There’s that damned sound again. I’ve been hearing it a lot lately now that the weather’s getting cold. At first I figured it was an injured animal. In these woods we get all sorts—deer, bears, wild turkeys, not to mention every kind of bird and snake and creepy crawly you wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Bigfoot lived in these mountains. The Appalachians are pretty ancient. There might be species here no one’s even discovered yet. Some of the locals definitely look as if the gene pool’s been muddied.
I moved up here last month for some peace and quiet. You see, big city life hasn’t exactly been helping my blood pressure. I live in a log cabin on top of a mountain. My nearest neighbor lives more than a mile down the road and he never comes up this way. And that’s just how I like it. I’m not a big fan of the human race. I tend to keep to myself. Some might call it “solitary.” I call it “smart.” The less dealings you have with people the less trouble you’re going to get.
Anyway, back to this noise business. At first I thought it was that pesky woodpecker that’s been hanging around. I swear the bastard wants to peck through the logs of this cabin so he can settle in by the fire with a hot toddy. I should probably take a potshot at him with my rifle to scare him off, but I just can’t bring myself to do it. He’s annoying, but this is his hood, after all. Although I do keep a loaded shotgun by my bed, I’ve never had cause to use it. I didn’t buy it for hunting or killing animals (or woodpeckers). I think hunters are the scum of the earth and should be hunted down (preferably by the animals they enjoy killing), shot in strategically painful locations (I can name some good ones), then left to die a slow and painful death. You can probably tell I’m not a Republican, despite my owning a gun.
I bought the thing on the off chance that some burglars or serial killers from the big city might decide to pay a visit to the countryside and find their way up to my cabin. Not that I’m easy to find, but burglars and serial killers have nothing better to do but to locate victims. It’s their job, if you think about it.
The noise always comes at dusk. It starts out as sort of a low keening, escalating here and there into a sharp wail, which stops abruptly. Then it all goes quiet again. It’s weird as hell. I’ve gone out onto the deck several times to try to see what’s causing it. My deck is pretty high up, so if it were some kind of animal—and possibly a rabid one—it can’t get to me. Yet I never see anything other than a squirrel scrabbling about. Whatever this thing is, at least it isn’t one of the local inbreeds creating more inbreeds beneath a romantic mountain sunset. I’ve had a couple of folks in town tell me to watch out for pink-eyed boys carrying banjos. It’s advice I take very seriously.
Eventually I give up trying to uncover the culprit. Whatever’s making that weird sound isn’t bothering me personally.…
Until the other week, that is. I’d just come back with my food shopping when no sooner do I get in the door than I feel something isn’t kosher. It’s not a burglary—at least not an obvious one, since everything of value is right where I’d left it: laptop, printer, TV, shotgun…. I couldn’t quite figure it out until I opened the fridge to put away my perishables. I’d left half a roast chicken on the bottom shelf, which was supposed to be my dinner that evening. Well, the plate’s still sitting there on the bottom shelf, and so is the cling film I’d covered the chicken with. But there’s no chicken.
My first thought was that maybe I’d begun to sleepwalk and gone into the kitchen in the middle of the night and eaten the bird. That morning I’d been in a rush and only opened up the fridge to get some milk for my cereal, so I could’ve overlooked the plate of chicken—or make that the plate of not chicken. I don’t usually sleepwalk, but there’s always a first time for everything, right?
Anyway, I put it out of my mind.
Until it happens again.
When you live in the woods and food goes missing, it’s usually a bear that’s responsible. They’re known to get into bird feeders and trash bins and even cars to scavenge for a meal; it’s not entirely unheard of for them to get into a house, if they smell an opportunity. However, unlike the mess from foraging one might expect from a lumbering and hungry bear, this latest incident has a more premeditated consciousness behind it, as if it knows exactly where to look, but doesn’t want to make a mess while doing the looking.
It would appear that I have a trespasser in my midst—and this trespasser knows how to pick a lock. It has to be someone who comes up here a lot, because this only happens when I’m not home and my car isn’t parked out front. The thought of someone lying in wait for me to drive off is pretty creepy. Considering that I’m almost always at home, my food thief has to be nearby, possibly even living rough in the woods. My first thought is that it’s some smelly old pothead hippy that got lost hitchhiking home from Woodstock or maybe even an Appalachian Unabomber waiting for a chance to wreak havoc on an already paranoid country. Neither prospect appeals.
I consider reporting it to the local sheriff next time I’m in town, but the idea of filing a police report about the missing half of a roast chicken and some missing slices of ham, cheese and bread to a good old boy Southern cop has about as much appeal as the anticipated identity of my uninvited lunch guest. So I decide to wait it out and catch the culprit in the act, though with my car parked outside my trespasser isn’t likely to show up. I think of parking it down the road at my neighbor’s, but the idea of engaging with him in any substantive way doesn’t appeal to me either. Then fate intervenes.
