After the bitter chill of Winter, the snow and ice of February, Spring couldn’t come soon enough for Kaitlyn and Madison. Throughout the drab lockdown, the vibrant forest had sustained them, freeing them from its suffocating constraints: online studies, incarceration with their frightened parents, to explore a fantasy world of adventure, life without masks.
Their return to school re-established daily rituals for the girls. They hardly saw each other during school time. Every morning Kait would meet Maddie off the school bus at the stop in front of the charity shop. After school they would kiss before Madison boarded the bus, and Kait watched her tired pale face, her veined hands, waving goodbye from a rear seat.
Except for when they walked and talked in the forest.
The forest was bordered by Pouting Hill, a busy country lane that wound its way from the traffic lights by The Stag and Hounds, past the Golf Club, to the junction with Forest Road, opposite the village green. Kait, oldest and tallest of the girls, held Maddie’s hand as they crossed the road, entering the forest discreetly, out of view, beyond a sharp bend in the road. Then they were free to roam, to wander, wherever, however they wished. The hilly path stretched for three miles as far as the woodland car park, the starting point for organised walks, and cycle rides. There, the path veered left, before making its steep, winding descent past Lover’s Common to a narrow opening in the hedgerow, the Tennis Club, and the murder house.
March was chilly, frost-free, wrap-up-well weather: rainy, gusting winds, falling trees, in mid-month. It was unsafe for the girls to walk through the woods so Maddie took the bus.
Spring arrived with a flourish of cherry and hawthorn blossom in the hedgerows. On the sunniest, warmest, driest day of the month, with sunbeams highlighting the virgin leaves in the trees, Kait led Maddie deep into the forest, in rolled-up shirtsleeves, open collars, swaying, polyester skirts, holding hands.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Madison keenly, her pale face flushing, starting to perspire.
The birdsong ceased. Leaves rustled in the trees. She felt the grip on her wrist intensify, her lover’s lilting, dulcet tones. ‘Somewhere where they’ll never find us.’
They trod her path of mystery alone.
After a while, Kait halted in her tracks, turned to face her girlfriend, and grinned.
‘Take off your shoes and socks.’
Maddie’s eyes lit up, sparkling sapphires, her face stretched, cheeks risen, high, just like her rib cage when she breathed in sharply, indenting her mouth with such happy dimples.
‘Why?’
‘You’ll get muddy feet otherwise.’
Muddy feet! The thought of it! Us, two girls! Playing together! In the mud! Muddy legs!
Maddie was a child at heart.
The eastern spur of the leafy avenue: beech and oak, the forest’s thoroughfare, changed. Narrowing to a soft mud path bordered by budding hawthorns, cruel brambles, and hazel. There were uncommon surprises dotted here and there, gaps in the thicket, wild cherry trees straining to burst into bloom. Remnants of some ancient orchard? Shooting bluebells yet to flower, straining for the sun. There was a bend in the path ahead. Kait smiled at Maddie, cherishing her childish happiness, loving the influence she exerted over her mate. Her girl would walk the plank for her, shin the tallest tree, scale the highest peak, swim the iciest stream. There was nothing in the world she wouldn’t do for Kait – when she was a child.
Today, Maddie was her child. She watched, excited, as her adorable lover, her sole reason to live, got down on bended knee, and took off her sandal, her anklet, revealing her slender thigh, her skirt hitched. Kait had model’s legs, smooth round knees. Unlike her knobbly knees, her pallid creamy skin, her sinewy calves, and thighs. Chick’s legs she called them. Kait’s chick. The socks and sandals were her idea, being childish, fun in the forest! Doting on her every word, Maddie followed suit. The sight of eighteen-year-old girls dressed in socks and sandals at school had raised their teacher’s brows, given the other girls a laugh that morning!
They would never understand these two girls.
