In the House of Spite Ch. 12

Pearl could've sworn the woman she saw in the Food Lion parking lot was that Karen from long ago, that Karen with the wild child and self-entitled attitude. When that Karen met Pearl's eyes, she visibly cringed, tugged her child's arm, and hurried to get into her vehicle.

Pearl liked to think Karen was afraid of her, but honestly Pearl knew she wasn't particularly intimidating. She couldn't figure out why that Karen had acted like a scaredy-cat.

Today was a rare little treat. Darren was joining her on a grocery shopping trip. They'd already left the truck and were walking to the main entrance with their fingers interlaced.

Inside, Pearl saw what she believed was a very "Food Lion" interior. It felt different from the kind of grocery store Mama used to take her to when she was a child. Although, that had been a very local store, and that place kept changing owners and names over the years. This Food Lion they were in looked and kind of felt brown. Not a sickening brown, more like a gentle, creamy color.

Pearl liked holding Darren's big hand. Hell, sometimes she'd even hide her face into his shirt. No reason except it felt excellent. He'd typically pat her back or head, and that always warmed her belly. He encouraged this odd behavior. He liked it. That made her feel secure and safe.

Autumn was here again. The cool air didn't stop Pearl from looking pretty. She had a long, coat-like sweater of black wool. Underneath, there was a pair of reasonably tight blue jeans with a high waist, a long-sleeved pink T-Shirt, and black booties with low heels. Darren had personally braided her hair for her, a single French braid. He'd said he thought she looked like she was ready to take on the world. But she still clung to him like a shy child.

Darren took a shopping cart, or as he called it, a buggy. Then Pearl looped two of her fingers into his jeans' belt loops and followed him around. Do we have enough ground beef? What about potatoes? Rice? Canned vegetables? Darren asked those sort of questions. Pearl had a list to consult, but she was able to answer most of the questions without looking.

When it was time to get cold cereal, Pearl left him long enough to get a few boxes of her favorites. She ate cereal a lot more often than Darren did. She even held each box up to him, grinned, and said, "I want this one!"

"Okay Baby," Darren would say as he put each box in the cart.

At one point, Pearl realized some new Karen, a woman she would've called Kristy just to keep things less confusing, was staring at her from a spot down an aisle. It wasn't an innocent stare. If it was, Pearl wouldn't have mentally called her a Karen nor a Kristy. Her lips were pursing and her nose was wrinkling. She had short and blonde hair. It had been teased and puffed up. Her sweater had some script that read, "GOD FIRST."

The Kristy's fingers clenched on her cart's handle. She had unusually long, red fingernails. When Pearl and Darren passed by her, the Kristy gave them such a snarling look that Pearl really didn't know what to think. She had a grandmother that was, in her opinion, the Christianiest Christian to ever Christian in all of Christiandom. And that grandmother would never have given random strangers such a mean look. What was up with this Christian sweater wearing Kristy?

In an aisle full of alcohol, Pearl happened to see a particular brand of canned beer on sale. In fact, the price was so low that she let go of Darren's jeans just so she could stop and examine the anomaly. Darren only took maybe two steps before he too stopped.

Daddy liked this brand of beer. Since the price was so low, Pearl thought she should get a pack for him. The price might change the next day for all she knew. She hooked her fingers in the plastic keeping the cans together, and she held it up to say to Darren, "I know someone who'd like this."

"Oh my GAWD!!"

Both Darren and Pearl turned to see where that had come from.

Red painted nails, puffed up hair, Kristy the Karen! She was pushing her cart over to them and practically yelling. "You can't give alcohol to a minor!"

God damn it.

The beer cans lowered with her arm, Pearl looked at the woman and said, "Ma'am, I don't know what you're talking about." Her chin rose and her free hand went to her hip. "He's forty, and the beer's not even for him."

Unamused, the Kristy left her cart to wave a finger, and she dared to snatch the beers out of Pearl's grasp. "Don't use that tone with me!" Yep, the waving finger was all up in Pearl's face. "You need to respect your elders!"

"Ma'am!" That was Darren. He'd left his cart to put a hand on Pearl's shoulder from behind. "Let's just calm down. Okay? Nobody here's a minor."

The Kristy squawked something about getting a manager, as if that would solve whatever problem she thought existed, and it shouldn't. The couple decided to walk away. When they were putting their stuff on the conveyor belt at a register, that Kristy stormed up with a nervous looking manager behind her.

