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Technically the call for victims wasn’t open to civilians. But Chrissy Cunningham should have considered that before she so eagerly employed her Red Cross-branded bullhorn to declare that the deep end of the Hawkins Community Pool was hereby CORDONED OFF for rescue and resuscitation training.
Eddie wondered if she regretted that. She looked like she did!
Her small pink mouth was knotted shut. Her arms, fair and freckled, crossed in peppermint stripes across the high red front of her lifeguard’s Speedo. The blush–equal parts irritation and embarrassment–seeping across her pale chest, that was red and white too. As were the copper flyaways of hair against her neck. The whistle (see: strawberry re: size and color) which dangled from a white nylon cord wrapped too tight around her wrist. The scar-like impressions produced from said cordage. Her whole palette could be captured with a handful of Valentine-flavored Crayolas.
Beside Chrissy, Heather Holloway pushed her sunglasses up the bridge of her nose as she popped one hip to the side. She clutched a clipboard in her hand to show she was in charge or something.
“I repeat–does ANYBODY else want to be the victim?”
There were a few kids watching behind Eddie. In his shadow they remained silent. He stood a good head taller than any of them, his hands innocently stashed inside his swim trunk [basketball shorts] pockets. His shirt was off. The tattoos? Irrefutable! The effect of the tableau–he imagined–he hoped–was that of a slash of black graffiti defacing a library mural depicting Children Across America Enjoying Recreation Outdoors.
Heather asked again. One thick-nosed kid in orange jams on Eddie’s six made like to raise his hand. Eddie swiveled and raised one pierced eyebrow.
“Connor.”
Connor went grey. (This was why Eddie preferred to cultivate an air of ignorance as to the true names of others–the impact, when expertly deployed, was sensational.) Connor’s hand went down.
Chrissy frowned. With some certainty, Eddie knew that in her mind’s eye she also saw the graffiti and the mural. She was probably imagining what she could accomplish with a brush and some whitewash.
“This is why–” She turned to Heather. “This is why I don’t want him to do it.”
Him was right here. Him could be addressed directly. Him was not.
“I know. Girl. I know .” Heather scanned the crowd using the flat of her clipboard as a shield against the sun. “Anybody else? ANYBODY at all.”
Connor huffed and slouched off to the snack bar. Smart Connor.
“Why is he here at all. He doesn’t ever go here. It’s weird .” Chrissy offered this to Heather in a whisper amplified by layers of false discretion and false concern. Her two favorite weapons. Heather jerked her clipboard towards Eddie.
“Hey. Where are all those little creeps?”
Eddie pointed at his chest like Moi?
“Yeah. Your little–” She made skrunkly crawling spider fingers. “Why are you alone.”
Eddie did not care to visualize the guys and their pizza rolls and Jim Nabors reruns and inside jokes and holiday relief that he– Eddie, remember? –was not around at Dustin’s house to rule and prod and invect. Such petty jealousies were beneath the managerial class. Heavy lies the head etc. Instead he turned his finger from his chest to Chrissy. She froze.
“If we’re asking. Where’s her boyfriend?”
Chrissy actually stamped her bare foot. An anklet with a charm declaring her heart’s allegiance to Sleeping Bear Dunes jumped as she did. Eddie leaned back on his palms to better display the ink splattered on the canvas of his chest. He could feel a sunburn grazing the tops of his shoulders. He grinned.
“Love those shades, Heather H.”
Heather flopped her massive ponytail to one side like duh-doy. Chrissy scowled.
“How do you think they’d look on me?”
Heather smirked and held up her hand in a fat ZERO.
He grinned bigger. “You missed a spot.” He pointed to her bikini line.
Heather chucked her pen cap at him. He caught it with one hand. She said something to the effect that he WISHED she had missed a spot and he said well can you blame me and she told him to shut the fuck up. She laughed the whole time. Heather was always an easy laugh.
Chrissy pulled the whistle’s white nylon cord even tighter. The marks around her wrist were turning scarlet.
“See! He can’t–”
She interrupted herself with an indignant huff. She wasn’t a great talker. The curves of red Speedo rose and fell as she breathed.
“It’s just a waste of time.”
Eddie squinted up directly at the sun.
Heather checked her clipboard with the impartial eye of a 4H judge. “Maybe. But he does match the height/weight profile.” She was, Eddie could tell, getting impatient.