Standing very still, Madison bent her left knee, raising her calf behind her, reached back, prised off her sandal, and peeled off her sock. One of Kait’s model’s legs was bare, she noticed. She was bending, on her other knee, working off her sandal, the sock, standing. Mud, she had mud on her knee. Maddie watched her brush it off. She wanted to lick it off her smooth, round knee. While she bent her right knee and raised her calf, picking at her buckle, pulling off her sock. Kait’s legs were bare. Her legs were bare! Fun! In the forest! Kaitlyn’s jaw kept moving, saying something odd, shoes and socks, held, in both hands…
Wipe the wisp of hair off your face, Kait. So that I can see you. So that I can be your child.
She wiped the wisp of copper hair off her face, grinning – fully – at Madison, and said, ‘Shall we get our legs all wet and muddy?’
Breathless with excitement, fretting – nice frets, dreaming – wet dreams, fun-filled-panic attacks, Maddie could barely speak, ‘Yes, lets! Hurry, Kait! Let’s, yes! Kait, hurry!’
Please! I want to know your secret!
Kaitlyn Hart. Madison Hendricks.
Two Girls.
Went around the bend.
In the shady, narrow, muddy path.
Cleft watched the girls undress. The short girl with the bronze-tinted shoulder-length hair, parted down the middle, grey eyes, big nose, thin lips, slightly jagged teeth, was the sexier of the two girls, more self-conscious. She stood to take off her shoes and socks, refusing to go down on bended knee, to bare her thighs, in case a voyeur saw them, naked. It was the tall girl who intrigued Cleft. She appeared to exert an unhealthy influence over her mate. The childish girl couldn’t take her eyes off her. And yet she bore such a shy smile on those melancholy, cracked lips of hers, a sadness in her eyes of midnight blue, and, on her lower lip, a prominent, ugly, brown scar.
From Cleft’s hidey-hole, the gap in the thicket, she could almost reach out and touch the girl with the thick drape of copper hair brushing, scratching her eyelids, the bridge of her nose.
She wondered what would happen if she did.
It had to happen.
Madison felt the goosebumps rise on her bare calves and thighs as she slid, first one leg, then the other, incrementally into the stagnant pond water. The fermenting broth, a rotting stew of decaying leaf mulch, dead rats, and birds, lumbricids, and snails, was deeper than she expected, wetting the hem of her skirt. She wondered if there were eels in the pond, leeches, and bloodsucker lampreys, imagining them all attaching themselves to her arms, legs, and body. Kaitlyn, come to rescue her, biting them off, chewing them off, with her jagged, incisive teeth. Sucking them off Maddie’s wet breasts with her mouth. She felt herself go.
Didn’t mean to! Oh, no! What will mummy say when she sees me like this? All covered in sticky-clingy pondweed, pond slime, algae, and sloppy-stink mud. Take off my clothes, Kait, wash me, cleanse me… touch me!
Slip! Trip! Fall! Headfirst! Into the murky water. Mads plunged, headfirst, into the filthy mire, digging her toes in deep, smearing herself, her crisp cotton shirt, her polyester skirt, in thick grey gunge, bobbing her head upward, sputtering froth and bubbles, weed, crying.
‘Help me, girl!’
Kait, being the taller of the two girls, kept her hem dry as she waded through the disturbed swell of mud and mulch, swirling around, engulfing her best friend. Grabbing her by both arms, she dragged her to the far bank, appreciating Maddie’s crocodile tears, her plaintive cry.
‘Will I catch the lurgy, Kait? Please don’t let me catch the lurgy. I’ll so miss you if I do?’
Maddie was shivering, despite the unseasonal warm spring sunshine, trembling, a wibbly-wobbly jelly girl, all tingly in her wingly, rippling on the outside, nervy-girl in her insides. Kait smiled at her, knowingly, shaking on the bank.
Clumsy girl’s lost her socks and sandals during her one-girl water fight. Maddie’s socks and sandals are nowhere to be seen. How can she ever go home looking like that?
Her satchel lay on the grassy bank. Kait dipped inside, took out her phone, and checked. She breathed a sigh of relief.
No signal! There’s no signal! We’re alone in the forest. Where no-one will ever find us!
