dealers were a natural part of the nightscape, as were the occasional drive-by shootings and dark alley knifings. Annalee never said anything bad had happened to her, and Shari had made sure when her sister moved into the apartment that there were strong locks on the doors. It never occurred to Shari that Annalee might not use them, though. Surely even Annalee knew that bad things thrived in the dark, bad things that liked best to prey on women like Annalee.
Shari wished she could have arranged for a better place for her sister, but after the Dogwood Hills debacle she was tapped for money, and her ex husband Robert sure as hell wasn't going to help support Annalee. Robert had once said the Annalee needed to be put in the state run facility downstate, where only the poorest families let their damaged loved ones go to live on the state's dollar. Where the criminally insane were sent to be 'cured,' whatever that meant. Annalee could live on her own; she just needed a little help, a boost now and then. Shari was uncomfortably aware that her own beloved sister didn't live with her and her son Dusty in their three bedroom brick home, the leftovers of the divorce. Shari told herself that Annalee needed to be on her own, needed the freedom and responsibility to live a more full life, not that Shari was uneasy with her sister doing something crazy around Dusty, maybe even accidentally hurting Dusty again. It was too shameful to admit that, too horrible.
Shari grabbed up the car keys and a different coat, a jacket that didn't have eyeball juice in the pocket, and ran out the door in search of answers.
Annalee woke slowly, a horrible combination of throbbing and piercing waves of pain radiating from her ass. She moaned low in her throat, wishing she could go back to wherever it was she went to before. Teddy couldn't reach her there with his nice white teeth and fleshy sword that stung so. She could be still and happy, at peace in the all-engulfing darkness that surrounded and protected her.
Teddy was sitting in the old cane chair in the corner, on top of her clean clothes laid out for in case she decided to go somewhere tomorrow. She had thought she would find her way back to that park she and Shari had gone to today, see if maybe the children with their happy ways would be there for her to watch. Thanks to Teddy she would not be walking very far in the near future.
"You listenin, bitch?" Teddy's voice rose up out of the shadows like a menacing spirit incapable of violence but more than ready to call it in like a foxhound baying for blood red hunters. "You said somethin about eyes 'fore you blacked out. What was it?"
Annalee groaned again and thought hard. Yes, the eyes. Shari's gift.
"I found them this morning. Early. I was walking before the sun came up; it is so nice at that time of the morning. I was hoping to see a pretty bird or a kitty I could take home with me, and when I went down the alley behind Spanky's I saw a man behind a trashcan. I thought he was sleeping," she said in a quiet voice. She didn't want to talk too loud, it might make him mad.
"Go on, 'less you want some more a this," Teddy growled. He was holding his cock in his hand, and it was thirsting.
"Ok, ok, I saw him there and he wouldn't wake up. He looked broken, and I knew he was in heaven. He didn't need his eyes, besides they were on the ground. Something had pulled them out. They were so pretty, they reminded me…" she said.
Teddy leaned forward, still gripping his dick. He looked thoughtful, not angry, which was encouraging in a way.
"And you never saw no one around, right?"
She shook her head and was still. Shaking made it hurt worse, made her feel like passing out again. She ventured a hand back to feel the area, something wasn't right. The pain should have been bad but not this bad, not for so long after.
"Ok, I guess it don't hurt nothin that you took em. Dammit, girl, you are one kind of twisted ain't ya?" Teddy was relaxing now, leaning back into the chair, and slowly stroking his long shaft absentmindedly.
Despite the pain her movements were causing her Annalee continued to reach until she felt what should have been her asshole. To her horror and disbelief her fingers touched a sharp point, two sharp points.
"Question is, sweet darlin, what'd ya do with em?" His voice resonated in her mind.
She reached further in and found a smooth metal rod coming out of her ass, several smooth rods. In a flash she comprehended exactly what was still embedded in her - her set of cheap kitchen utensils she found at a Salvation Army store. A meat fork, ladle, and spoon. He had raped her with her cooking utensils. Annalee grasped the utensils and pulled, jerking them out with a faint pop and a searing agony of fresh pain, probably fresh blood too. The magnitude of what had happened seemed to chase all other thoughts out her head, leaving a blind panic blended with a healthy dose of unconscionable rage.
"You don't wanna look at me like that, you stupid cunt," Teddy said as she stared at him. The blank look on her face was unlike anything he had ever seen on her before. Her emotions were always there for the world to read, always. Annalee was hands-down the dumbest bitch Teddy knew. This was unnerving though, and nothing made Teddy nervous outside of the missing eyes on Roy Hanson.
Roy had owed Teddy a couple of thousand for three months, and was in need of some serious punishment. After all the excuses and bargains and promises, Roy had let him down big time. It was bad enough the police would be all over Teddy soon if they were worth half a damn. Thanks to Roy's fragility under a beating Teddy was never gonna see that money.
"You….bastard," Annalee whispered. Her voice was steady, a black musical cobra that promised poison, pain, death.
Teddy's eyes widened in shock. This was the first time she had ever dared to speak back, fight back. In all honesty it was little scary. Scarier still was the way her body flexed and coiled like a snake ready to strike. He raised his hands before him, letting his suddenly limp cock swing freely.
Shari thrummed her fingers on the black leather steering wheel, waiting anxiously for the damn red light to turn green. The corner she was stopped at was notorious for hookers and dealers, and she didn't want to have to deal with any of them. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dim shape of a woman wearing very little approaching her car. Shari turned and recognized Vicky, one of the only people Annalee had made friends with. The older black woman was surprisingly nice to her sister. Maybe she had seen too many bad things in her life to be mean to the mentally incapable Annalee. Vicky tapped on the window. Shari rolled it down a few inches and offered the hooker a smile.
