Page 6 of Lonely (Wellard Asylum #4)

A fter a long, tedious shift, I exited Wellard with my umbrella tucked under my armpit.

A crow had been pecking at the remains of a dead rat at the bottom of the steps, but when the door shut behind me, it took flight, abandoning its meal.

I sidestepped the bloodied pebbles. The rat’s eyes were gone, macerating inside the bird’s digestive tract.

Walking past the Cherub fountain, I was almost to the parking lot when Anna’s Renault Clio spluttered and died.

She must have turned the ignition again, because the dying sound started back up.

The car coughed, but the engine failed to turn over.

She tried again, then gave up and dropped her forehead to the steering wheel.

I debated my options, because the last thing I wanted to deal with was a young woman with car troubles, but before I could turn around, she exited the vehicle.

It took her a moment to spot me, but then she looked up and hurried to wipe the tears from her rosy cheeks.

“Sorry, Doctor. I didn’t see you there.”

Goddammit. It was too late to turn back now. My smile felt forced and awkward, and I wished I had stayed in my office.

Somewhere behind us, flutters of wings broke the silence as a swarm of crows descended from the roof to peck at the dead rat.

The scent of wet grass and decaying leaves reached my nose, and I twitched it because it itched, but I didn’t want to scratch it.

Not when Anna’s eyes were growing bigger and rounder by the second.

Instead, I cleared my throat. “Car troubles?”

She took it as an invitation to wobble over in her high heels, which sank into the gravel, and she smiled brightly, like a ray of sunshine. She was too innocent for a dreary place like this.

But maybe Mother had been right. Maybe the Devil was into trickery.

My left eye twitched with each step, catching the glimmer of her ankle bracelet in the gray afternoon.

“Do you know much about cars?” she asked.

I knew nothing about cars. My knowledge was limited to the car wash events the school used to organize to raise funds.

Every year, it turned the boys in my year into brainless spider monkeys because of Tessa Miller’s big breasts.

She’d rub them on the windshield for a few bucks, and if you were lucky, you might see her nipples through her white T-shirt.

She had big areolas. The boys liked that.

Now, as the rain drizzled, I pictured Anna’s areolas.

Were they big, too?

Did I like them big?

I had never slept with a woman. They were terrifying creatures, and they were all the spawn of the Devil. Mother reminded me every Wednesday.

“Do you mind giving me a ride home?” Anna asked, batting her lashes the way Tessa Miller would when Chris O’Connor walled her in with his corded arms against her locker between classes.

Chris O’Connor had a mean streak. When he wasn’t sucking on Tessa Miller’s big areolas, he would flush my head in the toilet or fill my locker with trash and used condoms.

“Doctor?”

I blinked away the bad memories.

“Can you drive me home?”

“Sure.”

I walked in a daze to my car, a squabble breaking out behind us as the crows fought over the carcass.

Anna smiled at me over the Beetle’s roof, and my hands shook as I inserted the key. It took me a few tries, but it finally turned, and I escaped into the vehicle.

Anna strapped herself in, rubbing her cold hands and blowing on them. She smelled of vanilla, fresh rain, and crisp autumn air, and I couldn’t breathe when she fiddled with the radio.

“Buddy Holly,” she said, a wet lock of hair slipping from behind her ear. “Classic rock for a classic car.”

I believed there was wit behind her words, but I’d never been good with social interactions, so I turned the ignition and reversed onto the road.

Anna talked about the weather and her Siamese cat named Little Mikey, from a Quaker Oats commercial that had been popular in the seventies. Seemed like an odd choice when she was barely in her mid-twenties, but I didn’t question it.

I didn’t really want to make conversation with Anna. She was annoying and loud, and every time she shifted, her nurse’s dress climbed higher up her thighs. She didn’t seem to notice. Or care.

At the lights, she laughed at one of her own jokes and put her hand on my arm, high up near the shoulder. She was too invested in her story to notice I’d gone stiffer than Mr. Carson’s corpse in the mortuary.

We finally pulled up outside her small cottage, which had green window shutters and Christmas decorations on the porch. Christmas was months away.

“Do you want to come inside?”

My thoughts came to an abrupt halt, like a scratched vinyl, and I whipped my head toward her.

She exited the car, letting cold air rush into the toasty vehicle, then dipped her head back inside.

“I bought a new coffee maker.” A smile tipped her lips. “I promise I won’t bite.”

