Chapter Four: Black Mass — Part 9

Daria is lost for a moment in her thoughts. Jynx lets her have her memories, focusing instead on the flickering blaze that is both a comfort and an irritant. Daria is reminded of all the things Jacob taught her. The pictures lay out before her, and tricked by the power of nostalgia, Daria closes her eyes, remembering that time as if there had been no storm, as if she were now and the moment is just happening. Daria inhales deeply, but does not open her eyes.

This is a cat’s napping dream, some part of her mind says, as if to soothe her. This was once real, another whisper warns.

Then the whispers are gone.

Jacob, as always, is waiting for her at Whack, a small burger joint where the college boys come between classes and at lunch: A place where Daria hangs out because her breasts have come in, and because she likes the attention the boys give her. It is a burger joint in a college downtown with red and white and black printed signs describing everything. Jacob buys her a burger and a soda, and teases her about her hair, about her dreams, about her bra, which is not a trainer any more. Daria doesn’t know what he sees in her, but she likes what he is, and his flirting is something that makes her feel powerful even when part of her knows that Jacob is pulling all the strings.

Jacob’s studio is only a couple blocks away, and Daria finds herself there often, making out almost every night, feeling Jacob’s hard desire press against her hips. Still, he’s always good in not pushing her too hard, his hands never touch her anywhere but her breasts, and his breath is always like cinnamon and mint. He always kisses her, longing, needful, and he always pushes into her hips until his body shakes, and his breathing is ragged. Jacob then stops, calm, holding her by the arms, squeezing tightly and staring into her eyes until something ends. He never takes off his clothes, but however he dresses, the mess of lust never shows itself through his pants.

Though Daria thinks to herself, I am making him come, and though she knows what this means, it never occurs to her that he is dry humping her, using her for selfish release, because his actions make her warm, not hot. She is not old enough to know hot, yet. She can smell his heat as he looks at her, and tonight he seems to want more. Three weeks of making out, and Daria wonders if she might not want more as well. Daria thinks she is in love. She cannot want or ask for more, because she doesn’t know what to ask for, but whatever Jacob wants, she will not deny him.

“Stand up.” Jacob says, setting her in front of his couch, so that she is standing between him and the television. “It’s your turn to know. There are rules.”

“Rules?” Daria is serious.

“You do as I say.” Jacob says.

“If I don’t do as you say?” Daria wonders, her eyes locked with his.

“Then you will hurt my feelings, and you will punish yourself.” Jacob says.

Daria laughs, but Jacob looks serious, and suddenly she’s scared. “Okay.” She says, confused.

“Promise.” Jacob says. “Promise you will follow the rules.”

“I promise.” Daria says brightly.

“Undress.”

Daria pauses, but his look is stern, so she strips down, leaving on her bra and panties.

“All of it.” Jacob says.

Daria does so, expecting that now he will do the same, and that he will take her, and she will let him have her because she thinks this is love. Instead Jacob looks her up and down. She has hair between her legs, under her arms. Hormones have brought her to maturity years ahead of schedule. Physically, her body can compete with any freshman in college. Jacob is impressed, apparently, his smile subtle.

“How old are you?” He asks.

“Nineteen.” Daria lies easily, and Jacob chooses to believe her, though he suspects any nineteen year old girl would already have tried to get him free of his clothes, or taken offense to his using her to come while making out.

“Touch yourself. Down there.” Jacob says quietly.

It’s a childish request and Daria does it because he asks. But something’s changed, she wants more of it, but she stops, feeling uncomfortable.

“I didn’t say to stop.” Jacob says, almost in a whisper.

“I can’t.” Daria says, pulling up her clothes. “Not like this.”

Jacob tosses her a paddle, thin and about the length of his elbow to his wrist, a cruel look on his face. “You’re hurting me. You promised.”

“How?” Daria wonders.

“Your shoulders. Strike yourself. Hard.”

