A Young Desert Rose, Chapter 8

  • Posted on April 6, 2017 at 12:05 pm

By Sunnybunny

The situation was growing dire.

Heather could feel herself sinking deeper into the metaphorical quagmire of her predicament with no means of escape, nothing to latch onto to save herself. For the first time in her life, Heather was completely at the mercy of external entities. It was more than the stolen money, more than Angie, the town itself seemed to be drawing her into… what?

The sheriff’s coy jab rang in her ears, louder each time her mind returned to how awful the situation truly was. He spoke about the long-time residents here, how so many of their stories began with how they were just drifting through Oasis and onto greener pastures. It was like something out of Stephen King. A humble town, Anywhere, USA, with some otherworldly power lurking beneath the unassuming façade slowly turning the populace into lizard people.

She needed to escape before things got any worse.

Heather was seated on the edge of her bed, her go-to spot now for deep thought in the days since arriving, with her hands clasped firmly between her knees. Beside her was a folded over notebook and pen with a few lines written then hastily scratched out. The remnants of a new plan — possible suspects and hiding places for her stolen cash, each one dismissed before she had finished scribbling out the thought. Each new idea came with added baggage of having to expose more of her hand, who she had been before she wound up in Oasis, and that was out of the question. Lies brought more lies, more chances to trip up on her own bogus history. She was already popular enough being the new girl in a town seriously lacking in single women without arousing further suspicion. It was safer to keep a low profile, play up the lone motorist, just working her way through to the west coast. Nothing to see here!

The diner offered her the best opportunity to gather intel on the townspeople and so far, it had yielded little. There were no whispers of anyone abruptly leaving town or suddenly coming into a great deal of money. The conversations were as well-worn as the pages of a good book: the older folks that came in for black coffee and an English muffin reminisce about when Oasis had been a coal miner’s paradise. Hard to believe, they’d say, but Oasis was at one time twice its current size with triple the population. During the boom of the forties and fifties, Oasis was on the fast track to become a major metropolitan hub. They had a bustling downtown, newly constructed suburban homes, and a clinic with a doctor that made house calls! It sounded to Heather like Mayberry until the sly older gentlemen would lean in and confide that there had even been a brothel on the outskirts of town. A good place for those hardworking miners to unwind after a few dark and dizzying days in the coal pits. The wistfulness in his recollections made her wonder if he had enjoyed the company of a young woman in this house of ill-fame when he was in his prime.

Then, almost overnight, the coal mine dried up and was promptly shut down and abandoned. At first, nobody knew what to make of the news but weren’t too concerned. In their eyes, Oasis was already moving so far along in progress that it was impossible to halt now. The mine was gone, but so what? Ford and GM where already in talks to open manufacturing plants that would keep the jobs rolling in for years to come. Only without the mines being a reliable source of revenue, the properties were seen as less valuable and those companies once so eager to snatch up land to build on wanted to renegotiate. Contracts fell through and eventually they would pass on Oasis. Soon the town’s finances were in freefall and many long-time residents pulled up stakes and moved away.

Heather later told Mama Maven she intended to visit the local library’s archives to dig up more of the town’s past. Mama Maven gently broke the news that the library had burned to the ground a few years prior. “Probably teenagers,” she confided but there was no scorn one might anticipate in her tone, only disappointment. “A stray cigarette butt in a building full of dry old books in a dusty old town… we was lucky it didn’t spread and take the whole of Oasis with it!”

Another story she overhead was the one Angie had given her a preview of, how her mother had met and fallen in love with some ‘city fella’.  At the time, it was quite the scandal and everyone seemed to have their own take on the story (which they were also more than willing to share!). Some said that Angie’s father had been abusive, prompting her to seek refuge and warmth in another man’s arms. Others still offered up that he was a decent and hardworking man who would never harm a flea. Whatever the reason, they all agreed that after she left, the man had crawled into a bottle to cope with the loss and never recovered. Poor little Angie was another point of contention. Plenty of opinions and concerns about her well-being staying in the home of an alcoholic who may or may not have anger issues, but there were no stories of anyone looking into the matter. They were content to speculate and gossip, sit around the diner and shake their heads in pity at the right moments in the story, but when Heather pressed (despite her better judgement) if anyone had ever looked into the state of Angie’s home life, her question was met with blank stares. Stick their nose into someone else’s affairs? It was unheard of, out of line and impolite!

