The Pit
******************************
Roy Mitchell slapped a mosquito, rolled bloody ruin down his neck, and figured things couldn’t be much worse.
“Scout!” He cried into the trees. He whistled. “Here, boy!”
No answering bark came.
“Scout!”
The sun was all but set, and the dusk between the trees was the color of cobwebs. Scout, the boxer-pit bull mix his wife and daughter had insisted they adopt, had disappeared this afternoon, less than forty eight hours since the papers had been signed. He knew Ariel, his daughter, didn’t have the wherewithal or the attention span for a goddamn dog, and he hadn’t been shy about saying as much. Only thing that held her gaze for longer than eleven seconds was her smartphone, where most of what she did, it seemed to Roy, involved teasing boys with pictures of herself wearing too-tight clothes.
“Teenagers,” he cursed under his breath. Ariel had just turned eighteen two days ago. The dog was her present. It had cost money that Roy didn’t have, since he’d been let go at the start of summer. Ari’s younger sister, Kailey, was working at summer camp. He was certain Ari had already told her about the dog, sent her pictures. And now the dog was gone.
The dog. His job. His security. His life’s savings. The love and trust of his wife and children. All gone. Slurped up by some invisible, inscrutable thing he hadn’t seen coming. Wiped away as though by some cosmic law bent against him.
“It’s fine,” his wife, Heather, had told him. “You’ll be working again soon. We’ll be fine. But we can’t let the girls know. You know how they worry. Just act like everything is normal and, before you know it, it will be.”
He wasn’t working, though. Eight weeks, now. The only money coming in was Heather’s, and she worked for the school board, which may as well have paid her nothing at all, for all the good it did. The savings were almost gone. And now, all he could think about, wandering through the woods, looking for a dog that didn’t know its name, was that he should probably just kill himself. Isn’t that what a man was expected to do, when they ran out of money? When he could no longer provide for his family? He should take the gun, the one in the nightstand drawer, an ugly little Glock 22, and put it in his mouth and—
You’re being ridiculous, Heather would tell him. We’ll be fine. We just have to get through the summer.
But he could see it in her eyes. In the taught skin around her mouth. In the fresh wrinkles carving themselves across her forehead. They were not fine. They were not going to be fine. And summer had just started.
There was a rustling in undergrowth up ahead, just past a dense copse of trees.
“Scout?” He cried.
Nothing answered.
He broke into a jog, wedged his body through the trees and found himself in a clearing.
He stood for a moment, trying to process what he was seeing.
For the past eleven years, they had lived here, next to the woods, and he had never actually bothered to explore them. It was enough that they were there, he told himself, that they lived far enough away from everyone else that he didn’t have to talk to anyone he didn’t want to talk to. That had been the definition of the success Roy had worked so hard for over the past twenty years. Now, all of that was crumbling. Soon enough, the bank would take the house and—
Alright, enough. He told himself.
Of course, since he had never explored the woods, he couldn’t say for certain whether or not the strange hole in the earth, or the obelisk jutting from the pile of black stones on the far side of it actually belonged there. But it didn’t feel like they did. Something about them felt…wrong.
“The hell…”
He took small steps closer to the edge of the pit until he was able to lean forward and see into it. There was nothing to see. Just darkness. And a light rush of air that prickled against his skin, as if it were tainted with electricity, or radiation.
Aw, hell, he figured, poor dog must have fallen in.
“Scout!” He cried into the pit. There was no echo.
He picked up a small branch from the ground by his feet and dropped it in. He waited and listened. Even after several seconds had passed—an uncomfortably long amount of time—he still could not be sure he had heard it hit the bottom.
He looked up at the obelisk. A dull gray thing, it was carved all over with symbols he did not recognize. The stone—weathered and pitted and worn—looked ancient. But the stonework was advanced, lending a fluid, organic look to the thing. The symbols followed vein-like ridges that curved and coiled up the obelisk’s shaft to its flared, bulbous tip. It made him uncomfortable, looking at it. It seemed to add heat to his blood, and he could hear it roaring in his ears like a river gorged on the rain.
The sun was nearly gone, now. Only a tiny blood orange sliver remained above the horizon.
He shook his head, turned around, and started home.
The image of the dark pit stained his mind. He began to imagine something crawling out of it. Something covered in black oil and with too many fingers. He didn’t know where it came from, the thought. He knew it was wholly ridiculous.
Even still, he started to run.
*************************************************
Roy woke early from a sleep polluted with dreams. He wouldn’t quite call them nightmares. In them, he was not afraid. In them, the black, greasy thing from the pit followed him home. In them, the Thing pulled Roy’s body to red wet pieces in his bed and consumed them next to his sleeping wife. In them, the Thing walked down the hall, to Ariel’s room, and walked in…
He didn’t remember the rest. But the dreams lent an ugly sense of déjà vu as he made his own way down the hall and entered his eldest daughter’s room.
She was still asleep, and he paused in the doorway.
The oscillating fan she used—more for the white noise than anything else—was shaking its head slowly in the corner. In her sleep, Ariel had kicked the sheets into a messy bundle at the foot of her bed, and she lay uncovered on her stomach, limbs and blonde hair splayed every which way, like a crushed spider.
