***
Author's Note: For all of you coming back for more—this story is specifically designed to go off the deep end. If you want from me a realistic, grounded depiction of people who you might recognize, wait about a week until the first chapter of my next series is ready. This story is supposed to be over the top (OK, maybe
way
over the top). To be honest, it's the only way I think this crazy category is any fun at all, though. If you liked the first installment (and, really, why are you still reading if you didn't?) enjoy! -Theworldspins
***
Beverly Whitman almost wished the Sunrise Inn was an honest to god flophouse: peeling paint, dirty, cigarette-burned carpet, bars on the windows. At least if she were staying in some seedy dump, then her surroundings might match the way she felt inside. But this place was, if not luxurious, then at least...normal.
She wasn't pleased with what she saw when she looked at herself in the mirror of the fluorescent-lit bathroom. Her eyes were red and puffy from crying, her long auburn hair a mess from holding her head into the pillow. Worst of all, she knew she deserved everything she was feeling right now.
She'd cheated on her husband with a student. Though she'd done it in a haze of blissful ignorance, in the cold light of day she knew what people would see her as:
Debra LaFave
Mary Kay Letourneau
Pamela Rogers
Carrie McCandless
All pretty, all young, all infamous for spreading their legs for students. It was little solace to know that at least she'd waited for her student to turn eighteen before she fucked him. After all, Simon wasn't the charming, sensitive young man she had believed him to be, but instead a blackmailing, sadistic, creep. He'd forced her to give him a blowjob in front of her husband under the threat of ruining their careers and lives. And she'd done it.
Afterwards, Paul had kicked her out of the house and promised to file for divorce when the lawyers' offices opened on Monday. After the horror show on Friday, she couldn't blame him. She wasn't sure if she even wanted her marriage to continue; after all, she'd nursed secret fantasies of running away with Simon as recently as three days ago. Now she could only think of him with fear and revulsion for what he had done.
Tomorrow she wouldn't be able to return to school. How could she stand in front of her class and teach, knowing he would be there. He'd sit in her class, silently reminding her of how he'd mocked her, called her a "piece of ass" and a "slut" while she performed oral sex for him in front of her shell-shocked husband.
If anything, it might be worse seeing Paul. She knew he felt betrayed—he
should
. She felt incredibly guilty in way she hadn't when everything had been secret, when she'd snuck off to be with Simon. She would come home to him with some flimsy excuse, and the moment Paul accepted it, all seemed right with the world. Now that Paul knew about what she had been doing, she had to live with the hurt it had caused him. He'd probably serve her divorce papers immediately. She could only hope he'd keep it quiet.
Everything quiet. Everything under wraps. Nobody has to know a thing.
***
"Just shut up and listen. I don't have a lot of time."
Beverly was still feeling groggy when she'd answered the phone, and wasn't prepared for her husband to be on the other end of the line. It was the middle of the night on Monday, and those were the first words Beverly had heard from Paul since Friday.
"Get a pen."
"What is this all a—"
"Get a pen, Beverly, I told you," he snarled.
"Fine, what?"
Beverly heard loud noises in the background; it sounded like a lot of people milling around.
"OK. Do what I tell you. Call 904-RELEASE. You know, from the commercials on late night. Give them my name, and my case number: H15A-1735-96 and tell them I'm at Berkeley County Jail."
"What!?!"
"Do it Beverly. The ad says they take debit cards over the phone. I can't stay in here tonight. Gotta go soon, they're—"
***
Beverly knew she had to stay sharp and not sink into resignation if she wanted to make it through this. As she drove towards school, Paul slumped over in the passenger's seat of her Camry. All she knew at that moment was that he'd been booked for assault, that there was a witness, but that, strangely, the victim had apparently vanished by the time police arrived.
Without a word of help from Paul, she knew immediately who the victim had to be.
Today was going to be hard enough. Paul's knuckles were caked in dried blood, and they'd need an excuse for why they were late (and why she'd missed the day before). Coming up with all of this would be difficult enough if they were speaking, but Paul, still, even after she'd bailed him out, refused to so much as acknowledge her presence. She was trying to help him, to make it up to him, and maybe just find a way to keep him out of prison, and he was giving her no cooperation.
When they finally arrived after twenty minutes of silent brooding, Paul reached across the car to grab Beverly's arm. She locked eyes with him, and in that moment Beverly sensed the fear consuming him.
"I'm fucked. I...I thought I'd killed him. I...I lost it."
She felt a crushing weight of guilt for bringing all this on Paul, though still somewhere in the back of her mind she resented him for acquiescing to Simon's perverted demands before. Where was the guy who kicked the little bastard's ass on Friday when she was on her knees servicing him? Was it just that he no longer cared what happened to her, that quickly?