"There she is! She's trying to by alcohol!" This weirdness got the attention of pretty much everyone.

"So what if she is?" Darren said after giving the confused cashier an exasperated look. "She's thirty, and she's not even going to drink it."

The manager sighed and said, "Ma'am, the cashiers have been trained to check IDs. This really isn't something you need to worry about."

"I'll show my ID while we're at it," Darren said. Then he glanced over at Pearl and muttered, "Control yourself."

Pearl snorted. "Not my fault some people don't know how to act."

"That girl's obviously a teenager!" the Kristy went on to the manager and anyone else that would listen. "She shouldn't even be with that man! He probably kidnapped her! I'm calling the police!"

"Ma'am," the manager said, "please don't call the police. Nobody's hurting anybody."

Oh great, the bitch was already on her phone. But the cashier had already looked at their IDs, and she called out to the Kristy, "They're both over twenty-one!"

"He must've got a fake ID for her!" that crazy woman said in the middle of a conversation with someone on the phone.

"Go ahead and call the police," Pearl said as the groceries were being rung up. "You'll look pretty damn stupid when they show up and get told nothing happened."

The manager rose his voice, seeming to hope that the people on the other end of Kristy's conversation would hear him. "This woman thinks a minor just bought alcohol even though she she's over twenty-one."

"It's obviously a fake ID," the bitch argued.

"She hasn't even seen my ID," Pearl said with a rising temper, "but she thinks it's fake. But I'm not about to hand it over to her. She might snap it in half."

"Girl." Darren gave her braid a little tug. "You're amazing when you're mad but I'm tired and I just want to go home."

"I'm not the one who started this," Pearl said with a huff.

The groceries were all bagged and in the cart, but when they tried to leave the Kristy ran up to them, still talking on the phone. She grabbed the bag of beer cans. "You can't have this!"

Darren's jaw was clicking.

Oh no. He was ill.

Pearl knew he wasn't himself when he was ill.

He snatched the bag out of the Kristy's hand, slammed it back into the cart, and hollered down at her, "Well aren't you just a fucking peach?! I just bought that and YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE IT OUT OF MY BUGGY?! YOU WANNABE THUG ASS BITCH!!"

Silence. Pearl wanted to drop a pin just to learn how it would sound.

Darren put one hand around Pearl's wrist and the other on his cart's handle. Then the couple left the building. Pearl looked back to see the Kristy's paling face. Having a huge man yell at you, especially when you were a woman, was rather frightening.

Normally, Pearl would've vented about the situation for a while and then forgot about it.

But a week or so later, she was reminded of that stupidity again. She was at Food Lion, and she saw that Christian Kristy again. When the Kristy saw her, she gasped and ran away. It was weird. It was like she was afraid to be anywhere near Pearl.

Pearl was reminded of other issues in the past. The Karen at the Walmart, the Teacher at the wildlife preserve, Britt from the lake. All those people had gotten into Pearl's face over nothing, or what felt like nothing to Pearl. The Karen had a similar reaction to the Kristy when she next saw Pearl, pure fear and avoidance. The Teacher had been severely injured and he lost a limb. Britt was straight up dead.

Was this a pattern?

No.

She shook her head as she put a can in her shopping cart.

This was all a string of coincidences. At the most, one could call it karma, or what Mama would call karma. Pearl didn't believe in karma.

Nothing particularly shocking was going on. It was all just everyday nonsense. Sometimes people were crazy, and crazy people tended to get in trouble.

But why were the women so scared of Pearl? Was it because of Darren? Did they remember how big he was and get scared?

She shook her head again.

Darren wasn't enough to scare a crazy person into that state of mind. He didn't do anything particularly scary. He was just a dude, a big dude.

There was nothing about Darren that would make someone freak out just from looking at Pearl.

***

It was so cold. Nothing someone up north would be disturbed by, but Pearl was used to mild weather. December was here and the only reason Pearl could find anything good in it was because of Christmas. She'd be all snuggled up with a big sexy man on the beloved Christmas Day, and he'd even promised a somewhat expensive bunch of presents in the morning.

"You know all those Christmas videos of kids waking up to a pile of presents and going crazy opening them?" he'd said to her. "Well, you and the dogs are my babies. So you'll get all the presents."

