Chapter Twenty-Nine

“Damn.”

Doreen broke away and sat up, looming over him in the near-dark. They had lit a single candle against this likelihood, and that was all that saved them from sepulchral black. The laptop had already been shut down, but the loss of the TV and electric lighting took a minute to adjust to. The roar of the storm sounded louder in the gloom though the TV had already been muted. From his submissive position Karl ventured encouragement.

“This isn’t anything we weren’t expecting.”

“No, but it’s still a pain in the ass.”

Doreen’s voice was worried as she ran down the list of difficulties.

“We’ve got about eight hours of battery life in that laptop, less if we watch videos. We can only recharge it through the cigarette lighter in the car. We’ve got no internet and only the radio for news. Even when the storm’s over we can’t use the lift upstairs until they get the power back on. I’ve got a freezer full of food that’s going to start to rot after a few days. I have got to get solar panels put up on the roof!”

“Put that on next week’s shit-to-do list. In the meantime, I think it’s kind of romantic and even fun, roughing it down here in the safehold. Where were we, my lovely Dungeon-Mistress?”

“I believe I was devouring your face, slave. You were whimpering piteously – still crying about that vibrator probably. But I should get off your hips now, and that should help.

“You’re not getting out of that chair until the storm passes, so we don’t need to be putting any extra weight on your buns. Instead in payment for your cheek just now I’m going to recline you back flat, take off my pants and let you lick my ass. What do you think of that, young man?”

“I should be punished so for all eternity.”

“That’s my filthy little slut.”

“Can I just ask a question first ma’am?”

“Speak, sinner.”

“Where is my laptop? It would be nice to have them both.”

“So it would. Yours is right where you’ve assumed, in the storage locker with the rest of your worldly goods. I had not thought we’d need it. More fool me, eh?”

“Oh well, shit happens.”

“Sometimes it does. That’s why I like to stay nice and clean down there. I’m awfully sweaty and sticky in these slacks.” Nurse Drake rocked atop him, rubbing their crotches sensuously against each other. “Perhaps you’d like to move up from feet, and return the favor of your daily perineal care. Perhaps you’d like to wash me thoroughly before you eat me. Would that pass an agreeable hour or two for you boy?”

“Absolutely, ma’am!”

Doreen climbed off. She began to unbutton the slacks she’d donned for the run into town. Karl waited with squirming desperation for her to recline him back flat – anything to further lessen the pressure on that agonizing intrusion! Doreen slipped off her pants and panties. That single candle limned and shadowed her dramatically.

Karl wet his lips, trapped monster raging. She lowered him down, that special smile stirring him to service. Unfortunately this new honor-obligation would have to wait. Tired of being shut out and ignored, angry Diana chose this moment to strike at them.

The constant roar of the storm was getting louder. Even underground they heard a quickly increasing cacophony. It sounded like a thousand cattle cars approaching; perhaps full of wildcats on the way to a furrier, perhaps on fire and throwing off bolts of electricity too.

Karl had read the phrase ‘his bowels turned to water’ in at least half a dozen books and always thought it melodramatic nonsense. Suddenly he was discovering the truth behind the triteness. His eagerly watering mouth dried up instantly and terror beyond even his extensive experience seemed to send deadly ice crystals careening through his bloodstream.

The muscles still spastically clenching around that vibrator abruptly loosened, and if he hadn’t been sitting on it the damn thing might have finally slid out. For once however Karl was distracted almost totally from the monstrosity his beloved had stuffed up his bum. Here it was at last: the ultimate nightmare of complete helplessness in the face of unanswerable peril.

Suddenly it didn’t matter what he’d done. It didn’t even matter if this really was the wind-and-water embodiment of some Goddess come to take revenge and put an end to guilt. Subconscious death-wish be damned, Krista was dead and that was a tragedy he would suffer for forever, but he was alive and he very badly wanted to go on being alive!