She was a small girl, just barely five feet tall, and wouldn’t likely get much taller. She was thin and lithe, her features pointed where they weren’t soft and ample. Her body had developed enough that boys had been a continuous headache for her throughout high school, though she never settled on any of them. Never even went on a date, unless he counted the homecoming dance with Russel Willis last year as a date, which Roy did not, especially since he had picked her up early because she had called and asked him to, bored out of her mind. That night, she had come home and worked on her science fair project instead. For all the shit he gave her, she really was a good kid.
Her salmon-pink pajama top had ridden up her stomach, and her shorts had wedgied themselves between her buttocks. For far, far too long did Roy’s gaze linger on the flesh of his daughter’s ass.
Ass? He chided himself. I’ve never thought of it using that word before. What the fuck is wrong with me?
He lowered his head, shook it, rubbed his eyes. He was just tired. That was all. Tired and stressed. It was just one of those demons that creeps in every now and then, like road rage, or going on a murder spree. One of those demon-thoughts that worm their way into the soul, when one is exhausted enough. And Roy was exhausted. He could be forgiven for that.
But when he looked up, his daughter’s arm had thrown itself over her head, revealing a cleanly shaven armpit, and beside it, breast bulging, straining against the thin pink pajama top.
What would it feel like, a voice that wasn’t his chimed in his brain.
His heart was a heavy hammer inside his chest. Blood raced through him. His boxers tightened.
What would it feel like, the voice said, to touch—
“Ariel!” He hissed. “Ari!”
The voice slithered backwards, as if frightened by the noise.
His daughter breathed in sharply, pushed herself up onto her elbows and rolled over. Her stomach and navel were wet with sweat, and the pajama top was rolled up under her breasts. Again, Roy’s gaze lingered.
“Dad, what?”
He met her eyes, felt himself blush.
“I…um…” he had forgotten.
“What time is it?” His daughter fumbled for the phone on her nightstand.
Right. That brought him back.
“Your…your phone,” he said. “I need to borrow it.”
Groggy, and with her eyes still mostly closed, Ariel said, “My phone? Why?”
“I’m going to make a Missing poster for Scout,” he told her. “You’re the only one that took pictures of him.”
“Um,” Ariel said, “Okay. Can’t I just send it to you?”
“Fine,” Roy said. But something in him quivered. Something coiled around his spine, tightened.
What other pictures does she have, huh, daddy?
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, daddy?
“Yes. Just send it to me. Email it. I’ll be in the office downstairs.”
“Okay.” Ariel tapped furiously on the phone. “Sent it.” She threw herself back into her pillow. “I’m going back to sleep. Bye.”
Roy backed out of the room and headed downstairs.
Sweat beaded down his forehead, rode his lashes into his eyes. It stung.
He squinted and wiped it away.
**********************
It was around noon by the time Roy returned from hanging the missing posters.
Ari was in the kitchen, still in her pajamas, sipping coffee. The air conditioning had been cranked to below freezing in his absence. The chill in the air felt like a slap across the face.
“Ari,” he said through gritted teeth. His daughter raised her eyebrows at him and sipped her coffee. He could see her nipples through the thin pink fabric. The shirt really was too small, and it showed off her flat, tan stomach. “Did you turn the AC up again? Like I’ve asked you not to?”
She rolled her eyes. “It was boiling in here, dad. I woke up sweating.”
He sighed, placed his phone and keys down on the counter, and walked over to the thermostat. It read 60.
“Jesus,” he muttered, and nudged the number back up to 72, where it belonged.
“Any luck?” Ari asked.
“Not yet.” Roy turned around. Ari had her back to him now, rinsing her coffee cup out in the sink. His eyes fell to her long, shapely legs, glistening from lotion recently applied. He breathed in sharply as his eyes travelled north, as if they did not belong to him. As if they had minds and wants of their own. He stared at his daughter’s ass—
There’s that word again…
–peeking out from her almost see-through cotton pajama shorts, and he could see that there was no underwear beneath them. He stared at the space between her thighs. At the deep shadows, there.
Imagine it, daddy.
Just imagine.
She’s easily more beautiful than any women that ever let you touch her.
Just. Imagine. It.
Ari closed the faucet and turned around.
Roy lifted his gaze in a panic. Ari’s eyes were wide.
She saw.
She saw you staring.
What the fuck are you gonna do now?
“Dad,” Ari said, crossing her arms beneath her breasts, pushing them up to her clavicles.
“Wh…what?” Blood roared in his ears, filled his face with white heat.
She arched her eyebrows again. “What are we gonna do?”
“About…about what?”
She uncrossed her arms, said “Ugh,” and ran her fingers through her unruly blonde hair. “About my dog, dad. About Scout.”
Relief flooded through him in a cleansing wave. She hadn’t seen. She didn’t know.
Didn’t know what, daddy?
That you’re thinking bad thoughts?
That you want to fu—
“Nothing more we can do,” he answered. “I hung posters up everywhere I could. As far away as the gelato shop on Vine, all the way downtown. If anyone sees him, they’ll call us. I put all of our phone numbers on it.”
“We should be out looking for him.”
Roy closed his eyes and squeezed the bridge of his nose.
“You know, I don’t have the time, Ari. I have an appointment at the employment office today. Id you want to drive around and look, you can be my guest. Please do.”
This is your fault anyway, you stupid bimbo bitch. You’re the one that left the door open. And the posters aren’t gonna do any fucking good, you idiot slut. Because your stupid fucking dog fell into a hole in the woods, and if it isn’t dead by now it’s got a long way to suffer before it does…
The scouring language of his thoughts sent a shudder through Roy’s body, curdled the contents of his stomach.
