Anonymous Caller (Chapter 6)
Tim pulled his pickup into the driveway just in time to see Bobby Shimkus’ red Mustang peeling away. Margot was in the driver’s seat, with her boyfriend, Phil, next to her. Phil reached over and the car’s horn blared.
“What the hell?” Jenny puzzled.
Bobby was in back taking a swig from a bottle. Next to him Tiffany leaned out the window, throwing up her arms and whooping as they tore out to the main road, and spun a hard right towards town.
Tim threw the truck into park and jumped out. The door of the house had been pried open, and a tire iron left abandoned on the doormat.
Inside, it was a shambles. The little vases Jenny had filled were in pieces on the floor, flowers scattered where they fell. The television tube was cracked. Pictures had been pulled off the wall, bookshelves toppled.
Jenny walked in behind him. “Wow,” she said quietly. “Maybe a fence is a good idea after all.”
He didn’t laugh. He walked to the fireplace and picked up a framed photo. It was Tim as a boy, with his father and mother. The glass was shattered. He set it gently back on the mantle.
“Shit,” he said, a disturbing possibility breaking into his thoughts. “The gatehouse.” He ran through the kitchen and out the back door, leaving Jenny behind.
His heart pounded, pumping poisonous anger through his veins as he ran. But the gatehouse appeared untouched. The mayhem didn’t reach this far. To be sure, he pulled the keys from around his neck and unlocked the door.
He turned on the light. The machine was fine. He sucked in the stale air. He hadn’t been to the gatehouse since taking care of the FBI agent and Jenny’s boyfriend, and the mechanical giant seemed somehow lonely.
Tim nodded to the machine, as he remembered that he still had Bobby Shimkus’ cell phone number.
“Slow down! That’s a cop,” Phil yelled, laughing.
“It’s not a cop. Jesus, how much did you drink in there?” Margot asked from the driver’s seat. It didn’t seem possible they could get so shitfaced so fast. Tiffany laughed from the backseat. Bobby guffawed.
“And I can’t believe you went in, Tiffany,” Margot said, glaring at the redhead in the rear view.
Tiffany shrugged. “I got bored.”
Margot slowed as they entered the town limits, where they might actually encounter a cop. A phone rang somewhere inside the car. In the back seat, Bobby pulled his cell out of his jeans pocket and checked the display. “Anonymous caller,” he said. He flipped the phone open.
She glanced in the mirror. “Who is it?”
He didn’t answer. He just listened to the phone, his eyes staring into space. Beside him, Tiffany yanked on his hair. “Bobby? Who is it?” He ignored her too.
Margot stopped at an intersection and put the car in park. Even her drunk boyfriend was worried now. Phil poked his head back between the seats. “Hey,” he said. “Earth to Bobby.”
Then Bobby abruptly pulled the phone away from his ear and extended it to Tiffany. “It’s for you,” he said.
Tiffany frowned, but she tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and accepted the phone. Before she could finish “Hello?” her face smoothed into the same waking repose that Bobby had worn a moment ago.
By the time Tiffany finished listening to the caller, and was extending the phone over the seat to Phil, Margot was genuinely frightened. “Don’t take it,” she urged. “Just don’t.”
He scoffed and pressed the phone to his ear. The grin disappeared, replaced with a slack, emotionless expression Margot had never seen on Phil’s face. She looked in the rearview again: Bobby and Tiffany were sitting side-by-side, watching Phil’s back expectantly. Margot bounced in her seat, her eyes searching through the windshield for signs of life on Main Street—for someone who might help. But the town was graveyard quiet.
Then Bobby was reaching to her, the open phone in his doughy hand.
“It’s for you, Margot,” he said flatly.
She threw open the door and jumped out, breaking into a run, aiming herself at a darkened row of shops. Some of the storekeepers lived above their businesses. Maybe she could get help.
Car doors opened behind her, and rapid footsteps followed in her wake: the rubber of the boys’ sneakers, and the clacking of Tiffany’s flats. Margot reached a dry cleaner’s and pulled futility at the locked glass door. Then Phil’s strong arms were around her.
“Let me go!” she shouted, twisting her body in his grip.
Bobby approached with the cell phone, and placed it gently against Margot’s ear. The street faded away, as she fell, dizzy, into the bottomless void of the open line.