Clumsy girl was hunched up in a sodden heap on the bank, arms wrapped round her soppy wet shoulders in a vain bid to keep warm. Kait threw the redundant satchel into the thicket with the phone, and any hope of contact, reached under Maddie’s armpits, and hauled her to her feet.
‘Won’t let you catch the lurgy,’ was all she said.
There were beech trees, hazel, pussy willows, a prickly holly tree, then – rhododendrons.
Rhododendrons! Here in the heart of the forest! Whoever heard of such a thing?
Kait giggled, the child who springs out of bed, better, feeling better, after her long illness: measles, chickenpox, mumps. The child released within her, she took a longing, yearning, look at Madison: all bedraggled, begging, beautifully muddy for her, beckoning her mate to follow her. Then she disappeared into the soft, broad-leafy hedgerow.
Maddie shrugged and shivered, stamping her bare foot, cracking twigs in her frustration.
‘Aren’t you going to undress me?’
Silence, all around her. Then…
The sound of heavy breathing.
Somewhere behind her.
She dare not look!
A cold drip of fear ran down her back.
Madison Hendricks scarpered, a frightened bunny rabbit, ran for her life, to Kait, to safety.
Or so it seemed.
Cleft decided to stalk them, knowing where they were headed. She left her den and strode as far as the bend. The dewpond stretched from a knot of silver birch and pussy willows on her left to dense undergrowth on her right. If she wanted to pursue her quarry, Cleft would have to wade the pond. She cursed silently.
This is turning into a muddy nightmare. Is she worth it?
She closed her eyes, seeing the tall girl, down on her bended knee, soiling herself, skirt hitched high, baring her slender thighs, her crotch.
Mmmn, she’s worth it! There’s only one thing for it.
Cleft shielded her eyes from the sun and stared ahead. The girls were nowhere to be seen. She shrugged, found a tussock of dry couch grass to kneel on, took off her jogging shoes, her prim new sports socks, pulled down her tracksuit bottoms, and waded into the stagnant water.
The short girl’s anklets were swelling with bilge in the middle of the pond, about to sink, like her scuffed sandals, Cleft noted salaciously.
The clumsy girl’s sandals have sunk into the muddy abyss. Those are her socks!
Wishing, she had a ship’s whistle to pipe the sinking of the socks, Cleft ceased wading, tucked her bottoms, socks, joggers, under her left armhole, and raised her hand in silent salute. She’d find them, afterwards, for at the going down of the sun she would remember them. After all: Finders’ keepers, losers’ weepers!
How would the short girl’s toes taste on her palate when she sucked them all clean? she wondered, licking her lips fervently with the upturned tip of her tongue. For that matter, how would she taste? Cleft wobbled as her perfectly manicured left foot slid and slipped on a submerged slimy boulder, rinsing her thighs, tainting her pure-soft skin with nature’s rich wild broth of decay. She closed her eyes and dreamed, all smiles: suck-a-toe-in-turn.
The sun beamed down on her from its noon high, casting twinkles on the rippled surface, burning her face with ultraviolet light, warming her body as she waded to the other side. Cleft shook her legs dry as best she could, pulled on her tracksuit bottoms, jogging shoes, stuffed her socks in her pockets, then found the hidey-hole in her rhododendron hedge.
She felt a nausea, a sick bile, rising in her parched throat, swallowed hard, her excitement.
‘No going back now,’ she told herself, ‘Your fetish, carnal need, darkest secret, two girls, await you. In you go, girl! In you go!’
No-one’s land. Maddie found herself standing in the cool, leafy, umber shade of no-one’s land. The hidey-hole in the hedge. Nature’s passageway. A portal. Her one-way invitation to paradise or purgatory, suspended, saturated, someplace between the wood and the why? There was a kissing gate, timbered, coaxing her to enter forbidden territory. She pushed the gate with her wet cuff, wary of catching virus off its splintered surface, passed through the gap, and stepped inside.