Something is wrong with me, he thought. And he knew it was true. It felt like something bad. Something irreversible. Something wasn’t breaking so much as it was already broken.
“Dad, are you okay? You’re all…red.”
Just then, the phone vibrated on the counter. A picture of his wife smiled at him from the screen. He pressed the green icon and lifted the phone to his ear.
“Hey, hon.” He said. “What’s up?”
“Roy,” his wife said, tersely. “Did you find the dog?”
A headache began to throb in the back of his skull. He smiled through it.
“No. Not yet. But I hung posters all over—”
“Goddamn it. Okay.” She sighed. “Listen. That’s not what I’m calling about. I promised Ari I’d take her to the mall, clothes-shopping. She needs an outfit for her new job—”
Roy looked up at Ari, whose arms were crossed again. It was warmer in the kitchen already, without the AC blowing at subarctic temperatures, and he was disappointed that he could no longer see her nipples through her shirt.
“Ari got a job?”
His wife groaned. “Yes, Roy. We talked about this, remember?”
He did not.
“She got a job at Rudy’s. Hostessing. She starts tomorrow. She needs an all-black outfit. I told her I’d take her but I’m not gonna be able to get out of here early, like I thought. Unplanned budget meeting. So I need you to take her.”
Roy winced. He hated the mall, especially during the summer. The noise, the children, the endless corridor of yawning, colorful chasms into which money inevitably vanished in awesome quantities.
“Doesn’t she have something…already? Doesn’t she have black clothes?”
His wife’s voice was low, simmering. “It’s. A. Treat. Roy. She deserves it. She went out and got a job all by herself, she’s allowed to get something nice. We can afford it. I can afford it.”
This struck Roy somewhere behind his heart. When he spoke, his voice was a croak.
“That was uncalled for.”
Another heavy sigh into the receiver. “She’s doing this to help out, Roy. She’s doing this for us.”
He looked back up at Ari. Her eyes were suddenly sad, fragile, and her posture was changed, diminished, somehow. She knew she was the topic of discussion and had reverted into the defensive body language of a child preparing for a scolding. He recognized it. Had seen it a thousand thousand times since she had been born.
This is my little girl, he thought. I remember when I held her in the fucking hospital and now…
Now what, daddy?
Now what?
Now she had to work her summer away just to help with the household expenses. Now, she wouldn’t spend one of her last free summers with her friends or at the beach or at concerts. No. Now he owed her something. More than he could ever repay. Now, he was certain, he had found the bottom of the pit he had fallen into two months ago.
Don’t forget, the voice inside him said, you’re losing your fucking mind.
Don’t forget the bad thoughts, daddy.
“Roy!” Heather snapped into his ear. “Are you really that busy today, that you can’t take your daughter to the fucking mall?”
“Okay!” He snapped back. “You’re right. I’m sorry, I didn’t know—”
“I have to go,” she said. “Just use the Discover card.” And then she hung up.
Slowly, Roy lowered the phone.
“Was that Mom?” Ari asked.
He nodded. “Go get dressed and ready,” he said. “I’m taking you to the mall.”
Something in him warmed at her smile, honest and wide as it was, and as she crossed the kitchen and wrapped her arms around him, he felt her breasts press against his ribs. He almost panicked, almost pushed her off him, as if he was afraid of what he might do if she got too close.
But, for the moment, the bad thoughts were silent.
For the moment, she was his little girl again.
He hugged her back, and held her. Her hair smelled faintly of coconut shampoo and dried sweat.
“Thank you,” he whispered into it.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
She released him, and bounced out of the kitchen up the stairs.
*******************************
An hour later, when she came back downstairs, Roy almost told her to go back up and change. The outfit was simply ridiculous.
She wore a white ribbed tube-top that seemed barely capable of holding her breasts, which bounced perilously close to freedom as she hurried down the stairs, and she kept having to pull it up to prevent it from slipping off. She wore no bra beneath it, and the pale denim shorts she wore revealed a full inch of her ass-cheeks before practically disappearing into the crack. Sky-blue lace panties rose over her hips from beneath the shorts. Her lips were glossy with lip-balm, and her perfume was childishly sweet-smelling. It probably had a name like Cotton Candy Dreams or Boardwalk Summer. She had a small purse shaped like a sequined cat slung over her left shoulder.
“I’m ready,” she said, applying more lip balm before sliding it back into her purse. Her eyes met his, bold and searing at the center of eyeshadow and mascara, as if daring his to move. Daring them to roam where the shouldn’t.
Don’t I look good, daddy? Good enough to—
He opened his mouth to tell her, NO. To tell her to go right back upstairs and change. But something stopped him. He took his keys and phone off the counter, smiled and said, “Okay.”
He told himself it was respect. He told himself it was an unwillingness to spoil the day with a needless argument when things had started to level out between them.
But after they climbed in the car, he in the driver’s seat, her in the passenger, and she pulled her seatbelt across her chest so that the strap nestled snugly between her two breasts, separating the tube top into two full, bulging orbs, and her thighs spread out beneath her so that their insides kissed, he knew what it was that had kept him from speaking up.
He knew exactly.
