The Grassy Knoll
By Jed, jedventurer@yahoo.com
She isn't the innocent he thinks she is . . 


With Angela on a grassy knoll. I've been weeding all afternoon, in a secluded
section of the condo complex, wearing my polyester landscaper's uniform. I'm
nineteen. I'm hot, sweaty, and stiff. My shirt is sticking to my back, and my
eyes are salty with the sweat off my brow. She's come along to keep me
company. In her one-piece green bathing suit, an innocent wanton splayed on
the grass, knees up, heels planted in the soft turf and leaning back on her
elbows, she's a child of privilege and leisure, a stone killer and, to this
brutish domestic, she's a change in scenery and a cool breeze.

She's young, too young to do anything with but look at, and try to remember
the wonder of first discovery. I don't know what I represent to her, but I
know for a fact that she has sought me out; her need is almost palpable.
She'll be an easy mark for the first unprincipled opportunist to come down the
pike and show her a little masculine attention. It's a hard task sometimes,
reminding myself that I am not that unprincipled fellow.

The Boys are saying that your net is inescapable,? I say. My eyes linger on
the long, smooth curve of her inner thigh, the soft convex curve of green
where her leg joins her body. . . drawn helplessly along, as it were -
inescapable, indeed.

She hasn't noticed the direction of my gaze. She produces the net from behind
her – where there had been nothing, suddenly her hands are draped with its
shimmering strands. Nobody's gotten out of it,? she says softly. She smoothes
it over her knees, letting it drape her legs. Her long, toned legs.

They think there's some magic involved,? I say. I'm speaking once again to her
thighs, to the soft mound between them. They're obsessed with it but
frightened by it.?

I know.? She crosses her legs and turns on her hip, resting her weight on one
elbow, shoulder crooked. This does lovely things to the thin fabric stretched
across her breasts. They want to feel what it's like, but they're afraid what
will happen to them.?

I wonder if we're both still talking about the same thing. What will happen??

We'll capture them.?

And then??

A shrug. Different things.?

Different things, indeed. It looks . . . odd.?

She hands it to me. The strands are thick tubes, in a multitude of colors,
most bright, most slick to the touch. They're bathing suits, I realize;
one-piece girl's bathing suits, linked together by means of loops fashioned
from the arm straps and leg holes of each suit. I look up at her in surprise.

We all have lots of suits,? she says with a shrug.

I realize with an embarrassed start that my hand has slipped through the
leg-holes of one of the strands; it's a soft cotton suit in lime green, and I
flash on an image – Bunny, all legs and arms, cutting the water of the pool in
this suit. I look at Angela's green swimsuit and imagine it as part of this
seductive mesh. My face goes hot as I realize I've been staring – at Angela,
and at the crotch of this empty bathing suit.

I drop my arm, letting the suit slip off my hand; but it doesn't slip off –
two other suits intersect this one through the leg holes, and my hand has
become caught between the three loops of cool fabric.

That's why they think it's magic,? Angela says, noticing my captured hand.
It's not the suits that hold them – it's the holes in between the suits.? She
rises smoothly to her knees, takes the edge of the net and lifts it over my
head, draping it over me. They get all tangled up in the knots and holes. It's
easy to grab them while they're trying to figure their way out.?

I'm breathless. Breathless with the closeness of her lush, lithe body, so very
young but so very everything else as well. Breathless with the sheer
inappropriateness of the situation – draped with the bathing suits – dozens of
‘em – of a cadre of young teenaged girls; breathless to be taking such sensual
pleasure in the very entanglement that has captured several young boys,
leading directly to what I assume has been their deaths. Breathless because I
can hear the suits. The soft susurration of the fabric against my shirt as it
settles over me; the almost-inaudible whispers coming from the suits
themselves – a soft cooing, wordless, murmurs of delight from the very fabric
of each suit, each strand.

Amazing,? I manage to croak, peering at Angela from beneath the thick mesh.

It works,? she says. There are more of them than there are of us, so . . . ?

What happens next?? I ask, knowing I should remove the net now, stand up and
go back to my garage. But I remain, kneeling on the soft grass with this soft
girl, her deadly seductive snare draped over me.

We wrap him up some more,? she says, drawing the folds of mesh around me, her
arms encircling me. The net seems to cling to itself – knots cleaving to
knots, fabric pulled through loops and nooses. Angela leans forward to pull it
tight around me; she smells powerfully of flowers – Herbal Essences, I think,
for a moment made giddy by the scent. She sits back on her heels, knees
together, hands resting on her thighs. Her eyes are bright, her expression is
expectant.

Remarkable,? I say, and she takes this as praise, for she beams. She looks
down, blushing, which gives me a chance to extricate my hand from the noose in
which it is still caught. I slide my other hand over to help, but it becomes
caught in another space – the suits are, whispering one to another, the web
deciding how best to entangle me. It doesn't want to let me go, I think, and I
know this is preposterous, but I know also that it is true. I can hear the
distinct voices of each suits' donor – a dozen of them, sweet soft voices, the
memory of voices of the girls who wore these suits, their personalities
sweated out through teenaged pores and absorbed by the fabric of their
swimsuits as they lay in the hot sun thinking about boys, danger and sex,
power and sex and danger and boys. With the voices of their owners, the
strands of the web are conspiring together. In a quiet cacophony of urgent
whispers, the web teaches itself desire, and resolves to grasp the object of
its desire.

