Rating
CHAPTER NINE
THE EPILOGUE
NINE LIVES
“Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall Cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of foul deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc’ and let slip the dogs of war.”
From Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare (1599)
Day 466
As the weeks and months passed, the ‘Cumber Kidnap’ story steadily slipped down the front pages, to the inside columns, and finally from media coverage altogether. With nothing new to say about it, editors, journalists, broadcasters, readers, viewers and bloggers, all moved on to other shock, horror news.
Gradually, the Agencies and Police pulled resources from the Cumber Investigation until only a small hardcore unit was left on the case. Meanwhile, the Cumber Corporation itself slowly recovered under a new CEO and management with a fresh strategy. Even the share price rebounded.
Then, one early morning, fourteen months after his last contact from the kidnappers, John Cumber awoke in the homeless shelter where he slept every night with a couple of hundred other down-on-their-lucks.
Somebody was shining a torch into his face.
“John.”
He squinted and rubbed at the sleep dust in his eyes.
Nostrils twitching, Walt Furness knelt down gingerly on the edge of the rollaway mattress.
“John ... they’re home.”
But even in his sleep-drugged state, he could tell from Walt’s tone.
Something was terribly wrong.
Three wailing police cars carried them through the rain-slick streets at dawn to the airfield. They flew westwards in a jet laid on by the Bureau to southern Texas. During the 4-hour flight, they travelled virtually in silence. Walt sat rubbing his eyes, perusing files, making a few calls.
As they neared the landing, Walt explained to John that his family had been found locked in the back of a truck at a Gas Station on Interstate 10, between San Antonio and Houston, suspected smuggled in from Mexico.
Police and Emergency Vehicles had rushed to the scene.
Three more police cars now carried John, Walt and others to the Ben Taub General Hospital in the heart of the Texas Medical Center.
A phalanx of paramedics, officers and agents greeted them, bustling John in through the rear entrance, leaving a dozen armed men to seal the doors.
He was ushered into an elevator and taken to the 8th Floor.
There were twin doors at the end of a long corridor.
Slowly, with leaden steps, he made it without falling over.
The doors were opened and he walked through, followed by Walt and the grey-haired man who’d been introduced as the senior doctor on duty.
The first one he saw was Gene, unshaven, staring red eyed.
But alive.
Then Ryan. His son, staggering towards him.
Alive.
Then his darling Lorna, lying covered up on a hospital gurney.
Also alive.
No sign of Rachel.
Or Susan.
And then Ryan’s emaciated arms were around his neck.
“Dad.” A faraway voice whispered into his ear.
He tried to speak but nothing came out. He felt his legs buckling.
“Help him !” Walt ordered urgently and strong hands scooped him under the armpits.
“This way.”
“Careful.”
He lost consciousness for a few moments and then he was being supported at another set of swing doors, looking through internal glass panes.
A figure was lying on an operating table, surrounded by green suited medics, nurses and banks of flashing equipment.
“It’s Rachel, dad.”
Ryan’s voice was clearer now, nearer, stronger. Recognisably his son.
“She’s too weak, John.” Walt put a hand on his shoulder. “So they’re doing an emergency C-Section.”
C-Section ? Rachel ? Pregnant ?
“H ... how ... ?”
Walt looked away. Ryan blinked.
“Lorna is pregnant too, dad. She’s over eight months gone. Just behind Rachel.”
John nodded slowly. He half turned his head to look across at his elder daughter but stopped himself. His unspoken question went unanswered.
Ryan was wearing a white cotton hospital shift. On his legs he was dressed in soiled black pants, part of the same wedding suit he’d been wearing the afternoon he’d been kidnapped. Slowly, he fished a hand down into the side pocket.
“They said to give you this straightaway, dad.”
John felt his whole body shiver as he recognised the big, black, upper case letters; JOHN CUMBER, BY HIS KID’S HAND
He didn’t ask Walt for permission. He simply slid his trembling finger along the sealed tab and opened the envelope, heart pumping. Cautiously, he unfolded the page.
Dear John,
Hi. At last ! It’s been a while hasn’t it.