He’d averred this intellectually all along, though his belief could have been stronger. But claiming and hoping something was so couldn’t compare to feeling it shrieking in the animal core of him. The threat of death had pitched Karl into a state of extreme lucidity. Yet there was scant chance to savor this revelation. Even as the word tornado was forming in his head Nurse Drake cried out in warning.

“Look out!”

Rather than swing astride his face as she’d been about to do, or scurry for the spot of greatest safely in the cellar, she threw her torso atop his, acting with instinctive altruism to protect his body with her own. In a movie (on the Lifetime channel for example), this joining of love and revelation in the face of ultimate things would be just the deus ex machina needed to cure him. Unfortunately his life wasn’t as tidy. Karl could only lie squashed under his protector in gelid terror and wait for the house to either collapse atop them or be whisked off into the sky along with them and all their conscientiously stored supplies.

The horrible roar grew louder still, the shrieking more strident. A rumbling that could be felt all through the system approached. Perhaps sensing his peaking panic Doreen hugged Karl tighter, shouting reassurance against the racket. Facing the end he wanted to pray, but in this super-lucidity knew it was pointless.

Though in the interest of fitting in he’d always paid proper lip service, he realized suddenly that deep inside he’d never believed in the God of the Abrahamic faiths any more than he did Zeus or Ra or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It was all superstition for children; there was nothing up there but the sky. Even the private religion he’d been following here was ultimately just a mental game, a habit of thought and source of amusing metaphor. It was a way to influence his primitive subconscious and reinforce the necessarily asymmetric dynamic between him and the icon he was relying on to cure him. It increased the intensity of emotion involved, but could do nothing to spare him from the sheer physical power of something on the scale of a tornado. In the last analysis, Karl saw as never before that the universe was simply a vast insentient process, that life in all its multifarious wonders was merely a part of that process and that consciousness of any of it was as inexpressibly precious as it was ephemeral.

Each of us gets one life, no more; when it’s over, that’s it. If the right factors combined in the next few moments, that would happen to him. There was nothing further he or any other being could do to prevent it. He had to trust to Doreen’s preparations and protection, and to the chance that had warned them just in time. Still as the tumult from above climaxed in a wooden-metallic crash and the sound of breaking glass he prayed to the woman shielding him anyway, and for the same reason humans always have: It couldn’t hurt, and it comforted him. It was at least better than shrieking and gibbering like a panicked monkey.

Karl’s bladder voided on its own. Heat ran out of him and down the tube while he waited for his personal apocalypse to commence – for the first cracks to appear in the ceiling above. For a moment everything trembled, that rumbling vibrating subsonically through their bodies, as well as the house and earth and everything else. For a moment blind fate hung in the balance. But then rather than escalate and shake them to destruction the rumbling at last began to pass, to recede in effect as it moved on. The awful racket modulated back to just its previous dull roar. The hurricane was still pounding them, but the vortex Diana had spun off to throw at them had just missed. They were still safe until she threw another; the candle hadn’t even gone out. Karl gradually relaxed, luxuriating in his lover’s embrace.

She could have leaped up and run to a corner, or slid under the bed. That would have been safest and indeed smartest. What use in both of them being killed? Instead she’d stayed, shielding him with her own body. If the ceiling had fallen in or flown off she would have died for him, and never even thought to ask why. She was a saint, an angel, a goddamn Goddess if he said so and never mind seeing reality with blinders off. To let her know he appreciated her and was all right, he kissed her shoulder and asked a question he already knew the answer to.

“That wasn’t the skylight, was it?”

“No.” Doreen’s voice was muffled. Lying atop him in the inclined wheelchair was awkward for her but she clung on a moment longer before sliding off into a sitting position.

“That would have been a serious crash. I think something was flung against the big kitchen window. It hit the shutters, not hard enough to smash through, but the concussion broke the glass behind. This is a seriously sturdy house. We’ll be okay. I just hate to think what might have happened if all this came upon us in bed, blithely fooling around with the skylight open.