“It’s not–” Chrissy’s voice cracked as her incoming protest withered beneath the glare of Heather’s Ray Bans. Eddie predicted that Speech and Debate next semester would have to be taken Pass/Fail for Miss Cunningham. She scratched a cherry welt on her pale calf with her anklet. “He’s just going to make it into a big joke. Like he does with everything.”
“So? His flair for the theatrical might lend this all, like. Legitimacy.” Three cheers for the cunty pragmatism of Heather Holloway! She began to jot down something on the clipboard. Chrissy pouted. It didn’t work.
“Heather. Stop.”
Heather didn’t stop. Chrissy made for the pen. Heather dodged her.
“Don’t–write–”
Munson, Edward . Height: 6’1. Age: Too Old For This Kind of Thing.
The merciless motions of Heather’s pen continued unimpeded by Chrissy’s whining. “We can’t force anybody else to do it. Right? And I wanna be out of here by five.”
The ever-rising blotch spread in thick carmine fingers up Chrissy’s throat. She sounded on the verge of tears. “Can’t we…can we at least wait for Jason?”
Eddie clocked how Heather’s dark brows flew above the blue rims of her sunglasses. Even she thought that was pathetic.
Eddie raised his hand. They ignored him. Heather mentioned the certification deadline. Chrissy said something about merit. Eddie raised his hand higher. His pits were really sweaty. They ignored him further. Heather didn’t give a shit about merit. Heather had a date that night. Chrissy pleaded that Jason would be there in an hour. Heather had to leave in an hour. Chrissy gestured desperately, such that the promise ring on her left hand glinted sharply in the late July sun.
So it would seem she really never took it off.
“Excuse me,” said Eddie.
“What,” snapped Chrissy.
“Help,” said Eddie and he fell face-first into the deep end.
On his life he never planned to go to the pool that day.
But partway through the third reel of Maximum Overdrive an errant hair got caught between the celluloid and the projector bulb, causing an onscreen meltdown of such stuttering and gooey magnificence that at first all that concerned Eddie Munson was how much of Mike Wheeler’s popcorn could he pelt at Emilio Estevez’s rapidly-disintegrating face.
Then the lights came on and the house manager announced that there would be refunds issued to all and Eddie said Boo! and the house manager said Wait hang on didn’t I sell you a ticket to Manhunter and Eddie said Uh Oh and the house manager said Hang on no NO I recognize you out out OUT! And there was the chase and the shaking of the administrative fists and so it always went.
They couldn’t go to the mall because Eddie was banned due to shoplifting and they couldn’t go to the record store because Eddie was banned due to smoking in the listening booth. Late fees had him banned from the library; church–impossible; Wayne and he on the outs (can’t discuss here); and thus the list of places in Hawkins with air-conditioning was winnowed down to Dustin Henderson’s house, from which Eddie was banned due to Everything, Especially Lately.
It was July 27th and 94 degrees in the shade.
So in a way they made him do it!
He wasn’t a member but as tithe for their abandonment he’d commandeered Mike Wheeler’s laminated Hawkins Community Pool pass, which he’d forced the sophomore kid behind the sign-in desk to accept with a well-timed crack of his knuckles. (Mike, as photographed on the above, weighed about 13 pounds and had an expression like a dog with a thermometer recently shoved up his ass. Still, there could be an argument made for a certain family resemblance.)
And YES Eddie had been counting on a crowd so thick that he might pass through undetected. It was a Saturday afternoon during the worst heat wave in thirty years. The pool should have been a madhouse! Eddie Munson Innocent! Here was only a prince stripped of his retinue and turned out to the streets. All he asked was a place to sulk in peace. The plan was to slither without malice as would a dusky eel through the coral-toned reef of suburbanite swimmers around him. To lay low and cool off. He hadn’t planned this. He never did!
Down here, embalmed in chlorine, it was hard to remember exactly why he’d needed to act like such an asshole. It was quiet now at the bottom. The turquoise of the pool supernaturally refreshing. Eddie found himself idly wondering that if he opened his mouth wide enough, would the water rushing in finally quench the pilot light to that internal idiot’s furnace which always seemed to propel him straight into the universe’s doghouse?
He gazed up to the surface. Ten feet down. Maybe eighteen seconds had passed. The silver chain around his neck floated up to his chin, as if imploring him to go up up up to air and sunlight and liberty.