"It's OK, baby. We'll figure this out, together," she replied, putting on her best supportive wife voice.
Paul leaned in, as if to embrace her, before he shuddered. She could see him physically recoil, the moment his awareness of what she had done returned.
"We're not doing anything together."
"Tell me what happened. I need to know, if only to keep our stories straight," she pleaded.
Paul looked positively sick.
"He came over looking for you. When I said you weren't there, he started badgering me about the money—"
"What money?" Beverly asked.
"Friday," Paul said, trembling with revulsion to even mention the word. "He gave me an envelope full of cash and some 'instructions.' Told me to spend the money dressing you up in fancy lingerie, getting your hair done. He kept telling me I
want
this, that I'd be happier if I dressed you up for him. So I hit him. Hard. And I didn't stop, until he went limp."
"How did he get away?"
"I heard a car horn blow, a bunch of times in a row. I went outside to look—I mean, I was totally freaked—and there was a girl, young-looking, in a Jag, blowing the horn like crazy. I could just tell she knew. She knew what had happened, like they planned it. He brought her there. When I went back inside, he was gone. I mean, there was blood everywhere. It was just a few minutes later when the police arrived and cuffed me."
Beverly was horrified by the possibility of her husband—no matter what had come between them—going to prison. On the other hand, she was also more than a little happy that, in his own way, Paul had stood up to Simon, proven himself a real man. Though it went against so much of her beliefs about violence, or at least thought she believed, she had to admit that the sight of Paul's knuckles, coated in the blood of the creep who was blackmailing them, made him seem more...virile. It was sick, and it was wrong, but nevertheless, she started to think that she had been wrong about Paul, that maybe he was stronger than she thought.
"Why now?" she asked. "I mean, on Friday, you just let—"
"I was in shock," he said, "and I was so mad at you. All weekend...Christ, Beverly, when I saw his face, it was a miracle I didn't smash it in before he said a word."
Beverly could see other teachers and staff members making note of them sitting in the car in the parking lot. She cursed herself a little for foolishly parking in Paul's headmaster space, instead of parking far away to avoid attention.
"So what're we telling people?"
It was already noon, as it had taken most of the morning to process the bail bond. They'd need a legitimate excuse by now.
"What's it matter? Either he crawled away and died, and it's only a matter of time before the police find me, or he got away and will no doubt use this against me, too."
Paul seemed resigned to his fate; now, his future was as endangered as hers. With one fell swoop, Simon could send Paul to prison, and make her into a pariah. He held their fate in his hands, and any move they made threatened to draw them ever deeper into his clutches.
"Let's go to work," she said. "Whatever happens, is going to happen."
***
He looked terrible. Just terrible.
Paul had really done a number on him. He was breathing with obvious pain, and his face looked like it had been painted black and inflated with a bicycle pump. An IV in his right arm supplying pain meds must have taken the edge off, but Simon still looked like he was in a world of hurt.
Beverly didn't recognize the taciturn red-haired girl at Simon's bedside. She was thin, pretty, but in a way that was...mean: thin, angular nose, sharp cheekbones, a face both beautiful and frightening. Her mind flashed to a phrase she'd heard the kids use: "resting bitch face." This girl should be the picture for the Wikipedia article.
She wasn't a student at Chatsworthy as far as she could tell. Though different in many ways, the girl shared something of Simon's looks: a certain coldness of expression and the icy, piercing eyes that had first gotten to Beverly when she looked at him.
"Happy to see what you've done?" the girl spat at Paul.
Beverly and Paul were deeply uncomfortable standing before Simon's hospital bed. They had been summoned, and Beverly knew it was time to pay the piper. Paul had lost control, and now Simon had them both right where he wanted them.
"Why are we here?" he asked pointedly.
"My brother told me all about you two," the redhead continued, before craning her neck to look for any nearby nurses. "He told me how he was fucking his teacher, and how her husband the headmaster watched her suck his cock. He told me he was going to keep fucking her while her husband watched, but if he grew a pair and fought back that I'd need to call the cops."
"You know what he does?" Beverly asked in astonishment. "Don't you think he's—"
"Don't try it, bitch," the girl said icily. "Me and Simon have something special. Something you wouldn't understand. So save it."
Beverly shuddered. There were two sociopaths in the family...
"Anyway," the girl continued, "Simon told me to give my statement and description of what I saw, which was some sick shit. Now, if he comes forward, you're headed upstate where your ass is getting plowed for, like, three to five."
"And here I wanted to be the first to fuck you in the ass, Dr. Whitman..."