I should probably mention that it’s serious hell on a car up in these parts what with all the steep and unpaved roads, which likely explains why everyone seems to drive a pickup. So there I am on my way to the home improvement store to buy a new lock for my front door when I hear a horrendous rattle coming from beneath my car. After I finally manage to locate a service station with what passes as a mechanic on duty, the news I receive isn’t good. Nor is the fact that I’ll be sans voiture for a couple of days while they wait for the necessary part to arrive to do the repair. They don’t have what are called “fern car” dealerships around here; it’s Ford and Chevy and that’s all you’re getting, buddy—you wave them American flags high now, hear? The fact that I drive a socialist European car will likely add dearly to the cost of my repair, if the dirty look I get off Bubba the service station owner is any indication. After finally figuring out how to fit the key into my car’s ignition, he gets one of the guys to give me a lift home, with the promise to come collect me when the car’s ready. I can only hope he’ll keep to his word, since there’s no such thing as a taxi around here.
By the time I get in the door, I feel so grimy from sitting around the garage’s grimy little waiting room that all I want is to take a nice hot bath. There’s a chill in the air with an overnight freeze being forecast, so I figure I’ll get a head start on the warming-up. As far as I can tell, my food thief hadn’t taken advantage of my absence to come inside to make a sandwich; therefore when I sink down into the steaming hot bathwater it doesn’t even occur to me that my car being gone from out front would make it look as if I’m not at home. It’s only after I dunk my head under the water that I hear the sound of the front door opening.
Shit.
No way in hell I can reach my shotgun. It’s a good fifteen feet away in the bedroom and on the opposite side of the bed from where I am. Plus whoever came into the cabin will be bound to hear me on these creaky pine floorboards and get to it first. I don’t mind telling you that I don’t fancy having my head blown off.
A moment later I hear the refrigerator door open.
Bastard!
I so want to catch this guy—and I’m pretty sure it’s a guy, though I don’t know why I’m so sure. Slowly I rise up from the bathwater, the Phoenix of Appalachia, ready to kick ass even though I’m naked and dripping water all over the place. By now I’m so pissed off that I don’t need a gun. I grab up my towel and wrap it around me totally half-assed, too angry to care that I’ve got half a tit showing and probably half my twat, too.
I creep toward the kitchen, where I spy a pair of blue-jeaned male buttocks thrusting out as their owner’s head sticks itself inside my fridge. Those jeans have seen better days. I know it’s fashionable to wear denim that looks old and worn, but this is overkill. The guy’s wearing a T-shirt that might’ve been white during the Clinton administration, but is now a kaleidoscopic orgy of mud-brown smeared with yellow and rust.
He must’ve heard me because he turns around. I see a flicker of guilt flash across his gaunt face as I catch him red-handed with a wedge of cheddar and a bread roll in a hand each. His sunken eyes widen with shock. His lips work, but nothing comes out but a tiny keening noise that sounds like a mouse whose tail has been trodden on.
He’s young. Beneath the grime and the dark hollows etched beneath his cloudy eyes he could be a high school senior. I wonder if he’s a runaway, though I doubt they classify boys at the age of consent as “runaways” these days. Whoever he is, something very strange has happened to him. He doesn’t look… well…right.
His dead-looking eyes appear to catch fire as they focus on the lower portion of my towel and suddenly I feel the cool air on parts of me that I should have taken greater care to keep covered. It’s all there for him to see—and boy does he see it. I can feel myself getting wet, and it isn’t from the bathwater dripping from me.
The tip of his tongue shows up between thin lips and it’s as if it’s licking me. I swear I can feel it laving my flesh, exploring and prodding and tasting. Oh, yeah; he’s hungry, all right.
At last I regain my senses. “Who the hell are you and what the hell are you doing in my house?”
Not the most polite of greetings, but there you go.
He doesn’t move. He’s just standing there with the cheddar and the roll, looking the kind of terrified that I should be feeling, yet don’t. I see the guilt come onto his face again as he seems to struggle to say something. I almost expect him to apologize, which I imagine would be highly unusual for a burglar. Maybe he’s some kind of new-school burglar as opposed to the old-school sort—a burglar with a conscience. I wonder if he might be some kid living rough in the woods. That’s what he looks like. Or at least it would be if he didn’t look so…weird.
Then just like that he’s gone, vanishing out my front door with his treasures, the only sign of his having been here the open refrigerator door.
What in the name of—?
I lock the front door, hoping I’ll get my car back soon so that I can drive to the home improvement place and buy a better lock. I figure the kid’s not likely to come back again, especially since I caught him red-handed. He’s probably clear on the other side of the mountain range by now, maybe even crossing the state border.