******************************
The mall was a cacophony, a nightmare of noise and jostling bodies. They entered through the Food Court around 2pm, and the lunch rush was still in full swing. It took them nearly ten minutes just to navigate and shove their way through the clustered lines tangled in front of Chik-Fil-A and Sbarro. Someone—the frazzled, six-hundred pound mother of a spastic toddler flailing in his stroller, almost spilled her soda and dipping sauces all over Roy’s shorts while trying to carry her tray of food and push the stroller at the same time. Roy managed to dodge the brunt of the catastrophe, only catching a few sticky splatters on his shoes and ankles.
I fucking hate the mall.
In the wake of the panic, Roy realized he had lost Ari in the crowd.
He pulled out his phone and texted her, frantic.
WHERE ARE YOU?
He watched the three gray dots bob up and down on the screen until they were replaced with,
HEADED TO FOREVER 21.
He slid the phone back into his pocket and found a directory beside the elevators.
***********************************
By the time he walked into the bright, hideous cavern that called itself FOREVER 21, Roy had three texts from Ari.
WHERE ARE YOU?
NEED OPINION.
COME TO DRESSING ROOM.
He stepped over the mounds of discarded tank-tops, crop-tops and t-shirts that lay across the floor like corpses in the wake of a nerve gas attack, slowly making his way to the white neon sign that said “FITTING ROOM”.
He poked his head in cautiously.
“Ari?”
“In here!” Came his daughter’s voice.
He followed it to a black-curtained cubicle.
“What’s up?” He asked. “Did you find anything?”
Please, say you did and let’s get the hell out of here.
“Maybe,” she answered. But I need your honest opinion.”
He sighed, shrugged. At least she was including him in this ritual in its entirety. That meant something, didn’t it?
“Okay,” he said. “Lemme see.”
The black curtain was swept back, and with it, whatever fragile barrier had kept the bad thoughts from overtaking him.
Goddamn.
His daughter stood there in a black t-shirt, its v so deep it almost reached her belly-button. The shirt was tucked into a pair of tight black pleather shorts, and she was wearing a bright red bra underneath that pushed her breasts up to her goddamn chin. She had shiny black pumps on her feet that made her taller, almost as tall as her father.
Heat rose in him, as he drank the sigh of her.
“Well,” she said, shifting her weight, causing her breasts to jiggle in their crimson cups. “What do you think?”
He swallowed, licked his lips with a dry tongue.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did so.
Roy almost moaned. The skirt was far too short. If she were to bend over, it would slide all the way over her tight, perfect ass.
“It’s…” he said, lifting his eyes to meet hers in the dressing room mirror. “…perfect.”
She beamed, glossed lips parting to reveal straight white teeth. “Really?” She squealed.
He tried to ignore the blood rushing into his cock. Tried to remind himself of the peace he had felt earlier.
This is my daughter. This is my fucking daughter. This is my baby girl.
“Really,” he said.
“Alright,” she said. “Let me get changed and we’ll go. She turned to face him, tousling her hair . “I kind of wanted to hit up the Food Court for lunch. You think we could?”
What he wanted to do, in fact, had very little to do with the food court. What he wanted to do was step into the changing room, rip that top from her body, wrap his hands around her throat and force her to her knees. He wanted to plunge his cock directly into the cleavage formed by that expensive, red lace bra that held her perky pale tits. He wanted to fuck those tits wild while he choked her unconscious. He wanted to see the fear and pain in her eyes. He wanted to spit in her face and call her horrible things. Things like slut. Things like tease. Things like cum dumpster.
His cock ached in the confines of his briefs and khaki shorts.
“Um. Y—yeah. Sure,” he stammered. “You get changed. I need to find a restroom.”
And with that, he turned and bolted out of the store, kicking up stray piles of panties and taco-shaped body pillows as he went.
*******************************
The restroom was empty. He slid into a stall, gasping for breath. Sweat slid down his nose onto the toilet seat. He wasn’t even aware he had started pawing at his cock, fumbling with the zipper until it was freed. He gripped the shaft and began stroking. He looked down, watched his hand work as if it weren’t his own.
She’s my baby girl. My baby girl. My sunshine. My daughter.
But these thoughts no longer doused the flames cackling within him. Instead, they seemed to fuel them.
His cock wasn’t large, by any means, but it wasn’t small, either. Six inches erect, he had long ago come to terms with its averageness. He figured Ari had likely sucked bigger cocks than this one. He figured it was damn near certain. He figured she could probably take her father’s cock down her throat without gagging, and the image came to him, his daughter’s lips wrapped around his cock, his pudgy, middle-aged belly slamming her in the face as he fucked her slut throat. In his vision, the force of his thrusts made her nose start to bleed.
When he came, it was to his daughter’s lips, glossed this time in a mix of cum and her own blood.
Short seconds after he was done, he started to weep.
In his pocket, his phone buzzed.
That was Ari, he knew, wondering where he was.
He managed to pull himself together, wiped the cum off the wall of the stall and flushed the paper down the toilet.
He washed his hands and face before he left, not knowing what the hell he was going to do with himself.
No. That wasn’t true.
He wondered when he was going to do it.
I should kill myself, he thought, before I hurt someone. Before I hurt…
The door opened and someone else entered the restroom.
Roy dried his shaking hands and hurried out.
********************************
By 6:30, Heather still wasn’t home from work.
Roy ordered dinner. Chinese, Cashew Chicken for him and Beef and Broccoli for Ari. By the time it arrived forty minutes later, Heather was still missing. While they ate together in the living room, watching Jeopardy, Roy wondered absently if his wife was cheating on him. He decided it didn’t matter. Not after what he’d been through at the mall.