"Please don't spend all your money like that," she'd told him. People sometimes went crazy getting toys and electronics for loved one. Sometimes they even took high risk loans. "Just get me one thing."

"How about a bunch of cheap things and a few nice things?" he'd suggested.

Pearl accepted that.

There wasn't any snow, but god damn it was cold. That didn't bother Darren. He wasn't in an ill mood. He wanted to take Pearl out for a nice dinner. A little steakhouse. Pearl refused to have steak, though. Any steak that wasn't cooked outside on a charcoal grill wasn't worth her time. She had a chicken sandwich with steak fries instead.

Thy were a happy couple. They had weird tastes sometimes, but there wasn't anything wrong with being weird.

After the meal was done and the sky was dark, they walked to the parking lot. Pearl's phone beeped in her purse. She paused.

She shouldn't have paused.

She'd been so comfortable in her peaceful life that she forgot to cling to her boyfriend.

Something grabbed her by her hair and arms. Her purse fell. She screamed.

Backwards, she was being dragged backwards!

Still hollering because her life definitely depended on it!

Her coat was clawed into. Something her forward, away from the kidnappers. "Police!! Call the police!! Somebody!!" Darren!

Pearl could see him! One of the lights from the restaurant seemed to flood onto his face. "Let her go!!"

Just then, as if her skin had mysterious powers that only manifested themselves at that moment, whoever had grabbed her let her go. She heard a strange man hollering something in Spanish. She was pretty sure he'd said, "Go! Go!" She couldn't be sure, though.

She was shoved from behind and she landed in Darren's arms. She looked back and saw a man with a ski-mask jump into a van. The van screeched as it rushed off.

It was only then that Pearl realized she'd pissed herself. It didn't smell good. She was shaking worse than an old ass car that was close to being scrapped. She wasn't even feeling the cold anymore. Her heart was pounding. It hurt her chest.

"God damn it, Pearlie." Darren's voice was so weak, but he held her tightly. If he knew that she'd peed, he didn't care. He hissed and panted into her hair, lifting her up and hugging her like a child's favorite doll. She was still shivering, but she eventually told him she needed to get her purse. They later found out a bystander had already called the police.

***

If that van had a license plate, nobody could remember.

There wasn't much the cops could do.

Pearl didn't want to leave the house ever again.

After the attempted kidnapping, when Pearl was home and clean, she stayed in bed for a while and hid her face in one of her pillows. Gunner showed up at one point. He hopped onto the bed and laid down beside her. His breath was even. His warmth almost annoyed her.

Pearl heard the door open. Well known heavy foot steps. A dip in the mattress. Darren's voice. "Alright, go see Baby Blue."

Gunner shot a bit of air out of his nose and yawned.

"Go on, get."

Gunner jumped off and left the room.

"Baby?"

Pearl turned her head. Darren was on his side, looking at her. His eyes were pink and puffy. Had he been crying?

He reached out and pulled her against him. She had to adjust her body, getting on her side instead of her belly.

"Baby, that was scary."

Pearl's mind was pretty much swiped clean.

"I ... I'm not going to tell you what those guys probably wanted to do. You already know."

The most likely motive? Sexual enslavement. It was a problem around the world. Women and children were the most common victims. They'd be kidnapped, often beaten or forced to take drugs, and they'd be forced to have sex with men for money, money they weren't allowed to keep. Slaves. Rape slaves.

It was also possible that the kidnappers had wanted to keep her for their own pleasure. Rape. Torture. Nearly anything was technically realistic. Maybe they'd wanted to abuse her while recording it for the darker parts of the Internet, either for kicks or for profit. Maybe they'd wanted to harvest her organs for a black market.

Whatever the reason, it was still one of the most horrifying things to have ever happened in Pearl's sheltered life.

He kneaded her back a little as he spoke. "I'm still scared. Just because I'm big doesn't mean I don't get scared. I want to throw up and break something. I'm so glad you're here and not with those sick fucks."

Pearl nuzzled his shirt and closed her eyes.

"All I could think of was grabbing you. Maybe I should've pulled my gun out." He had a concealed carry permit. "But I just wanted to pull you out of there, and I thought I'd end up shooting you by accident. Or the van would get away before I could aim properly."

She flinched as she considered all the ways that could've gone wrong, all the ways Darren could've innocently failed to save her. It was a sickening, rushing thought. Ice cold and gluey in her stomach and throat.

"Okay," he said. "So ... let's come up with some new rules."