For the rest of the day and evening I try not to give him any more thought, though I can still feel that phantom tongue of his licking me. It gets so bad that I need to go lie down on the bed and twiddle myself until I come. And when I do, the ghost of his haunted face appears before me. Christ. I must really be losing it.
The car is ready a day earlier than estimated and finally I’m back in control. Yet despite my anxiousness to do something about the lock situation, I keep putting it off. I reckon the kid’s not coming back now that the jig is up, so maybe I should just stop worrying. Even those weird noises at dusk have stopped. It’s all back to normal: woodpeckers pecking, squirrels barking, katydids chirruping. Nothing suspicious or sinister, just the forest residents doing their thang.
I don’t leave the cabin for an entire week. I would’ve stayed sequestered for another week were it not for the fact that I’m running low on provisions. I’m nearly out of toilet paper and wine. Something must be done.
I’m only gone for a couple of hours, yet it’s sufficient time for my intruder to return to the cabin. When I get home, I find my front door unlocked and standing wide open and a familiar blue-jeaned ass at the kitchen counter, its owner apparently not having heard the car drive up. The pot of chili I’d made the other day is out on the stove being heated, an empty bowl and spoon sitting on the countertop, along with a bottle of beer, half of which has already been consumed.
I drop my shopping bags onto the floor with a loud thunk.
The kid turns around. Christ, he looks even worse than the last time I saw him. His face is more gaunt than ever, his eyes more sunken in. And don’t even talk about the clothes. Yet there’s something there—something that makes me overlook his battered and shabby appearance and gets that phantom tongue licking again. Oh, man, I really need to get out more.
He sets the stirring spoon into the bowl. Yeah, can you believe it? He was actually stirring the chili while it was warming up to prevent it from burning. Talk about domesticated. His thin lips do that twitching thing again and I can see he’s really struggling to say something, but all that comes out is that tiny keening mouse. What the hell’s up with this guy?
Oddly, I don’t feel afraid so I don’t even think to make a run for the shotgun. There’s something kind of sweet about him stirring that pot of chili and it reaches through my rib cage, touching my heart. “I guess you’ll be wanting some shredded cheese with that,” I say, going over to the fridge to take out the cheddar. He stands there watching with those haunted eyes of his as I drag the wedge over the shredder until a cheesy hill forms on the chopping block. I scoop it with my hand onto a small plate and take it to the dining table, where I arrange a place setting for my uninvited guest.
A few minutes later he’s spooning his bowl of cheese-topped chili into his mouth, washing it down with a second bottle of beer. The kid’s got a healthy appetite, I’ll say that much. His table manners aren’t too shabby either. In fact, he’s more mannerly in his eating habits than most of the guys I’ve known who dress in a suit and tie five days a week. Despite his appearance of starvation, he doesn’t scarf down his food. Now that’s class.
When not so much as a chili bean remains, he finishes the last of his beer and gets up from the table, bringing the empty bowl and beer bottle over to the counter. We stand there staring at each other for several minutes until he reaches a gaunt hand out toward my face, trailing his cool fingers down my cheek. I feel my nipples go rock hard beneath my T-shirt. My panties are wet; I feel them soaking all the way through to my jeans.
I want him to touch me so bad that I ache.
Then suddenly, just like before, he’s gone.
That night I don’t know what to do. I’m so frustrated with desire I’m ready to scream. I use my fingers, I rub against the bedpost, I grind myself onto the heel of my foot. But the relief I need is not the relief I’m getting.
All I want is for him to return.
Sure, he looks like something from out of a George A. Romero film, but I don’t care. I want him.
As if in answer to my prayers, he does come back. This time he doesn’t break in like some cut-rate burglar, but instead turns up at the front door, knocking politely yet with solid determination like a Jehovah’s Witness. I discover him there with a withering bouquet of flowers he must’ve picked up from a gravesite. I’m flabbergasted. Modern men just don’t do this kind of thing anymore. This kid’s definitely old school. It seems I’m being courted!
I take the dying flowers from his trembling hand and stick them in a plastic pitcher, which I fill with water even though nothing will return any life to this floral arrangement. I place the thing on the dining table and get him a bottle of beer from the fridge. I’ve taken to keeping a bigger supply on hand in hopeful anticipation of his visits. He takes it from me with a grateful look and goes to sit in the same chair he sat in last time. I grab a beer for myself and join him.
It takes a while before I can finally understand a word he says, but once I get the hang of his disjointed verbal cadences and frequent full stops I can follow along with a fair amount of success. From what I can gather, he’s broken away from some group and is trying to get by on his own. A religious cult perhaps? At first he doesn’t say why he wants to steer clear of his comrades, but the fear in his eyes tells me plenty. Then he finally comes clean and admits that he just doesn’t want to kill and eat people anymore.