Angie…

Heather’s mind reached the inevitable point where it drifted back to Angela Lawrence and she let her eyes wander up from the pen and pad toward her stack of pillows at the headboard. Beneath the pile, hidden but practically beating like Poe’s hideous heart was a carefully folded pair of girl’s underwear. She knew she should move it. All it would take was Walter getting it into his head that her room needed turning over and the jig would be up. There would be no way she could plausibly explain the presence of those panties.

The memory of that day was dizzying, and she could only recall fragments of what had happened once she had returned to her room, trembling so badly Heather could barely walk. She dropped the key twice before her fingers would cooperate well enough to slide it into the lock. Heather fell into the bed, hands clawing at her body in a desperate move to undress herself. Clutched tightly in her fist, a wad of white gold, Angie’s soiled underwear. She pressed them into her nose and inhaled the heady fragrance, having to sink her teeth into the fabric to stifle a loud moan. Her own panties were soaked through and clinging to her crotch like a second skin. She was wet down to her knees and had to wrestle her legs free of her jeans. She did not bother with the vibrator this time — there was no time, no real need for it.

She crawled to her favorite position in the middle of the bed, gathering a pillow to rest beneath her stomach and lifted her ass into the air, thighs spread. She was close, so very close to coming, and she had only just begun to caress herself. Angie’s panties were spread out before her on the bedspread, allowing her to admire the moisture at the center, still so very warm with the heat of her little sex. She stretched her tongue out and lapped at the cloth, hoping to taste even the faintest hint of her cunt but it was a poor substitute. She hated herself in the moment for not taking Angie when she had the chance. The feeling of that young body pressed against hers still lingered on her flesh, how those deliciously small nipples had rolled so easily along the tip of her tongue…

She let her imagination run wild now, and like a runaway locomotive, it crashed through every sexual taboo she could fathom.

She had fallen asleep that night, masturbated to the point of sexual exhaustion and still unsatisfied. The waves of endless pleasure proved only a temporary solution to quell the worst of the ache, the need. Heather was beginning to feel like a junkie jonesing for her next fix and everything in between was just filling the time. She was falling into addiction, hooked on the most forbidden of pleasures. She knew she should feel worse about it, she even tried to. For as long as she could, Heather fought to hold onto those feelings of self-loathing and disgust and be ashamed of her behavior. She tried to make herself physically ill from entertaining such lewd thoughts and bowed her head over the toilet with two fingers jammed down her throat, pleading penance from the porcelain god. She would give herself a hard scolding and vow to throw Angie’s gift out…only to be in bed with them pressed to her face again, squirming and moaning about the sheets like a bitch in heat.

The days dragged on without a whisper of her stolen property and she was beginning to fear the worst. In the quiet hours of the evening, after helping Mama Maven close the diner for the weekend (they were closed on Sundays in observance of the Lord’s day of rest, Maven explained), Heather collapsed into a ball at the foot of her bed and had a good long cry at the hopelessness of her situation. She knew it would solve nothing, give her no clearer idea of how to dig herself out of the hole she was in, but the weight of it all had worn her resolve down. She was fatigued, beaten down by the last few days, frustrated and afraid. Her hands wormed their way beneath her stack of pillows, retrieved Angie’s panties and clutched them tightly against her chest with both hands. Horny too — god had she ever been so desperate for sex in her entire life? She smelled them while she sobbed, pressing them to her mouth to stifle the worst of the noise and soon they were damp from tears.

She returned to the scene of the crime, as Heather had done a hundred times since arriving in Oasis. The town was silent, still, bathed in its evening colors of silver and white that seemed to transform the dunes of sand into hills of snow. It was the only thing chilly in the picture as the temperature was particularly muggy that evening and when she ventured out to the Mustang, pants were foregone and she padded out into the parking lot in her bare feet, tank top and panties.