He looked over at Ari, still dressed in her white tube-tob and denim shorts, sitting cross-legged on the couch, staring at the TV. His hands shook as he lifted the fork to his mouth.
What am I gonna do? Oh, Christ. I’m sick. I’m really sick. I need to see someone. I need to see a doctor. Tell them what’s going on in my head. Tell them…
And then what?
Then what? They’d put him in a cell, or on a list, or both. They’d force-feed him pills for the rest of his life so that he never had a sexual thought again. They’d lock him up in a pale fog and throw away the key.
Maybe that’s what I deserve.
The front door clicked open, and Heather strode into the living room, purse hanging off the crook of her elbow. Her hair was messy, and there was a sheen of sweat across her forehead and neck.
“Ooh,” she groaned, peeling her heels off, “You will not believe the day I had.”
Roy blinked up at her, said nothing.
She smiled awkwardly. “Did you go to the mall?”
Ari nodded. “Dad got me a kick-ass outfit.”
Heather nodded. “Good. Good. Well,” she sighed, “I need a shower.” She hurried up the stairs.
Ari stood, took her plate into the kitchen and dumped it in the sink. She stopped back into the living room just as the end credits flashed over the Jeopardy stage.
Roy looked over at her.
“What is it, sweetie?”
Ari took a step closer. Her breasts quivered as she leaned forward. They hung before him as she bent over, placing her lips on top of her father’s head for a kiss. They were so close…so close…
“I just wanted to say Thanks,” she said. “For today. It was nice.”
“Yeah,” he croaked, dryly.
“Nobody called about Scout, huh?” She asked.
He shook his head, keeping his eyes on her breasts, thinking how easy it would be to tug the fabric down, to see them…Christ, he hadn’t seen her naked in over a decade. He wondered what she looked like. How she had grown. He wondered if she’d stop him, if she knew what he was doing. He wondered—
Then it hit him.
Scout!
That was it! That was when the bad thoughts started. After he had found that pit in the woods, the phallic sculpture looming over it like a forgotten god.
Something had gotten inside of him. Something had entered him. And it had cocooned his mind in horrible thoughts, in unbidden lusts…
Or had it?
Were they unbidden? Or merely…released…from some part of him he had always known existed, but managed to keep locked away…
“I’m gonna go call Kailey,” she said. “Her counselors let them use their phones at eight o’clock.” She bounced out of the living room and up the stairs.
Roy waited for several long minutes until he followed.
*******************************
The shower ran in the master bedroom, water slapping heavily on the tile.
Roy thought, I have time.
He stood, silently, in his daughter’s doorway. In the threshold of the room she and her sister had shared for seventeen years. The door was mostly closed, and in the unlit hallway, he could stand and stare unseen.
She had changed into her new outfit, and was busy standing in front of her mirror, taking pictures with her phone. He doubted very much that she was sending these kinds of pictures to her sister. There was a boy on the other end of this, he was certain. Maybe more than one. She leaned forward, emphasizing her cleavage, pursed her lips into a kissy-face, and snapped another one. He had caught a glimpse of the bra’s size at the Forever 21 checkout counter. 34DD.
There’s no going back, is there? He asked the thing that had taken up residence in his mind. A pit unto itself. But how deep?
Where was the bottom?
The pit didn’t answer.
He moved his hand to the crotch of his boxers and started rubbing in time to his daughter’s gyrations as she filmed a video of herself dancing to a rap song playing out of her phone.
No, he knew. The pit didn’t need to answer. There was no going back. There was no stopping it. Not anymore.
Between the blood rushing in his ears and the rap song and the sound of his own thoughts, he never heard the silence after the shower stopped running. He never heard the master bedroom door slide open across the carpet, or his wife’s footsteps as she approached him.
“Roy…” she hissed.
He spun.
His wife stood in the darkened hallway, wrapped in the DisneyWorld robe she had kept from their vacation two years ago. Things had been better, then.
His wife’s eyes, wide and fevered, moved almost reluctantly to her husband’s hand, massaging his cock through his shorts.
“Roy…what…what the FUCK are you doing?”
Roy panicked. “Heather, it isn’t…it’s not what you…”
“Get…the fuck…Oh…” tears welled in her eyes and she backed away. “Oh my god…how long…how long have you…”
“Heather. Stop.” He stepped toward her. She backed away. “Keep your mouth shut,” he growled.
“I’m calling the police,” she spat, and spun, ran into the room.
Roy bolted after her, grabbed her by the shoulders. They tumbled together into the room, falling at once.
Heather’s head cracked loudly against the heavy mahogany footboard of their queen-sized bed. She hit the floor, perfectly still, pinned beneath her husband’s weight.
Roy rolled her over onto her back, panting. The world went white around the edges of his vision. He leaned forward, felt breath from her nostrils.
Not dead, he thought.
He was almost disappointed.
From down the hall, Ari’s voice called, “Guys? Is everything okay?”
Roy stood up, legs straddling his unconscious wife, watched a deep purple bruise spread out from her temple. Her robe had spilled open, and Roy thought that she was beautiful. Ari had inherited the soft skin and ample breasts from her mother. But she wasn’t his anymore. He knew that. Not since he’d lost his job. And the dog. And her respect. She belonged to someone else.
And now, someone else was going to belong to him.