And it is succeeding. My hands are entangled, held apart by the meshwork
wrapped around my body. My elbows are ensnared, pulled up and back at awkward
angles. Even my foot is trapped, caught up in a dangling corner of the net.
Angela looks at me expectantly, waiting for me to remove the web from around
myself and return it to her. But I cannot move my arms to free myself, cannot
even stand. And she doesn't realize it.

And she must not. I know now exactly how her victims feel when they are caught
in her web; the sick feeling of dread at the sensation of helplessness,
coupled with overpowering arousal. I imagine what it must be like for one of
her victims: a young boy, his balls just dropped, immobilized, erotically
humiliated, aroused and confused; watching as his captors close in – former
playmates grown mysterious and exciting, dangerous and unknowable, and
suddenly holding the power of pain and death over him; all of them standing
over him with cold, cold eyes devoid even of malice. My balls ache at the
erotic perfection of the moment: captured and bound by the object of our
youthful obsession, desire and fear of death battling it out to a draw,
settling for uneasy co-existence. Bondage – the love-child of Eros and
Thanatos. My captor – perfectly innocent, perfectly merciless – sits demurely
before me, unknowing.

She cannot know. If she did, she would stop seeing me as an older confidant
and object of unrequited desire, and see me as I am at this moment: prey.

If they struggle enough, it tightens around them,? she offers. I know that
struggle on the part of the victim is no longer required, for the web is
tightening around me as she speaks, ardent embrace becoming suffocating
pressure. I wonder how tight it could become – could a small boy, left wrapped
for long enough, strangle or smother in its tresses?

You have no idea how remarkable this accomplishment is,? I say, to her obvious
pleasure. Why don't you remove it from around me – I'm afraid I'll rip it with
my muscles.?

She rises to her knees, puts her arms around me as if to remove the net from
around me. She presses herself against me, and this time her scent is flowery
shampoo, and something else. Sweat; fear; desire. You can't free yourself, can
you,? she whispers in my ear. It's not really a question.

I'm not your enemy,? I say. Or your prey.?

Monica would say that anyone under my power is my prey.? She sounds doubtful,
as if she hasn't fully comprehended what her older friend means.

But now you don't know what to do.?

She shakes her head. I don't know what I want to do. With the younger ones . .
.?

I shudder, thinking about some of the things these young combatants have done
to each other in the name of play. You've all taken this too far,? I tell her.

. . . with the younger ones,? she continues, I can taste what they're feeling.
Fear, pain, and something I don't know what to call.?

That's lust. Desire.?

I can smell it on you.?

I can't help that. But I would never act on it.?

You can't act on anything.? She pulls back, turns my face toward hers. I want
to taste that from a man,? she whispers, fastening her mouth on mine.

I'm sure this is her first kiss, and it's with a captive, maybe yet a victim,
and a bound, sweaty day laborer at that. She's a child of wealth, playing
fantasy games gone all too real with an ever-shrinking cast of characters. And
yet, it is her first real kiss, and I try to give her one worth remembering,
with all the tenderness it should entail.

She breaks off and looks at me. Her eyes are troubled, her expression serious.
She rises to her feet, steps behind me, and the web falls away from my body. I
roll to my back; one leg and both arms have gone to sleep from the pressure of
the whispering strands.

I tasted something new.? She's leaning over me, her head blocking my view of
the sky. I used to think about what I would do to you if I ever caught you in
my web. I imagined what you would say, and how you would taste. I thought you
would be like the others, just more. And you were – you had everything The
Boys have, right up to the end. But you have something new, something I've
never tasted before. I want to taste it again.?

You won't.?

I think I can capture you any time I want to, now.? We both know she's right.

But it's not right. It's no more right than what you do to The Boys, and what
The Boys will do to you if they catch you.?

Monica says it doesn't matter what's right. All that matters is what you can
do.? She kisses me on the forehead, a chaste kiss. I know you tried to save
me, just now. It's sweet of you. But I don't need saving. All that I need, I
can take.?

Until you, and Monica, run into someone who can take you. If I'm not around to
save you then, you'll be dead, because I don't think anybody else will.?
Because I know what it was you tasted in me. And I don't think you'll find it
anywhere else.f

It's just a game, Jed. It's kids, playing. When I'm all grown up, with all
this behind me, maybe I'll come wrap you up one last time. Think how good I'll
be by then.? Then with another kiss on my brow, she's gone.

I lay my head back and looked at the clouds. I realize I'm seriously
considering how long I will wait for her to grow up and stop murdering her
playmates in demented predatory games. I only stop fantasizing when the
thunder of a dozen sneaker-clad feet rumbles by me. I look up, but hunters and
hunted have already disappeared from sight.