Chapter Seven
Alex Pruitt beheld the silly woman on the screen as she thrashed about in the snow like a wild cat caught in fly paper. He was utterly transfixed. When he first hung the bucket of flooring adhesive by the gate, he hadn't expected that its contents would be unloaded over the entire upper half of Alice's body. Indeed, he had predicted mere hand-to-bucket cohesion at most, a lost glove at the very least.
Reclining in an old couch in the attic, legs up on the table, the boy slurped his soda and opened a bag of potato chips. "What do you think, Doris?" Alex called out to the allied rat. "Should we make things more interesting for the bad lady?"
The rodent's ebullient squeaks elicited a snicker from the boy. "I'm gonna take that as a yes."
At this, he grabbed the remote control and began fiddling with the buttons, repositioning the cameras at the southern entrance so as to find the burglar's most flattering angles. One lens filmed her from above in a full frontal wide shot. Another zoomed in on her wondrous posterior from below, immortalizing every bounce and every jiggle of those beauteous buns. Luckily for Alex, his subject was no longer sitting in the slush; she'd managed to stand, albeit on wobbly legs. All the pieces were in place. The kid ran to the window and brusquely snipped a cord overhead. It glided across an elaborate system of pulleys then vanished out into the yard. Before long, a pitchfork tied to the other end of the rope pendulously swung down from its treetop perch, diving straight into the woman's round, curvaceous rump.
Alice's mouth shot open as though to shriek, but not the slightest peep erupted. Instead, a great shiny glue bubble formed around her lips, expanding in circumference with each excruciating second until, finally, it broke off. As the woman shivered and gasped, her mouth freed from the gooey prison, the bubble floated awhile in a drunken stupor. When it popped, the reverberations of her captured scream blasted across the neighborhood, distorting the air through which the sound waves travelled.
"Kyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"
The earth itself shook. Car alarms blared madly in the aftermath. Dogs burst into vigorous fits of howling and barking.
Alex doubled over, laughing so hard that he spilled his potato chips all over the floorboards. It was simply music to his ears. He reverted his gaze to the stack of television monitors and studied the close-up of Alice's tormented butt. The three-pronged weapon had torn three pint-sized holes in the seat of her white onesie. It pierced right through the first layer of padding, through the second layer of thermal underwear bottoms, leaving in its wake some ragged fragments of thread and some shredded scraps of nylon which drooped around the edges of each hole. To top it off, the boy could spy a flash of vivid purple panties, hints of an elegant floral print. This did his heart good. The bad lady very much deserved it.
[…]
Alice rubbed her ass, inadvertently slathering glue over it, hoping to soothe the pain. By then, the flooring adhesive had begun to assume a semi-transparent state. Her delicate features, though lightly obscured by a coat of slime, came increasingly into view. Movement of the facial muscles remained challenging, but not impossible. She gnashed her teeth and cursed under her breath.
A pitchfork?! It was enough to set her blood boiling. The voluptuous thief determined that strangling the Pruitt kid for these transgressions just wouldn't do; she was going to tear him limb from limb! And yet, the matter of having to attend to this infernal gate confronted her. She needed to focus, to calculate her next move. Breathing deeply, narrowing her eyes, Alice scanned her surroundings until she seized upon the pitchfork still hanging listlessly from its branch. Eureka! She grinned from ear to ear, then snatched the inert gardening tool, astounded by her own ingenuity. With this, she could effortlessly pole vault to the other side. The idea tickled her fancy; it was daring, flamboyant – but, best of all, she adored the irony of using an enemy's armaments against them.
"You'll have to do better than that, kid! You're not facing off against some cheap, run-of-the-mill thug! I'm the best of the best!"
So, without further ado, she raised the pitchfork like a lance and dashed forward. As she neared the hurdle, she planted the pitchfork with expert precision, lifting her legs, gracefully swinging herself up and over. The lady thief had the polish of an accomplished athlete. She released the handle, thoroughly at ease, and seemed to fly. Indeed, she gave this latest feat an air of class befitting a Russian ballet performance at the most exquisite of theaters. It appeared that the tides were finally turning in her favor.
Soon, Alice descended, poised to land squarely on her nimble feet. Her boots touched the soot-colored terrain beyond the wooden gate. But instead of being greeted by terra firma, the steep momentum of her arrival immediately broke the surface with a deafening squelch!
Sploorrrrrrch!
"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Nghh! Ah! N-noooooo!"
