Obsession: Tales of Irresistible Desire Read Online Free PDF Page B

WHORE!”
    Avery has his pants up and he is seeing Reebok and VJ come into the room and he is reaching into the desk drawer. Barbara is swept up to the desk by the wind feeling, and she slams the desk drawer on his hand. “No.”
    Avery yelps with hurt, and when she hears that, something just lets go inside Barbara; a spillway opens up in her and she thinks, I forgot what feeling good feels like. She hasn’t felt this good since she was little, before some things started happening to her.
    Now she finds herself drawn to the sound that Velma is making: Velma cursing under her breath as she hustles toward the side door to her office, thinking she’s going to get to a phone, call 911.
    Barbara looks VJ in the eye and says, “Don’t let her get away, she’s got the money. Shoot her in the legs.”
    VJ jerks out the gun—and hesitates. Velma’s got her hand on the doorknob.
    “Barbara, Jeezus Christ!” Avery yells, clutching his swelling hand to his stomach.
    “VJ,” Reebok says. “Shit. Just grab her.”
    “No, shoot her in the goddamn legs or we lose the money!” Barbara says, saying it big, the voice coming from her with that stormfront behind it.
    Then the thunder: the gun in VJ’s hand.
    Velma screams and Barbara feels another release of good feeling roll through her as pieces of Velma’s knees spatter the door and embed in the wall and blood gushes over the carpet. Avery bolts for the door and, feeling like a Greek goddess, Barbara points at him and commands Reebok, “Hurt that traitor with your gun! Hurt him! He’s stealing everything that’s ours! Stop him.”
    Reebok seems surprised when the gun in his hand goes off— maybe it was more a squeeze of fear in his fingers than a real decision to shoot—and a hole with little red petals on it like a small red daisy appears on Avery’s back, then another—
    Avery spins around, howling, mouth agape, eyes like those of a toddler terrified of a barking dog; Avery trying to fend off bullets with his pudgy fingers—she never saw before how pudgy they were—as Barbara reaches over and grabs Reebok’s hand and points the gun downward at Avery’s penis as his unfastened pants slip down. She pulls the trigger and the tip of his penis disappears—which she saw only that one other time, uncircumcised, with that funny little hose tip on it—and she shouts, “Now you’re circumcised, Avery, you traitor fucking that whore you pig!”
    Reebok and Avery scream at the same time almost the same way.
    Then she notices Velma sobbing. Barbara crosses the room to Velma, picking up something off the desk as she goes, not really consciously noticing what it is till she’s kneeling beside Velma, who’s trying to crawl away, and Barbara’s driving the paper spike into her neck, one of those spikes your kid makes for you in shop with a little wooden disk, still has some receipts on it getting all bloody as the nail goes ka-chunk into her neck three times, four times, and Avery is screaming louder and louder, so VJ turns to him and yells, “Shut the fuck up!” and makes the top of Avery’s head disappear at the same moment that Barbara drives the spike again into Velma kachunk-boom!, the nail going in right behind her ear, and Velma suddenly pees herself and stops flopping, right in mid-flop, she stops . . .
    “Oh, fuck,” Reebok is saying, sobbing as Barbara gets up, moving through a sort of sweet, warm haze as she goes to the corner of the room and points at the cabinet that has the safe hidden in it and says, “Forty-one, thirty-five, and . . . seven.”
    It’s not until she’s in the car, on the road, pulling onto the freeway entrance, that Barbara notices that she peed herself, too, just like Velma. That’s funny. She’s surprised that she doesn’t really care much. She’s been surprised at herself all day. It feels good, it’s like on Oprah with those women talking about doing things they never thought they could do, that people said they couldn’t do,