The doorbell roused Jenny from her slumber. Next to her, Tim was still sleeping, wrapped in the covers he’d stolen from her in the night. She kissed his lips and rolled out of bed, pulling a robe from the door hook to cover her naked body.
How different her world had become. She thought of Rob, the unfinished pasta dinner from her last night in the city, and the legal brief she’d left half-complete in the office. This was her home now, filled with languorous days and petty dramas, enslaved by a love too fierce to be natural.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs she shook her head at the ruined living room. She had started to clean up the night before, but when Tim finally returned from the gatehouse, he’d made her stop.
When she opened the front door, she began to realize why.
It was the four kids who’d vandalized the house, the red Mustang parked haphazardly on the drive behind them. They looked wan and disheveled in the morning sunlight—apparitions summoned at a séance.
She recognized the handsome country boy in front; he’d been in the back of the car with the tall girl who now stood listlessly at his side, floating in place like a marionette in the wind, her red hair cascading messily over her shoulders. The couple stared at her with haunted eyes.
The two other vandals stood behind them. The meaty boy with dirty-blonde hair seemed like he should be impetuous and kind of fun, but today he looked pained, his eyebrows forming a peak over his hooded eyes. The girl beside him was compact, with a fresh face framed by a messy crop of short, dark hair. The confusion in her gaze made Jenny think of the lost children printed on milk cartons.
She heard Tim running down the stairs behind her like a child on Christmas morning. He joined her at the door, and the kids who’d invaded his house turned their gazes to him, uncertain.
He stared back at them, nearly hyperventilating with the same muted excitement he’d shown Jenny at her arrival. “Come in,” he finally said, moving Jenny out of the way.
They shuffled into the living room, eyes glued to Tim. They lined up shoulder-to-shoulder, the girls in the middle. Tim closed the door.
“Tim, what’s going on?” she asked.
“Shhh.” He began pacing in front of the four like a general inspecting his troops. He paused at the country boy, and abruptly raised his hand as though to strike him. The boy, big enough to trounce Tim, flinched with the look of a cowed animal. Tim seemed to reconsider, and lowered his arm.
He gave a disdainful glance at the beefier boy. Then a predatory look crossed his face as stepped closer to the girls’ empty bodies, side-by-side, arms limp, hands touching haphazardly. Something in the redhead’s mesmerized expression caught his fancy, and he smiled at her.
He stepped close and kissed the girl’s parted lips gently. She might as well have been asleep; she neither resisted, nor kissed him back.
Tim moved to the shorter girl and touched her chin. “Hello, Margot.” He placed both hands on her breasts and fondled her through her tank top. She stood placidly, looking up at him as he squeezed her breasts, pushed them up to enhance her cleavage, then kneaded them hard enough that her body swayed in place. She uttered no protest. Neither did her boyfriend.
Jenny’s blood ran cold. What had he done? The kids seemed gutted, emptied of what they’d been before. He’d gone much further with them that he had with her.
“Tell me you like this,” he said to Margot.
“I like this,” the girl replied.
He stepped back and cleared his throat. “Okay, all of you, clean the house from top to bottom,” he commanded.
The four of them nodded slowly.
“And quit looking so glum,” he added. “Smile.”
They obeyed, even the neat, black-haired girl he’d just molested beamed at him with the weak half-smile of a child with a head cold. The four bodies turned and drifted towards the mess in the living room.
They stayed all day, cleaning up, making small repairs, cooking and washing the dishes. Tim finally let them leave after dark. Jenny heard Bobby’s car start up with a roar, then fade away.
They returned the next morning, bright and early again, looking healthier and more alive. Tim had instructed them to get a good night’s sleep, and to come back showered and well groomed. The boys had shaved; the girls had blown out their hair and applied a touch of makeup and perfume. They all smiled at him as they walked in, and went right to work, unasked.
The following day, Tim sent his coterie to return Jenny’s rental car. When they came back in the afternoon, Bobby and Phil hauled in a new television, grunting as they hefted it through the door and eased it onto the stand where the old one had been. They dropped to their knees and began hooking up cables.
Tiffany and Margot followed, each carrying a black, shiny paper bag bearing the logo for a store called “The Gee Spot” and an address in the city. Tim had the girls change upstairs. They came back down wearing fetishistic parodies of a French maid’s uniform, complete with fishnet stockings and black lace chokers, and accessorized with novelty feather dusters.
