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| Stories Bingo’s Home Bingo’s Lair |
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Cage Girl — Chapters 11 and 12 |
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Chapter 11 After Derek and Mary Sue left Sunday afternoon, Liz handed me a shopping list, groceries for most of the week. She smiled and went back to her cage after shedding her shirt. “Don’t you have homework to do?” “It’s done. When you get back I’m making dinner tonight.” Looking at her now it was hard to visualize what she’d gone through two weeks ago. I stopped at Blockbuster and picked up a video before going to Kroger. Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps should be low key and a bit campy, too. Liz got a kick out of my love for the old black and white movies. I took care of bills while she made hamburgers, naked except for the apron. If she was trying to drive me crazy, she was succeeding. I don’t know how many times she came to where I was working, for one innocent reason or another, to walk away with an enhanced sway. She did well with the burgers. She couldn’t eat the potato chips, said she was full anyway. She went back to her cage while I cleaned up, and I think both of us were really happy, grinning a lot to each other. Having Derek and Mary Sue visit had been good for her. Liz wore the regulatory t-shirt and panties on the bed while watching the movie, but the fabric of both seemed to be in constant motion as it was pulled, tugged or pushed. There’s a handcuff sequence in the movie where the hero and the woman he constantly fought with were cuffed together and had to pretend they were a newly wedded couple on their honeymoon. Liz said, “Stop a minute.” I found the remote and pushed the button as she rolled over and looked at me. “You have handcuffs, don’t you? Let’s use them.” She jumped up and had to go through two drawers before she found them. “Here.” I gave her a wary look. “Come on. Let’s do this. I want you to put one on me and then one on yourself.” I’m not so sure . . .” “Come on. This will be fun.” She held the cuffs out. I cuffed her left hand to my right and she tried to pull me forward. “Let’s just watch the movie, Liz.” “Sure.” She grabbed my cuffed hand with hers and pulled me forward so we lay side by side on the bed. “Well, start her up again, Andy.” I fumbled with the remote, got the film started. “This is nice, isn’t it?” She looked over at me and smiled, released my hand. The rest of the movie went by while I was in a haze of preoccupation. She no longer fiddled with her clothes because it didn’t matter. I was aware of the heat of her given off by every single inch of her body. When the film was over, I set the remote for rewind. “I need to use the bathroom.” “I guess I’m coming along, aren’t I?” She winked at me. “I want to show you something first.” I left her cuffed to the cage and put the TV and VCR up, left the video on the table to take back in the morning, before going to the bathroom. When I came out Liz was naked, still cuffed to the cage but with the cuff wrapped in her t-shirt. I couldn’t see where she’d kicked her panties. “That was mean,” she said. “If I had any sense, I’d leave you there.” “If you’d had any sense you’d never given me that ride in the cagemobile.” “What was I thinking?” “Thanks, Andy, for everything.” “Thanks, Liz, for your preposterous beauty. Burgers, nice ass, and a smart mouth, what more could a man want?” “Maybe what Mary Sue offered and you couldn’t get?” “I’m happy. Pull the shirt up so I can unlock you.” “You’re going to have to wrestle me. Grrrrr.” I left her and brought back the pad and blanket for her cage. “You’ll be comfy in here.” I looked over at her. “That shirt better be off those cuffs.” “Grrrr. A virgin always defends her honor.” I went into the bedroom and took a spare sheet from the closet. Back in the main room I said, “It’s not up.” “Grrrrr.” I rushed her, flinging the open sheet over her, wrapping it around her (deliciously) writhing body. I held her with one arm, got the sheet and t-shirt away from the cuff, and circling her with my arms, as she flung her body against mine, laughing, got the cuff off her wrist. I wrapped her tight in the sheet, picked her up. She wiggled in my arms, flopping like a fish, as I lowered her into the cage doorway. “I give up. I give up,” she said. She pulled the sheet off her head, flipping her hair over her face. She tugged it away from her eyes. “You’re wicked. You know that? You didn’t need to smother me.” “The next time Mary Sue comes, I don’t care what you say, I’m doing it. This is pure torture.” “Andy, you can have me any time you want. I never said no to you.” She pulled the rest of the sheet off of her and crawled entirely into the cage. “I don’t need that sheet.” I shut the door and folded the sheet. I looked down at her and she was backed against a bar, rubbing it. She ignored me when I turned out the lights. I watched her in the glow from the bedroom light