She was blinded by the light, roasted by the heat, loving the cellophaned-body effect as her shirt, bra, and panties clung to her, sticking to her bristling skin, sensuously, sensually. Something slithery, sluggish, slippery: a leech, or a lumbricid, wormed its way inside her left bra cup, tickling her teat. Bugs, lice, flies, gnats, nipped and bit her folds, the creases in her skin: along her jawline, behind her ears, inside her armholes, elbows, knees, belly, navel. Making her itch like billy-ho! Maddie didn’t seem to mind. Maddie was her child.
Kait admired her, the child-girl in her, her calves and thighs caked with drying mud, her matted hair stuck onto her scalp, dirty-urchin face, the shabby ruins of her school uniform.
Her mind wrestled with the mud. Mad’s mud. Clumsy girl’s crisp white cotton shirt had dried in the unseasonal heat, and stained khaki. Her skirt was filthy, spattered, with khaki.
My precious army girl!
She couldn’t take Mads home to her mum and dad, Steph, and James Hendricks, looking like that. Steph would have her daughter’s guts for garters. Then there were the onlookers to consider: walkers, passers-by, men-in-the-street: the knowing glances, mocking chants, derisive laughter: the shameful humiliation Maddie would endure. Kait’s embarrassment. Chance meetings with schoolmates. Taunts, jeering in the playground. Animals bullying.
Maddie had an enchanted look on her face. Beguiled! Bewildered! Kait took her hand and led her, inside the summer garden. It wasn’t spring. It was summer, inside. Roses climbing over weeded flower beds, fruiting apple, cherry, pear trees, buttercups on a lawn, a mossy garden path which led to…
‘Wh-what’s that?’ asked Maddie, shaking herself, vigorously, to check that she was real.
A shed? A shack? A shambles?
Something unworldly, unnatural, unfriendly, about the place made her tighten her grip on Kait’s hand.
A summerhouse?
It was the strangest place they had ever seen. A flight of hardwood steps led up to a crude, sheltered veranda, enclosed by metal trellis covered in flaky white paint. At the top of the stairs, across the entrance, stretched a solid, cupric metal chain – without its missing sign:
DANGER! UNSAFE! NO ENTRY!
‘Shall we go inside?’ suggested the taller girl, in a funny-odd voice.
Maddie, quite forgetting what it feels like to be shrouded in mud, shrivelled up, crawling, all over with lice and lumbricids, soaked, sored, bruised, bitten, bilious yet unbowed, said, ‘Wh-what is it, Kait? Please, tell me what it is!’
There were no windows in the wooden walls. The roof was a grassy thatch. The only way in was through a thick-plank-grey wooden door, which hung ajar, enticing, inviting them.
‘K-kait? Wh-what is it?’ Maddie repeated.
Her best friend wasn’t listening. Her lover let go of her hand, peering through the sunshine at the glimmering sheen which lay beyond the weird hut, and stretched, as far as her eyes could see. Kait left her standing on the path, crossed the lawn, and stood at the very edge.
‘Come see what I’ve found!’ she cried.
Madison hurried to her playmate’s side, seizing her hand – for a sense of security. A little bit scared. Just a bit. Nothing made sense here in the arbour-within-the-woods. The heat for a start, why was it so warm? She cast her mind back to Geography. Felt her heart leap.
Micro-climate! Maybe we’re in a micro-climate, a bubble of summer warmth, surrounded by trees. Hidden from view! Anyone’s view? At least, that horrible heavy breathing noise has stopped. Have Kait and I finally found our paradise? Hope so! Can’t afford a holiday. Couldn’t go on holiday. Even if I wanted to. Can’t go away with my Kait: mummy say it’s unhealthy, daddy won’t let me. If they could see us now! I like it here. With Kait. Like it! A lot! Perhaps we can stay here, forever, where no-one can ever find us. Hope so! I love Kait. She’s my world!
‘Look!’ cried Kait.
Maddie opened her eyes. And looked.
At first she though it was a swimming pool, the water was so clear and clean. She could see the bottom, the floor, chequered black-and-white floor tiles, old-fashioned. Victorian? There were submerged red and amber brick walls enclosing the pool at its perimeter and partitioning the space into rooms. At least, they used to be rooms, once upon a time. There was a convenient flight of steps, at the far end of the pool, a fool’s descent, a flooded…
‘Cellar!’ the two girls both cried at the same time, ‘A flooded cellar!’
