Jonathan Everest
The tortured tourists
CHAPTER ONE
The flies were the worst of the many indignities. Even the odors of decayed fish from the nearby wharves, and the sharp, acrid smell of male urine from the pissoir outside her window, h, had become part of the accepted background. She was aware that her own body had begun to add to the aroma. Next to the flies, she hated more than all the rest to feel the acute needs of her unwashed body.
She tried to shift her position, but the bonds which kept her spread-eagled on the soiled bed linen were not loose enough to permit much movement. She looked down through the valley of her proud young breasts, over the creamy flat tummy and the blonde curls of her womanly forest, to the iron rails at the foot of the bed. The ropes which secured her ankles were tied to the two corner posts.
The shifting movement had caused a little chafing, but her ankles didn't bother her as much as her wrists. She couldn't see them but she could imagine the red rawness of the skin from the burning sensations. Yet, this misery paled by comparison with the flies.
The insects, which had awakened her by crawling over the damp stickiness of her exposed vulva had flown away as she moved. She knew she would have to move repeatedly to keep them away. She tried to scream past the gag in her mouth, but the only sound it inside was in her own head, where the pressure was so great, that she gave up.
If only the La Jolla crowd could see her now! Darla Fleming, princess of the tennis courts, pacesetter of the flashy younger set, untouchable virgin with a reputation for semi-frigidity! If she had only given herself to Jeff, or Alan! She choked back a sob, knowing from bitter experience how much more miserable she'd be if she let herself start crying with that gag in her mouth.
Some flies had returned to feast in the forest of her sticky golden curls. She rolled her hips, and the movement made all but one stubborn insect buzz off. She could feel it moving across the moist outer lips, then into the slit of her sensitive inner lips. She thrust her hip upward, and it flew out and away, joining one of the groups of its fellows hovering in the air, or crawling on the many unclean surfaces in the shabby room.
The perspiration was gathering on her skin, and it added to the discomfort and to the closeness of the room, as if the June warmth and the humidity of the harbor area weren't enough.
She tried to take her thoughts off her misery, to get away from the unendurable present. Not daring to think of what might lie in the immediate future, she could only dwell on the past. And the most immediate experiences of the last two days were so luridly etched in her memory that they flashed past her all too slowly.