“We’re fine,” Roy called out. “Just tripped over the hamper.”
He knelt, rolled his wife back over onto her stomach. With the robe’s sash, he tied her hands behind her back. He pulled his belt from his khaki shorts he’d left lying on the bed and used it to bind her feet. Then, he rose, and found her phone in her purse. He smashed it to pieces against the nightstand before doing the same with his own. No one was going to be calling the police.
Before he left the room, he got down on all fours and placed his lips against his wife’s sleeping ear.
“You know what I’m going to do now, honey?” He whispered. “I’m going to rape our daughter. I’m going to use every inch of her. I’m going to cum in her fucking pussy and when I’m done, I’m…I’m…”
Listen to yourself…
He stood, slowly, and caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, still foggy from his wife’s shower. In it, he was just a shape. A blur.
You have to be stopped.
You’re a monster, Roy.
And what do we do with monsters?
Roy nodded at the blur, and knew what needed to be done.
He hurried to his side of the bed and pulled the gun case out from under it. He spun the code to open it—Ari’s birthday, of all things—and swung the lid back. He lifted the black, shiny thing from the black foam, felt its weight.
Do it, came a voice. The voice of the pit.
Do it.
He gripped the handle, let the metal box clatter onto the carpet.
He had bought the gun to protect his family.
Isn’t that what you’re doing?
“Yeah,” he said aloud. “I guess so.”
At least now, his girls would be safe. They could move on, find someone worth a damn. Someone who could provide. Someone whose life wasn’t so polluted with failure and misery that they—
“Oh my God…” Ari’s voice shook from the doorway.
Roy’s heart sank. He looked up, saw Ari staring down at her bound and naked mother.
“Oh my God! Dad!”
Her eyes found the gun.
Do it, the pit said. Do it.
Alright, thought Roy. I will.
He stared at his daughter, let his eyes roll over her. All that quivering flesh, wrapped in all that tight fabric, begging to be released.
My daughter.
My baby girl.
My sunshine.
That’s right.
My daughter.
Mine.
Mine.
Mine.
Blood roared into his cock, sent it shooting through the fly of his boxers. He let Ari see it.
“Oh my God…” she gagged.
His grip tightened around the gun. His finger found the trigger.
When he spoke, his voice no longer shook.
“Come here.”
Ari shook her head violently.
“Ari,” he smiled. “Come to daddy.”
She ran.
Roy leapt from the bed, snarling, gun in hand. He chased his daughter down the hall. She reached her room before he was able to, and she slammed the door and locked it.
He didn’t slow down. He bellowed and threw his shoulder into the door. When that didn’t work, he kicked it open. It came apart in splinters and swung open. Ari had her phone in her hands, but her fingers were trembling too badly to hit the right numbers.
“Please!” she screamed, “Please!”
Desperate, she hurled the phone through the air at her father. It bounced off his chest, landed face-down on the floor. He crushed it beneath his heel.
Ari cowered in the corner, crossing her arms in front of her chest. Tears streamed down her face.
“Dad, stop! Please, please, please stop! What…what’s wrong? What’s happening—”
Roy lunged forward, pressed the gun under his daughter’s chin with his right hand. With his left, he buried his hands in her thick blonde hair and yanked back hard.
“What’s happening?” He hissed into her ear. “What’s happening is daddy’s finally gonna get what belongs to him. What he wants! Do you understand?”
Her only reply was a whimper. He tugged on her hair harder, let the gun slide down her throat, then further, further. He slid it into her cleavage. She shivered against the cold metal.
“Oh…Oh God…Oh God please help me…” she sobbed.
Roy licked his lips watching the gun slide between his daughter’s luscious tits.
“Get naked for daddy, Ari.”
She tried to shake her head, but couldn’t with his fingers rooted to her skull.
“Please. Please, dad. Please don’t—”
He pressed the gun against her chest, felt her panicked heartbeat travel through the barrel and into the grip, into his palm and fingers.
“You know I have a gun, yes?”
She went right on sobbing.
“And you know, way down deep, that I’m not going to stop, right?”
She screamed. Howled for help.
“And you know that no one can hear you. Not way out here.”
Her howl subsided. Slowly, she opened her eyes. Tears spilled down her cheeks, dripped off her jaw in mascara-black streaks.
She grimaced as her father dragged his tongue across her lips, sucking at the watermelon-flavored lip balm.
After several long seconds, he pulled his face from hers.
He spat onto her face and spun, held her at arm’s length so that she stood in the center of the room. Then, he let go of her hair, but kept the gun pointed at her stomach, and sat on the bed. His cock was bright red and erect, standing up through the fly of his boxers.
“Now,” he said. “Take off that shirt I bought for you.”
Ari’s eyes flashed from the gun to her father’s erect cock, then back to the gun.
He was right. She knew she had no choice.
Sobbing, trembling, descending into shock, she peeled the black top off as her father, the man she relied on, trusted to keep her safe, stroked his cock and plucked at the gun’s black trigger.
She dropped the bra to the floor. Snot bubbled out of her nose. Roy stared long at the bright red bra, filled to burst with the sweet, soft meat of his daughter’s breasts.
“MOM!” She screamed. “MOM WAKE UP!”
“Now,” Roy said, calmly, slowly, “Your bra.”
“Dad, please!”
“Show daddy your tits. Or I’ll fucking kill you.”
