Invasion (17 page)

Jesus Christ.

I’m done.

Ruined.

Flopping next to her I stare at the ceiling. I failed. She asked to bleed and all I’ve done is ride the best roller-coaster in the playground. Now I’m determined to complete this mission, but might need the props in her drawers to do it.

I’m wasted. I need time to recover.

Turning her over, the once perfect snow white duvet crumples as she splays, chest rising up and down quickly, pussy lips swollen, and hair tousled. She is breathing hard.

“Princess,” I pause. Swallowing thickly, looking at her ass, I don’t think I’m going to fit in there. “This is going to hurt, babe. Are you sure you want to bleed?”

Her voice is soporific, lazy and sedate. “Have you ever been ass fucked?”

“Nope,” I affirm immediately, shaking my head even though she can’t see me.

“Then you wouldn’t know. It’s even better when both holes are plugged, it’s thick and hot and fucking amazing. I can take it, I promise.”

“You want both holes filled? Where are the toys?”

She just gave me an out without looking like I let the team down. She gets a box under her bed, tossing it to me. Being able to bask in this folly is almost more than I can handle.

Selecting two vibrating shafts, I do the roll gesture with my finger, and she reclaims her previous position. Switching them both on, the one to the pussy just glides in. She’s loose and swollen from me being in there, and juiced up with jizz. Slipping it out now that it’s lubricated, I home the second one in her snatch, setting it on high.

Why don’t dudes get toys like this? I want a humming soft mouth for my lonely days. Sliding the second dildo into her anus, it gives me sadistic pleasure to keep on working it in, deeper and deeper, until she’s lifted her hips and angling back at me, praying to the universe in a half prostrate position, giving me the angles for deepest penetration.

I think I love her.

I really do.

No matter how long I lie here I just can’t drift into slumber. My instincts are tingling. Something is puncturing perforations into my newly acquired idyllic existence.

Something
is amiss.

Escaping the bedroom, sliding into shadows, leaving the damsel to her sleep, I move to the landing, listening. Haunting the darkness I’m grateful I’m familiar with the layout. I’ve mapped it seven times with my eyes closed.

Somehow I know it’s a vital component to my habitual routine. New place – know it in every way. A punch can momentarily blind, still you must be able to read the air, reaching out your chi as sensory input, to defend against attack even when rendered vulnerable.

I can no longer ignore that I’m conditioned for battle. I don’t know if I idolized Kung Fu or Shaolin martial arts, but I instinctively know too many skills, too many automatic defaults to work and exist as a man supremely primed for perpetual peril and confrontation.

The tension in my spine increases while I stand motionless, reading my environment, using every one of my senses beyond normal human range to detect intrusion.

Could it be Mark?

I’d have heard a car; footsteps beyond the window panes. I can hear a cat walking on the grass, I’m sure I’d have detected someone casing this place outside. If it was summer ambient surveillance would be easier. All nocturnal animals still when there is an intruder, even the crickets hush. Some birds will call out a warning, but it is the insect life that is nature’s alarm system. Where there is noise there is safety, where there is silence there is danger.

The urge for a firearm burrows into my awareness, urgent and immediate. I am naked without it.

So I assume I was armed as a matter of course. I figured I knew my way around an assault rifle based on my nightmares, but a handgun seems so feminine in comparison; a weak and ineffectual option.

Still, I’d rather meet a threat fully prepared than have to constantly resort to my tactical training in hand to hand combat.

That’s when I detect the ambient hum, a vibration so low it’s felt more than heard. Twisting to my left I determine it’s not coming from the rear of the dwelling, it’s coming from the street.

Reflexes bomb my zen and I’m running in a crouch, suctioned to deep pools of night, disguising my presence in the nocturnal camouflage, speeding my way to the staircase.

Pausing, I peer into the foyer, staying silent as mist, inspecting the lower floor, hearing nothing out of the ordinary below deck. Now I’m thanking my lucky stars that the basement has no windows. I can defend this territory because at the right vantage I can see every entry point without needing to worry about the one area I can’t see, where my den used to be.