You’ve been a good boy, John. We admire your new lifestyle so much more than the old one. And so here is your reward. If you remember we made a deal; we said you could have four kids back straightaway, or all five in a year’s time.
And you chose Option Two, right ? Well, you always were a shit hot investor John. Guess what ? You invested four and, instead of five, you’ve got six kids back !
Ryan, Gene, Lorna, Rachel and your two little grand kids. Six out of seven ain’t bad. I call that a pretty good return all things considered. Heck, better than we ever did investing in Cumber stock. So, goodbye my friend. Live again. I think that makes us even. Game’s over.
You will never hear from us again.
The Chameleon.
Unable to speak, John handed the sheet of paper to Walt. He shook his head at Ryan, screwing his eyes shut in pain. Susan was never coming home.
“Dad !”
He reopened them at the alarm in his son’s voice.
Through the glass panes, he could make out frantic activity around the operating table. Rachel’s head and body were hidden by a sheet but her pale legs were visible. A surgeon was holding something.
John stared.
His grandchild.
A tiny baby.
Beautiful.
And black.
*** *** ***
April 2012
Outside, the fresh snow lay thick and fluffy as a white sheepskin rug. The winter had been mild by Arctic standards, but the cold snap had brought huge falls of deep powder that covered every square yard of the 10,000 acres ranch, and for hundreds of miles around.
Melissa sat warm indoors at her PC and surfed the news pages.
“Madam.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“May I take your tea cup Madam ?”
She nodded.
After Susan had curtseyed and picked up the empty cup and saucer, Melissa spoke.
“Would you like to hear the latest titbit ?”
Susan’s green eyes widened. She craved news of her family. Melissa monitored the press, social media, even phone calls and knew everything about John and the kids. But she doled out information as if it was caviar. Tiny blobs of black nectar.
“Actually, I think it must be a while since I heard it. Lorna is pregnant again.”
She watched Susan gasp, making the cup and saucer rattle.
Gene and Lorna had gotten married after all, quietly, a year after they were released. They lived simply now, with their daughter Delorna, and at last they had apparently been able to conceive a child all of their own.
“Thank you, Madam. That is wonderful news.”
“Yes, I thought you’d be pleased. That’s why I was saving it up for a special occasion. She’s actually seven months gone.”
Susan clattered the cup and saucer again.
Melissa opened a drawer and fished out a tattered printout of a smiling Lorna with a bump under her shirt. She handed it to Susan.
“It’s probably Gene’s.” She smiled.
“By the way, I also have the latest photo of Rachel’s son for you somewhere. He’s going to make a heck of a basketball player, I think.”
“Thank you Madam. You are too kind.”
Melissa paused, smiling at her. It had taken a while, but Susan Cumber really had turned out a nice, polite, meek, grateful, and very obedient domestic servant.
“Do you know what day it is tomorrow, Susan ?”
Susan’s aged, lined but still attractive face furrowed. She probably barely knew the month, let alone the precise date.
“No Madam.”
“It’s Easter Sunday. Your fiftieth birthday.”
Susan rattled the cup a third time, her expression shifting to a blend of nervous surprise and sadness all at once.
“Yes. So, the time has finally come for that game of Sophie’s Choice I promised you so long ago. Susan’s choice ! We’ll celebrate and play it tonight.”
That evening, Charlie opened a magnum of Bollinger and poured three glasses. He handed one to Mel and the other to Susan, then set the large champagne bottle down on the closed lid of the coffin. It was placed dead in the centre of the candlelit room.
“Cheers.”
All three drank; Charlie and Mel smiling, Susan’s face apprehensive in the flickering light. Several times her gaze shifted down to the new, wooden, pine-scented coffin.
“Strip.” He said matter-of-factly.
Without any reaction or hesitation, Susan began removing her maid’s outfit. It was her everyday uniform. He watched in the gentle light, as the body that he had come to know every inch of, was revealed one last time. She unhooked her bra and slipped off her black thong without embarrassment.
Her nipples were both pierced with small gold hoops. Heavier steel bells hung down from the rings once her bra was removed.
“Bend.”
Naked, Susan turned and silently presented her rear view to him. The bells tinkled.
A small initial C had been branded on her right buttock. On her left was a matching M. In the middle, at the base of her spine, was a V.