They stood at attention and displayed themselves for Tim. Tiffany’s costume seemed tailor-made for her height and figure. Margot’s was a poorer fit, but the black satin set off her pale skin to great effect. Tim nodded his approval.
From the TV stand, Bobby and Phil glanced back furtively at their girlfriends’ half-naked bodies. Tim caught them. “Hey, what are you looking at?” he demanded. The boys muttered apologies and returned to their work. Tim snorted and circled behind the girls, looking them up and down. He reached under their minidresses and squeezed their butts.
“Actually, that’s okay,” Tim said to the boys. “Pay attention for a minute. This is important.”
They looked back up. Tim pushed between the girls and draped his arms over their shoulders proprietarily, his fingers dangling at the swell of their breasts. “Margot and Tiffany are mine now, do you understand? You’re never going to touch them again. You’re not even going to think about touching them.”
“Yes, sir,” Phil said.
“Understood,” Bobby answered.
He stepped back in front of the women. “Same with you,” he told them. “Your bodies belong to me exclusively.”
They nodded.
“Do you understand?”
“Yeah,” said Tiffany. “Our bodies belong to you, Tim.”
“Exclusively,” added Margot.
Tim seemed to remember for the first time that Jenny was still there, standing near the door. He grinned at her, almost with embarrassment.
“I figure, as long as we have domestic help, they might as well look the part,” he explained.
Domestic help was right. In the days ahead, the boys were mostly consigned to the grounds, raking leaves and cleaning and servicing the aging farm equipment. But the girls waited on Tim hand and foot—making meals, doing laundry, and using their cheap feather dusters to clean the shelves. Jenny was pretty sure that wasn’t all they would be doing for him.
Tim dipped the tip of his brush into the pink-toned paint and lifted it gently to the sketchpad. He squinted and steadied his hand, then touched the brush to a spot high on the buoyant breast. Vioia! A perfect nipple.
He looked back up at his model for comparison, and frowned. Tiffany was standing where he put her on the coffee table. Her fiery hair and statuesque body was still glowing in the sunlight that streamed through the living room windows. But she’d definitely moved.
“Tiffany, I asked you to stand still.”
“I’m sorry,” she said through a forced smile. “I’m trying. But I’m getting so tired.”
He shook his head. Her body alignment had drifted. She was supposed to be in profile, with her face turned toward him while her body bent backwards in a graceful arc that lifted her breasts and accentuated her naked ass. Her back was far too straight now.
“Fine. Take a break.”
She sighed in relief and stepped down, then plopped onto the rug near where Bobby was cleaning, sweeping ashes from the fireplace into a dustpan.
The kitchen door opened and Jenny walked in, tugging gardening gloves off her fingers—she’d been seeding flowers in the planters outside. She glanced at Tiffany, then the sketchpad on the easel. “That’s really good.”
“Thanks. I’ve never had a live model before.” He stepped past the easel to look at Tiffany sprawled out naked on the rug, her eyes half closed.
Tiffany Miller, he thought. There was a brief period in the 9th grade when Tiffany was all he thought about. He’d hated himself for it. She seemed to ooze sex from every pore, but if there was more to her than her looks, and her mastery of the flirty banter that passed as wit at school, he never saw it. She’d been hot in a purely conventional way—an object of desire to the same crude rednecks he so despised. Sharing their taste in anything was abhorrent.
But his body had decided that the redhead was the perfect girl, and it dragged his mind along for two, maybe three, long months. His interest was noticed, and one sweltering day shortly before summer vacation Tiffany had struck up a conversation with him in the hall. She’d stood close and touched his arm, while sharing some insight about the curriculum that he didn’t hear. He still remembered the smell of her hair.
He couldn’t recall the incoherent response he’d stammered back. But she abruptly walked away to join her friends by the drinking fountain. They’d been watching the whole thing. It had all been a joke. Her pouty mouth curled into a cruel smile, and she pointed at him and made some comment at his expense. They all laughed as he slunk away. But part of him was glad it happened. His obsession was cured.
Now she was his.
“You ready yet?”
“I can’t move,” she groaned from the floor.
It was time to try out the second part of his programming—the part he’d thought up especially for her.
He held up his hand and snapped his fingers.
Tiffany jolted and her green eyes opened. She pushed up from the rug suddenly and gathered her knees beneath her, then quickly spun to face him, looking up at him in shock, her mouth hanging open.
