Six bare feet, 30 bare toes, dented the sand that was still warm from the blazing midday sun and the accompanying temperatures in the high 80s. It was 7 o'clock by now, and although the sand still warmed the soles of the feet of the three women, the air had taken on a chill. It must be down into the 60s now Rachel thought as her naked, mildly sunburned body shivered a little under the old Army blanket she wrapped around herself. Jeannie looked a bit uncomfortable too despite having taken the other blanket and wrapped her naked self in it for the walk to the motorboat that would take them back to the mainland where Rachel could again put on her favorite denim overalls and one of Jeannie's flannel shirts and Jeannie could wear the red sweatshirt Tom gave her from the college he attended and they could scarf bowls of Jeannie's mom's awesome kale soup and they could light a fire in the fireplace and sit on the living room rug with the bottoms of their feet facing the flames and they'd be warm again.
Janet wasn't cold. Didn't look cold at all, despite having absolutely nothing on herself. What's gives with her, Rachel thought. Janet wasn't shivering. All she had between her and the nippy evening air was the fabulous suntan of hers.
"So who are you?" Rachel asked.
"You already know my name is Janet," the older woman answered. "I'd rather not tell you a whole lot about myself. I'll just tell you that I live not far from here, and I'm a travel agent."
Jeannie: "Travel agent. That explains that killer tan you have. You been to some tropical resort or something?"
Janet: "Spent most of April on St. Vincent."
Rachel: "Where's that?"
Janet: "It's one of the Windward Islands, in the Carribbean. The east side is facing the Atlantic and the west side the Carribbean. A really small island."
Rachel: "You travel agents must know all the great out-of-the-way places."
Janet: "We go to these places for practically nothing. Their tourism offices want us to come back with glowing reports of what a wonderful spot it is. They don't want to be out-of-the-way places any longer."
Rachel: "I never heard of St. Vincent."
Janet: "If the tourism people do their jobs, pretty soon everyone will have heard of it. It'll be as famous as Barbados or Monserrat."
Jeannie: "So why did those guys bring you here and why were they torturing you?...What was it they wanted?"
Janet: "They wanted something that belongs to me."
Rachel: "Well, yeah, sure but..."
Janet suddenly stopped and stretched out her arms, touching the forearms of Jeannie and Rachel in a gesture to make them stop, too. She glanced at both young women for a second.
"Someone spent most of today keeping me tied up, tickling me, slapping my face, beating the bottoms of my feet with a piece of rubber hose, pinching my nipples until I thought they would come off me, and he couldn't make me talk," Janet said in a matter-of-fact manner. "I know you two were tortured too, but please don't ask me to tell you things I don't want to tell anyone."
Rachel and Jeannie stared at each other, sheepishly and a little bit guilty for their temerity.
"Uh yeah, sure...uh, we understand," Rachel finally replied as Jeannie nodded in agreement.
Janet: "I suppose you believe we're in some sisterhood now after we were all abused by that..."
Jeannie: "It's all right, really...really...we're sorry."
Janet sat on the sand and motioned Rachel and Jeannie to do the same.
Janet: "Did you see my face when that guy was on the phone?"
The girlfriends shook their heads. Janet brushed her unkempt brown hair off her face. Her toes sifted the sand and her hands grabbed chunks of it that she let pour out and back onto the trillions of other granules on this barren beach.
"That bastard made one mistake," Janet said with a sigh. "He should have taken the call outside. The voice on the other end was my husband."
Rachel gasped and put her right hand over her mouth. Jeannie's eyes turned big as beer coasters in a seaside saloon.
"Oh, no!" said Rachel. "Oh God, no!"
"Yes," said Janet. "It was him. And you know what? It didn't really surprise me."
"Why?" asked Rachel and Jeannie, almost in unison.
Janet remained silent, still dribbling sand from her fists.
"Why would your husband have you kidnapped and tickled like that?" Jeannie asked.
"He wants it," said Janet. "He wants it and he can't have. It's mine and it will be mine until I die and then it will belong to my son. My husband can never have it."
"OK," said Jeannie. "We won't ask what it is, but it must be worth a lot."
"Yes," answered Janet. "I suppose it is. It's never been formally appraised, but it has to be worth a lot of money. But what it's worth to me is more than money. It's been in my family for generations, on the condition that it never be bartered or sold. No one knows where it is but me. It's location is kept in a vault under the stewardship of my family's attorneys, and even they don't know what it is or how to retrieve it. Only I know."
Rachel: "Why only you?"
Janet: "This heirloom gets passed down from generation to generation, from father to his oldest son. I'm my father's only child, so I have it now. My dad died when I was 22, in my senior year of college. And now it's mine."