Down here his tattoos looked purple. His skin green.
Twenty-five seconds.
The chain tugged him ever upward. He did not rise.
Thirty seconds now.
Leslie Nielsen in Creepshow : I CAN HOLD MY BREATH A REAL LONG TIME!
Thirty five.
It was starting to hurt.
Thirty seven.
What had that been about a flair for the theatrical?
An exasperated splash cut him off just before his count hit forty. Of course only Chrissy could make even a splash sound exasperated. She cut through the blue with precise, strong scissor-kicks, trailing a chain of silver bubbles behind her. Her copper hair had come loose from its bun and it swirled in clouds behind her backlit face, and as she scooped him from beneath the armpits (now clean) all Eddie could think of was blood diffuse in the water and the accompanying frenzy.
Upon breach, she maneuvered that whistle into her small pink mouth and blew three times. He didn’t know if he was supposed to be living or dead and so half-heartedly tried to schlep himself over the concrete lip of the pool until she smacked his shoulder and he went obligingly limp. She didn’t say thank you. She didn’t say anything.
She had him on solid ground in moments. Christ. She was built like a green bean! Where did she keep all this strength? She cradled the back of his head as she pressed him against the hot pavement. From miles away there were noises that might have been splashing. An ice cream calliope. Somebody falling down.
She pressed two soft fingers against his jaw to take his pulse. She was focused now. Firmly–it had to have been for Heather’s benefit, stationed ten feet away and taking notes–she said, “It’s time for rescue breathing.”
Her palm cupped his chin and tilted it some respiratorially-crucial degree upwards. He did not resist. Her fingernails drew wet strands of hair away from his mouth and his nose. She brushed them past his temples. His eyes were shut because he was supposed to be drowned. So the only clue to her hesitation was the minute gap in her breathing. When the white noise of her panting (he’d exerted her) cut short. He heard the scrape of her palm against the cement. The sun was already baking his skin dry. He felt heat from the ground beneath him and heat from the sky above. There was the kiss of a damp copper curtain against the side of his face, obscuring them from Heather and Heather’s clipboard.
She floated above him.
She whispered, “Don’t laugh.”
She held his nose shut.
Once again. Closer now. “Don’t laugh.”
Her air in his lungs.
The handicapped shower was in a separate outbuilding and had a door which locked. They ran the water for the noise of it. The split crotch of her red Speedo flapped in feeble surrender against his hand. The switchblade with which he’d cut it was cast aside by the drain.
“What is that, Chrissy? Three?”
She groaned and knocked her head back against the shower wall. Her red hair was matted along the white tile.
“I asked you–” he pistoned his fingers even harder, she could hardly speak by now, much less count, he was probably being unkind, “-–a question.”
“Three,” she slurred. “It’s three.”
“Nope.” The pink walls of her cunt were swollen and thick along his pruning fingers. “It’s four.”
She actually tried to protest, to whine No, I counted right –but he upped his tempo again so that she couldn’t think, she couldn’t move, she could barely stand, but she did not fall because he held her aloft with her wrists pinned high above the crime scene splatter of her hair. Her twitching thighs stayed locked around his knee.
“You’re not even paying attention. I don’t know why I bother.” She was wet enough to hear.
“I’m trying, I am -” Squishing. Pounding. Trapped beneath him.
“It’s ungrateful is what it is,” and in response to this she moaned so plaintively that he almost felt bad since she had in actuality counted correctly. There were only three fingers inside her. But there wasn’t time to feel bad about that NOW because he suddenly had this great idea to spit against the wall.
She eyed it with an expression that in anybody else’s eyes would have been horror. But he knew better.
“C’mon. Let’s go.”
She tried to turn her head away from the glob of saliva which glistened wet against the tile, but he risked pulling a muscle to lower his elbow from above her head and jam the funny bone into the fat of her cheek. He pressed her face into the wet ceramic squares until she couldn’t avoid looking at it any longer. They watched together for one silent second as the wad of spit oozed down the wall.
He said, “Don’t be rude.”
“OK,” she whispered, “OK, OK–” and she stuck out her pink tongue, white teeth and flicked the frothy white splat with just the tip. He squished her face into the wall. Hard.
“Are those your table manners, Chrissy?”
She squeaked out, “No.” She sounded miserable. He shook his head.
“Picky picky.”