Kait swivelled round to face the wooden outbuilding, taking Maddie with her.
‘This,’ she said, waving her arm from left to right, ‘All this, must have been someone’s property. Once. The house. The garden. The Summerhouse! It is a summerhouse, Mads. Children might have played here.’
Her voice was tinged with sadness, so much so that Maddie shared her sense of loss, her grief, Kaitlyn’s overwhelming desire to reconcile their present with someone else’s past.
‘Who do you think lived here then, Kait, a family?’
Her mate spoke slowly, ‘A rich family, I expect. Only the rich can afford a summerhouse.’
Madison suddenly felt weak. Wearied by it all. It had been an exciting adventure but the sun would go down sooner or later taking away its warmth, dusk would set in. They had yet to wade their way back through the pond, find their way home through the dark forest, and…
‘I’m tired out,’ she complained, ‘Think we should take a bath, have a rest, make our way back, before it gets dark?’
‘Are you saying it’s our bath time?!’ her lover smirked, not a smile, just a naughty smirk.
‘Yes! Bath time!’ Maddie craved her, pleaded for her touch, ‘Will you undress me, Kait?’
‘Only if you undress me, too!’
‘Yes! Yes! Hurry! Hurry!’
Cleft, concealed in her hidey-hole, watched, enthralled, as the tall girl hastily unbuttoned her friend’s filthy blouse, peeling it off her back, a crusty scab. Her skirt came off next, stiff with dirt. She freed her lover’s breasts, unlatching three hooks, teasing off her cups, revealing her pale breasts, the dusky nipples, flicking off the clinging leech. The girl stood still as a garden gnome, quivering inside, tingling with excitement, as Kait pulled down her dirty pants, threw them on the ground, kissing her blushing cheeks, whispering, softly, in her ear.
‘Take off my clothes, Maddie.’
Cleft could barely bring herself to watch the tall girl’s denouement, such was her pent-up lust, her self-imposed restraint.
Maddie, meanwhile, was all fingers n thumbs, fiddle, flaff, fizzing in a frisson of wanton, selfish need. Her hands shook, digits dithered, as she unpicked the five remaining buttons on her girl’s blouse, fluffing the cotton shift out of her skirt, pushing the material back over Kaitlyn’s angular shoulders, hearing her murmuring instructions in the background.
‘Fold it neatly for me. Leave it on the path.’
Clean! She wants me to keep her clean!
She did as she was told, then she unclasped and yanked off Kait’s skirt, folding it, neatly.
Cleft gasped as the lip-servant stripped off the tall girl’s bra and briefs – denuding her.
Kaitlyn Hart was easily the most beautiful girl that she had ever had the pleasure to stalk.
For once in her, shallow, life, Madison Hendricks was lost for words, such was the nature of Kait’s twin imperfections: the scar over her mouth, remnants of her hair lip, the raised blue varicose vein: her vascular graffiti: which crept over her floppy right breast, swelling her nipple. The imperfections enhanced her natural beauty, her healthy ruddy complexion, the smooth silkiness of her skin, her astonishingly shapely physique. Maddie wanted to kiss her scar, to lightly run her soft fingertips along her bulging vein. But Kait was having none of it. She ran up to the flooded cellar, abandoning her stunned mate.
‘Come on! Let’s go for a swim!’
Maddie stooped and picked up her soiled clothing, in litter-picker fashion, ‘I can’t swim!’
‘Then stand on the steps and wash yourself. You look like a tramp!’ called Kait.
‘A lovely tramp, though,’ she added, joyfully, ‘My precious little tramp.’
I love you so much, Maddie mused, You’re always so kind to me.
It was time for the two girls to splash around naked in the water. Kait perched with all her toes clasping the rough edge of the makeshift swimming pool estimating correctly that the water was little more than two feet deeper than her height. She dived in headfirst. Her friend watched, admiring her as she scythed through the crystal-clear water as far as the steps, rolled underwater, then swam back to her. Kait trod water for her, spoke in sputters.