"Hi, Vicky, how are you?" In her head Shari was praying for the light to change, she had to get to Annalee.
"Hey Shari, you going to see Annalee?" The prostitute hugged her arms closer; it was a frigid night and she was freezing. Business was so slow she was thinking about calling it an early night, Teddy be damned.
"Yeah, is she ok?" Concern and worry sprang up stronger than before.
"I don't know, Shari. Teddy is over there now. It might not be safe for either of you to go there right now." Vicky's voice was tired but nonetheless frightening with its sorrowful worry.
"Oh, God. You mean…"
"Yeah, sugar, that Teddy."
"Thanks Vicky," Shari said as she punched the accelerator and sped across the intersection, red light be damned. She could faintly hear Vicky shouting something to her as she raced on towards the apartment complex.
Annalee had told her about this Teddy that sometimes came over and harassed her. She would never tell Shari just what it was that bothered her so much about Teddy, but from the secretive and shameful looks in her sister's eyes it couldn't be good. Unfortunately Shari couldn't do anything about it, when she called the police the cops had looked at both sisters like they were crazy and told Shari not to bother them with a retard's nightmares again. Damn them.
Shari skid into the driveway and jumped out of the car with the engine still running. If she could she was going to yank Annalee out of the apartment and hope that Teddy wouldn't be able to get to them before they got away. She tried to open the door; it was locked. In desperation Shari stepped back and whaled into the old peeling door with her booted foot. The door was so weak it popped open and bounced in the frame, narrowly missing Shari's nose as she ran through. She could see in an instant that there was no one in the living room. From the bedroom came a loud crash like something falling over. Shari was through the bedroom door in two steps.
A dead black man was sprawled out on the floor with a meat fork buried in his eye. Multiple wounds crossed his face, hands, and upper body. The room reeked of shit and sweat, and her sister was calmly standing in the middle of it all, naked from the waist down. Her hands were dripping crimson, the same color as the blood dripping from her swollen crotch, streaked down her thighs. Deep bruises were already appearing on her belly, legs, and upper arms. Many of them were clearly defined handprints.
"Dear Lord, Annalee, are you ok?" Shari stepped over the body and held her sister in a fierce hug.
Annalee gasped in her ear and stiffened, causing Shari to let go.
"I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to hurt you. Please say something, Annalee, are you alright?" Shari's voice was hushed and heavy with impending hysteria.
"I'm going to be ok, Shari. He hurt me. He hurt me bad. Please don't make me talk about it," Annalee whispered.
Shari gazed into her sister's face. Annalee looked…like someone in pain but otherwise fine. No panic or extreme anything. Shari felt sure that whatever had happened to Annalee, and she was pretty sure it was rape, that she herself would have been off her head over it. Then again, there was a dead man in the room, so Annalee must have been fairly emotional at least long enough to kill him.
"Shari, I want a shower. I stink," Annalee said simply. She didn't acknowledge the dead pimp on her floor.
Shari guided her sister to the stained bed and made her sit down.
"Annalee, you can't do that just yet. We're going to have to call the police baby, they have to come and take this…man away. He hurt you very badly, and you need to see a doctor. They need you to be just like this so they can tell exactly what happened, ok?" Shari cringed inwardly at the response the word 'doctor' caused in Annalee, the withdrawal further into herself. Annalee's liquid eyes slowly faded as though looking inward.
"Please, baby, you have to go, just for tonight. I swear on my life that I won't let them take you to the bad place, to Dogwood. Can you hear me?" Shari saw with despair that Annalee had finally shut down entirely. Where Teddy couldn't reach her, where the doctors and nurses and bad people couldn't reach her.
Annalee's eyes were open as her sister reached the police on her sleek little cell phone, but she wasn't really watching. Men came and looked over the room and took pictures, and someone wrapped her in a blanket and put her on a soft white bed on wheels. They took her outside into the frigid air and lowered the bed to the ground. As they were picking it up to put her inside a big vehicle with flashing lights Vicky's face peered over her, larger than the full moon, telling her something in a comforting and strangely happy voice. But Annalee wasn't really listening either, because she was where no one could ever hurt her again, and she didn't think she would ever leave. Ever.
Six years later Shari still wondered what had happened that day and night. She knew some of the facts surrounding the dead man, probabilities on what had happened and why from the testimonies of Vicky and the other hooker. There were no charges filed against Annalee, but it didn't help her mental state. Annalee never really woke up. Annalee wouldn't respond to anything around her, couldn't respond. The doctors held out very little hope for her.
Shari would probably never find out what was going on with the eyes that Annalee had given her. The more she thought about them the more confused she was. The only thing about those eyes that made anything close to sense was the fact that they were the exact same shade of brown as Dusty's eyes. Thinking about it all reminded Shari of a time when Dusty was just four years old, and Annalee had been over to the house. Shari was ironing clothes and had wire hangers sitting in a basket near the ironing board. Annalee had grabbed one and was pretending to be Captain Hook to Dusty's Peter Pan, and before Shari could say or do anything Dusty accidently fell on the hanger in Annalee's hand. His right eye was scratched badly, but like most children he healed perfectly well. For some reason Annalee never really understood that he had healed fine, that children held an amazing capacity for bouncing back from accidents. Her sister was always haunted by that accident, especially during his recovery when the eye drops given to him by the doctor made his eye appear cloudy. The memory of Annalee's gentle concern and fragile apologies brought tears to her eyes.