My first thought is they’re some Appalachian cannibal version of the Manson Family and this gets me worried, especially if they might be out looking for him right now. My shotgun can only pick off one thing at a time—and I don’t fancy my luck with the flesh-eating members of a zombie cult.
The time passes and before I know it darkness has taken hold outside the cabin, bringing with it a requisite chill in the air. I switch on the central heating and light up one of those prefab logs in the fireplace. With a fire going and a bottle of wine open, it’s beginning to feel quite cozy with my guest here. I can get used to this.
We sit on the floor in front of the fire drinking our wine. I have to admit that being in such close proximity to him I begin to notice that he doesn’t smell all that sweet. I don’t want to be rude, so I figure I’ll be diplomatic and suggest he spend the night, throwing in the offer of a nice hot bath as incentive for him to clean himself up. He accepts my offer with an appreciative keen. I run a bath for him, pouring in a generous glop of patchouli-scented bubble bath. I also strategically place a natural bristle brush on the rim of the tub, along with a fresh bar of Shea butter soap. That should do the trick. I doubt I’ll use the brush after him, but I figure its loss could prove a good investment for later tonight, if you know what I mean.
I return to the living room to inform him that his bath is ready, offering to refill his wineglass and bring it in to him so that he can enjoy it while he’s having a soak. He seems amenable to the suggestion and keens favorably. I follow him to the bathroom, where I watch him undress. His body is lean and in parts almost emaciated, but in the part that matters most he’s anything but. My word, the equipment on this guy! It’s standing straight up, looking like a man’s forearm rising into the air with a clenched fist. My first thought is whether it will fit inside me. He sees me staring at his assets and looks away in embarrassment, though his cock isn’t embarrassed. It gives a sharp lurch, spasming before my eyes and getting even bigger, if you can believe it.
I decide to leave him to his bath. The threadbare condition of his jeans and T-shirt lying on the floor like roadkill makes me want to cry, especially when I pick them up (albeit gingerly), the intention being to put them into the washing machine on hot, though I have serious doubts they’ll survive the spin cycle. I decide to check the closet for some generic-gender gear I can loan him, coming up with an old flannel shirt and a pair of baggy jeans I never really liked anyway.
I return to the fireplace, adding in a new log and replenishing my wine. The comforting warmth of the fire lulls me into an otherworldly state and I lie back on the rug, suddenly feeling incredibly aroused. I figure my guest will be in the bath a while longer, so I kick off my jeans and panties and start getting down to business. I can only imagine what I must look like lying on the floor with my thighs splayed like a Thanksgiving turkey when he returns to the living room dressed in my boyish gear. The next thing I know he’s making that weird keening sound again and his face is right down there, licking and sucking and doing all sorts of amazing and noisy things with his tongue. I’ve had guys go down on me before, but nothing like this. It’s as if his tongue is operating on an electrical current—I can feel myself flowing into his mouth like a river that has broken its banks. I come twice and still he keeps at it until I come a third.
Finally I can bear no more. I need to get a taste of that astonishing appendage of his. Zombie cock. I laugh at the thought of it, but I stop laughing pretty darn quick when it fills my mouth so fully that I fear I’ll get a dislocated jaw. But what a way to go, eh?
I can tell that he’s not had this done to him in a long time (if ever?) and his ghostly eyes roll back inside his head until only the whites show. I look away, since it sort of amplifies that whole undead persona thing he has going on, which I have to admit does freak me out. His flavor is a bit gamy too, but I get used to it and even start to groove on it in a rather weird way. Just when I think he’s going to let it all start flowing, he pulls out of my mouth.
Mind you, what he does next worries me even more than a broken jaw. His bony fingers grab hold of a thigh each, hoisting them well away from each other. I’m in serious childbearing position here, minus the stirrups and lab coats. As I feel him begin to push inside me, my mind percolates with the possibility of him getting me pregnant. Like, what would it actually be?
I push the thought out of my head and concentrate on not being split in half. I will myself to open, using my muscles to push out as he pushes in. In a way it’s like giving birth, except in reverse. Talk about an electrical current, his thing is like a jackhammer and just as big as one too. And he’s getting it in me, dammit, he’s actually getting it in me. I keep pushing out until finally I feel him bumping up against my cervix. He’s done it.
And I’m still alive!
I grab on to his thin, flannel-covered shoulders and gaze into his hollowed-out eyes as he takes control, riding me like nobody’s business until I feel another orgasm creeping up on me—and this one is going to be massive. When it finally hits I scream with the impact, wondering how I could make so much noise, until I realize that he’s keening right along with me as he experiences his own climax. They can probably hear us all the way to town.
I still don’t even know his name. He’s told me enough times, but I’m finding it harder and harder to understand him. His speech seems to be getting worse with the passing of each day, each week. Not that it really matters what his name is. I guess you’ve probably figured out that he stayed more than just that one night. What can I say? It can get a bit lonely up here in these mountains, you know?