The House That Jack Built Read Free Page B

wait till I follow those boys and find out where they at and whistle for the man. Well, here's news for you. You ain't followin' us none.'
        'I wasn't even going to try,' Craig choked.
        'That's what you say.'
        'Why the hell should I follow you? I'm soaking wet, I'm sick. All I want to do is go home.'
        'That's what you say.'
        'For Christ's sake, you've taken all my money. What more do you want?'
        'I want a guarantee, pal.'
        Before Craig could even ask him what kind of a guarantee he wanted, the other youth seized him ferociously from behind and gripped him tight. Craig tried to wrestle and wriggle free, but the youth in the frock coat slapped his face, left and right, not too hard, but just enough to make his ears sing and his cheeks burst into flame.
        Together they slammed him up against the old drugstore counter.
        'What are you doing? What the hell are you doing? For Christ's sake let me go!'
        But while the first youth kept Craig pressed against the dusty mahogany counter, the youth in the frock coat reached around and unbuckled Craig's belt.
        'Get off me! Don't touch me! What are you doing?'
        He felt his buttons pulled off, his fly wrenched apart. Then a long-fingered black hand reaching into his shorts.
        'Don't touch me! Don't touch me! Don't touch me!'
        But the youth in the frock coat roughly scooped his genitals out of his shorts, and laid them on the counter. Craig's penis shrank in fear, and his scrotum tightened so much that the youth could barely take a grip on his testes.
        'Listen, I'll give you anything you want,' Craig babbled at him. 'I have a BMW 7-series, you can have that if you want to, it's red, you never drove anything like it. I have much more money, I'm really wealthy, I can arrange to pay you ten thousand dollars each. Twenty thousand, if you like.'
        The youth in the frock coat sniffed reflectively. 'Amazin', ain't it, how generous a dude can be when you're holdin' his toolbox.'
        Craig was sweating and trembling and utterly revolted by the way the youth was slowly kneading his penis and his testes between his long, dry fingers. He was rubbing him and pulling him almost absent-mindedly, but this gave his manipulations a terrible intimacy, as if he were a wife playing with her husband.
        'Amazin', how much some dudes would pay for a toolbox. What you would pay, pal?'
        'Anything you want. Now just let me go.'
        But the other youth said, 'I bid twenty dollars for the right-hand ball.'
        'Twenty dollars? Do I hear twenty dollars for the right-hand ball?'
        'Let me go!' Craig roared at him, and tried to wrench himself away. But the youth in the frock coat slapped him again, much harder this time, and then he slammed his hammer down on top of the counter, only inches away from Craig's genitals. Craig felt the hard shock of it travel through the counter and bruise his thighs.
        'Is that all that anybody goin' to bid?' the youth asked, in mock astonishment. 'Why, twenty dollars, that's nothin' for a full-growed fully-functional ball.'
        'Thirty,' said Craig. This was the most chilling kind of torture, because he didn't know whether they wanted him to win or lose - or what would happen if he did either. If he won, he was terrified that they would cut off his testicle and give it to him. If he lost - well, God alone knew what they would do. He even began to think about the Bobbitt case, in which a vengeful Laurene Bobbitt had cut off her husband's penis and thrown it out of her car window. He tried to remind himself to look closely where these two tossed his genitals, if they castrated him, so that he could recover them quickly; and he also had to think of places where he could find some ice, so that he could keep them in good condition while he called for an ambulance.
        He thought he remembered seeing a bar across the street.