Oh well, that was all in the past. From what the doctors kept telling her Shari was certain that her sister would die without ever being able to tell her the truth, but more importantly without giving Shari the chance to know Annalee hears her when she says 'I love you.'
Thank you -postobitum
Sweet Annalee
The russet eyes calmly stared, unperturbed and docile. Shari didn’t know what to do, couldn't think or even breathe properly. Those beautifully tragic eyes…she thought they could gaze into her soul and pick it to pieces, dissect it to bits without her being aware of it. The whites were perfect, almost too perfect. Cleanly bleached bone brushed with snow couldn't be so unpolluted, pristine. The illusion of perfection was marred only by the ragged burgundy nerves and connective tissues, shredded muscle that clung hopelessly to the each tidy orb.
"Why?" Her clear voice belied the panic seizing her chest.
"Why?" Confusion. Vacant misunderstanding.
"Yes, Annalee, why?" Shari fought to keep her breathing steady, though her heart was surely going to pound right out of her chest at any moment. In the silence that followed, the uncertain stillness, Shari casually looked to her left. Just a few yards away a group of toddlers awkwardly played in a sand box, their uncoordinated movements insistent and precious. A single dowdy woman in an outdated down jacket half-heartedly watched over the children. She looked as though she would like to stand up and leave the little boys and girls without a backward glance. She looked as though she would like to leave her life altogether. Maybe she too had shattered expectations lining her unfashionable pockets.
"Shari, are you ignoring me?" Annalee meekly asked. Her thinly elegant lips quavered ever so slightly.
Shari focused on the tiny chocolate tinted beauty mark gracing her sister's delicate unpainted cheek.
"No, Annalee, I'm not ignoring you. I am waiting for an answer, though. I need to know why you have those," Shari said, gesturing briefly to the glistening eyes in Annalee's gloved palm. To draw attention to the bizarre offering would be disastrous, unthinkably so.
"I took them for you, Shari. Don't you like them?" Annalee's gentle cobalt eyes looked troubled. She couldn't understand, would never understand.
"Annalee, there're…. very pretty. Beautiful even. But honey, you can't- it's not safe to give this lovely… gift to me here. Other people won't understand, they would think bad things," Shari said, taking her sister's arm with as little urgency as possible, guiding her to a more secluded area near a small stand of coniferous trees.
Annalee did not resist Shari's bird like grasp, following her as naturally as a child follows the ice cream truck. When the two women were partially concealed by the fragrant verdant branches she looked into her palm for the first time and sighed.
"Did I do something bad, Shari?" Annalee thought the eyes very nice. They reminded her of Shari's son Dusty, before the awful accident that ruined his eye.
"Honey, I don’t know if you did anything wrong at all. Just tell me where you found them, ok?" Shari was scared, terrified. This was by far the worst stunt yet. Annalee was…out of control, beyond any control that Shari could exert for long.
"I found them, Shari, I just found them. I really don’t remember where." Annalee continued to contemplate the eyes lying in her hand, looking into infinity without comment.
Shari sighed deeply, struggling to control the impulse to strike Annalee, pound comprehension into her misfiring mind. Instead Shari smoothed a small bare hand over her gleaming hazelnut hair and cleared her throat.
"Annalee, I need you to think. Take your time if you need to. I really want to know where you found them," she said soothingly.
Annalee began to look more than troubled. From the expression on her porcelain features it seemed Annalee was on the verge of a breakdown. A breakdown in a crowded park! Shari quickly kissed the little mole, patted her sibling's narrowly graceful shoulder and looked into the lowered gaze.
"Never mind, sweetie. I think they are gorgeous. Here, I'll take them and put them in my jewelry box at home, where I keep all my most favorite gifts. Ok?" She gritted her teeth to keep cries of disgust and fear at bay when the two vagrants were placed in her hand. They were tacky, as though not too long ago they were nice and juicy, and were being dried in the chilly wind like winter raisins. Shari quickly but smoothly transferred them to her coat pocket, being careful not to crush them in her hand or in the pocket. She wasn't sure she would be able to keep her composure if they were to burst open while in her immediate possession.
Annalee impulsively drew her shorter sister to her in a tight embrace. She was so pleased that Shari liked the present. It never even occurred to her to wonder why Shari was concerned with where Annalee got them, in fact the memory of any concern on Shari's part was soon nothing but an uncomfortable vapor blowing away.
Annalee was aware of the sounds of small children playing, children a few years younger than little Dusty, her favorite nephew, her only nephew. The need to watch such funny young things drove all unease from her completely, leaving nothing but a gleeful pleasure. She clutched Shari's hand and tugged her in the direction of the frolicking children.
"Come on, Shari! I want to watch the babies play!" With delight and simple childish pleasure Annalee watched the sand box kids for almost hour. The drab babysitter in charge of the small brood sensed a wrongness surrounding the strangely childlike woman with her clean but old and faded jeans and slightly ragged sweater, her long attractively unkempt silver ash hair and uncomplicated smile sitting so happily next to the smaller woman. It was the other lady, with her brooding cloud of worry and hopelessness veiling her lovely flannel eyes that at first glance should have concerned the caretaker, but with a second peek it became clear that the deepening sense of wrong and… dangerously good intent that scared her emanated from the happy one. She gathered her innocents to her like a mother hen counting her chicks and led them out of the park, trying not to break into a run.