Jeannie: "I hope you don't mind asking but why does your husband want it so badly. I mean, what kind of a husband has his wife tortured..."
Janet: "Money!...Nothing else -- just money. He worships the stuff. In his little warped mind he cannot imagine someone owning something valuable that sits around and doesn't make money for him. He wants to sell it. I know he does. He wants to sell anything that will put more cash in his big fat bank account. He has asked me numerous times where it is. It sounded like no more than curiousity at first, and he was accepting when I wouldn't tell him. Lately, he has been more insistent. He won't take no for an answer and he more or less regards me as a fool for just keeping it, or a bad wife for keeping it from him. It has taken over his mind. That was what I wasn't surprised he was behind what those goons did to me...and to you too."
Rachel: "Was he always like that?"
Janet (letting out a short, sarcastic chuckle): "You mean, why would I marry a man like that? I suppose that's what's eating you...No, he was not always like that. When I met him, when I was 23, he had nothing. Common as dirt. But he was brilliant. I could see that in him. Everyone could. This fellow was handsome, smooth, witty, intelligent and driven. Everything a girl could want, right?"
Rachel: "Were you rich?"
Janet (smiling): "I suppose compared to him I was. But, no, my family isn't at all what you'd call 'filthy rich.' Upper-middle class, I guess. Besides, he knew he was going to make all the money himself, and he did."
At that point Janet paused for a few seconds. Jeannie and Rachel said not a word. They were hanging on Janet's next sentence. Janet sighed and began speaking once more.
"At first, all was wonderful. He was a millionaire by 31, one several times over by 33. I was 30 by then and busy making a beautiful life for me and him and our three-year-old son."
Rachel: "How old are you now?"
Janet: "I'm 44."
Jeannie: "Wow, you look great."
Janet: "Oh thank you, my dear."
Jeannie: "Hope I look like that when I'm older."
Rachel: "I don't look as good as her now."
Janet: "Don't sell yourself cheap, young lady. I have an 18-year-old son and I'll bet his heart would leap at the sight of you and that little bikini you wore today."
Rachel glowed, clearly enjoying the compliment from the older woman. Janet then turned her head from Rachel and stared into the bay as the sun rapidly sank toward the horizon.
"But money became a drug to him," Janet continued, clearly more eager to tell her tale, her True Confession-like tale, almost as she were laying on a coach in a psychiatrist's office.
"The more he had, the more he needed, I won't even say wanted. Needed. Like a junkie with his needle. He paid less attention to me and more to some desire to have all the money in the world. He even stopped spending it, and read me the riot act every time I tried to buy something that cost more than three figures. So it's no surprise that his life has come to this -- hiring a pair of scumbags to torture his wife for something that he would turn around and sell on ebay."
Rachel: "You'll divorce him, right?"
Janet: "Not until I have him thrown in prison."
Jeannie: "Think you can do that?"
Janet: "Oh, yes. Those two losers back there face down in the sand are not hardened criminals. Prison would scare the living daylights out of them. Know what they do in prison to young guys like that?"
The girls nodded, blanching at the thought of what DOES happen to guys like curly hair and half-breed in prison.
Janet: "For a deal, they'll sing like canaries. I know they will. C'mon on. Let's get out of here. It'll be dark soon."
Rachel: "Why did your husband tell that guy not leave bruises and stuff? Why did he mostly just tickle us?"
Janet: "I suppose, if the whole thing fell through he'd play ignorant. 'My poor little wife,' he'd say. Then, he'd expect me to go on being his wife, want me to accompany him to the country club looking smashing and have no one ask questions like 'What happened to you, my dear?' Without any signs of torture I guess there wouldn't be much of case against anyone, as long as those two weren't caught in the act. All the while he'd be plotting some new way to get what he wanted. Disgusting!"
The three got up and walked that last few hundred yards to the boat, sitting high in the water as the tide was at it's late-day peak. They almost ran into the brine and sank their bodies in the frigid bay to wash the hours worth of sweat off their bodies as well as the urine they could smell on each other as all three had, at one time or another during their tickle-tortures, lost bladder control.
Rachel: "It'll be dark by the time we get home."
Janet: "Good. I don't want anyone seeing me naked."
Jeannie: "You can stay in the boat and I'll bring you some clothes. You look about my size. You can even have a pair of flip-flops if you..."
Janet: "No need for THEM, honey. I've been barefoot all my life. No reason I should stop now."