Shimmering through dappled illumination I launch down the staircase, hugging every cluster of impenetrable shadow, the freaky calm shrouding my reactions again. With my breath and heartbeat working at an undetectable level, shallow and indiscernible, the silent path of my footsteps amazes me. I feel like an insurgent penetrating an enemy camp. Every muscle is tense, so rigid and hard with the urgent rush of blood to the power dormant in my body, that my limbs feel thick with blood. Cortisol is taking over, mingling with adrenaline, and yet there is no sense of panic, just – focus.

Slinking around the foyer I stand beside the curtain in the living room, shielded behind brick and mortar and shadow, making no movement. A sniper could have a scope on this window and not an atom has moved out of place. I’ve mastered surveillance without disturbing the drape – I don’t need to.

I’m reading the ambient light. The entire world is a banner of light waves. Beyond the pane streetlights glow their beams, and if you remain immobile for long enough you can dissect every beam. When there is movement in the street the light waves bounce, casting a moving shadow, a sudden pulse of brighter light, if you stare for just long enough while it’s unhindered and undisturbed you familiarize yourself with its natural state, making it easy to detect a change in the lighting – indicating movement.

It’s now, with my eye line pressed against the wall, peering at the white moonlight hitting the lining of the curtain, seeing it as wan and diluted, that a shaft of whiter light slides lazily across the material in the recognizable arc of reflection. It’s a wide stripe slowly slipping across the material, indicating a vehicle in the road trying to be stealthy, going as slowly as possible, keeping the engine vibration to the barest of minimums. It has to be something wide and flat to reflect the streetlight like that.

Someone is scoping this joint. Who or what or why, fuck knows. But I know they’re out there and I have a hunch that only an intruder with harmful intent would be doing a drive-by at such a sedate pace at four in the morning.

It’s a well known fact that the bulk of breaking and entering occurs between 02h00 and 06h00. That is the designated window of opportunity for when ninety percent of residents are in the deepest cycle of sleep. Deep state REM is now.

A sleep cycle is precisely four hours. To break a prisoner of war you must wake them every two hours. This means they never have a full sleep cycle, and when you deprive them of a full sleep cycle interminably, the mind cracks. Washboarding is for sissies and pathetic crime series on television.

Those of us who know – KNOW.

We know that control is as easy as salt in the right places and sleep deprivation. The mind is so fragile, splitting it wider than the San Andreas fault is simple, just so long as you have three days at your disposal to crack the POW. Sleep has a rhythm, the ultradian cycle. The first stage of sleep is NREM, the second stage of sleep is REM. NREM has three stages in itself, where there is virtually no brainwave activity, when we secrete growth hormone, aiding the body in recovery, for ongoing longevity. Sleep is an essential component to vibrant good health.

N3 NREM precedes REM, a deep sleep, when you don’t hear an intruder, you’ve blocked out your environment in favor of recovery for the human organism. This is the most restful phase, and then you enter REM. In REM your muscles are paralyzed, entering high frequency EEG activity – and it’s in this stage that it’s difficult to wake the sleeper. Every human spends more than half their sleep cycle in this stage, and it’s the stage most enter before they’re due to wake. If you have a complete cycle you wake up refreshed, interrupt the cycle and the person is drained and lethargic. That’s how the work machine keeps the populace too tired to care what they’re doing, how they’re spending the budget, or why.

We’re in that window now, and because I know this random shit, I know that the fuckers casing the place are a) informed and b) a threat.

Two things occur to me simultaneously. 1) A wall doesn’t shield me from heat signature surveillance. 2) I don’t have a cell phone so I can’t be traced.

So how did they find me? Who are they? And are they here for me, or her?

I’ve read her work emails, I know she’s made some powerful enemies, they all have motive to take her out. But her ex, Mark, also has clear motivation to target her.