“I messed up bad, not keeping up with the weather reports. You should take that paddle to me for a while, or I should be the one licking your ass.”

Karl had no idea what to say. He averted his eyes and remained silent. When Doreen pulled her pants back on he made no objection but watched silently as she lit the Coleman lanterns, stuck a flashlight in her waistband and turned on the radio. Once she had it tuned she made another drink, came back and raised his footrests so he was reclined more comfortably. She took the cushion off the armchair and sank back onto the floor next to him. She gave them sips of whiskey and toyed with a lock of his hair.

“We have to listen for the eye. I want to go up for a quick look around in the lull. And then we’ll know it’s half over too.”

“I understand.”

They sat quietly, listening to the wind and rain and radio. The basement was expertly sealed; not a drop of moisture penetrated. Of course they were far enough inland that storm surge wasn’t a problem. But if it rained enough they could find the pond creeping up toward the back door. That was one thing Doreen wanted to check on. In the meantime they finished their drink. Doreen grabbed a pillow off the bed so she could squirm into a position where she could hold him and rest her head on his chest. Within minutes she’d dozed off.

Karl left her alone.

He could listen for the lull just fine himself. He certainly wouldn’t be sleeping, that damn, miserable, horribly aggravating vibrator would see to that. It was getting a bit chilly in the basement too, and he was naked as ever. The hurricane still raged and he remained helpless against it, yet the panic had gone elsewhere.

Even asleep Nurse Drake was a potent ward against the heebie-jeebies. With her ear pressed right to his chest his heart must have provided a soothing rhythm to the background lullaby of muted wind and rain. Despite their close call and continuing danger, and the awkwardness of her posture she was the picture of peaceful repose.

Her face was beautiful as ever and her love just as much of an enigma. Karl watched her worshipfully, listened for a drop in the wind and endlessly replayed the moment when she threw her body across him.

Was it that unfathomable love that drove her to risk her life for him or just the instinctive altruism of the compassionate medical professional? Would she have done the same for anyone? What was there to love about him in the first place? Karl knew he was good-looking even as a cripple; you don’t score the hottest girl in the class if you’re not. Yet who could be attracted to any cripple, especially a self-inflicted cripple too weak to overcome his own demons?

In his reading Karl had come across the term ‘devotee’ as a label for a person with a sexual fetish for amputees and cripples.

That was a curious fetish, no doubt, but hardly more irrational than being aroused by domination. In any case Doreen certainly didn’t seem like a person ruled by perverse yearnings. And if she was so motivated (by sadism say, and the opportunity his helplessness presented), what need had she of love for him, or all this effort and altruism on his behalf? She could torture him to death or right into the state home if she wanted. Anyway that was all ridiculous: he knew Doreen, and knew that she loved him. What he couldn’t understand was why.

As always Karl found no answer to his questions. Eventually he dismissed them, forced to just accept the miracle of her affections with the same staggered gratitude as always. He was turning his attention to his recent realization that whatever his dreams and self-despite indicated to the contrary his will to live remained instinctive and persistent when the lull finally came.

At first he was so surprised by the sudden quiet he didn’t recognize it for what it was, though supposedly he had been listening for exactly that. He felt a pang at awakening Doreen, but knew she expected him to.

“Hey, honey. It’s here.”

“What’s that, darling?”

“It is the eye of the storm.”

“Good.”

Doreen scrambled up, stretched, and pulled the flashlight from her waistband.

“Will you be all right while I take a quick look around?”

“As long as nothing happens to you.”

“I’ll be careful – no unnecessary risks.”

“I trust you.”

“I’ll be right back.”

“I love you, mistress.”

“You’re the apple of my eye, little slut, the creamy white stuff in the middle of my Twinkie. Sit tight, be brave, and I will bring you a present.”