With shaking hands, Ari reached behind her and undid the clasp. The bra fell slowly from her chest as she let her arms fall. The loose straps slid down her forearms and off her wrists and the cups let the two enormous globes fall free.
Roy moaned.
They were perfect. Youth bore their impressive weight with an ease that defied gravity. The upturned nipples were wide pink circles, big around as a silver dollar, and he could see the thick blue veins that ran through them beneath the milky white skin.
The hand that wasn’t holding the gun flashed upward and seized his daughter’s right breast, fingers digging deep into the supple flesh. She screamed and backed away, which angered him.
“No. Please. Dad! Please stop. I won’t tell anyone just please—“
Fury rose in him. She still didn’t understand.
He lifted the gun, pressed it against the crotch of her skin-tight pleather skirt.
She screamed again, and started crying.
“Please. Please Dad.”
“You don’t get it,” he said. He clasped her nipple between his fingers and twisted, viciously. She screamed through the tears and scampered backwards, colliding with the dresser.
Roy bolted from the bed. In moments, he was on top of her. He gripped her by the throat.
“You stupid FUCKING CUNT!”
He spun again, sending her stumbling across the room and onto the bed.
Shrieking, she clawed at the sheets, trying to reach the other side, to put the bed between herself and her attacker.
Her father.
Roy seized her ankle with his free hand, and tugged her backwards towards him so that her legs spread around him, her perky, pleather-wrapped ass presented to his throbbing cock.
He thought about simply hiking up the skirt and fucking her right here, like this.
But he knew he wouldn’t.
He knew he had to make this last.
He flipped her onto her back, gripped her by the throat and pulled her so she was sitting on the edge of the bed, their places reversed from where they were moments ago.
He pressed the gun against her left tit, pushed it heavily against the pliant flesh.
She screamed. “MOM! MOM PLEASE WAKE UP?!”
Rage trembled into Roy’s hands. He shifted the gun to his left and slapped his daughter hard across her face with his open right palm. Then again. And again. And again, until she was silent. When he finally stopped, she looked up at him, her nose streaming blood as bright red as the bra on the floor.
He tugged his boxers off at last, and wrapped his free hand around his daughter’s throat and squeezed. At the same time, pressed his cock against her chest, first dragging himself across her left tit, then her right, pre-cum stretching its silken web between the head of his cock and his daughter’s nipple. Finally, he settled his penis into that soft stretch of paradise between her tits and started to grind. His mind exploded into a white mist of pleasure.
I’m doing it, he thought. I’m taking what’s mine.
He lifted his daughter’s chin as he humped her chest so that she looked up at him.
“Look at me,” he hissed, breathless, “Look at what…you do…to daddy…”
She started to cry again.
“You ever sucked a dick before, babygirl?”
“Dad…dad…”
“Show me.”
He pressed the gun to his daughter’s lips, and she screamed. He shoved the barrel of the gun down his daughter’s throat, gagging her with it. The sound of her trying to scream past the choke of it filled him with a deeper, more vicious hunger, and he fucked her chest with his cock and her mouth with the gun faster, more violently, rocking her tiny frame back and forth, back and forth, all of her belonging to him, all of her trembling beneath him.
“Are you wet, yet, babygirl? Are you wet for daddy?”
He pulled the gun out of her mouth and kissed her deeply, tasted her screams, then pulled away, pushed her back onto the bed.
He lowered himself to the floor between her knees, gnashing and biting his way down her thighs, pulling the skirt down the lengths of her legs before casting it across the room. Her panties he tore away from her with his one free hand.
“Let’s see,” he said. “Let’s see how wet you are for me, babygirl. Let’s see how wet you are you stupid fucking slut.”
Keeping the gun pressed against her stomach, Roy buried his face between his daughter’s legs, drank in the sight of her gorgeous, perfect, pink and shaved pussy. Constellations of razor bumps dotted the insides of her thighs. He dragged his tongue across them, breathed deep of the scent of spit-wet flesh.
But something was wrong.
He dragged a finger across his daughter’s slit, and it came back drier than bleached bone.
“You…you don’t like this, huh?” He asked.
“No…” came the strangled answer. “No…Please…stop. I won’t tell anyone I promise…”
“No,” he started to shake. Fury boiled his insides. “No, you fucking cumrag. You fucking bitch. You FUCKING BITCH!”
He took the gun, still glistening wet from his daughter’s spit, and plunged it into her pussy, forced the barrel past her lips, felt flesh tear before it surrendered.
And oh, Lord almighty, the screams.
The screams!
He was afraid, for a moment, that he was going to cum just from the screams alone, but decided he didn’t care. He howled with mad laughter, bit down hard on his daughter’s thigh while he worked the gun in and out of his daughter’s pussy.
“FUCK YOU!” He cackled. “FUCK YOU YOU FUCKING BITCH! YOU’RE NOTHING! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A HOLE TO BE FUCKED!”
He had lost all control.
Now, he knew. Now was the time.
He was going to fuck her. Put his cock where the gun had been.
Now! At last!
He pulled the gun free from her…
Her foot flashed outward, caught him in the jaw. He fell backwards, felt the gun fly from his hands.
He sat there, dazed long enough to watch Ari make a mad, desperate scramble from the bed to the floor, to the gun. His heart raced. His fingers closed around the discarded sky-blue panties.
“You stupid…whore…”
Then he was on his feet again, roaring from deep in his belly.
“COME BACK HERE YOU SLUT!”