It could be a crowd cruising for a crime of opportunity, but my instincts instantly disregard that option. This feels far too concentrated and deliberate to be random.

I maintain position for an hour, and the car sidles past the main entrance three times in forty minutes. As soon as it was beyond hearing on its first circuit, I adjusted position to upstairs, so I can look down to the street from up high, seeing over the hedge.

If I had reason to be paranoid before, now it’s an absolute. Matte black body paint, tinted windows which look so dark as to be bulletproof, and on the second circuit it produced a faint electrical whine, having switched over to the more silent engine in that behemoth’s arsenal. That is not a typical civilian vehicle, it looks like something the secret service would drive for covert surveillance.

My imagination is going berserk, visualizing the instrument panel behind the rear doors of the van, listening for conversations, accumulating intel on a target before making a move.

If it is what I think it is, I’ll be lucky if we have three days before the storm troopers swarm this place.

Again it worries me, the doubt. I don’t know who I am. They could be watching either one of us, she’s as much a candidate for a midnight abduction as I am.

On the fourth circuit past the house, panic elbows into my tranquility. One scope-light penetrates the windowpane next to the cedar front door. That means there’s a high powered rifle aimed inside, into this haven, into my cocoon.

That singular beam is received by my adrenal system as an act of war. I hit the deck faster than a flea, scrambling for cover, hiding behind the only metal desk in the room. Metal bounces the beam back, just in case it’s the same technology used to scan at airports and post offices.

Heat signature intel batters my mind again and I leopard crawl deeper into the house, writhing on my belly to the fridge, standing up behind it, using its internal cold chamber to shield myself, watching the reflection of a red beam bouncing around the surfaces within its range.

What the fuck do they want?
And why the hell are they here?

Love burns

It brands the host, disfiguring it

David
:

S
oon after I took cover behind the refrigerator the surveillance van left the enclave of the private road, in the appropriate shape of a noose. The sedate O layout of the street returns to itself, infinity in itself, without a twist, yet I’m a twist, that van’s a fucking twist - with forest both sides, rimming the few houses in this swanky spot.

There was no way in hell I could catch zzz’s after that. I was on high alert until the sun reared its shrouded presence, trying unsuccessfully to chase away cloud cover, instead it is now one of those insipid days where light struggles to penetrate.

I’m living in a stormy Achenbach painting with a hint of Rembrandt’s darkness. With so few hours of the day permitted to daylight it’s as if the universe herself is casting her cosmic shadows over my life.

I’ve made coffee, with boiled eggs and croissants waiting for her majesty to rise and shine, when the walls close in again, confinement constricting the edges of my mind, burning it out like a reel to reel movie melting in the projector.

I’ve gotta get out, I can’t breathe in here.

Pulling on my boots and flannel shirt, I head to the front door, flinging it wide and inhaling the frosty air, instantly rejuvenated, but stepping beyond the step out and shutting the cell door behind me to preserve the warmth Carly seems to like at midday - Kalahari strength, not just tropical, but bake your balls hot. It’s stifling, stuffy, and enough to make me feel like my sinuses are gearing up to give me the nosebleed of the century.

Sitting on the chilled step, connecting skin to the shocking temperature, I’m grateful for the overhang of the entrance which shields this from snow. I cross my arms, hunched against the door, suffering the glimpse into a world I’m exiled from.

My mind is playing another fairytale to feed my paranoia. A memory flashes of me punching a man hanging upside down from a metal pipe in what seems to be an abandoned building. The sewerage pipes line the ceiling, painted black, stark against the peeling and aged ecru enamel on the ceiling above it. It’s concrete, painted over, so an old building.

No one will find us here, I’ll get what I need and then put a bullet in him.

Using him as my daily sparring routine I pummel him like he’s a boxing bag, swaying back to meet my fist over and over, when I connect with his nose.

He’s grunting and cussing and playing his role of resistance to perfection, but the hit to the schnoz opens a vein and blood comes pouring out.