She shut the door of the passenger side and listened to the stillness surrounding her until it became unbearable. It was all-encompassing, the quiet in Oasis. It seemed to consume sound, feast itself on the tiniest noise until not even the wind dared to raise a protest against it.

Going from the air-conditioned motel room to the tight confines of her car was quite the shock to her system, and she was sweating in a matter of moments but weathered the discomfort, making no move to leave, but instead settled back into the seat. She raised her chin until she was reclined against the headrest and tried to imagine herself as Angie, what it must have felt like from her perspective that fateful evening and have some strange woman brazenly explore her body. It never failed to give her a shiver of excitement. She willed herself to feel strange hands sweeping over her belly, finding the entrance at the bottom of her shirt and sneaking underneath. Had Angie gotten a similar rush of lascivious pleasure? Had it come when Heather traced fingers up those silken thighs? Did it linger after she caressed her little mound beneath the panties Heather now owned?

Heather was deftly squeezing at her own chest, awakening her nipples into fine points before teasing them with gentle pinches between her fingers. Her sex was soon aching for attention, but she delayed doing more than sliding the length of her middle finger along the outside of her underwear for the moment, sending an electric charge tickling out to her extremities.

She had just tugged aside the crotch of her panties, exposing herself to the evening air, when something cut through the darkness like a bolt of lightning. Heather immediately leapt to attention and turtled up tightly in embarrassment. The noise had not come from outside however, but within. A jaunty tune was playing faintly, a song she knew all too well. It was Katy Perry, one of her older singles from the PRISM album. It had been on a nonstop loop for a time with Heather and never failed to get her hips moving. She liked it so much that Heather had set it as the ringtone for her cellphone….

Tentatively, she opened the glove compartment and there it was: the small, rectangle of light jittering across the state of New Mexico on her folded roadmap. She glimpsed the number flashing across the display and with nothing more than a series of numbers, her blood turned to ice water.

Audibly, she intoned, “No….”

Katy’s voices were abruptly cut off and the silence closed in angrily around them again but only for a moment. The number flashed again and Katy Perry took up the chorus again.

“Baby, you’re a firewoooooooork! Come on, let your colors burst!”

Even in her petrified state, Heather found herself nodding her head in time with the beat. “Still a great song.…” The phone darkened again and the lyrics died only to begin over again a heartbeat later, and she knew that it was going to keep ringing until…

She snatched it up and swiped her finger across the display. She did not bother with formalities. “I thought I disconnected the service to this thing.” Her tone was intentionally accusatory.

“So, I found out,” the voice on the opposite end replied. He was grinning like the goddamn Cheshire cat. She could hear it plainly, and it melted the ice in her veins and set it to boil. “It wasn’t the only surprise I got that day. Where are you?”

“That’s for me to know and you to never find out.”

“As childish as ever. How about this question — where is my goddamned. Motherfucking. Money?”

He wasn’t shouting. She had never known him to raise his voice in anger. He could intimidate with a whisper, and each word was carefully measured and matched with an even character.

“I have no idea.” Some truth for a change. Ironic, she thought, that there was no way he was going to buy it.

He didn’t.

“Bullshit.”

“Hanging up now.”

“I traced the phone, Heather.”

The pause was all the gesture he needed to continue. He knew he had her attention now.

“After I found out the cell service had been canceled, I immediately called in to reactivate things. I know you, everything about you, including all your security passwords and verification questions. After I got your phone working again, I traced your device, using the GPS-.”

“Looks like bingeing all those episodes of CSI on Netflix paid off,” she replied with confidence she did not feel. Her mind was racing, heart beating out of her chest. Was he on the way to collect her now? Worse, what would he do when he found out she had lost half a million dollars in cash?

“It was on Hulu,” he corrected. “Don’t focus on the wrong part of the story. Do you know what I found when I traced your phone, Heather? Can I tell you?”

She did not reply.