As she reached the edge of the large children's playground and pulled the protesting kids past the alluring duck pond she felt like she had just barely escaped a danger that couldn't be seen or heard but would surely have destroyed her, and she shuddered.
Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. Shari still couldn't reach into her pocket or even take her coat off. The faint solidity she could feel through the lining was enough to render her will down to the consistency of melted wax. She has already taken Annalee back to the tiny one bedroom apartment in the bad part of town, with the admonishment to stay inside for the rest of today, do some housecleaning, anything to stay out of trouble. More trouble.
Shari dropped her keys unceremoniously amidst the clutter of her son's drawings from school; bills opened and unopened, ad circulars and the everyday junk of living covering the top of her small kitchen table. She was glad her son was already at his father's for the weekend, the need to act normal for his sake might be too much for her at the moment. Those damn eyes were still in her pocket and she had to get rid of them somehow. What the hell had Annalee been thinking?
She wandered over to the gleaming stainless steel sink and tentatively slid her right hand into the coat pocket containing the macabre gift. Eyes squeezed shut and teeth clenched she found the eyes with her fingertips; they were like two freezing sticky suckers covered in a thin film of jell-o. As her hand carefully closed on the eyes she fought back the overwhelming urge to throw up in the sink. Instead she flung the eyes into the sink and turned on the water, scrubbing her hands under the burning water until they were bright red and throbbing. The two eyes lay on the rubber opening of the garbage disposal, one looking down into the blades, the other casually looking up at Shari.
She turned the water on again and poked the eyes down the drain into the disposal. They didn't seem to be too substantial; from the sound of it the disposal ground them to nothing without any effort. As she rinsed the sink she could feel that one beautifully brown displaced eye watching her. It seemed to have known it's fate, known it was bound for destruction and oddly enough was at peace with the end. The other one, well, it was watching the blades when she flipped the switch, so perhaps death was not as innocent for that one as it felt the force of the water and Shari's determination push it into the whirling, chewing blades. Shari laughed as she shut the water off and stood looking down into the black depths of the sink.
"Now I'm feeling sorry for a pair of dead eyes? Like they really knew what was happening. Jesus, I'm the one losing it now," Shari said into the empty air. A deep breathe and a deeper glass of brandy would be just the thing to help her relax and think over this afternoon's weirdness.
Coat off, glass of brandy refracting light in hand, and Ella Fitzgerald filling the emptiness of the living room did help Shari feel calmer. She rested her head against the back of the soft and amazingly child resistant couch cushions, letting the music wash over and around her, the brandy warming her insides, giving her enough fuzziness to feel almost pleasant.
"Where did you get the eyes, Annalee?" Shari whispered. It was inconceivable that someone just handed them to her sister, or sold them to her at the pharmacy like a pair of condoms. She knew her sister sometimes went to the hospital to talk to some of the nurses on the psych ward. It wasn't an everyday thing and not something the nurses always appreciated since the people in that part of the hospital were more often than not emergency cases, and yet undiagnosed or waiting for transfer to better equipped and less temporary facilities. Maybe Annalee took a little side trip through some other parts of the hospital, maybe to a room where autopsies were done. Maybe she had just stolen a jar with two eyes floating in preservative…maybe she thought they were pretty and unwanted.
But the eyes hadn't smelled like anything, and Shari remembered from her biology and anatomy and physiology classes in high school that the preservatives used for dead tissue stunk badly. Stunk to high heaven, as a matter of fact. Did Annalee do something to someone? Did she hurt someone; kill them for their eyes? Oh, God, anything but that, anything but that. Annalee had her problems but surely she knew enough not to hurt another person.
Although there was that woman she beat in the hospital, just before Annalee was sent to Dogwood Hills. But Annalee was under the influence of some seriously bad psychotic medicines then that that quack doctor had pumped her full of. A whole cocktail of pills, enough for several huge men, they told her. Shari made sure that quack lost his license, but not before Annalee was questioned by the police, who didn't understand the situation, didn’t understand Annalee. They had threatened to send her to jail, amongst truly evil people who didn’t mind taking advantage of people like Annalee. It had taken Shari and Dr. Montrose, an old family friend who was retired, to get Annalee out of police custody and back to Dogwood Hills. Shari never wanted her sister in a situation like that again, it had taken years for Annalee to get over it, and she was still frightened of policemen. But what if Annalee had done something really bad? Where can a woman like Annalee get eyes without hurting someone to get them? Shari shook her head with a frighteningly silly laugh. Who would be giving eyeballs away anyway? Who would want them, as a matter of fact?
The questions and haunting memories, terrifying scenarios and disgusting scenes pummeled Shari until the brandy and warm air put her into a deep and welcoming sleep without dreams.
Annalee opened the door at the third knock. She had been washing the same dish and glass over and over, as the rest of the tiny apartment was spotless. She didn't want to stop cleaning, and it was so much fun pretending that a visitor was using the dish and glass. When Annalee was aware someone was at her door she was excited, maybe someone had come to visit her!
The visitor, however, turned out to be Teddy. Teddy was not a nice man. Teddy was mean and made her do things she was pretty sure weren't nice, things that hurt. She scowled at him and tried to shut the door. He grunted and easily shoved it back open, knocking her to the worn faded carpet. He towered over her, would have even if she had been standing. His scars and tattoos and dirty clothes did nothing to detract from his overly muscular frame and deep burnt coffee skin. From the open door behind him a cacophony of noise from a block party down the street filled the apartment.