Her legs plowed through the wet earth as if cutting through butter. In an instant, her expensive uggs disappeared wholly from sight. The classy cat burglar sank into the soft, black mud, and feeling the sludge rising all around her, she continued to sink, to submerge into that dank and hungry mire. A helpless squawk issued forth from her gaping mouth. The gorgeous woman's mind blanked from the shock and displeasure she sustained on account of this most nasty and most unexpected of developments. Worse, the loss of her overpriced footwear simply could not sate the appetite of this improvised swamp. In no more than a split second later, Alice was up to her knees in the muck, completely immobilized.
Of course, having nothing solid on which to secure a proper foothold, she nearly toppled over. She flailed her arms about like a giant chicken, teetered her body to and fro, thrusting out her hips then thrusting out her arse in a rhythmically absurd fashion to keep from dropping straight into the mud. It didn't much matter, though. In the end, she lost her balance. The villainess sensed her legs fold beneath her as she knelt forward, dumbfounded. Before she knew it, the morass had climbed up her shapely thighs and half-buried her within its dense, undulating girth. There was no escape whatsoever.
And surely, her misfortunes didn't stop then, for somewhere in that treacherously narrow path stretched a taut line of tripwire. The wire was itself connected to a deadly holiday poinsettia and its vintage ceramic Santa planter, both of which rested precariously on one of the window sills overhead. When Alice had knelt down, the befuddled dame had unwittingly triggered the waiting snare. Without any warning, the potted poinsettia plunged three floors to the bottom.
"Gross! Absolutely disgusti –– !" she whined in the midst of the inevitable.
Bonk!
"Ooh! Duh-durrrrr… guh… uuuuuh…."
It was a direct hit! The flower pot struck Alice on the top of her head, thus adding much injury to insult. The ceramic vessel shattered upon contact, but as wretched luck would have it, the contents of the broken pot roosted upon her cranium, fully intact. By all means, it looked as if the woman had sprouted leaves and become a ridiculous vegetable.
It was more than she could take. Arms slackening at her sides, body going numb, rocking slowly by its own volition, the femme fatale felt herself on the very verge of losing consciousness. A stream of saliva languidly trickled from her gaping lips. Her normally piercing blue eyes went dull and out of focus, the lids drooping, irises glazing over into a vacant and doll-like stare. The world seemed to whirl dangerously out of control. Tweeting birds flew circles around her. She groaned. Then everything blurred into darkness. The woman collapsed face down into the mud with her big butt cheeks raised high up in the air.
Splarrrt!
[…]
The kid shook his head in mock disappointment.
"Playing in the dirt, Alice? Tsk tsk tsk. That is so unbecoming of a lady."
For all her bravado, the felonious female was neither as bright nor as crafty as the Pruitt boy had come to expect after reading her entry in the criminals' compendium. Oh well, he thought, she was still heaps of fun to watch. Furthermore, the mud pit served as a welcome addition to her budding list of punishments. It did its job swimmingly, and it hadn't been all that difficult to construct either. All he did was to hook one end of a garden hose to the thermostatic hydro-tap in his basement while the other end was left to run out into the side-yard. Nature handled the rest as hot water seeped into the soil all night, mixing with the cold air and resulting in a thick, steaming soup. It was a genuine case of more for less. It also rendered the thief an irresistibly easy target for the falling flower pots.
Now, stuck in a tender embrace with the marsh trail, Alice had drifted off to dreamland. Her glassy-eyed expression told Alex that she'd be out of commission for some time longer – a pleasing scenario. Nothing could be more perfect, really. So, he let her have her nap. Whatever the situation, he figured those spare minutes would be best used to catch up on the other scoundrels, to glimpse their progress.
Thus, a quarter of an hour passed as the assault crept along at the speed of molasses.
It was then that the kid noticed a small stirring on Alice's screen. He wiped his eyes and checked again. There was no mistake! The wicked woman's bum had begun to wiggle!
He magnified the crumpled figure to thrice its original dimensions. Plain as day, her plump ass spasmed. Her fingers twitched. Her shoulders rose and deflated, gradually at first, mounting faster, more panicked. Until, suddenly, Alice extended her arms and dug them deep into the sludge, pushing herself up with all the unrestrained fury of a She-Creature, desperate to refill her lungs! The face which occupied the television display scarcely resembled the ravishing young woman whom tabloids had earlier christened the divine muse of larceny. Rather, what emerged so startled the boy that he swiftly took shelter behind the sofa, heart thumping loudly in his chest.
