XIII

"Why don't you like B?" Claire inquired toward Nona once Lydia and her husband were out the door. The goth hadn't seemed to notice Nona's displeasure at them taking off, but Claire had.

"She's just jealous," Mandy spoke up from behind the bar where she was boiling a pot of water for Ken. "We've had Lydia all to ourselves for a long time. That, and Nona really, really dislikes men."

"Shut up, slut." Nona growled darkly from the couch, earning a "nyah" from Mandy, her tongue poking out childishly. "I am not jealous of that foul git. I just think she deserves better." Nona had harbored a secret crush on Lydia for a long time. She squashed it down every time those feelings would start to blossom. Lydia was her friend. Lydia was married. Lydia was straight- though if that drunken kiss they'd shared was anything to go off of, her arrow might occasionally veer the other way.

"What? Does he not, like, treat her right or something? She's wearing a pretty big rock for someone who's being mistreated. But then again, mine was pretty big, too." Claire examined her bare hand, content to be free of her shackles.

"He treats her like a fucking queen." Mandy was dipping Ken into the boiling pot. In a hospital across town, Josh Peters' doctor was perplexed even further as mysterious boils started forming all over his screaming patient. "He gave her that kitten. They just came back from a honeymoon in India a few days ago. I mean, shit, he wasn't doing it for me when he killed Todd and Noah." Mandy stopped abruptly, dropping the doll fully into the pot by accident. "Oops." She hadn't meant to blurt that out like that.

The baby hairs on the back of Claire's neck stood straight. "But..." The night Todd had disappeared Josh had come to her telling crazy stories about a skeleton reaching through the ground and dragging Todd to Hell. She had talked him down, convinced him that he must have been imagining things, that they were all tired and drunk and that it must have been a tree root. But then the cops found those fingernails. She didn't know what to think about that. Josh became unhinged. He stopped spending as much time with her as he used to, stopped going out with his friends, started drinking more and spending a lot more time with Jessica- 'Idiot.' Claire berated herself. He was even worse after Noah disappeared. Almost as if he was paranoid, waiting for his turn. Now, she realized, that's exactly what he was doing. "How? All they found of Todd was his fingernails? Oh, my Gawd." Her mind was reeling, trying desperately to form a picture of what was happening. If Lydia's husband had truly killed those boys, she was dabbling with people and things much darker than what she'd thought. Torturing a Ken doll, imagining that she was hurting the man who had hurt her so much and so often, was not the same as killing a person.

"Way to go, motormouth." Nona drawled, sitting up to face Claire. "Don't bother trying to tell on him." She warned, her dark eyes darkening further. "He won't get caught, and you'll end up looking crazy."

Claire stood, her heart racing. "But-but we have to go to the police!"

Mandy laughed, pouring the boiling pot of water- and Ken- into the sink. "No, we don't. You can if you want. Seriously, knock yourself out."

"I don't know what happened to Todd, but it's sick! If-if he did that, then he's sick! He's a murderer!" Claire was pacing, wringing her hands through her hair. She almost tripped, skidding the salt circle.

"And if- sorry- when Josh dies? What then? What will that make you?" Nona's question stopped Claire cold. "You've been sitting here for hours, doing all matter of nasty things to that plastic little doll. You're every bit as guilty as us, as him. Life isn't all black and white, princess. The only difference between us and B is that he has the balls to stick the needles into his victims in person." Tears balanced precariously on Claire's bottom lids and Nona sighed deeply, pulling the girl to sit next to her and wrapping a comforting arm around her shoulders. "Don't feel bad, sweetie. You haven't done anything wrong. What they did was wrong. We're just dealing out a little justice on the behalf of Lady Karma."

