“Who was?” the deputy says, thrusting against Emma.
He hikes her dress, so that just her lace panties are against him. She wraps her legs around his legs and moves her mouth to just below the deputy’s left ear where she is whispering to him.
“Michael. Michael was here,” Emma whispers.
The deputy is reaching for his crotch, trying to undo his pants zipper.
“And Josh,” Emma says. “Josh was here too.”
“What!?” the deputy shouts, stopping the thrust and sitting up on his knees with Emma's legs splayed apart before him. “What!?”
"Yes," Emma says. "I asked Michael to fuck me but he wouldn't. But Josh, he licked my pussy."
"Emma," the deputy says, fumbling for his zipper.
"What do you want to do to me, Deputy? Do you want to fuck me from behind? Do you want to take my virginity? What do you want to do to me deputy?"
But before he can utter another word, or move an inch, Emma’s head coils and releases for his neck.
Strike!
“Yeeeoowww,” the deputy yells, falling back to the ground with Emma on top.
She digs her incisors into his veins, tapping into his life stream.
Within minutes his body is limp as Emma drains his blood, savoring every drop. Emma’s eyes blink as the last bits are drawn from Billy Cagle.
Emma rolls off the deputy, rests her head on the hay beside his corpse, and thinks of Michael as she falls dreamily asleep.
A car traveling down the blacktop highway at a fast pace wakes Emma up. She looks to the barn door, seeing the last shades of red sunlight fading into the west amid an otherwise dusky sky. She stands up and walks to the door, looking toward the parsonage.
She sees lights on inside the house.
She looks at the sky, determining its still before 7 p.m. If she hurries, she figures, she can get in the house before her mother and father are alarmed since it’s not unusual for chores to take her till sundown.
Emma wonders where the deputy parked.
What shall she do with his car? The sheriff’s department, certainly, will be looking for it later in the night, or early in the morning at the very least. Emma walks to the opposite end of the barn, where the driveway pulls up by the door.
Sure enough, there’s the deputy’s car, marked with lights and all.
Emma shudders of the thought of hiding it.
If they find it at the farm, they’ll certainly come looking for her, and only her for answers. If they find it somewhere else, she’ll have to get it there, soon. But first things first, since the deputy’s body is still lying in the barn.
Time for the deputy to find what he was looking for all along, she figures – Josh.
Emma takes the deputy’s body under the arms and drags it toward the barn door. The deputy is about the same size as Josh, requiring all of her strength to get him moving.
She gets him out the barn door and angles him toward the well that she dumped Josh in. One car passes midway through the jaunt, but Emma simply drops the deputy in the green grass that’s been growing at a healthy spring clip and lies down beside him. In the dark and in the cover of the uncut field grass, both are out of sight.
She finally reaches the well with the deputy’s corpse. She remembers to search his pockets for keys, in case he didn’t leave them in the car. Sure enough, they are there in a can opener ring with about 10 others jingling. She puts the keys on the ground, and, with a one, two, three, uses her last remaining muscle to heave the deputy up, over and into the well.
She counts – “one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi… “
Splash!
The smell of decay kicks up from the ripples, but Emma isn’t hanging around to ingest them. She leaves the keys on the ground and is bounding across the road through the parsonage grounds past the garden where she was working and into through the back door.
Emma heads straight for the bathroom for a quick bath so she can get on a clean change of clothes before dinner. Fifteen minutes later, Emma walks into the kitchen smelling of bath oils wearing a black dress that smells line-fresh.
“Evening, dear,” her mother says. “Who died?”
“What?”
“The black dress. Who died?”
“It was just the first one I saw.”
““Wasn’t sure where you were," her mother says.
“I wandered off out back in the pasture,” Emma says. “I was close by. Just getting some air.”
“Got a big dinner ready. Went ahead and made it without you -- meatloaf, green peas, mashed potatoes and rolls. Your father isn’t here yet. But we can go ahead without him. I’m sure you are famished.”
“Oh,” Emma says, clutching her stomach. “Don’t know where my appetite has gone. Lunch must be hanging with me. I’m really full.”