[…]
Alice awoke from her fainting spell a changed woman. Woozy from the throbbing headache which threatened to split her skull in two, she felt positively awful. Nonetheless, this brief discomfort could not compare with the horror and outrage she experienced over her fresh makeover. Prior to even entering the house, the bombshell had been transformed into a bombsite. Gone was the seductive yet aristocratic aura that tended to hover about her like branded perfume; gone were any signs of the flawless sophistication she so prided herself on. All evaporated as though in a puff of smoke. The front of her once immaculate ski-suit was smeared black with filth. Her porcelain complexion, formerly the envy of many, was likewise plastered with the same sickeningly foul and malodorous slop. She retched, tried to blow the muck out of her nostrils, to brush it off her countenance. But her every motion failed to get the desired effect.
The mud clung stubbornly to her skin, moist and chunky, smothering her super sensitive pores. Moreover, it had blended with the flooring adhesive already splattered there.
To anyone else, the outcome wouldn't have been all that surprising. To the prissy, vain thief, however, the revelation proved a devastating one. And as both substances congealed into an impenetrable mask, into a crap-colored facial that refused to be peeled away, Alice issued forth a cry overflowing with all the frustrations of a beauty besmirched. She shuddered. Then with quaking hands, she punctuated this little tantrum by taking her cap, squeezing it and biting down on the hapless accessory, casting it aside when she'd finally achieved some semblance of calm.
Of course, she had no intentions of either submission or retreat. She knew there was no way she'd ever be able to live down the shame if she ran. She required closure. And what better way to shut this unsavory chapter of her life forever than to expunge that insolent child from existence.
"Huff… huff… brat… you… are… dead! Just as soon as I –– Ugh! Just as soon as I –– Oooh! Ewwww!"
The woman's troubles, though, persisted. Besides having had her looks match the inner ugliness of her soul, she hadn't yet rescued her lower half from the bog. This too was no stroll in the park. The mud possessed the consistency of tar, and whenever she wriggled her legs in a bid to loosen the firmly packed earth, it would only tighten its grip. Regardless, grunting and moaning like a constipated porker, Alice struggled furiously. She tripled her efforts, then quadrupled them when that wasn't enough. She strained her muscles to their very maximum, jerking, humping, tugging, wrestling against gravity, against the pull of the gluttonous mire, against all hell; she strained with such intensity that her heaving ass started to swallow her pretty panties, to bunch them up between its shadowy crevice, chaffing!
In the end, diligence paid off. Flooooorp!
Alice managed successfully to extricate herself, albeit at the cost of abandoning her boots. Now, amidst the mess, the thief stood on stockinged feet. Exhaustion wracked her. She panted, hot and sweaty inside her ruined onesie, so drenched in fact that she was utterly mortified at the possibility of having lost bladder control. It drove her nuts, but she forced herself to plod onward. Surveying the area, she learned that the whole side-yard had been converted into a pigsty. There was no going around it. The walls on either side of her guaranteed that.
Thus, she waded through the narrow passage, each step emitting a damp sucking noise, an audible slurp and squish. Sticky clumps of debris gathered on her discolored socks. A gritty wetness breached the fabric, crowding between her toes, caressing her soles. She advanced as if dragging a heavy load, and the herculean task expended much more of her energies than she'd anticipated. Very soon, the vile vixen realized that she'd ceased making any headway whatsoever. She squealed in misery. Then, grasping a knee with both hands, she yanked hard. Perhaps, a little too hard.
"Arghh! Nghh-ngh! Oooohhh! Ugh! Guh! Nooooo! I –– urrrghh! I –– oomph! I won't lose! I w-w-wo-whoa-whoa-whoaaa!"
No avoiding it, though. As she liberated her foot, the sludge underneath shifted and her other foot slipped. In an instant, Alice flopped down onto her back, smack dab in the center of that reeking, repulsive swamp. Splaaaaaaam! The muck spread out, brimming forth from her weight, following the contours of her prostrate form. She made the finest mud angel. Yet, that wasn't the worst of her ordeal, for hidden there was another tripwire, now spurred into unleashing its terrible bounty upon the wide-eyed lady cat burglar. She seemed to be suffering from déjà vu. A flower pot (much like the one before) plummeted, its sculpted Santa sneer rushing to greet the naughty girl. Her jaw dropped. And before getting knocked out, she could've sworn that she could hear a cheerful "hohoho" ringing in her ears, berating her.
"M-mommy…! S-s-santa…! P-p-p-please…!"
Crack!