Mandy came around the bar from the kitchen and knelt before the blonde and brunette. "Claire, you don't know what they did to me. You've only heard rumors." She took a deep breath and lowered her gaze to the other blonde's knees. "Todd and I had been dating for awhile. I liked him. I thought he liked me. Then, one night..." She raised her blue eyes up to mirror Claire's. "He invited me out to their frat house for a party. Tried to get me to invite Nona and Lydia, too. Thank fucking God they were busy; working and doing homework. I had one beer. Just one. The next thing I knew I was waking up on the front lawn with no underwear and no memory of how I got there. They'd ripped my favorite dress, too." She broke off, laughing bitterly. "As if raping me wasn't enough." The tears in Claire's pretty eyes had broken free. She parted her lips, but Mandy cut her off. "Just stop. Wait. They..." Mandy couldn't meet her eyes. "After they were done with me, after they dropped me on the lawn, they... They urinated on my passed out body. I'm never going to forget the smell." Her expression was cold, detached. She lacked her usual sunny aura.

"I..." Claire's hands were covering her mouth in revulsion. "I'm so sorry." The arm around her shoulders tightened. Nona's eyes were practically black.

"I don't want your pity. Don't pity me." She handed Claire the doll and the girl took it with no hesitation this time. "Just don't ever feel bad for doing what needs to be done."

"I want to try something."

They were in his coffin. She'd pulled him inside, and once his hands had started wandering beneath her clothes, she'd flipped him onto his back. He let her.

"Oh, yeah?" Betelgeuse bent his arms, resting his head in his hands. "Feelin' adventurous, cream puff? You been watchin' porn behind my back?"

Lydia screwed up her face and swatted him before she began slowly unbuttoning his white top. "No. I just want to do a thing. I've never done it before- I mean..." She bit her lip. "I have, but..."

Rage blossomed in his chest as he realized what she was saying, what it was she wanted to do. He made a mental note to take a trip to the basement once she was nice n' fucked n' passed out in his coffin- where she belonged. His hands stopped hers, jade eyes piercing her to the core. "No, you haven't. That doesn't count. Nothing he made you do counts. You don't have to do that."

Lydia broke her eyes away from his and shook his hands away, continuing to unbutton him. "I know I don't have to. I want to." Reluctantly, he rested his hands on her thighs that the slits in her gown exposed. He wasn't about to turn her down twice. Especially when she was wearing pigtails- his cock twitched as he realized that she'd planned this- and looking at him like that. Soon, his top was completely unbuttoned and she began work unfastening his belt. He helped her, lifting his hips, as she tugged it out of his pant loops. The metal bit clattered on the hardwood outside of his coffin.

Lydia lifted up onto her knees and bent over him, kissing his neck. He knew that she was doing this to warm him up, but it was unnecessary. He'd been ready to go as soon as she'd crawled into his coffin and made herself at home. Her lips burned a trail down his chest, kissing and licking and nipping. He leaned up on his elbows to watch as she unzipped his pants, releasing him from their uncomfortable confinements. He fell back flat again, however, when she boldly grabbed hold of him at the base and shyly licked the thick vein beneath the underside of the head. She drew a groan out of him when she did it again, more firmly this time, her tongue flattened instead of pointed. It was torturous. She licked him over and over again, not drawing him fully into her mouth until his member was slick all over.

He actually gasped when she finally did, his dead lungs filling up with air. She was so hot, so soft, so wet. She held just the head at first, swirling her soft tongue in circles around it for an agonizing moment, before daring to take him in deeper. "Oh- FUCK- God, don't stop. Please, don't stop." He found himself mimicking words she'd said to him before. It made her feel powerful to have him begging to her for once. She sucked and he bucked his hips, inadvertently making her gag. She withdrew. "Shit! Sorry, uh-"

"It's okay." She smiled a tiny little smile up at him before continuing her work. God, she was a fucking angel. He'd thought she was a sight in India, laying nude in a bed of satin and diamonds. That was nothing compared to her now; pretty pink lips wrapped tight around his cock, honey colored eyes looking up at him watching for every little reaction. She quickly became more confident with her administrations and fell into a rhythm. His hands grabbed hold of the spools of hair on either side of her head and helped her along encouragingly, careful not to make her gag again.