V for the Victors.
An arrow directing traffic to her bottom.
She would take those three branded letters to her grave.
Charlie put his glass down and unzipped himself.
Mel winked at him encouragingly.
The final fuck.
She was ready. Susan still maintained herself constantly lubed up and ready. Charlie kept her cunt for himself. His guests used her mouth or ass when they came to visit for fishing or hiking trips.
She bent over, hands braced on her knees, hips angled to give him easy access. He ran his fingers up and down her familiar spine, thrusting into her cunt, listening to her quiet sigh.
Fifty. He smiled. It sounds old until you’re 49. Despite it all, Susan Cumber was still an attractive woman. Trim, curved, not really so different from the statuesque mother of the bride he’d kidnapped five years earlier.
Wherever she was going next, he would be sending her there just as it all began 36 years ago. A woman with a cunt full of semen.
Mel watched them both with half an eye. With the other, she carefully opened and studied the contents of her medicine chest. She extracted two identical syringes.
Charlie had just spent two days camping out on the ice on a fishing expedition. His balls were full and ready.
“Mmm.” Susan moaned below him, recognising his signs.
He cupped his palms under her breasts, rolling the bells, making her shiver, as his knees juddered.
“Come with me.” He grunted into her ear.
He grimaced as he injected his heavy load inside her.
And then he smiled as, a few moments later, highly trained Susan Cumber pushed back at him and hissed air in her own crescendo of uncontrolled cries.
“Well, I guess here cums the bride’s mother, after all”.
Five minutes later, Susan lay naked in the fur-lined coffin, looking up at them both in tears.
“Your choice.” Mel whispered, holding the two syringes up.
“It’s over, whatever happens. Either of these jabs will make you sleep.” She continued. “But only one will allow you to wake up afterwards.”
Susan snivelled terrified gulps.
“Quickly ! Come on, this bit’s the hard part. Once you’ve decided, you go to sleep and you won’t know any difference. It’s justice time. Which is it ? Parole or execution ? The left or the right ?”
Susan shook her head in uncontrolled panic.
After years of not making the simplest decision for herself, she was suddenly incapable when asked to make the most important one of all.
“Left or right !? Now ! Or I will stab you with both.”
“R ... right !”
There followed an ear splitting howl of terror as one female knelt and unloaded the contents of a syringe into the other female’s thigh.
Two women, each united by two men, both unwillingly.
A minute or so later, very gently, Melanie Jones covered Susan Cumber in a thick, soft, cashmere blanket, and was about to close the coffin lid.
“Wait.” Charlie said.
He fetched a piece of typed A4 paper and put it inside the coffin.
It was an invoice for one dollar.
*** *** ***
Wednesday, April 12th 2012
The Eyes watched the modest house in Brighton Beach owned by Gene and Lorna Collins. It was an ordinary suburban home with a single tree in the yard and a beat up Korean car out front. Gene’s family money could have afforded them anything they wanted but these two had learned their lesson.
Yellow ribbons and a Stars and Stripes bedecked the tree and house. He smiled. Although it was his first visit on US soil for five years, the welcome party was not for him.
The police had closed access to the street to anybody but family, neighbours and cops. In a few minutes, the taxi carrying John and Susan would arrive to reunite the whole Cumber family at last.
A happy, private moment.
His eyes squinted through his Ray-Bans to the window nearest the front door. A cute little 3 year old girl was visible, watching through the pane with her pregnant mom. They smiled and both waved excitedly at one of the policemen who had been drafted in from another precinct.
He waved back at them. His uniform and badge were real. Only his dyed hair, moustache and ID were fake.
He looked at Lorna and remembered her scent. The warmth of her body. Did she still think of him ? And her daughter, waving at him.
Delorna.
A sweet name for a sweet kid. Literally, of Lorna.
He had suggested the name before she was born and of course Lorna had obeyed him. She always did.
He knew he should probably never reveal himself to his daughter.
On the other hand, maybe he would do like his own dad had done, and simply turn up on her 18th Birthday !
You see his daughter’s name was also an anagram of ‘Leonard’.
But only one dude in the whole US of A got the fucking joke !