Ari screamed and raised the gun, aimed the barrel directly at her father’s chest.
She pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Only a dry click.
“No…” she whimpered through the blood caking her lips. “No no no”.
She pulled the trigger again. And again.
Her father laughed.
“You really are a stupid bitch.”
She threw the gun at her father, missed. It dented the drywall and fell impotent onto her pillow, right next to her pink teddy bear she’d had since she was six.
She tried to gain her feet, but her father was faster.
He fell on top of her, wrapped the waist of the panties around her throat so that the crotch stretched across her nose and mouth. He pulled tight, heard the breath stop in her throat, and knew if he held it long enough, she would pass out. Longer than that, and…
She flailed and scratched, dragged bloody trenches down his forearms but he barely felt it. This was his moment. His triumph. This was what he was put on this earth to do and he knew it without a doubt.
He tucked his throbbing cock beneath the crotch of the panties he was using to strangle his little girl, so that the shaft of his cock pressed against her right cheek, smeared the blood and sweat and tears and mascara into a sloppy mess.
“I want you to see this!” he roared through gritted teeth. He spat at her. The spit mixed with the mess, lubed his cock as he thrust it against her skull. Her eyes were wide and bloodshot, following the thrusting shaft of her father’s penis as it crossed her vision.
“I want this to be the LAST THING YOU FUCKING SEE, YOU BITCH!”
She started to spasm.
“Look! Look at what you did to daddy!”
Her eyes rolled backwards into her head, and her spasms became less violent.
Still, Roy fucked the side of his daughter’s skull, wrapped her beautiful golden hair around her bloody, spittle-covered face like a veil.
“Good girl,” he moaned, “Good girl.”
As she went still, he grunted, “Die for daddy. Die for daddy.”
She went completely limp, then.
Roy lasted three more thrusts until he came, blasting a load of cum across his daughter’s lifeless face, webbing it into her hair.
He came so long and so hard, he wasn’t certain it would ever end.
When it finally did, he dropped his daughter to the carpet, and wondered if she was really dead. He slapped her, smeared his cum across her lips.
“Ari?” he asked. “Ari?”
No answer came.
He stared at her for a long time. Bloodied, beaten, torn, tattered and lifeless, her right breast bruised from where he had twisted her nipple, her thighs marred with bite marks. He felt himself getting hard again.
And that was when he realized he hadn’t even gotten to fuck her. Not really. Not yet.
“Stupid cunt,” he spat. “I’m not done with you, yet.”
He climbed on top of her, right there at the foot of her bed, and slid his cock into her. There was too much resistance, however—the bitch still wasn’t wet, and he had to use the cotton-candy-scented lotion on her nightstand just to work it in.
He watched her flesh, emptied of life but still pliable, still beautiful, still somehow responsive to stimulus, twitch beneath him. He increased his pace, pulled her hips off the floor so that her tits fell back to slap her in the chin, bouncing with each violent thrust.
He dropped her hips, fell onto her breasts and began biting, sucking, leaving fat purple bruises when he finally pulled back.
“Daddy loves you,” he panted as he neared climax. “DADDY LOVES YOU! DADDY LOVES YOU!”
He screamed and his vision went white, white, white, the color of the sun’s insides as he dumped cum into his daughter’s corpse.
He lay on top of her for a while, enjoying the feeling of his dick softening inside his daughter. Then, from somewhere, a buzzing sound. He felt it through the floor.
He looked up, and saw the cracked screen of Ari’s phone lit up.
He almost laughed. It wasn’t broken after all. Well, damn.
For no reason that he could understand, he slid out of Ari’s corpse and crawled over to the phone and answered it.
“Hello?”
“Dad?” Came Kailey’s voice. “I…I was calling Ari back. It’s Phone Hour and she had left me a message.”
“Oh,” Roy said, casting a glance backward at Kailey’s dead sister. “She’s in the shower.”
“Oh,” Kailey said. “Okay. Um. I guess…I’ll call her tomorrow.”
“I guess,” Roy said. “You having fun?”
“Kind of. Why do you have Ari’s phone? Did she get in trouble?”
Roy laughed. “No. No.” Then, he said, finding a cooling web of cum stretched across her eyelashes. “Well, maybe a little.”
“Damn. Well, tell her to call me when she gets her phone back.”
“I will. And Kailey?”
“Yeah, Dad? Hurry. I’ve got other people to call and I only have an hour before we have to get back to our cabins.”
Other people.
Boys.
You’re a slut just like your sister, aren’t you, Kailey?
“I was just gonna say,” Roy said, “That I miss you, and I’ll see you when I pick you up on Saturday.”
“Okay, yeah, miss you too, see you Saturday, can I go now?”
Roy smiled and stroked a bloody strand of hair out of Ari’s face. “Bye sweetie. Love you.”
Kailey hung up.
*********************
Roy fucked his daughter’s corpse one more time before carrying it downstairs and out into the woods.
After a while, he got tired, and had to put her down. He dragged her the rest of the way to the pit.
In the moonlight, the obelisk seemed to glow.
He rolled Ari’s body into the darkness, waited and listened for it hitting bottom. But no sound ever came, and he grew tired of waiting.
After all, he had his wife to deal with, still, and preparations had to be made for Kailey’s return home on Saturday. Christ, that was only two days away.
And oh, did he have some fun things planned.
Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.
After all, he knew now, without a doubt, that the pit had no bottom.
No bottom at all.