She ducked for a quick kiss and then bounded up the ramp. She opened the door on that eerie quiet and disappeared topside, leaving the door open. Now if she got struck by lightning, stepped on a live wire or broke her neck tripping over a displaced chair he would die a slow death by thirst. Shoving such macabre possibilities away, Karl began quietly singing.

“There were three men came out of the west, their fortunes for to try.

And these three men made a solemn vow: John Barleycorn must die.”

By the time he’d worked his way through the traditional English folk song, Doreen was slipping back through the door and bolting it behind her. No sweat – and she did indeed have a present for him, several in fact. As she made her report she started by dumping a couple of frozen steaks on the table.

“Yeah, it was the kitchen window. Everything else looks okay. No telling how long the power will be out though. What does the radio say?”

“Just that it’s out all over.”

“Uh-huh. It’s time to eat the good meat before it goes bad. But while it thaws I’m going to dine on your good meat first – you know, tenderize it, give it a dry rub, sear in the delicious juices, and then messily devour it half-raw. Call it a first course.”

Nurse Drake tossed a small hand whip and the genital harness she used on him over onto Karl’s belly. She grabbed two more candles and moved in on him where he reclined naked in his wheelchair, still groaning over his stuffing.

“I know baby,” Mistress soothed as she lit the candles and pulled up a chair to give herself long and leisurely access to him. “You still don’t like having your bum stuffed and buzzed. But then it wouldn’t be atonement if you liked it. Take heart, little slut. Those batteries can’t last forever, and neither can this storm. In the meantime we’ll just take your mind off them both by playing with you for a while. After that we’ll have a steak dinner at three a.m. Does that sound fun and adventurous enough darling? I’ll still let you tongue-bathe me too if you want.”

“I want that desperately, ma’am.”

“Well good! Let’s just get this condom off and we’ll see how much alternating pain and pleasure your little peter can handle. Then we’ll both have our appetizers before dinner!”

They settled into another interminable session of burning, beating, baiting and fellating the harnessed-up, vibrator-assisted hardness of Doreen’s pet monster. While Diana wept and raged anew in her unceasing fury Karl suffered and soared as always, not even a natural disaster reason enough to interrupt his almost constant punishment and demeaning.

Into the latter category fell finally getting to bathe his better with his tongue.

Head swimming with rapture, he cleaned every fold and crease, every curve and plane, every delicate organelle and tight little pucker of her before getting his appetizer. With Nurse Drake battened on the monster at the same time they made love to each other as inexhaustibly as always until they finally had to break for their way-overdue dinner.

They split a can of sweet corn and ate a whole steak apiece, nothing but straight salt and pepper and a little butter for the corn. Nothing had ever tasted so good; simplicity had its appeal in their Spartan setting. In keeping with the frontier spirit they drank warm whiskey cut with water again, and by the time the meal was done and policed up Doreen was visibly dragging. Karl risked familiarity for the second time in one night.

“Honey, why don’t you go to bed? I’ll stay up and monitor the storm and radio. I can wake you again if anything happens. It’ll take considerably more booze than that to let me sleep again, at least until you let me off this thing.”

“You are sweet, darling. You are always so sweet to me. You’re going to make someone such a wonderful husband one of these days. I do hope she’s worthy of you, and of all my labor of love getting you back on your feet. Okay darling, let me just maneuver you over next to the bed so I can hold you and put my head on you again.”

Soon Doreen was back asleep, most of her body stretched sideways on the mattress. Pillow and teddy bear in one, Karl lay in her arms, a blanket wrapped about them both. Suffering badly still but deeply in love and content beyond understanding in such difficult straits, he listened to Diana rage on and the radio burble away until the batteries in the vibrator died as predicted. Though it still felt as though he was impaled on a fencepost, at least both he and the monster were finally spared that constant electronic stimulation. Doreen had earlier uncollared his balls too, and after untold hours of torment Karl gave one last whimper of conflicted relief. Soon after he followed his owner into slumber.