But bite was exactly what she did. Somewhere between me entering her cluttered living room, almost slipping on a catnip toy, and startling Little Mikey—who hissed at me and scurried off—she shoved me onto the couch and straddled my lap.

Now her dress was on the floor, and her tits were swaying in my face. Her areolas weren’t big, but they weren’t small either. I had nothing to compare them to, but I didn’t think I’d pay her to rub them against my windshield.

She was terrifyingly efficient at undoing belts. My sore ass had barely squished the latest issue of a country house magazine on the couch before she unbuckled my belt and undid my fly.

Now she was bouncing on my cock like I was a young, purebred stallion—like Carter—and I barely remembered how I got here.

“Yes, yes, yes,” she moaned, squishing her tits in my face and clawing at my scalp with her crimson nails. “Oh, Doctor, I knew you’d feel good. Fuck yes!”

My glasses were askew, and I was pretty sure she was strangling my dick with the boa constrictor between her legs. Was this normal?

Admittedly, it felt good. And I could already picture the brutal whipping I would get at Mother’s hands if she ever found out.

The Devil had sunk his claws into it’s son, and now the woman was bouncing and grinding on my cock while making all sorts of inhuman sounds. One could almost think I was killing her.

And I had killed people.

“Oh God, oh yes! That’s the spot.”

She smashed her lips to mine, smearing blood-red lipstick all over my chin and knocking my glasses off my nose.

Little Mikey was back, watching from the kitchen doorway, flicking his tail and giving me a judgmental stare to rival Mother’s.

“Fuck, your cock feels so good. I’m going to come hard. So fucking hard!”

She bit my lip to drive home the point, and I wondered if I should fear her tomorrow. Next time her car broke down, I was walking the other way. Hell, I might even take cover behind a tree.

She moaned so loud Little Mikey flicked his ears, and I dug my fingers into the countless colorful scatter cushions.

It was starting to feel good, really good, but I was scared of what would happen if I came before she did.

Maybe she would stab me with one of the tall heels she was still wearing.

Had anyone ever been stabbed to death with a heeled shoe post-sex?

I wouldn’t have put it past her, because the look in her eyes was truly terrifying, even though I was half-blind now that my glasses were lost somewhere in the sea of cushions.

I didn’t think her vagina could grip me any harder, but just as I was about to see if I could locate my glasses, she threw her head back and let out a scream.

Little Mikey bolted, disappearing into the kitchen.

I sucked in a breath as her walls clenched tight and rippled around me.

“Oh, baby,” she whispered against my lips as she finally settled down, dragging her sharp nails over my scalp. “You were so bad.”

Yeah. Bad at self-preservation, apparently.

I stayed still.

I’d seen that look before in nature documentaries, right before something got eaten alive.

She stood up and looked at my cock and then at her thighs. I almost flinched when she asked why I didn’t come.

I half expected her to reach for my belt and tell me to bare my bottom like Mother.

But instead, she climbed back onto my lap and cradled my face.

“What’s wrong, baby? You can talk to me.”

Her lipstick was smeared, her pinup hair mussed, and her pale skin glistened with sweat.

Meanwhile, I was still fully dressed, minus my glasses, with red lipstick on my collar. What a mess.

She reached for my hands and placed them on her soft breasts.

“You can touch me, you know. I want you to.”

My hands were so big they almost engulfed her entire bust.

But all I could think about, as she bit her bottom lip, was how much easier it would be to come if she were tied up. Helpless. Crying.

I loved tears.

And fear.

I had never done to a woman what I did to Chris O’Connor.

His skull and severed skeletal hands were still in a box beneath my bed. Sometimes, when I was stroking my cock, I dragged it out from behind the box of Polaroids and relived the euphoria I felt when the light left his eyes.

He was special to me. He’d wormed his way into my psyche with his cruelty.

The others were for sexual gratification. But Chris O’Connor? That was love.

I would never forget the sound of him begging for his life, or the things he was willing to do for mercy.

Filthy, filthy things.

A delicious shiver ran down my spine, and I massaged Anna’s breasts because it made her sigh with pleasure.

I didn’t know how it happened, but I woke up in her bed the next morning, her body wrapped around me like a koala bear, her soft snores brushing my neck.

And that was how I ended up giving her a ride to work while she discussed the weather and sang along to “Oh, Pretty Woman.”