Rachel and Jeannie gave each other knowing glances. They'd been barefoot all their lives, too, and seemed proud to have anything in common with this tough woman who, as she promised, outlasted her torment. The trio climbed into the boat. Jeannie shed her blanket and let it drop to the aluminum floor. She yanked the cord and the motor sputtered before finally catching. From neutral to forward just as Rachel, also throwing off her blanket, pulled the anchor from the sand. Off they went though the deep, black water of the bay to their mainland homes at the end of the first day of summer.
Janet wasn't cold. Didn't look cold at all, despite having absolutely nothing on herself. What's gives with her, Rachel thought. Janet wasn't shivering. All she had between her and the nippy evening air was the fabulous suntan of hers.
"So who are you?" Rachel asked.
"You already know my name is Janet," the older woman answered. "I'd rather not tell you a whole lot about myself. I'll just tell you that I live not far from here, and I'm a travel agent."
Jeannie: "Travel agent. That explains that killer tan you have. You been to some tropical resort or something?"
Janet: "Spent most of April on St. Vincent."
Rachel: "Where's that?"
Janet: "It's one of the Windward Islands, in the Carribbean. The east side is facing the Atlantic and the west side the Carribbean. A really small island."
Rachel: "You travel agents must know all the great out-of-the-way places."
Janet: "We go to these places for practically nothing. Their tourism offices want us to come back with glowing reports of what a wonderful spot it is. They don't want to be out-of-the-way places any longer."
Rachel: "I never heard of St. Vincent."
Janet: "If the tourism people do their jobs, pretty soon everyone will have heard of it. It'll be as famous as Barbados or Monserrat."
Jeannie: "So why did those guys bring you here and why were they torturing you?...What was it they wanted?"
Janet: "They wanted something that belongs to me."
Rachel: "Well, yeah, sure but..."
Janet suddenly stopped and stretched out her arms, touching the forearms of Jeannie and Rachel in a gesture to make them stop, too. She glanced at both young women for a second.
"Someone spent most of today keeping me tied up, tickling me, slapping my face, beating the bottoms of my feet with a piece of rubber hose, pinching my nipples until I thought they would come off me, and he couldn't make me talk," Janet said in a matter-of-fact manner. "I know you two were tortured too, but please don't ask me to tell you things I don't want to tell anyone."
Rachel and Jeannie stared at each other, sheepishly and a little bit guilty for their temerity.
"Uh yeah, sure...uh, we understand," Rachel finally replied as Jeannie nodded in agreement.
Janet: "I suppose you believe we're in some sisterhood now after we were all abused by that..."
Jeannie: "It's all right, really...really...we're sorry."
Janet sat on the sand and motioned Rachel and Jeannie to do the same.
Janet: "Did you see my face when that guy was on the phone?"
The girlfriends shook their heads. Janet brushed her unkempt brown hair off her face. Her toes sifted the sand and her hands grabbed chunks of it that she let pour out and back onto the trillions of other granules on this barren beach.
"That bastard made one mistake," Janet said with a sigh. "He should have taken the call outside. The voice on the other end was my husband."
Rachel gasped and put her right hand over her mouth. Jeannie's eyes turned big as beer coasters in a seaside saloon.
"Oh, no!" said Rachel. "Oh God, no!"
"Yes," said Janet. "It was him. And you know what? It didn't really surprise me."
"Why?" asked Rachel and Jeannie, almost in unison.
Janet remained silent, still dribbling sand from her fists.
"Why would your husband have you kidnapped and tickled like that?" Jeannie asked.
"He wants it," said Janet. "He wants it and he can't have. It's mine and it will be mine until I die and then it will belong to my son. My husband can never have it."
"OK," said Jeannie. "We won't ask what it is, but it must be worth a lot."
"Yes," answered Janet. "I suppose it is. It's never been formally appraised, but it has to be worth a lot of money. But what it's worth to me is more than money. It's been in my family for generations, on the condition that it never be bartered or sold. No one knows where it is but me. It's location is kept in a vault under the stewardship of my family's attorneys, and even they don't know what it is or how to retrieve it. Only I know."
Rachel: "Why only you?"
Janet: "This heirloom gets passed down from generation to generation, from father to his oldest son. I'm my father's only child, so I have it now. My dad died when I was 22, in my senior year of college. And now it's mine."
Jeannie: "I hope you don't mind asking but why does your husband want it so badly. I mean, what kind of a husband has his wife tortured..."
Janet: "Money!...Nothing else -- just money. He worships the stuff. In his little warped mind he cannot imagine someone owning something valuable that sits around and doesn't make money for him. He wants to sell it. I know he does. He wants to sell anything that will put more cash in his big fat bank account. He has asked me numerous times where it is. It sounded like no more than curiousity at first, and he was accepting when I wouldn't tell him. Lately, he has been more insistent. He won't take no for an answer and he more or less regards me as a fool for just keeping it, or a bad wife for keeping it from him. It has taken over his mind. That was what I wasn't surprised he was behind what those goons did to me...and to you too."