She couldn't deep throat and he didn't expect her to. In fact, she couldn't even fit half of him into her beautiful little mouth. That didn't matter. She was doing wonderful things with what she had to work with. Her tiny warm little hands worked what she couldn't fit into her mouth, stroking and gripping the way he'd taught her to. While she sucked, her tongue incessantly pulsed against the thick purple vein she'd teased before. "Mmm, yeah baby, just like that. You're doin' just fine..."

Big innocent eyes looked up at him and he groaned as she tried to say something around his cock, the vibrations humming through him in the best way. "Shouldn't try n' talk with your mouth full. S' bad manners." Her eyes narrowed and he felt her teeth scrape against him lightly, threateningly. In response, his hands tightened around her pigtails and pulled her down a centimeter or so. Her narrowed eyes drifted down and she sucked hard, punishingly, and drew as much of him as she possibly could into her mouth. His grip faltered as his head pressed against the back of her throat. Then, she released him completely, gasping for breath. She'd almost made herself gag on that one.

"C'mere."

He pulled her back up into his lap by her underarms and flipped the front of her dress out of the way. No underwear. He sat up and planted his mouth on hers, biting her slick bottom lip gently. Impatiently, he tugged the top of her dress down until her chest was exposed and the lacy material lay slack around her waist. Then, he lifted her by the ass and dropped her onto him. "Ungh!" Her arms wrapped around his shoulders and his hands gripped the plush velvet of his coffin for purchase as he thrust up, making her perfect breasts bounce and hit him in the face. She may have been on top, but he was in control. He leaned back onto his elbows and watched her as he pistoned upwards, hitting something inside of her that made her scream every time.

With a flick of his wrist, her gown disappeared and she was bare, bouncing on top of him at his will. Lydia threw her head back and cried out sweetly when he started stroking her clit with his thumb, the rest of his fingers splayed against her hipbone. He lost himself when both of her hands came up to play with her nipples and she lost herself in her orgasm, riding him down to the last inch. He grabbed her hips bruisingly and ground her down as he thrust up, once, twice, three times; emptying into her. With a whimper, she fell against him, head resting on his shoulder, hot gasping breaths burning into his neck. He sat up, still inside of her and supporting her with arms around her back. Cold lips brushed her sweaty forehead.

"That was good, baby. Real good."

Lydia was asleep. After their rut he'd conjured a heavy black comforter for her. The fireplace only kept the room so warm. He never slept with blankets. Really, he never slept. The coffin was just for show, not that he ever had any visitors. Carefully, he untangled her pale limbs from his own, crept from the tomb, and donned his bathrobe.

Gregory was screaming in the basement, burning. That was his fate whenever his tormentor wasn't there. He'd burn and burn and burn until there was nothing left of him but ash. Then, like the phoenix, he'd rise again only to burn down to embers and brittle blackened bones once more. Betelgeuse lit a cigarette and waved his hand, freeing Gregory from the pain momentarily.

"I'm a sick guy, Gregg, but I'm nothin' compared to you."

"I'm sorry, God! I repent! I'm a worm! I'm filth!"

"Shut the fuck up." Gregg obeyed, whimpering. "I bet you thought you got your due when those real bad motherfuckers made you their bitch. My wife's sleepin' like an angel upstairs. She couldn't be broken, not the way that you can."

"The Goddess could never! She's too strong! Not like Gregory... Gregory is trash... Gregory is evil..."

A fist slammed into his jaw, cutting off the insane ramblings, splitting his lip, and making his mouth swell up with blood. "Don't fucking talk about her. Ever."

A soft female gasp from the darkness behind him made him spin around. "B-Betelgeuse...?"

"Shit." He'd forgotten to lock the door. He meant to, with her here, but it had slipped his mind. She must've woken and gone looking for him in his absence. With a wave of his hand the only light in the room, a dingy low-watt bulb that hung over Gregory's head, was put out. But it was too late. She saw. The damage was done.

Lydia ran.