‘It’s really warm! Come on in!’
Madison shook her head in disbelief, ‘No way! It can’t be warm. It’s still only Spring!’
‘Don’t believe me then. Come in and feel it for yourself.’
With that Kait about turned and struck out for the steps. Her lovechild was waiting there, dipping her toes in the water. Kait was right. The water was warm. Mads sat on the stairs, enjoying her natural bath.
Perhaps there’s a warm water inlet to the lake. Hang on! This is a cellar, not a duckpond!
She rubbed the horrid khaki stains out of her clothes, rinsing them off in the clean water, got up, and padded to the summerhouse, leaving her idol to enjoy her swim. There were no familiar forest sounds, she noticed, no animal rustling leaves or birdsong. Her paradise was perfectly at peace, at one with her sense of wellbeing, her emotional fulfilment, her overwhelming happiness. Maddie had never felt so free. She quickly strung her clothing along the metal trellis to dry in the sun, ready for later, when the two girls returned home – without her shoes and socks.
‘Try explaining that to mummy and daddy,’ she tutted.
Someone, close by, laughed at her. Laughter, coming from the hidey-hole. Cruel laughter. Taunting her. Jeering at her. Scolding her for being such a stupid girl. Maddie ran away.
Don’t look back, girl! Don’t look back!
Kait was partially submerged, sitting on the cellar steps, rubbing her neck, when Maddie appeared, panting heavily, unfit, out of breath. She said, before the other girl could speak, ‘I’ve been bitten. Don’t worry. It’s only a scratch. Probably just a mozzie.’
Her little tramp ignored her, bending at the waist, hands on hips, gathering her breath.
‘I think we’re being watched.’
Kait instinctively covered her breasts with her hands and slunk down into the water, like a scared hippo in retreat only smaller. She smiled to herself. So, they had a secret admirer? Someone had witnessed their exotic schoolgirl burlesque, her denouement by Maddie. She sighed, Wonder who he is? Probably some crafty old bugger escaped from the local care home!
It wouldn’t have been the first time that she’d attracted the attention of older, mature men.
‘Where?’ she said.
Maddie wrung her hands, and shifted from foot-to-fit, nervous, glancing over her shoulder at the gap in the rhododendrons. The hidey-hole was empty. There was no-one there. A solitary light aircraft flew overhead. A mild breeze blew, rippling the surface of the pool, chilling her damp head of hair. She heard a sharp crack – a dead branch broken underfoot? The birds sang their hearts out. The treetops swayed in the breeze. The forest came back to life. Maddie began to wonder if her imagination had played tricks on her all along. She did have a hyperactive imagination, childish dreams, subliminal excursions into her own private la-la land. When she felt emotionally vulnerable. When she was Kait’s child. Truth be told, she felt a bit stupid.
‘I thought I heard laughter in the forest,’ she said, flushing, ‘I thought I heard someone laughing at me.’
‘Laughter? At you, Mads?’
‘Mm.’
Her mate was intrigued, ‘What kind of laughter?’
‘Horrid laughter.’
‘Why would anyone laugh at you?’ asked Kait, her face splitting in a mildly amused grin.
Madison threw up her hands and stared at the sky, which was clouding over, like her face.
‘Don’t believe me, do you?’
‘I’d say you’re imagining things. You do imagine a lot don’t you?’
Maddie clasped her hands behind her back and swayed, blushing profusely, the little girl who is caught red-handed stealing candy from a sweet shop.
‘I suppose so.’
‘You’re filthy! Come into the pool and let me bathe you.’
The mood changed to sultry, steamy, soporific. The urchin entered the pool, desperate for Kait’s touch, longing for her kiss. She sat between her lover’s smooth legs and slid into the warm water, right up to her neck.
‘Tilt your head back, so that I can wash your hair.’
Maddie relaxed as Kait washed all the muck and pondweed, a dead water boatman, and a live pond skater out of her manky brown hair, loving the sensation of her fingers rubbing her scalp. She closed her eyes and dreamed as Kait explored her earlobes, her cheeks, her thin smiling lips with her fingertips, hearing her quietly murmur, ‘Sit on my lap.’