"Annalee, did you take somethin you shouldn’t have? Did you, girl?" Teddy grumbled through shining white teeth. His teeth were the whitest Annalee had ever seen, and the cleanest. Teddy took very good care of his teeth, even if his clothing was stinky and old.
"No, Teddy. I was washing my dishes. Would you like to visit me?" Annalee held out the invitation in hopes that just once Teddy would smile with his pretty teeth and sit down at the tiny dinette set Shari had found for her, and cross his arms on the table while she made tea and set out little sugar cookies bought at the seven eleven down the street. Teddy didn't smile, and he didn't sit at the table, though he did shut and lock the door. With his immense stature and menacing air Annalee was sure that Teddy was not going to smile and sit and chat.
"Now Annalee, you gonna hafta tell me the truth, girl, did you take somethin or not?" Teddy took a step closer, bringing him almost on top of her.
"I don't know, Teddy, what are you looking for? I don't think I took anything at all. I don't steal. You know that," Annalee said clearly and simply. She could vaguely sense a strange memory tickling the edges of her mind, like a shadow's ghost, but she didn’t really pay much attention. She had tried in the past to track down another such psuedo-memory and it landed her in that horrible place with the woman who pissed all over herself on a daily basis just to make the nurse mad, and the man who tried to attack her, that was very bad. If she ignored the memory it would fade away completely.
By the look on Teddy's face, though, she thought maybe just once she should try to remember, because he looked very, very mad. He bent over with a grunt and took her thin arm in his beefy hand, yanking her to her feet. She was tempted to smile and giggle because it felt a little bit like a ride at the carnival with the cotton candy and the strange animals that Shari said were really just big rats with extra stuff glued to them, not aliens or mutants, but boy it sure was fun to pretend-
"Annalee! Listen to me! You gonna go too far one a these days, I fuckin swear. You sure you didn’t take nothin?" Teddy shook her, hard. Hard enough to make her teeth crack against each other and her head to hurt.
Annalee couldn't help the tears that slid down her perfect cheeks, couldn't stop the whimpers coming out of her mouth. Teddy hated crying, and hated whimpering even more.
"Dammit, bitch, don't start that baby shit again. Remember the las time you pulled that cryin shit? Huh?"
"I didn't mean to, Teddy, I swear! You shook me so hard…"
"You weren't payin attention like you should. You better stop that shit right now!" He removed the hand from her arm and reached down to his prodigious waistline, to his belt.
"Please, Teddy, please!" Annalee sobbed. The hot tears and anxious cries flooded out of her as if trying to escape what was sure to come. "I can't stop, not if you're going to be mean to me! Please, please just come have some tea and sugar cookies with me, I'll stop I promise."
"I done told you before that's faggot shit, tea and cookies, what the fuck? I think you need a reason to cry bitch, I think I'm gonna give it to you." Teddy ripped the belt out of the few remaining loops on his dirty jeans and doubled it over on itself, making it pop with obvious pleasure. Annalee fell back to the floor and held out one trembling hand.
"Teddy, don't! No, Teddy, no! I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," she cried. Her piteous wails echoed in the cramped space, floated out through the thin walls so that the hookers on the corner shook their heads and told each other she should just shut up. Soon her voice was joined by the sounds of a leather belt hitting flesh, but only briefly. After three or four loud cracks a low rumble could be heard, much like an angry grizzly.
One of the more seasoned prostitutes, Vicky, also happened to know Teddy quite well, since she 'worked' for him. She was tall and overly thin from drug use, wrinkled and stained beyond her years. Vicky was sharing her corner with a younger woman, who commented that it was a good thing the noises stopped.
"No, honey, not for that girl. When things get quiet like that's when the worst starts up, for her anyways. Let's move on, I don't wanna be here when he gets done with her, might decide we need some punishment too," Vicky replied with a hint of pity in her voice. The two prostitutes walked away, leaving the corner next to the apartment full of silent agony.
Annalee should have been mad at Teddy for doing it to her again, but she thought maybe she deserved it. She could still remember the first time he did it. She had just moved into the ratty apartment, and he had come over 'to meet the new neighbor.' Annalee had thought he was very nice to want to be friends with her. But he hadn't wanted to be just friends. He wanted her to work for him, do things with men for money. Annalee had no idea what he meant. When he realized there was something wrong with her mind, that though a grown woman she was still a virgin he decided to teach her what he meant.
He had touched her breasts, squeezed her firm C cups until they bruised. She was sure he shouldn't have been touching her like that, and tried to hit him. That only pissed him off worse. He hit her in the head hard enough to make the world spin and knock her to the ground. Teddy yelled at her to shut up and be still, so she did as she was told. She didn't want to be hit again.
Teddy tore her one really nice blouse off her body, then her bra. Her breasts swung delicately like virgin breasts tend to. Teddy grinned and nipped at them with his teeth, grinding the nipples and crushing them. She had horrible purplish-black bruises all around her breasts and nipples after that. The whole time he was playing with her tits he was taking her pants off, stripping her down to nothing. He pulled at the thick patch of soft, downy pubic hair covering her pussy before reaching a finger inside the uncharted lips. He told her she was wet and held out his finger for her to see. He made her lick it.