The Chameleon.
Him.
*** *** ***
21.09 hrs
Charlie stood in the scalding hot shower and sang along to the Aerosmith classic reverberating off his wet room tiles. It was Nine Lives, his own motto.
Nine Lives ... It ain’t over
Nine Lives ... Live for ten
Eventually, he finished singing and switched off the scalding hot shower.
His days of standing under a cold spray were over.
There were a couple of lines of the song he liked even more than the manic chorus.
And how can one man’s little bit of Heaven
Turn into another man’s Hell.
Now this fishing lodge in the middle of nowhere was his own little bit of heaven. All paid for by another man’s hell.
Dressed in only a white towel round his muscled midriff, he padded into the open-plan living room. He bent and ran his lips over Mel’s naked shoulder.
She had finished typing and was sat still in her chair, staring at the screen.
The End
It was over. She had finished.
“A penny for your thoughts.” he said. “Regrets ?”
She twisted her head slowly to look up at him with a smiling pout.
“Not really.”
Both syringes had contained the same anaesthetic.
After all, Melissa was hardly going to risk killing her granddaughter Delorna’s own grandmother !
Susan and John had been reunited at last. Ryan was working for Greenpeace. Rachel had trained as a teacher. Lorna would make a good mom to two kids.
“The whirlwind has been reaped. It’s over.” Red Mist said.
Famous Blue Raincoat squeezed her husband’s hand.
He leaned down and kissed her full on the lips.
“Was I too harsh ?” she asked.
He reached for her breast but she twisted away.
“Listen.” She said, clicking the mouse, bringing up a page of reviews. ‘Really good but at times too harsh for my liking’.
He chuckled. “Well then it’s kind of lucky you spared the readers your missing chapter then.”
“What about this ?”
‘There is something about the plot I don’t care for. In this case the Chameleon character is a real turn off for me’.
He gave another wry smile. “Heck, we weren’t meant to be nice !”
“Yes but look at this one.” She said.
It was from Anonymous. It had been impatiently posted at the end of only the first chapter on Literotica.
‘Revenge for what ? This story is crap. I hope the reaper gets you, and that you die lonely.’
“I hate anonymous comments.”
Charlie smiled at her indignation. He ruffled Mel’s hair.
“Don’t worry, there is no such thing as anonymous I can assure you.”
She leaned her head against his hip.
“Look,” he continued, calming her, “so many readers are mothers and fathers themselves. Every guy can empathise with John Cumber, every woman with Susan. But there were no serial killers, no slit throats, no gory murders. Everybody just wanted a happy ending.”
There was a pause. The log fire crackled and threw a spark.
“You think ?”
He began sensuously stroking her back.
“Sure.” He said. “And that’s the reason we had to let Susan go.”
“In the end.”
*** THE END ***
POSTSCRIPT
“Omne trium perfectum”
Tomorrow
“Hello ?”
Lonely thinks he hears a noise.
He is hunched at his table with his pants round his ankles. He doesn’t notice the stench of the ashtray full of smoked Camels, or the mouldy half-eaten pizza by the keyboard. He has just finished posting three anonymous abusive comments and is now too busy jerking off to notice anything much at all.
The writer’s rule of three is the accepted principle that things that come in threes are more satisfying to the audience or reader. The comedian who sets up his joke about the brunette, the redhead and the blonde, with the punchline always applying to the third character.
The speechwriter who first advises his listeners what he is about to tell them, who then tells them, and who ends by telling them what he has just told them. The orator who espouses duty, honor, country, or who addresses friends, Romans and countrymen.
The author who splits his story into a beginning, a middle and an end.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow.
“Hello ?” Lonely calls out again, reluctantly letting go of his erection.
Shit !
His apartment has a tiny entrance lobby leading to the shower and john. He sees through the crack in the door that he’s left his main front door open. Fuck, he could have sworn he locked it.
He giggles nervously. Somebody might have caught him jerking off!
He pulls up his pants to his knees and starts to shuffle towards the lobby to close his front door. He spots movement, or thinks he does.
“Hello ?” he repeats a third time.
As his breath catches in his throat, Lonely learns the rule of three.