Rachel: "Was he always like that?"
Janet (letting out a short, sarcastic chuckle): "You mean, why would I marry a man like that? I suppose that's what's eating you...No, he was not always like that. When I met him, when I was 23, he had nothing. Common as dirt. But he was brilliant. I could see that in him. Everyone could. This fellow was handsome, smooth, witty, intelligent and driven. Everything a girl could want, right?"
Rachel: "Were you rich?"
Janet (smiling): "I suppose compared to him I was. But, no, my family isn't at all what you'd call 'filthy rich.' Upper-middle class, I guess. Besides, he knew he was going to make all the money himself, and he did."
At that point Janet paused for a few seconds. Jeannie and Rachel said not a word. They were hanging on Janet's next sentence. Janet sighed and began speaking once more.
"At first, all was wonderful. He was a millionaire by 31, one several times over by 33. I was 30 by then and busy making a beautiful life for me and him and our three-year-old son."
Rachel: "How old are you now?"
Janet: "I'm 44."
Jeannie: "Wow, you look great."
Janet: "Oh thank you, my dear."
Jeannie: "Hope I look like that when I'm older."
Rachel: "I don't look as good as her now."
Janet: "Don't sell yourself cheap, young lady. I have an 18-year-old son and I'll bet his heart would leap at the sight of you and that little bikini you wore today."
Rachel glowed, clearly enjoying the compliment from the older woman. Janet then turned her head from Rachel and stared into the bay as the sun rapidly sank toward the horizon.
"But money became a drug to him," Janet continued, clearly more eager to tell her tale, her True Confession-like tale, almost as she were laying on a coach in a psychiatrist's office.
"The more he had, the more he needed, I won't even say wanted. Needed. Like a junkie with his needle. He paid less attention to me and more to some desire to have all the money in the world. He even stopped spending it, and read me the riot act every time I tried to buy something that cost more than three figures. So it's no surprise that his life has come to this -- hiring a pair of scumbags to torture his wife for something that he would turn around and sell on ebay."
Rachel: "You'll divorce him, right?"
Janet: "Not until I have him thrown in prison."
Jeannie: "Think you can do that?"
Janet: "Oh, yes. Those two losers back there face down in the sand are not hardened criminals. Prison would scare the living daylights out of them. Know what they do in prison to young guys like that?"
The girls nodded, blanching at the thought of what DOES happen to guys like curly hair and half-breed in prison.
Janet: "For a deal, they'll sing like canaries. I know they will. C'mon on. Let's get out of here. It'll be dark soon."
Rachel: "Why did your husband tell that guy not leave bruises and stuff? Why did he mostly just tickle us?"
Janet: "I suppose, if the whole thing fell through he'd play ignorant. 'My poor little wife,' he'd say. Then, he'd expect me to go on being his wife, want me to accompany him to the country club looking smashing and have no one ask questions like 'What happened to you, my dear?' Without any signs of torture I guess there wouldn't be much of case against anyone, as long as those two weren't caught in the act. All the while he'd be plotting some new way to get what he wanted. Disgusting!"
The three got up and walked that last few hundred yards to the boat, sitting high in the water as the tide was at it's late-day peak. They almost ran into the brine and sank their bodies in the frigid bay to wash the hours worth of sweat off their bodies as well as the urine they could smell on each other as all three had, at one time or another during their tickle-tortures, lost bladder control.
Rachel: "It'll be dark by the time we get home."
Janet: "Good. I don't want anyone seeing me naked."
Jeannie: "You can stay in the boat and I'll bring you some clothes. You look about my size. You can even have a pair of flip-flops if you..."
Janet: "No need for THEM, honey. I've been barefoot all my life. No reason I should stop now."
Rachel and Jeannie gave each other knowing glances. They'd been barefoot all their lives, too, and seemed proud to have anything in common with this tough woman who, as she promised, outlasted her torment. The trio climbed into the boat. Jeannie shed her blanket and let it drop to the aluminum floor. She yanked the cord and the motor sputtered before finally catching. From neutral to forward just as Rachel, also throwing off her blanket, pulled the anchor from the sand. Off they went though the deep, black water of the bay to their mainland homes at the end of the first day of summer.
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but great overall, the whole thing was very well written and you could really picture the characters and settings in your head, descriptions were great, etc. Look forward to more of your work someday
