Jimmie heard her first. His ears perked when he found her peculiar gait among all the other noise out there, while she was still on the strange hard stuff beyond the grass, then he stood when he heard her footsteps brushing through the grass, hoping she would take him outside, play with him for a long time, but he looked at the man on the floor and didn't know what would happen next.
She came up the steps and opened the door, came into the house, walked into the living room – then saw a man sprawled out on the floor, apparently unconscious. She ran over, knelt down and checked his neck for a pulse, signs of breathing – but everything appeared normal, at least as far as she could tell – yet she had no idea who this was, let alone what had happened.
She was about to get up, call for an ambulance when she heard more footsteps on the landing just outside the door, and she turned, expected to see Jim walk in the door – but no, that wasn't what happened. Not at all.
She watched her world turn upside down when Paul Dooley and Sheldon Vance walked in the door. They walked in and looked around the room, then Dooley saw her kneeling on the floor, and he smiled. There was nothing nice about his smile, she saw. Nothing like this afternoon.
"Well, lookie here. My, my, already on the floor...waitin' for us." he said as he walked over to her, then he saw the other man on the floor and stopped. "Who's this? Your new boyfriend, maybe?"
"No, I don't know who he is. Can you help me get him up into the chair?"
Dooley laughed a little; Vance went over and nudged the man with his foot.
"Looks out cold to me," Vance said, then he bent over and slapped the man's face. No reaction, nothing at all, and Vance stood up and shrugged.
"Good," Dooley said. "No witnesses..."
And then she looked at Paul, who was now undoing his belt and unbuttoning his jeans, flipping off his work boots, stepping out of his jeans...
"What are you doing?" she asked, not believing what she was seeing.
"We're gonna have a little party tonight, just the three of us, and guess what? You're the guest of honor."
"What?"
He pulled down his briefs – letting his cock free to dangle between his legs – and then he leered at her now. "Suckee, suckee, five buckee," he said gleefully, then he stepped forward, coming for her...again. "Just like old times," he sail, almost giggling.
"Who's that," Vance said, but Dooley heard a click-pffft, like the sound of rushing air, then something bit his neck, pain like a wasp's sting, or a hornet, maybe –
And she saw Jim step out of the shadows, a pistol of some sort in his right hand – which arced over to Sheldon Vance and click-spitted again. She saw a little spat of blood form on Vance's neck, watched him react, bring his hand up to the side of his neck – "Ahh, ouch!" he said – then Dooley went down on his knees, eyes rolled back in his head and he slowly slumped over backwards, trying to stop his fall with an outstretched arm. "Oh, fuck," Dooley said as he let himself down to the shiny oak floor. "Somethin' don't feel right..."
And then Vance stumbled, leaned against the wall, then he was trying to hold on to something, anything, as he slid to the floor, and he ended up in a sitting position with his back against the wall, his chin on his chest.
Jim walked into the room and the stranger on the floor sat up, looked at the two men on the floor and grinned, more men walked in from other hiding places and she looked around at all this sudden commotion and didn't know whether she wanted to hide her eyes or run away or cheer for the good ole red, white and blue...
"Did you just kill them? Simple as that?" she cried, but he came over to her and held out his hand, pulled her up.
"They've been watching you, and your house, for a couple of hours. What's up with them? And why is this dickhead wagging his weenie in my living room?"
So she sat down and she told him, them really, because all of them, all eight of his men, walked in and listened to her retelling of events now almost thirty years old – with all of them soon regarding the two on the floor almost like dog turds they'd just stepped on.
Jim looked at them, shook his head, then said: "Tom, get my bag, would you?"
"The black bag, sir?"
"Yup."
He walked over to Dooley, leaned over and looked into the man's eyes. "What hit you in the neck is a voluntary muscle relaxant. That's why you're still breathing, and that's why you can't move. You're not going to die, so just try to relax"
'Tom' brought in a small black case and handed it over; Jim opened it and took out some eyedrops and a few other odds and ends.
"That's also why you can't close your eyes, or even blink, so I've got to put some drops in your eyes from time to time, until you come out of this." He put drops in Dooley's eyes, then tossed the vial to one of his men. "That boy looks uncomfortable sitting like that. Let's get him down on the floor, then put some drops in, would you?"
"Yessir," the other man said.
"So," he said, looking at her, "which one is this?"
"He was my boyfriend in high school. Paul Dooley. And that's Sheldon Vance. He held me down most of that night, jacked off on my face once, then fucked me in the ass."
"Did he, now. Well, too bad for you, Sheldon." He turned to her, his face a blank mask now: "You might want to go home now."
"What are you going to do?"
He sighed. "I think class is going to be in session again for these boys. It's time they learned a thing or two about what happens to rapists in the real world."
"No, I'm not leaving," she said defiantly. "And I won't let you kill them."
"Kill them? No, just a little civics lesson, but it won't be pretty."
"I don't care. I have to watch, to make sure..."
"Well, suit yourself," he said, and he took a vial out of his bag and leaned over Dooley, put two drops on the man's tongue, then he walked over and did the same to Vance.
"What's that," she asked.
"It's an LSD analogue. Sort of the same thing, but this little home-brew heightens the sense of paranoia," he said as he took latex gloves out of his bag and slipped them on. Two wrapped syringes came out next, and he pointed at Vance, said "get his pants down," and men snapped to, pulled that man's pants down, including his underwear, then he walked over to Dooley, leaned over and looked into his eyes.
"Can you talk yet?"
Dooley worked his mouth, tried to say something and failed, then tried again. "I'm gonna fuckin' kill you, man..." he whispered.
"Indeed. Glad to hear it. Now Paul, do you know what this is?" He held up a snake, a rubber snake, but one that looked remarkably like a live coral snake, and he held it up carefully to Dooley's eyes, taking great care to hold it, then he put it back in his bag. "That's right, Paul, this is a coral snake. You've heard of those, haven't you? Well, Paul, what I'm going to do is this. I'm going to put that coral snake right up your dick. I'm going to put that snake to sleep first, then I'm going to just slide him right up that dick of yours, all the way up into your bladder. Then that snake is going to wake up. And Paul, do you have any idea what that poor snake's going to do once it wakes up?"
"Fuck you!" he slurred, and he watched as Dooley's eyes rolled back, the LSD analogue taking hold now.