She whimpered. Then she wrapped her arms and one leg around the man. All she had on was a T-Shirt and some panties.

"When it's dark, you don't go anywhere without me."

No problems there.

"Even if it's day, if I'm with you in town, you stick to me. You hold my hand like you're scared I'll leave you."

Pearl sighed and nodded.

"You're going to take some classes to get a permit. You need to know how to use a gun."

Nothing wrong with that. Pearl nodded again.

"I'll teach you some basic self-defense. I'll even get you a punching bag."

That sounded a little badass. She almost smiled.

"You'll take your phone with you wherever you go."

Pearl thought that sounded like common sense.

"And don't ever be afraid to maim or kill. Get rough. Go for the crotch. Go for the eyes. Go for the throat. Go for any weak spot you can get. Don't just whoop someone's ass. Get their brains on the ground."

That was when Pearl found the strength to speak. "Mama was right. Violence is the answer a lot of the time."

His strumming hand went to her hair. "I don't want anything to happen to you." He rubbed his nose and mouth in her hair. His voice became a croaking whisper in her scalp. "I love you."

Pearl gasped. Her heart twinged and her thighs flexed. "You love me, huh?"

"Probably should've told you a long time ago."

She shivered as his hand slid out of her hair and his fingernails glided down her nape. "That's ... that's really sweet," she said. "I'm pretty sure I love you too."

It was like something had burst.

Darren pulled her up so he could give her a very slobbery kiss. He moaned and sighed. She felt that, even tasted it. Sometimes he popped his lips off just long enough to say something. "Damn, Baby. I love you." Smack. "I love you so much." Slurp. "I want you here forever." Hum. Growl. Light nibble on her lower lip. Then another sucking kiss. "I need you here forever." He even put a lick on her cheek, then her throat, which had her giggling. Then more kissing. Saliva was rolling down her skin. Nobody cared.

He yanked her shirt over her head and threw it somewhere. Then he put his mouth to one of her breasts. He could almost suck the whole thing past his lips, and Pearl almost wondered if that was what he was trying to do. It felt so weird and amazing. Waving pleasure spread out from his mouth, or it felt that way, down her ribs and belly, and down to her thighs and cunt. She ground her crotch against his jeans and asked him to please, please fuck her like crazy.

Grabbing and molding her other breast, Darren lifted his head to grin down at her. What charming, clean teeth he had! "You want my cock, Baby?"

Pearl wanted to reach down and pull her underwear off, but she thought she should only do that if asked. It was better if he did it for her, anyway.

Only pouting just a little, she whined, "Please! I want Pa's big cock!"

"Hm? You want Pa's big cock?" He was sliding a hand down, peeling back a bit of her panties. "You want me to fill you up?"

"Mm hmmmmmmm!" She put some of her fingers in his soft, kinky curls. "Please?"

Those lines near his eyes, the creases, they stretched as he laughed. His chest trembled against her. Then his arms retracted so he could pull his shirt off. Pearl happily sighed at the breadth of muscles and just enough fat. He took down his jeans and underwear, then kicked it all off the bed. Pearl writhed against him, loving his body hair, his heat, and pretty much everything else.

"You're my Little Girl. You know that?" He put his palm between her breasts and gently nudged her onto her back. He was basically pinning her there as he got to a kneeling position.

"Yes, Sir!" Pearl wiped some of her wet neck with the heel of her hand.

"And nobody's allowed to hurt my Little Girl." He earnestly grabbed her panties then; he'd removed his hand from her chest. He slipped the panties down her legs and held them up to his impish face. Then he put a kiss to the cotton.

Pearl frowned and said in a high-pitched voice, "No! Nooooo!!" She reached up to grab the panties, but he avoided her. "You're supposed to kiss me!"

"Hm? But it smells like you."

Something like a game of keep away ensued. Pearl sat up to try and get the panties while Darren kept the undies away. Then he threw them across the room, laughed so loudly that Pearl thought the whole room shook, and then he set her back down, this time a hand on her shoulder. "Mm-mmm, Baby Girl." That humming noise had a negative tone. "You can't act out like that. You're supposed to be a Good Girl."

She stuck her tongue out.

"Oh no." He grabbed her by her waist. "On your belly. We can't just let that slide." She was flipped over; he even folded her legs for her. She wasn't mad about it at all, although she did whine and wiggle her butt in the air.