Maddie shifted herself up the stairs, sat on her lover’s lap, then opened her mouth to admit her tongue. They kissed deeply, throatily, drinking each other’s saliva, tickling tongues: tasting their palates, making their tonsils twitch. After several, breathless moments, Kait whispered, ‘I love you, girl.’
She ran her hands lightly over Maddie’s full off-white breasts, cleansing them, pausing to tease her dusky rose nipples, stiffening her tiny red teats making her gasp with pleasure. Ploughing, delving, deeper, massaging her flat tummy, probing her deep navel, squeezing her taut abs, caressing her soft hairy mound, tenderly, gently, fingering, parting, entering, her lover’s intimate cleft.
This is why I live, mused Madison, her body sensitizing, tingling, I live for her, for Kait.
‘Oh, that feels good,’ the young girl moaned, ‘That feels so good.’
The clouds burst, a summer shower, ripples formed around their bodies as Kait made love to her childhood sweetheart. They didn’t care wet, naked, in love. Kaitlyn made her wish.
If only we could stay here, in love, forever.
The rain teemed down in stair rods making it hard for Maddie to breathe. She began to panic. Kait read the alarm in her lover’s eyes. Maddie was prone to panic in extreme rain, when under extreme pressure. It was the child in her, her little girl mentality, struggling to cope with the real world. Kait removed her hand.
‘Let’s get you inside, girl,’ she said, lovingly, ‘I can love you inside.’
Maddie gasped, seeing stars, her head spinning with love, their intimacy, ‘Must we?’
‘You can love me, too?’
The two girls separated. They stood. They climbed the stairs out of the flooded cellar and raced through the pouring rain, through the garden. To the summerhouse! The trees were a hazy blur of dark and light green, the grass was soaking wet, slippery under their feet, the salmon pink roses hung their heads in shame, withering under the onslaught of the driving rain. The girls ran for the summerhouse, oblivious to their saturated surroundings, oblivious to their clothing which lay strewn across the freshly mown lawn, or hanging on the trellis, soaking wet. They mounted the four steps to the veranda, pulled open the door, and stepped inside. It was dark inside. There were no windows. Kait left the door wide open, so that they could see each other.
Inside the summerhouse, lying on the bare wooden floorboards, was a single mattress. A shock – or a pleasant surprise?
It was Maddie who broke the silence, ‘I wonder who lives here?’
Kait assessed the mattress: pink-and-white stripes, spotlessly clean, wide enough for two,
‘Search me! A tramp? No, this is too good for a tramp.’
She looked around her. Other than the mattress, the room was empty. There was a dry, musty smell, the smell of dust when the covers are removed from furniture in a disused room. It struck Kait that the summerhouse hadn’t been occupied for ages.
So why the mattress?
She felt Maddie’s soft hand give her forearm a gentle squeeze, felt her hold her hand, her child.
‘P’rhaps we should go home, Kait.’
The rain pummelled down on the veranda. Kait sang slowly as if she were in a trance.
‘It’s raining, it’s pouring, the old man is snoring…’
Maddie chuckled. Kait was playing games with her! She loved it when Kait played games.
‘He went to bed, and bumped his head, and couldn’t get up in the morning!’
Kait smiled her twisted smile and led her lover to the mattress. She let go of her hand.
‘We can’t go home in this rain, can we? Let’s go to bed until the rain has gone away.’
She lay down on her back with her arms outstretched, her pendulous breasts heaving with excitement.
‘Lie on top of me, girl,’ she murmured.
Maddie went to her, lay on top of her, brushed the copper kiss curl off Kait’s face. They kissed, open-mouthed, in the French-style. Kait took the girl to her breast, suckling her, as if she were a new-born babe. Maddie ran her tongue along the length of Kait’s varicose vein, loving the sensation of the swelling on the tip of her tongue, as her mouth reached her nipple. Kait cupped her fat breast for her lover, so that she could feed her, feed her babe. Maddie slathered, slobbered, and licked Kait’s rose pink nipple, teasing her realm of tiny teatlets, sucking voraciously on her corky teat. Kait whispered sensually while she fed her.