The witch received a clobbering, a jardinière right to the mug. It was no ordinary piece of pottery that demolished her, however. Rather, this holiday-themed receptacle contained a prize inside unlike any other, an apt present to a high-profile criminal for whom years of reaping coal on countless Christmases have had zero impact – what else but a nice, subtle… brick!
Her rigorous training, her fancy gadgets, her feminine wiles – in other words, all her assets – were useless against this lowly contrivance and the junior architect guiding it. Consequently, she lay lifeless for the duration of the ensuing hour. When Alice revived, wrenching her arms free from the repugnant cesspool, the thief removed the offending block of baked clay and exposed yet another unpleasant alteration to her profile. Now not only was her nose swollen a purplish shade of crimson, but it was pushed upwards in such a manner as to make her appear undeniably hoggish. Furthermore, her hair was so thoroughly caked that currently it more resembled a hideous helmet than the sassy, stylized crop she was accustomed to. She squirmed, seething with anger and humiliation, totally flummoxed. Just how could she have been outsmarted by a rugrat? How could she have been brought so low? Reduced to wallowing about in mud! It didn't compute. For wasn't she supposed to be the untouchable mistress of others' fates? The queen-bee? Their manipulator? The conundrum practically left her at wit's end.
She snorted, rolled over, then got up on all fours. Despite the indignity of crawling, the fear of springing any future traps far outweighed the objections of her ego. The villainess needed to stay close to the ground if she wanted to more evenly distribute her weight or detect more of those tripwires.
"Steady now… steady… steady…. Ooohhh! Yuck! This is so demeaning!"
Of course, it didn't help that, as she floundered across, the mud below burbled and belched like some clogged public latrine.
Alice found relief only when she approached the end of the path. Swaying her cute derriere excitedly behind her, she hurried towards what she believed was the conclusion of the nightmare. Her insecurities faded away. She giggled, and the girlish tittering quickly escalated into an arrogant and throaty cackle. The woman imagined herself the lone survivor, no more to be made a fool of. The kid was as good as ancient history, she gloated; she'd seen right through him, right through his petty games. And unlike her stupid, stinking, grubby cohorts whom she now presumed either dead and/or dying, her vast intelligence would sooner or later triumph. She was hopelessly convinced of it. Thus, she clambered onto the snowy embankment, blind to the invisible dangers, blind above all to the cluster of mousetraps concealed therein!
Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap!
"Aaaaaiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeee!"
The moment she pressed her palms down to take hold of dry land, the latched springs leapt into action. Several mousetraps relentlessly clamped shut on the thief's fingers like piranhas in heat. Not a single digit was spared. Eyes watering, throat constricting from the pain, she withdrew her hands and pried off the metallic mandibles one by one. Unfortunately, the ambush had bequeathed Alice with puffy fingertips, bruised knuckles, plus a mood more rotten than ever before. The damage was done. Whatever happiness she may have felt mere seconds ago drained from her expression.
Subsequently, she brandished her upthrust fist against the heavens, growling her lungs hoarse. "Listen up, kid, wherever you are! You'll regret this! Starting now, I'm just about getting serious! No more mishaps, no more accidents! You hear me?! No more!"
Filled with sheer determination, the begrimed belle finished her sojourn in the mud pit. She crossed the threshold into the backyard, circumvented the vague outline of what looked to be a frozen outdoor pool, and marched her way to the porch. However, having grown wary of everything, she remembered to inspect the porch steps before climbing them. This extra caution rewarded her immensely. The woman's lips twisted into an evil smirk as she discovered how the treads had been neatly sawn through the middle. It further enlivened her when she spotted a complex contraption lingering directly under those stairs – a Rube Goldberg machine which, she frankly deduced, was designed to ignite a box of firecrackers and other China-made incendiaries with an automatic lighter once provoked. She didn't know whether to be sincerely grateful or profoundly annoyed at the insight.
"Did you build this for me, you little monster? That's so sweet," she scoffed. "Hah! Nice try. But what sort of harebrained ditz do you take me for?! Prepare to eat humble pie! I'm coming up!"
With that, Alice clutched the railings and kicked her feet off the ground as if using parallel bars. She attempted an encore presentation of gymnastic finesse, a show of skill to demonstrate (perhaps more to herself than to anyone else) that she really had no reason to doubt in her own prowess. Adrenalin raced to the modern amazon's head, pumping straight into her besieged sense of superiority, healing its wounds, propping it up. "Okay, on the count of three. One…. Two…. Thwaaaaaaah!"