He mopped her face along the tile like a rag towards his spit. When the flat of her tongue made contact, she began to lick. She licked and licked and licked up what he’d left her, her eyes rolling up as she sunk into the motion of it, and when there was no more left he spat again and twisted her dripping cunt on the axle of his fingers so that she might have easier access.
There was a knock on the door. Heather’s voice.
“Chrissy?”
He relaxed his elbow enough for her to speak. There was a ruddy waffle grid imprinted on her cheek. She sounded small and timid. But that didn’t mean anything because she always did.
“Yeah?”
“...Do you still want a ride?”
Her eyes darted to the door. He took the chance to lean his forehead against hers. It was allowed in rare circumstances like if he was transmitting something which in this case was no. no. no. you do not .
“Um. I’m OK!”
A skeptical pause from one Heather H.
“Do you need anything?”
One thing Eddie noticed about Chrissy was that she wasn’t ever all that quick on her feet except when it was required for her to get fucked or–as was the case in ever-mounting occurrences that summer–to continue being fucked.
“I’m shaving.” For insurance, and with an imaginative flair that Eddie appreciated, she added– “Everything!”
“Are you–” and a cherry bomb exploded, “I’m FINE Heather, fucking RELAX!”
Another nice touch! Now all Heather would think about was what a bitch Chrissy was. This was affirmed by Heather screaming, “Fine, BITCH!” as she stomped away.
They waited as the crunch of her footsteps on the gravel footpath diminished. They waited some more. She had not drawn her forehead away. Her breath was hot and sour against his mouth as she asked, “It’s OK?”
He waited. She was looking at him. The clumps of her lashes. She was waiting for him.
“It’s OK.”
And because something needed to change, now–RIGHT now–he released her wrists. He took her left hand in his own and said, “Open up,” which she did. As he slid her fingers into her mouth he began to mutter about how she really couldn’t be trusted. She didn’t fight him. Her free hand pawed blindly at the ruined elastic of her Speedo, as if she needed a reminder of what was happening to her. Through a mouthful of her own fingers she groaned a muffled objection that she could, that she was good.
“I don’t think so Chrissy. I really don’t. You can’t speak when it counts and you can’t shut up when it counts. Even now, you sound like a whore–”
Her eyelids fluttered shut and her pussy clenched as she ground down hard against his other hand, which he’d almost forgotten was still inside her. Right. With practice over the summer he’d become sort of ambidextrous. He began to fuck her mouth with her hand and to fuck her cunt with his.
“I think you need to be gagged. No. You want to be gagged, so you never have to worry about if you’re gonna sound stupid–” (She clenched again, what else could be this warm and thick and wet) “-You just need to get filled up inside by somebody who can take care of all that for you–”
She was drooling now. From both holes. When he informed her of this, she bucked five-six-seven-eight which meant they didn’t have much time left. He had to work fast. He redoubled his focus to her left fingers, slurping wetly in and out of her small pink mouth. Her eyes were half-closed. She was humming a high and happy sound. If needed, he could make her cum in seconds.
Instead he slowly withdrew her fingers from her mouth. There was a rope of spit binding them to her exposed bottom gum. Her lids were heavy, her pupils nearly black. Like this she would let him do anything. So he folded down all her fingers but one, which he fed back to her via her exposed tongue.
“Close.”
She did.
“Suck.”
She did. He tugged now on her ring finger, drawing it against the tight suction of her obedient mouth. When it emerged this time, it was bare. He bade her open up one more time, but she only caught on to what he was doing when he produced from her lips her promise ring, glistening now with her own saliva. He held it close so the sight would register.
“So it does come off.”
Her eyes flew open. Instantly he leveraged the foot-plus he had on her and had the ring above her head. She swung for it. She missed.
“Give it back.”
He snickered. There may have been actual horror in her eyes now.
“Eddie. I need–” but she couldn’t finish because he began to fuck her cunt again, rubbing her clit with the heel of his hand for good measure. But he wasn’t a monster! He tucked the promise ring between his own teeth and gritted, “You can take it. Come on.”
“I can’t–I–” Her tits were bouncing under her red swimsuit, the fabric made loose and saggy from where he had cut it below. He waggled the ring between his right canines and leaned close.
“If you wanted it. You could get it.”