A lot of blood, like I cut his carotid.

It’s so viscous that I stop my assault just to observe the deluge of hemoglobin pouring into his eyes, into his curly hair, pissing through it and to the floor, a puddle spreading beneath him at an alarming pace.

I’ve punched so many dudes in my time I’ve lost count, and this has never happened. I’m astounded, and demand, “What the fuck, Ramon?”

He’s coughing and choking on his own blood, spitting like he can’t breathe. “Heart condition,” he blusters, swaying around like a scrying pendulum, that the longer I stand still the more disoriented I feel watching him move. It’s like standing in waves, do it for too long and you lose your balance, like when the car next to you in the traffic takes their foot off the brake and rolls back, and you have that manic moment of panic thinking you’re the one moving.

“Heart condition?” I say, knowing his answer makes no sense. What the hell does a heart condition have to do with him pouring crimson like he wrote the script for some submarine story.

“Thins … blood,” he wheezes.

That’s when I twig, he’s going to bleed to death because his blood won’t clot. He’s on heart meds that keep his blood so thin it can pump through his congested veins, and unless I unhook him and shove a tampon up his nose he’s gonna die before I get my intel.

Do I look like I have a fucking tampon on me?

Shit!

Wrestling him down, which is harder than it looks because Ramon has a gut the size of Texas on him, I finally lay him down in the skidding slime of his mess, only for him to asphyxiate before I can staunch the blood or clear his airway.

Motherfucking shit!

The Queen isn’t going to like this. Not one bit.

If I show up with diamonds she might spare my life. Balls! Another trip to Tiffany’s was not on my hit list for the day.

Blinking away the memory, the sound of a digital shutter deploying breaks the solace of my seclusion. Instinct kicks in, reflexes I didn’t know I owned possessing me, and I’m up and vaulting over the low wall lining the side of the porch, chasing an unknown suspect before I’ve even focused where he is or what the asshole looks like.

He shoves through the hedge and while he struggles I gain signifiant ground, but he’s a small shit and I’m a massive mofo, so when I reach his exit it’s impossible for me to follow his trajectory.

Shoving might into my sprint, I’m shunting through snow in nothing more than a flannel shirt and boots, reaching the entrance to the property and bolting into the road, watching the vehicle take off. The engine is loud, a V8 no less, so I dunno where the fuck my head was for me to not hear its approach. Life and death, it’s that close. Sleep on the surveillance and you’ll have a sniper’s bullet behind your left ear before you’ve noticed your world’s been invaded.

Exasperated I watch the cunt driving out of sight on the curve of the loop, and it’s now I wish I was packing. I need to be armed because this shit is no longer a coincidence.

So they’re not after Carly. They’re after me.

Mark:

Relishing my sedate Saturday morning in bed with the lovely whore I married in the registrar’s office, I’m so close to cumming that I get a cramp in my left ass cheek.

It’s while my leg is seized and my hips are frozen that I spasm, refurbishing the cavity I claimed with the blissful gift of my jizz.

She’s fucking lucky I chose her. I had my pick, but this sugar sucks harder than Hoover, plus she lets me cut her cunt. Carly had hard limits, Carrie doesn’t.

Dropping back, agonized, my cell phone doesn’t quit its incessant vibrating across the bedside table.

If it’s work I’m going to tear up employment contracts. Whoever you are, you’re going to pay for making me lose my focus and get the kind of cramp you’d expect after Medusa gives you a love bite.

Shoving my hand over Carrie’s mouth, twisting her so I can see the swollen belly holding junior, I answer the god forsaken caller, “WHAT!”

“You want the thug’s identity, or not?”

“Hang on,” I hiss at the bastard, releasing my concubine and sliding off the bed, hobbling with the ache lingering in my butt muscle to the bathroom, slamming the door to say, “Who is he?”

“I’ve got four words for you, Marky. Stay. Away. From. Him.”