‘Lie on top of me, the other way round.’
She unlatched her babe from her breast and gently forced her off. Maddie clambered into her new position: lying on top of Kait with her head between her lover’s thighs. Kait put her arms around Maddie’s waist, holding her in place. They kissed each other, deeply, in their most intimate places.
Cleft stood in the doorway, watching the two girls make love, watching the tall girl, Kait, pressed against her lover. There would be plenty of time for her to touch and play with her afterwards. She had all the time in the world for beautiful Kait. Not for the sexy girl, though. She didn’t fancy the clumsy, childish, sexy, little, girl at all, only wanted Kait.
She slammed the door and locked it.
Maddie raised her head from between Kait’s thighs, ‘Why has it gone so dark?’
It wasn’t just dark inside the summerhouse. The wooden shack was pitch black, without a shaft of light. It was impossible for the girls to see each other, only feel, they could feel.
Kait relaxed her grip on her lover’s waist, ‘The door must’ve blown shut in the wind.’
‘But there isn’t any wind?’
‘Then it must’ve shut itself.’
‘I’m scared.’
Kait hugged her girl as best she could, then eased her off her, feeling her weight removed. ‘Don’t be scared, Mads. We’ll soon get out. Then we’ll put on our clothes and go home.’
‘Our wet clothes,’ Maddie corrected, getting to her feet.
‘Yes, our wet clothes,’ Kait reflected gloomily, then brightened, ‘Things could be worse.’
‘How, Kait? How could things be worse? Shut up in this horrible place, nothing to see, nothing to eat or drink, no clothes to wear. I want us to get out of this dump and go home.’
Kait clambered to her feet and searched for a tell-tale chink in the wall, feeling blindly with her hands.
‘Feel along the wall until you find the door, then push. Ouch!’
Maddie’s voice, in the dark, ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’ve got a splinter in my finger.’
‘Oh, no Kait!’
‘Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait!’
‘Stop it, Maddie!’
‘It isn’t me! It isn’t me!’
‘Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait!’
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ she screamed.
The mocking voice fell quiet. There was someone outside the summerhouse, mocking Kait. The sound of hysterical laughter, cruel laughter, outside. A woman’s laugh, or the laugh of an effeminate man. They heard her laugh cruelly. Both of them heard her laugh, this time.
‘Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait! Oh, no Kait!’
‘Stop It! Stop It!’ they screamed. The voice fell quiet then nothing. They were alone.
Kait cried, ‘No! Come back! Come back! Let us out! Let us out!’
The two girls beat their fists on the splinter-wood wall, making a terrible din, screaming their heads off. Cutting and bruising their fists. Kicking at the wall, furiously. Cutting and bruising their bare feet. Screaming themselves hoarse. Kait felt Maddie’s body sag against hers, felt her giving up all hope, despairing.
‘What are we going to do? What are we going to do? We can’t stay here! Can’t stay here!’
‘Someone will find us,’ Kait assured her.
‘Who? Who will find us? You told me no-one would ever find us here. You told me that!’
The darkness, the hard drumming of rain upon the veranda, the onset of panic in her babe, tipped Kait over the crazy edge, the ridge of hysteria; it was Kait who lost her cool, lashing out at her mate, shaking her by the bare shoulders, slapping her cute little pixie face.
‘Shut up, Mads! Shut up!’
Maddie started to cry. They both did. The two girls slumped to the ground, wondering if they would ever be found.
It was left to Cleft to tie up all the loose ends. She picked Maddie’s clothing off the metal trellis, then gathered Kaitlyn’s clothing off the muddy ground, tying it up in a wet bundle, destined for the clothing bank that she passed on the way home. The hungry and the poor would appreciate the white cotton shirts, their swaying polyester skirts, in the heat of the desert, maybe not their bras and panties. She disposed of them, burying them under the heavy logs in the swollen, muddy, woodland pool.
Then, she made her way to the forest path – and home!