There was only one problem. The cat burglar had forgotten to check the railing posts themselves! In no time at all, before she could make a proper dismount, before she could even process what was happening, the railings fell apart, their foundations having been perforated like Swiss cheese the previous night. Terror etched itself on her muck-covered face. She crashed unceremoniously onto the rigged steps below, smashing them beneath her large, luscious badonkadonk while initiating a chain reaction of hitherto unheard proportions. For her part, Alice freaked out, tried frantically to disentangle herself from the wreckage. But to no avail. The pressure she involuntarily applied had by then activated the mechanism and lit the main fuse. Sprawled on her back, legs elevated, booty invitingly splayed, she was defenseless to the incoming barrage.
An assortment of explosives promptly detonated on her unguarded buttocks! As though the Fourth of July had arrived early, sparklers spewed pyrotechnic clouds like blistering aureoles; firecrackers sizzled under her ass in consecutive spurts of lightning agony; and miniature missiles whizzed forth with the singular goal of anal annihilation. The rough rear treatment caused the femme fatale's eyes to roll so far back that she could almost see her brain registering the torture. She mewled and choked and whimpered, tongue lolling out of her mouth, body convulsing and seeming to dance.
It was pinecones all over again. The scorching sensation rippled across her roasted hams, biting at the succulent flesh, agitating the twin mounds of tush. Her itty-bitty bunghole tingled.
Eventually, as the fusillades sputtered out into cinders, fully spent, Alice collected herself enough to scramble away – albeit, with the seat of her muddy ski-suit aflame! She hopped from one foot to another, repeatedly spanking her own fanny as if this moronic gesture could extinguish the blaze. Instead, the fires surged higher, stronger.
"Eowwwwwww! Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!" she howled.
The risk of the conflagration reaching her pussy was abruptly compounded. Then and there, the woman did the most logical thing available to a person in her position. She plopped down onto her bum and, without a second thought, grinded it into the snow! The flames fizzled. Rainbow-tinted vapors emanated from the fierce physical contact. She sighed, eyes fluttering, lips betraying a dopey smile of satisfaction. After a while, the thief stood and massaged her backside, only to unveil the conspicuous half-moon she'd left behind in the slush, the butt-print she'd created in the chaos. That wasn't all, of course. Much, much more embarrassing was the large, smoldering aperture that'd been burned through the back of her pants and which now paraded her frilly silk undies in all their partly charred glory. Her reddened ass cheeks likewise spilled out of the opening, a testament to her newfound status as walking disaster zone.
Yet, something else seemed wrong, something in the atmosphere, something buzzing, droning. The din soared in volume as a frenzied shadow cast itself over the confused cat burglar. Her stomach clenched. She gulped then spun around, meeting face-to-face not with a solar eclipse, but with a swarm of wasps so huge it blotted out the sun. Clearly, these insects were on a revenge mission. Their nest, unbeknownst to the lady thief, had been decimated by a stray rocket. And wasps being wasps, someone had to pay dearly – in blood. Too bad for Alice, they'd chosen her!
"Eeep!" Although the soreness in her rump hadn't diminished, the villainess bolted for the porch, for the safe haven of the kitchen entrance. She dashed across the lawn, and the swarm chased her like a humming cone of mean aerial death. What the heck, she asked, were these wasps doing alive in winter anyway?! The question would go unanswered. She had merely journeyed a scant distance when, to her chagrin and to her pathetic caboose, one of her fiendish pursuers delivered a sharp, beastly sting.
This solitary attack prodded Alice into overdrive. She cartwheeled towards the battered steps, did a brisk somersault, then alighted on the mahogany deck. Straightaway, the floorboards tilted beneath her, thus revealing a trapdoor. She tumbled to the Pruitts' basement, to her next destination, shouting.
"Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhh!"
The bugs barely concerned her now, replaced as they were by a different trial which commanded her undivided dread. Fortuitously for the thief, her nemesis had foreseen this very contingency and readied an idle Jacuzzi as congratulations. She'd gotten this far after all. He had guessed that – at this point – the witch would be craving a decent bath, perhaps a warm shower or a meticulous scrubbing. So, he'd stuffed the tub with all the household items needed to promise a cushy splashdown. Soon, Alice was dunked in a few hundred gallons of milk, custard, cake mix, pudding, yogurt, oatmeal, cool whip, tomato sauce, mayonnaise, creamed corn, and chocolate syrup! The nauseating swill engulfed her together with her every selfish ambition, immersing them both where they rightly belonged: gunged.