Then Teddy did something that truly terrified her. He sat up and unzipped his jeans, releasing a monstrous thing. He told her it was his cock, and she was made to serve it. She tried again to speak out when he lowered himself back over her, touched her thigh with the huge thing. He shushed her, told her she was being bad and had to be punished for it, had to be taught. That's when he shoved it inside her special place, making her bleed and hurting her. It was the first of many rapes, mostly done because she didn't do something right or say the right thing. Annalee thought he just liked doing it to her because she couldn't stop him. He told her that's what his friends did for him, and she liked having friends. Strangely enough when she told her other friend Vicky about it Vicky had only hugged her like she felt sorry for Annalee.
The pain wasn't too bad if she didn't struggle, and on one occasion it actually started to feel good. Of course, when Teddy saw that on her transparent face he stopped, and found a new way to make it hurt. A way that made it hurt for days afterward in another pace, and made it so she couldn't poop without screaming. After that she tried hard to keep from showing any pleasure at all, even though she never truly felt it again. It never occurred to Annalee to find some other man to try it with, try to feel good all over, not have to be in pain and miserably ashamed for the episode.
This time Teddy seemed to be especially made at her. With every powerfully reckless thrust she had to bite back the cries. Making noise only made it worse, it made him angrier. And tonight it was clear she could not afford to make him any angrier. He always did it perfectly silent, always, and he never kissed her. Occasionally he would do it with his fingers, trying to shove as many into her as he could. That seemed to hurt more than when he used his dick, maybe because of the way he moved his fingers in her, reaching and poking and scratching. One time he managed to get his entire hand in her, closed it in a fist and tried to pump it roughly but she had started bleeding. It had scared him so badly he dropped her off at the emergency room, but she was scared of being put back in That Place, and skulked away with her legs clamped as tight as she could keep them. The next day she was feverish and still bleeding a little. Annalee wasn't sure how long she had bled but it was a long time and several times she thought she was going to die from the pain, fever, and bleeding. If Vicky hadn't brought her some little white pills she probably would have died. Teddy hadn't come back for a long time after that.
Suddenly Teddy broke the silence.
"You sure you didn't take nothin?" His words shocked her.
"Ye-yes, I'm sure Teddy," she replied quietly.
He continued pumping with deeper intensity, thinking over her answer. All of a sudden he stopped and pulled out of her. She thought she was saved for a split second, but then he flipped her over and was between her legs before she could close them.
"You better not be lyin to me, or I won't even spit on it before I dig in. And I don't think I'll be done for a long while, little girl." He murmured in his gravelly voice, his sour breath streaming over her face, making her gag.
She wondered how his teeth could be so nice and his breath so rancid. She also wondered if she could die from it. It hurt so badly the last time he did this to her. She felt him push against her ass with enough force to open her a fraction. The pain was exquisite, blinding, choking her breath and bringing fresh moisture to her eyes. She bit her lip, tasting salty hot blood.
"You lyin?" Another small push against her tightly shut opening, another fraction opened for him to take if he chose to. "I hope for your sake you ain't lyin about them eyes, bitch." A harder push and his swollen head was inside her, causing her to grasp the tangled sheets beneath her and spit red tinted saliva.
She tried not to move or breath; couldn't do anything to stop him but wouldn't do anything to help him either. Oddly enough he wasn't moving. As Annalee tried to block the pain his penis was causing she had a moment of clarity, of remembrance.
"Did you say…eyes?" She whispered.
Teddy jerked, surprised at her meek query with its undertones of pure understanding. For once she seemed to comprehend something. Unfortunately when he jerked he inadvertently shoved another inch of his massive cock into her ass, and he felt her quietly pass out beneath him. He groaned in frustration. Just as he seemed on the verge of getting useful information out of her she blacks out.
"Fuck!" He forced himself in all the way, not caring if he was hurting her or not. She couldn't feel anything anyway, she was out cold, and he was so hard, so pissed. If he couldn't get what he wanted, he would at least finish getting off. All it took was a few more fast thrusts lubed by blood and sweat and he was done. He pulled out and stood, panting heavily and so tired. His ten-inch cock was painted red, as were Annalee's thighs and ass. The bed sheets beneath her were soaking wet and stunk like piss. Her bladder must have let go just before she passed out. He grinned when he saw her asshole, still gaping and raw, resembling an open mouth ready to gobble him right up. His dick was already starting to go soft, but that didn't mean he couldn't have some fun…
Shari woke with a start, visions of disembodied eyes taunting her, stalking her every move. In her dreams she realized the only way to stop them was to eat them. She grimaced at the memory of the dream eyes popping like ripe grapes in her mouth, tasting faintly like sweet berries dipped in rotten milk.
The glass on her coffee table still contained a swig or two of brandy, which she slammed down in a gulp, trying to use the burning liquid to erase the horrible thoughts still in her head. Her temples pounded, her neck was aching and her whole body felt abused from the tiring day that ended on such a terrifying and strangely sad note. She still had no answers as to where Annalee got the eyes, or even why for that matter.
Shari stood and stretched long and hard, feeling and hearing bones crack and tendons groan. She wasn't drunk and she wasn't sober, but she was sure she could drive to Annalee's apartments for answers. Shari didn’t look forward to driving through the part of town that Annalee lived in. Hookers and drug dealers were a natural part of the nightscape, as were the occasional drive-by shootings and dark alley knifings. Annalee never said anything bad had happened to her, and Shari had made sure when her sister moved into the apartment that there were strong locks on the doors. It never occurred to Shari that Annalee might not use them, though. Surely even Annalee knew that bad things thrived in the dark, bad things that liked best to prey on women like Annalee.