“Nothing! Not a damn thing.” He laughed. “Just miles of blank map on all sides of your little dot. It’s like the world opened itself up and swallowed you whole.”

“Happy to disappoint you.” She tried to keep the relief out of her voice, but the apprehension lingered. He wasn’t done….

“Oh, don’t you worry your pretty little head,” he replied, sounding as if he were reassuring a child that Santa was on his way. “I found out enough for a good start. I know you are somewhere in Arizona. Some lonely stretch of road, maybe in a dingy motel that still thinks free cable is an enticing enough quality in the decade of unlimited wireless data packages.”

Heather glanced up into the shadow of the motel’s sign, a bent elbow of metal stretching over the sand-caked road.

“Good luck with that. It’s a big state. An even bigger country. I don’t plan on staying still for long.”

“Oh, but you have!” He cried so loudly that she drew the receiver away from her ear. “Your beacon hasn’t moved for days now. You’re holed up somewhere, Princess –.”

“Don’t you fucking call me that — ever!”

“Maybe you’re having car trouble? Maybe half a mill wasn’t enough cash to get you across country, who the hell knows? My point is, I have feelers out there already, looking for you. You know me, you know what I do….” There was a sinister pause, a calculated breath that was intended to allow Heather to reflect on everything she knew about this individual.

Her blood ran cold again.

“I’m going to find you.” Not a threat, there was no animosity in his voice. It was a promise. “It’s just a matter of time. So, why not make it easier for the both of us and come home? I’m feeling generous tonight, Princess, and I’m willing to let all this be bygones. I’ll let it all go, no hard feelings, you have my word.” His voice softened, “Everyone makes mistakes, right, babe? You lost your head, weren’t thinking straight and before you knew it, you were too far in and felt there was no way back. Does that about sum things up? Well, babe, there IS a way back. Just tell me where you are, and I’ll have some people there tomorrow morning to help you.”

She had to agree on one point, “You’re right, Richie. I have made mistakes. Big ones.”

“It’s okay, Princess. Really it is.”

“But running away from you, that place, that whole invention of a life… that was NOT one of them.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“The fuck I don’t!”

He sighed into the phone. “When I find you Heather –”

She did not let him finish. Heather ended the call but it wasn’t enough. She powered off the device but still wasn’t satisfied. She climbed out of the car, stumbling on shaky legs and reared her arm back like a baseball pitcher. The phone did not shatter as she anticipated, but instead skipped along the pavement a few yards before coming to a rest atop a small dune of sand. She pounced on it and found it had somehow powered itself on again — God only knew how it had powered on in the first place — but the screen was a wash of dazzling colors contained within spider-web cracks. Heather cried out in frustration and hammered the phone into the ground like a hammer to nail, over and over again until plastic bits were rocketing around her like bomb shrapnel. She continued until there was nothing left but fragments and gathered them all up in her bleeding fingers to scatter them into the air.

Continue on to Chapter 9

 

5 Comments on A Young Desert Rose, Chapter 8

  1. JetBoy says:

    Still riveted by this excellent story, and eager to see where it takes us next. Nicely done, Sunbun!

  2. kim says:

    Just the best story. so interesting and so hot. Just gets better and better. Though I must say, in the Girl with the Dragoon Tattoo stories she is always taking the battery out of her cell phone and then throwing the phone away. Maybe Heather never read those. Sorry no real complaints just wondered. Keep up the super writing.

  3. sue says:

    I loved it. I would have done just what Heather did. I am now so scared. Can’t wait for the next chapter.

  4. Swan says:

    This is an excellent story and I am enjoying it quite a bit. I find it interesting following the lead character’s struggle with her pedophilic desires. I am sure more than one person has those sorts of struggles. Hope to read many more delightful chapters. I trust that our author will bring the whole story to a conclusion one of these days.
    One minor complaint – Chapter 1 is quite clear that the action takes place in Oasis, Nevada. This chapter and one of the earlier ones indicate we are in Arizona. Is that geographical issue a mystery to be resolved in some later chapter, or (more likely) a simple inconsistency?

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