Then the felon hangs up, leaving me dangling after getting me out of bed on a morning colder than Ullr’s shrine. What the hell?

Dialing the degenerate back I’ll do my utmost to sound polite, schmoozing up to the drug lord. It rings and rings and rings, going to voicemail.

Ending call, I try again, and again, until the cramp in my ass comes back from leaning against the frigid vanity.

I’m in paralyzing pain when the asswipe finally answers. “You stupid, Marky? I don’t want no money, you just stay the fuck away from me and my boys. We got nothing to say. I don’t know you.”

“WAIT! Don’t hang up! Please Jorge, tell me why? Who is he that he’s got you running for cover?”

“He doesn’t exist, he’s no one, a bogeyman, a ghost. Ghost Recon kinda ghost. You touch that motherfucker and acid rain is going to hail into your life so hard you get burned white boy, burned so bad you end up disfigured. He’ll cut your eyeballs out and feed them to his fish, comprende?”

“WHO THE FUCK IS HE?” I bellow, losing all self-control, seething that he can’t just tell me what I need to know. I can do my own research once I have a name.

“You’ll end up in a hearse, Marky. He’s the angel of death. El diablo.”

Tears are washing my face of lethargy and sleep, the pain in my butt making my breath come out spastic, and I’m writhing on the underfloor heating on top of ceramic tiles, missing the delectable glide I once had on marble.

I miss my home. The house I paid for; had built for us. Jackson made me eat my own pride, kicking my ass in the divorce settlement. Bitch deserves a bullet for what she put me through.

“Jorge, just the name. No riddles, no warnings, just give me that asshole’s name. He gave me a black eye and sent me to the dentist! The indignity of it! You know how much I like the dentist, Jorge? About as much as I like a prostate exam,” I wheeze, finally finding a position that doesn’t feel like I have a knitting needle in my ass-cheek.

“You love a finger in your asshole. You’re that kinda fanny, Marky.”

“Jorge!” I snap, losing my patience.

“David Hearse.”

And the bandit hangs up on me. AGAIN!

He treats me like his bitch, and that pisses me off.

Dropping my phone on the tiles, I yell for Carrie. “Get your skinny bones in here - bring my medication! This is your fault, you stupid whore.”

A sleepy incubator prods her head around the doorframe. “Be nice, daddy, or I’ll not help you.”

“Like you help me? Yeah right. You couldn’t help a flea find an armpit in a zoo!”

Her eyes narrow. “You want it or not?”

“This isn’t a debate, Carrie. Get it or you can fuck off and have that baby on a secretary’s salary. You should have brought the meds
when
I called you, not investigate my predicament first.”

Then I get the fucking pout. “You deserve the pain, Mark.”

“Come here so I can show you the meaning of the word, bitch!” I’m so pissed now I heft myself up, using the vanity for leverage, and snatch up the scalpel. Lungeing for her, I grip her by the hair, pulling her down to my cock, pressing the blade to her temple. “Major vein there, whore. You want to bleed, or suck? You have three seconds to choose wisely before I help you on your way out. That baby’s big enough to survive without you now, so use the two brain cells you have. Chop chop, cunt.”

The mouth opens and covers my freezing cock, and I sigh, grateful for the heat. The damn Viagra keeps me hard for hours. I cum and the blood stays right in me, like a dildo. The least my whore can do is use it ‘til the blood batteries run out.

“Why are you here, Carrie?” Jamming my cock deep into her throat, shutting off air, I hiss at the stupid bitch who didn’t do as commanded. She had one job as permission to leave bed, and she disobeyed on two counts. “To
please
me! To keep me hard and happy! Renege on our agreement and you’ll be stripped of everything. I’ll never let a whore take me to the cleaners again.”

Her eyes start rolling and I press the scalpel closer, watching a beautiful trickle of blood run to her cheek. “Carly took it! TAKE IT! Pass out without closing your mouth! Remember you breathe for
me
! I am your judge, jury and executioner, and
I
decide when you get to draw breath.”