Shari wished she could have arranged for a better place for her sister, but after the Dogwood Hills debacle she was tapped for money, and her ex husband Robert sure as hell wasn't going to help support Annalee. Robert had once said the Annalee needed to be put in the state run facility downstate, where only the poorest families let their damaged loved ones go to live on the state's dollar. Where the criminally insane were sent to be 'cured,' whatever that meant. Annalee could live on her own; she just needed a little help, a boost now and then. Shari was uncomfortably aware that her own beloved sister didn't live with her and her son Dusty in their three bedroom brick home, the leftovers of the divorce. Shari told herself that Annalee needed to be on her own, needed the freedom and responsibility to live a more full life, not that Shari was uneasy with her sister doing something crazy around Dusty, maybe even accidentally hurting Dusty again. It was too shameful to admit that, too horrible.
Shari grabbed up the car keys and a different coat, a jacket that didn't have eyeball juice in the pocket, and ran out the door in search of answers.
Annalee woke slowly, a horrible combination of throbbing and piercing waves of pain radiating from her ass. She moaned low in her throat, wishing she could go back to wherever it was she went to before. Teddy couldn't reach her there with his nice white teeth and fleshy sword that stung so. She could be still and happy, at peace in the all-engulfing darkness that surrounded and protected her.
Teddy was sitting in the old cane chair in the corner, on top of her clean clothes laid out for in case she decided to go somewhere tomorrow. She had thought she would find her way back to that park she and Shari had gone to today, see if maybe the children with their happy ways would be there for her to watch. Thanks to Teddy she would not be walking very far in the near future.
"You listenin, bitch?" Teddy's voice rose up out of the shadows like a menacing spirit incapable of violence but more than ready to call it in like a foxhound baying for blood red hunters. "You said somethin about eyes 'fore you blacked out. What was it?"
Annalee groaned again and thought hard. Yes, the eyes. Shari's gift.
"I found them this morning. Early. I was walking before the sun came up; it is so nice at that time of the morning. I was hoping to see a pretty bird or a kitty I could take home with me, and when I went down the alley behind Spanky's I saw a man behind a trashcan. I thought he was sleeping," she said in a quiet voice. She didn't want to talk too loud, it might make him mad.
"Go on, 'less you want some more a this," Teddy growled. He was holding his cock in his hand, and it was thirsting.
"Ok, ok, I saw him there and he wouldn't wake up. He looked broken, and I knew he was in heaven. He didn't need his eyes, besides they were on the ground. Something had pulled them out. They were so pretty, they reminded me…" she said.
Teddy leaned forward, still gripping his dick. He looked thoughtful, not angry, which was encouraging in a way.
"And you never saw no one around, right?"
She shook her head and was still. Shaking made it hurt worse, made her feel like passing out again. She ventured a hand back to feel the area, something wasn't right. The pain should have been bad but not this bad, not for so long after.
"Ok, I guess it don't hurt nothin that you took em. Dammit, girl, you are one kind of twisted ain't ya?" Teddy was relaxing now, leaning back into the chair, and slowly stroking his long shaft absentmindedly.
Despite the pain her movements were causing her Annalee continued to reach until she felt what should have been her asshole. To her horror and disbelief her fingers touched a sharp point, two sharp points.
"Question is, sweet darlin, what'd ya do with em?" His voice resonated in her mind.
She reached further in and found a smooth metal rod coming out of her ass, several smooth rods. In a flash she comprehended exactly what was still embedded in her - her set of cheap kitchen utensils she found at a Salvation Army store. A meat fork, ladle, and spoon. He had raped her with her cooking utensils. Annalee grasped the utensils and pulled, jerking them out with a faint pop and a searing agony of fresh pain, probably fresh blood too. The magnitude of what had happened seemed to chase all other thoughts out her head, leaving a blind panic blended with a healthy dose of unconscionable rage.
"You don't wanna look at me like that, you stupid cunt," Teddy said as she stared at him. The blank look on her face was unlike anything he had ever seen on her before. Her emotions were always there for the world to read, always. Annalee was hands-down the dumbest bitch Teddy knew. This was unnerving though, and nothing made Teddy nervous outside of the missing eyes on Roy Hanson.
Roy had owed Teddy a couple of thousand for three months, and was in need of some serious punishment. After all the excuses and bargains and promises, Roy had let him down big time. It was bad enough the police would be all over Teddy soon if they were worth half a damn. Thanks to Roy's fragility under a beating Teddy was never gonna see that money.
"You….bastard," Annalee whispered. Her voice was steady, a black musical cobra that promised poison, pain, death.
Teddy's eyes widened in shock. This was the first time she had ever dared to speak back, fight back. In all honesty it was little scary. Scarier still was the way her body flexed and coiled like a snake ready to strike. He raised his hands before him, letting his suddenly limp cock swing freely.
Shari thrummed her fingers on the black leather steering wheel, waiting anxiously for the damn red light to turn green. The corner she was stopped at was notorious for hookers and dealers, and she didn't want to have to deal with any of them. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dim shape of a woman wearing very little approaching her car. Shari turned and recognized Vicky, one of the only people Annalee had made friends with. The older black woman was surprisingly nice to her sister. Maybe she had seen too many bad things in her life to be mean to the mentally incapable Annalee. Vicky tapped on the window. Shari rolled it down a few inches and offered the hooker a smile.
"Hi, Vicky, how are you?" In her head Shari was praying for the light to change, she had to get to Annalee.