“What—?” said Jenny. “What did you do?”
“Just watch.”
Tiffany began breathing hard, still staring at Tim. Then she dropped onto all fours and started crawling, her face flushed and her body beginning to tremble. He watched her narrow waist as she rounded the coffee table, and admired her firm ass hanging in the air, a bikini tan line white across her cheeks.
She stopped at his feet, rose to a kneeling position and buried her head in his crotch, her button nose pressing into his denim. She breathed deep and her body shook.
“I thought you were tired?” he said.
She opened her mouth and tried to wrap it around his erection through his jeans. “Please,” she said, her voice muffled by his pants. “Mffft... I need ...”
Tim laced his fingers in her hair. “Bobby, are you okay with this?” he called to the boy at the fireplace.
“With what?” Bobby looked up from his work. “Oh. Ummm, I guess. She belongs to you, right?”
Tiffany began unbuttoning his fly clumsily, then unbuckling his belt. In a moment she had his pants down and his erection was in her hand. She whimpered at the sight of it, as though the anticipation was too much to bear.
He turned to Jenny with grin. “Blow jobs on demand,” he explained.
To his surprise, Jenny didn’t appear amused. In fact, she seemed appalled. She stared at him like he was a stranger.
“Is something wro—? Ohhhh, shit that’s good.” Tiffany’s lips were soft and warm as she took him in. He looked back down at her. Her fingers nimbly caressed the base of his shaft as her head bobbed up and down. Her eyes rolled back and she moaned, as though she were being fucked for real.
And then, like a pubescent dream, he came in Tiffany Miller’s mouth. He was barely aware of Jenny leaving the room, the kitchen door slamming behind her.
The lace fringes of the costume tickled Margot’s thighs as she inventoried the breakfast tray. The pancakes were perfectly browned, and steam rose from the scrambled eggs. There was warm maple syrup, two cups of coffee and two glasses of orange juice, fresh squeezed. Bits of orangey pulp were still trapped under her fingernails. She tried to suck them out, then gave up.
She’d sleepwalked through the first couple of days, still trying to figure out what had happened to her. Now, she’d come to realize, it didn’t really matter. Whatever science or spell compelled her to get up every morning, shower and make herself beautiful, and then wait at the corner for Bobby’s car and the ride to the farm, it wasn’t going away. The best she could hope for was to master this new terrain, this blank desert where Tim Forrester’s commands were the only important features on the landscape, and obeying them the only reward that satisfied her.
Margot made her way up the stairs and down the hall, balancing the tray in her hands, then knocked. “Come in,” Tim called from inside.
She pushed open the door with her butt and entered the sunny room. Tim was in bed with Jenny, who pulled the covers up to cover her body. She eyed Margot with something like suspicion; jealousy, perhaps.
“Good morning,” Margot said neutrally.
“Put that on the table,” Tim said. She complied wordlessly and turned to leave. “Hold on,” he added.
She faced him and gave him a polite half-smile. He was looking at her like she was a mystery candy in a boxed assortment, chocolate on the outside, the inside equally likely to be a savory hazelnut, or a sickly sweet candied cherry. The look gave her an abstract urge to somehow reveal her soul to him, as if such a thing were possible, to satisfy his curiosity.
“I always thought Margot was an weird name in this town. How did you get it?”
“My mother thought it sounded sophisticated,” she answered, wrinkling her nose. “French or something.”
He laughed. “Well, you certainly look French now.”
“I know, right? Or like a short porn star.”
“You don’t like the outfit?”
“I like everything you like,” she said. “Is there anything else I can do for you?”
“Yes.” He threw off the covers. He was naked and erect. “Come up here and fuck me.”
“Okay.”
She’d wondered when this would happen; she knew he’d been screwing Tiffany for a day or two. Margot slid her panties down over her fishnets and crawled onto the bed and up his prone body, his erection grazing her and leaving a sticky trail of pre-come. She looked up from his chest into his eyes. “Should I... kiss you?”
“Why not?”
She settled over him and propped herself up on her elbows above his face. She lowered her mouth to his and kissed him as passionately as she knew how. She’d have his full attention now—every twitch of his body would be a new command that she could obey. Between her legs, she felt her own body responding excitedly.