She tried to grab the ring but he was too fast and had her hands pinned once again. The only tool she had left was her mouth. She was shaking, stammering, she couldn’t help but say it, even through her distress– close, close, Eddie I’m so close . He leaned in near enough that their lips would graze if she closed the gap. The ring was there for her if she wanted it.
She pulled away.
“Please, Eddie…” Her bound fingers were clawing against his grip.
“Don’t you want it?” How rarely he got to play dumb!
“I do–fuck, oh fuck, Eddie please–I do–” She often begged but not like this.
“So take it.” He swung the gold band close to her lips, dangerously close, the ring from Jason was there. for. the. taking. but she would not meet him. She turned her mouth away from his and cried out with some emotion he couldn’t understand. He worked his face into an expression of mock epiphany, which was no small feat without swallowing the ring. His spare hand working her cunt the whole time.
“Oh, that’s right! I remember!!!”
Her core was shaking now. She couldn’t help what was about to happen to her. He pressed his sweaty body over hers, released her wrists to muzzle her mouth with his palm so he could return it to her at last, it had been months, he had waited–
“You can fuck me if you want Eddie but you can’t kiss me. ”
And before she had time to react he fucked her so deep, with four fingers this time, and ground her clit with force and precision but no gentleness because she didn’t want any and within seconds she was calling it out, she always did, “Oh fuck oh Eddie I’m coming oh God Eddie help me–” as she gushed onto the shower floor.
Five seconds.
They held still for five seconds. She trembled in his hands. She gasped into his open mouth.
Then he pulled away. The ring dropped onto the wet shower floor. He wiped his untouched lips.
After she retrieved it, he helped her to her feet. She offered to jack him off but it would have been unendurable so instead they got dressed in separate corners. He finished first and so watched as she struggled to tug a pale yellow comb through her tangled hair.
“Are you. Um. Doing anything tonight?”
It was so much worse when she was nice because when she was nice he could have been anybody. So instead he stepped over and took the comb from her hands. She flinched.
“What’re you–”
Like he hadn’t been halfway to her cervix eight minutes ago. He took a step closer and motioned with the comb.
“Can I?”
She took a half step back. Then she nodded. He took up a fistful of her red hair and began to work the teeth through a knot. He took his time, slowly separating the strands into neat rows. He didn’t tug like Chrissy did. He didn’t force. In this way the knot was driven ever so gradually to first the middle and then the bottom of her hair until suddenly it was nothing at all. He took up another fistful.
“Where did you learn to do this?” Her voice was sullen and a little suspicious.
He shook his own wet curls in reply. She flushed again. Then for the first time all summer she laughed.
“Sorry, sometimes I–”
He didn’t say anything. He let her gather her thoughts.
“I kind of take for granted how you look.”
This next knot was more stubborn. She winced.
“Gentle.”
He apologized and was gentle.
When her hair was free he tapped her shoulder with the comb, and watched as she tied it half up with a blue ribbon. Her green summer dress was sleeveless and showed off her freckled arms. They knew to depart separately in ten minute intervals and she went first because Jason was meeting her at the tennis courts to pick her up for some party at some place.
As her hand hovered over the door handle, an unfamiliar expression crossed her face.
“If you want, you could–”
It would have been more unendurable than the handjob. “I’m meeting my band, actually. We have a gig tonight in Bedford.”
She tugged the strap of her gym bag over her bare shoulder. It left a mark. “I didn’t know you were–I mean. That sounds cool.” She was hovering.
He braced his own bare arms, jutting from the sockets of his wifebeater, against his knees. He smiled at the floor and cursed the pilot light. “You wouldn’t say that if you heard us.”
“No I mean–” She laughed again. Twice in one day. “It’s just, not like, cool . I didn’t know you–um. Like. Had something you were into.”
He looked at her. She smiled. From some distance, a car honked twice. She paled. Eddie twisted his own ring, one of many.
“Yeah. Well. Great way to pull trim.”
She nodded and said bye.
From the swimmer’s speedclock on the wall he counted down ten minutes. It was only 5:25. Maybe he could hit up the multiplex in Bedford. He wasn’t banned there yet. Get high and finish Maximum Overdrive . Crash at Rick’s. Demand some kind of homage from the boys tomorrow. For some reason she’d left behind her ruined red Speedo on the white wet floor. So he folded it up slowly and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts.
He couldn’t toss it here, he reasoned. He just needed to find a safe place to throw it away.