"Hey Shari, you going to see Annalee?" The prostitute hugged her arms closer; it was a frigid night and she was freezing. Business was so slow she was thinking about calling it an early night, Teddy be damned.
"Yeah, is she ok?" Concern and worry sprang up stronger than before.
"I don't know, Shari. Teddy is over there now. It might not be safe for either of you to go there right now." Vicky's voice was tired but nonetheless frightening with its sorrowful worry.
"Oh, God. You mean…"
"Yeah, sugar, that Teddy."
"Thanks Vicky," Shari said as she punched the accelerator and sped across the intersection, red light be damned. She could faintly hear Vicky shouting something to her as she raced on towards the apartment complex.
Annalee had told her about this Teddy that sometimes came over and harassed her. She would never tell Shari just what it was that bothered her so much about Teddy, but from the secretive and shameful looks in her sister's eyes it couldn't be good. Unfortunately Shari couldn't do anything about it, when she called the police the cops had looked at both sisters like they were crazy and told Shari not to bother them with a retard's nightmares again. Damn them.
Shari skid into the driveway and jumped out of the car with the engine still running. If she could she was going to yank Annalee out of the apartment and hope that Teddy wouldn't be able to get to them before they got away. She tried to open the door; it was locked. In desperation Shari stepped back and whaled into the old peeling door with her booted foot. The door was so weak it popped open and bounced in the frame, narrowly missing Shari's nose as she ran through. She could see in an instant that there was no one in the living room. From the bedroom came a loud crash like something falling over. Shari was through the bedroom door in two steps.
A dead black man was sprawled out on the floor with a meat fork buried in his eye. Multiple wounds crossed his face, hands, and upper body. The room reeked of shit and sweat, and her sister was calmly standing in the middle of it all, naked from the waist down. Her hands were dripping crimson, the same color as the blood dripping from her swollen crotch, streaked down her thighs. Deep bruises were already appearing on her belly, legs, and upper arms. Many of them were clearly defined handprints.
"Dear Lord, Annalee, are you ok?" Shari stepped over the body and held her sister in a fierce hug.
Annalee gasped in her ear and stiffened, causing Shari to let go.
"I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to hurt you. Please say something, Annalee, are you alright?" Shari's voice was hushed and heavy with impending hysteria.
"I'm going to be ok, Shari. He hurt me. He hurt me bad. Please don't make me talk about it," Annalee whispered.
Shari gazed into her sister's face. Annalee looked…like someone in pain but otherwise fine. No panic or extreme anything. Shari felt sure that whatever had happened to Annalee, and she was pretty sure it was rape, that she herself would have been off her head over it. Then again, there was a dead man in the room, so Annalee must have been fairly emotional at least long enough to kill him.
"Shari, I want a shower. I stink," Annalee said simply. She didn't acknowledge the dead pimp on her floor.
Shari guided her sister to the stained bed and made her sit down.
"Annalee, you can't do that just yet. We're going to have to call the police baby, they have to come and take this…man away. He hurt you very badly, and you need to see a doctor. They need you to be just like this so they can tell exactly what happened, ok?" Shari cringed inwardly at the response the word 'doctor' caused in Annalee, the withdrawal further into herself. Annalee's liquid eyes slowly faded as though looking inward.
"Please, baby, you have to go, just for tonight. I swear on my life that I won't let them take you to the bad place, to Dogwood. Can you hear me?" Shari saw with despair that Annalee had finally shut down entirely. Where Teddy couldn't reach her, where the doctors and nurses and bad people couldn't reach her.
Annalee's eyes were open as her sister reached the police on her sleek little cell phone, but she wasn't really watching. Men came and looked over the room and took pictures, and someone wrapped her in a blanket and put her on a soft white bed on wheels. They took her outside into the frigid air and lowered the bed to the ground. As they were picking it up to put her inside a big vehicle with flashing lights Vicky's face peered over her, larger than the full moon, telling her something in a comforting and strangely happy voice. But Annalee wasn't really listening either, because she was where no one could ever hurt her again, and she didn't think she would ever leave. Ever.
Six years later Shari still wondered what had happened that day and night. She knew some of the facts surrounding the dead man, probabilities on what had happened and why from the testimonies of Vicky and the other hooker. There were no charges filed against Annalee, but it didn't help her mental state. Annalee never really woke up. Annalee wouldn't respond to anything around her, couldn't respond. The doctors held out very little hope for her.
Shari would probably never find out what was going on with the eyes that Annalee had given her. The more she thought about them the more confused she was. The only thing about those eyes that made anything close to sense was the fact that they were the exact same shade of brown as Dusty's eyes. Thinking about it all reminded Shari of a time when Dusty was just four years old, and Annalee had been over to the house. Shari was ironing clothes and had wire hangers sitting in a basket near the ironing board. Annalee had grabbed one and was pretending to be Captain Hook to Dusty's Peter Pan, and before Shari could say or do anything Dusty accidently fell on the hanger in Annalee's hand. His right eye was scratched badly, but like most children he healed perfectly well. For some reason Annalee never really understood that he had healed fine, that children held an amazing capacity for bouncing back from accidents. Her sister was always haunted by that accident, especially during his recovery when the eye drops given to him by the doctor made his eye appear cloudy. The memory of Annalee's gentle concern and fragile apologies brought tears to her eyes.
Oh well, that was all in the past. From what the doctors kept telling her Shari was certain that her sister would die without ever being able to tell her the truth, but more importantly without giving Shari the chance to know Annalee hears her when she says 'I love you.'