for a minute. I was going to sleep in here again. I shut the door. I lay in bed thinking of that first week, either the time in the van or the first time here at home. She’d told me she needed to be touched. I’d maybe touched her mind but she had a body too, and I wanted to lose myself in the grace of that touch. I thought that if she went away a part of me would die. I’d not been celibate since Cindy’s death, not by a long shot, had fallen in and out of love, but this was different. Mary Sue’s option of sending Liz somewhere was no longer possible it looked for either of us. I think Liz would bitterly fight any attempt to make her leave, no matter how much better it would be for her. People her own age. Counselors. Some place safe, far from here. Memory has a geographic component and being at school or in a town and seeing familiar landmarks and people must be hard for Liz, since everything was associated with her pain. I drifted off finally and woke with a muzzy-headedness because I was halfway in a dream. I heard a noise and thought, Liz is taking the pad and blanket out of her cage. There was no light at all, even with my eyes open. I shut them, heard another noise and felt the bed shift. “I’m joining you,” Liz said. I rolled toward the voice. “Just calm down. I mean if you want to you can. Don’t try to make me leave. Okay?” I felt her move under the sheets, move up against me and roll onto her side. Her arm reached over me and I rolled to my side facing away from her. She snuggled closer and gave a gentle squeeze. “Thanks, Andy.” “Night, Liz.” “Night.” I could smell her this close. I wondered how I smelled to her. Was I different? Could she smell the rot of age? I hated the feeling of loss I lived with. To fight it I had sought out Liz. Now she was the one trying to hold onto what I couldn’t offer her, a life full of years and bounty. Maybe she didn’t care now, but all I had for her was my mortality. I woke several times in the night. Once she wasn’t against my back and I turned and found her facing away. I moved to her, held her close to me and that’s how the alarm woke us, my arm over her.
Chapter 12 We were in the car getting ready for school and work and she said, “Look at what I have.” She pulled the handcuffs out of her purse. “Neat, huh?” She clicked them on her wrists and laughed. “I’m your captive.” “Only in the car.” “I know that, Andy. Two worlds. You carefully explained it to me.” She clicked the cuffs pulling her wrists apart. “I want you to flog me.” I started the car. “One time I wanted you, or someone like you, to say those magic words to me. I want you to flog me.” “Mary Sue says it makes her horny as all get out.” “Mary Sue’s exceptional.” “Isn’t she.” Liz clicked the cuffs. “Maybe tonight’s the night.” “Depends on what’s for dinner.” “Macaroni and cheese. Out of a box. Mary Sue said keep things simple. She’s sending me a cookbook.” We were two blocks from home, passing through an intersection. “Noodles and flogging. I don’t think . . .” I still can’t remember much. There was a loud crash and everything shook and I remember hearing Liz scream. I woke up in the hospital. Mark was there. “Where’s Liz?” “She was with you?” I went a little crazy then and it took a few minutes to sort things out. The Barracuda had been broadsided by a car. I was the only one on the scene. Cops had gone to the shop, looking for Junior, I guess as my closest relative. Mark had come to the hospital. I got him to call Leroy so Leroy could call Derek. The number was on the rolodex on my desk. As time passed I learned I’d been hit by a Pinto and then that the Pinto was Junior’s and that there’d been some blood on the passenger side of my car. I’d hit my head on the driver’s side window and bled like a stuck pig so they’d thought the blood was mine. The cops were still trying to get things sorted out. I knew who had Liz and could too easily imagine what they’d do to her. Cops saw I had a head injury and they thought I sounded like a crazy man. A call from Derek to the Chief had a car go to Liz’s home. No one was at the house. Derek himself checked records, what he could access from where he was, and there was no step dad. Everything, car, house, was in Liz’s mom’s name. No record of a divorce or death, or of a remarriage in this state. All this he told me two days later when I was back in the shop. I drove over to her home as soon as I got out of the hospital and it looked like no one was there. No one got the mail, the trash can was tipped over, out by the curb. They’d taken Liz and gone. I sat one evening in the spare bedroom, looking at Liz’s clothes, the things she’d worn. I finally got up. I can’t do this, I thought. I went upstairs, turned off the light, and never went back down. I took the cage out of the van and buried it under clutter in the garage. A week after this I sat in the car in the Burger King parking lot and bawled while Bobby watched, frozen. Cage Girl Page |
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