Margot kissed him sloppily until her need grew painful, then sat back and fondled his erection, stroking it a couple of times with her hands. Then she straddled his hips and lowered herself onto him. She moaned as he filled her.
She flexed and began rolling her hips rhythmically, her pubic hair scrunching against his and the pre-shock of an orgasm already twitching in her belly. She diverted her eyes to forestall her climax, and caught Jenny’s gaze. The blonde was watching her with a trace of anger, but mostly something else. Pity.
The next morning, the knock on the door came earlier than normal. Jenny squinted at the alarm clock. It was 5:00 a.m.
A crazy thought entered her mind as she descended the stairs. Maybe it’s the police. A knot tightened in her stomach. What would she do then?
But the pretty blonde girl on the doorstep definitely wasn’t a cop. She was tan, and her body shined with a coat of sunscreen. There was a spray of freckles on her face. She wore unseasonable short pants and a backpack. Her ocean-blue eyes fixed on Jenny with anticipation.
“Hello,” she said, tossing her short hair. Her accent placed her from Australia or New Zealand. “I’m looking for Tim.”
Jenny heard Tim run down the stairs behind them. She angled a thumb over her shoulder, and the girl’s face broke into an excited smile. She pulled off her backpack and let it drop to ground with a thud, then darted through the door and threw her body at Tim. She attached herself, arms around his neck, her toned legs wrapping his waist as she kissed him frantically.
Jenny slammed the door closed and stomped her feet as she ascended the stairs, leaving Tim alone with his new conquest.
Ten minutes later, he joined her in the bedroom. He opened a drawer and started changing out his pajamas into jeans and a tee shirt.
“Who is she?” Jenny demanded.
“Paige,” he said. “She’s from Melbourne. She’ll be sleeping with us.”
“How come you’re not fucking her right now?”
“She’s on the phone in the kitchen calling home. Her parents think she’s on a student exchange trip.” He pulled on his jeans. “What’s wrong with you, anyway?”
It was too much. “What’s wrong with me?” She shook her head. “What’s wrong with me? What are you doing, Tim? First those poor kids, and now you’re enslaving random girls from around the world.”
“She’s not enslaved,” he protested. “She’s in love.”
“Whatever.”
“What, are you jealous?”
She picked up a pillow and threw it at him. “You’ve gone too far!” she shouted. “When are you going to stop?! How many is enough?”
He puzzled at her. “Jenny, that’s my business.”
“I was happy before, in my life. Not blissful, but happy. Now I’m stuck on a goddamn farm in the middle of nowhere as part of some horny teenager’s harem!”
The outburst surprised even her, and she regretted it instantly. She still loved him desperately, and was fine with sharing him, if that’s what he wanted. But she’d thought she was special to him.
Tim glowered at her, his jaw tense. He walked silently to the closet and retrieved a small basket from the top shelf. He pulled something out of it. It was an artifact from Jenny’s past life. Her cell phone.
He turned it on and extended to her.
“Wh—what?”
“You’ve had a bad attitude for days,” he said. “You don’t see Margot and Tiffany talking back to me like that.”
“Margot and Tiffany are zombies.”
“They just know their place,” he growled. “And, by the way, they’re perfectly happy as a result. Take the phone.”
She obeyed. “What are you going to do?” She heard her voice tremble.
“Get on the bed and stay there. Don’t make any calls. When the phone rings, answer it,” he said. He headed for the bedroom door.
She heard him walk down the hall and descend the stairs.
“Oh... God,” she whispered. She stared at the phone in her palm like it was a hand grenade. Seven minutes, she thought. Maybe eight. That’s how long it would take him to reach the gatehouse, unlock it and get the machine up to speed. A little longer if he had to fuel it.
She had seven minutes left as herself.
The phone rang, too early. He must have run all the way. She closed her eyes, pressing out a tear, then answered.
“Please... " she whispered into the phone. “Don’t.”
“Jenny?”
She bolted upright. “Rob?!”
“Jenny, I’ve been calling you for a week! Where are you?”
“Oh Rob, please help me,” she cried. “I’m in Crow’s Landing, Indiana. I’m on a farm. I don’t know what he’s going to do to me. He’s going to change me. I don’t know if I’ll even remember...”
“Where are you exactly? What’s the address?”
A beep in her ear: call waiting. “I have to go now. Please don’t hurt him.”
She pressed the button that hung up on Rob and answered the call.