Without even considering why, Daria slaps the light pine board against her shoulders in swift alternating strikes. The wood whistles as it strikes, causing welts and hot, almost unbearable pain. She hits both shoulders until she is crying, unable to stop until Jacob tells her. She has promised, after all, and Daria is ever a person to keep her word. She goes home frustrated and shamed. It will be three nights before he breaks her, but when he does, she is actually relieved, as the pain, while a slight comfort in that she hasn’t given in, leaves bruises that are growing harder to conceal. The night she surrenders, the paddle is nowhere in sight, as if he knew she wouldn’t let him down. On that night, as she moans in surprised, Jacob smiles brightly.

“You will come back tomorrow?”

“As soon as I’m out of school.” Daria says sweetly.

Only Daria never returns. Instead Jynx meets up with her somewhere on the way to her house. Daria knows Jynx from school, and though she is in a hurry to get to her boyfriend, Jynx has a way about her, and soon the two are talking about kisses and sex until Daria falls asleep in her bed. She remembers drinking a beer, and Jynx tucking her in, and then nothing else. When she wakes up it is well into the night and her parents are asleep. Her head feels groggy as she pulls on her clothes, and, heart racing, sneaks out through her window, running down the street to meet with Jacob, thinking only of her punishment for being late. She raises her hand to knock, but the note stops her. Typed on a note card and tacked the door, the note leaves her with a sense of dread and pain.




I’m failing my classes.
I have moved back home.
Sorry.




The door is locked. Daria doesn’t bother to knock. Even if it is a lie, she will never see him again. She knows it as sure as she knows that her heart is broken. Daria stumbles home in shock, cries herself to sleep. She is sixteen before she dates another man. By then she has her pick of them, and a sex drive that matches any of them. Her steady becomes Kevin, but there are many liaisons, and always drifting into her life and her bed, is Jynx.

The catnap ends with a moan, Daria’s body flooded with the memory of hundreds of sexual encounters, all competing against the distorted realization. “You drugged me. You took Jacob away.”

“Of course I did.” Jynx says. “You were mine. You just didn’t know that yet. He brought a couple friends over. They paid him to have their way with you. You would have done so, to please him. It would have broken you. I couldn’t let that happen.”

Jynx doesn’t mention how she took two six packs of beer, a bench capping machine, and a simple combination of over the counter drugs, mixing a strange brew with one purpose in mind. Nor does she discuss how she readied herself for the night with a dose of spermicidal gel and a fresh package of condoms. Lost are the details about how Jacob had fallen prey to her lie about having come over to tell him Daria was sick. The three men drank down every beer, getting rough with her even as consciousness escaped them: How she had humored the forceful sex of the largest male, biding her time while the drugs and alcohol slowly shut him down. Jynx did smile at the memory of his collapse, the look of fear in his face as, in the middle of making love to her, he suddenly realized that something terrible was happening to him. Daria knows how Jynx works, and jumps to what would have been an extreme assumption, if any other person were at the center of the accusation.

“You killed them?” Daria asks.

“I didn’t have to.” Jynx says. “Turns out he really was failing his classes and going home, though I admit I’m the one who put the note up, just to be nice. That night you were going to be shared between him and two friends, it didn’t take much convincing to let them have a go at me.”

“But you didn’t kill them.” Daria repeats.

“I promise that I only escorted him and his friends out of town, and that they were alive when I left them.” Jynx says.

Daria doesn’t ask where, and Jynx doesn’t tell her. Moving them had involved 20 extra gallons of gasoline and two stops at gas stations. Ten hours of driving, she broke off the main highway onto a packed dirt road, somewhere close to the New Mexico border. The three men woke up with their legs bound from ankle to knee in duct tape, a razor blade in each of their left hands, and a pistol with three bullets in it, set between them. The men were eight hours drive from anywhere, and woke up blinded by the raging sun, dehydrated from the elements, and hung over from the previous night. Jynx knows that if they did make it out of the desert alive, they did not come running back to Phoenix.

“Why did you do that?” Daria sounds a little demanding.

Jynx throws all the pictures into the fire, including two bundles that nobody but her will ever see. “I’m tired now. Get me home, so we can let Joe know about the pig plague and start making plans for getting off this rock.”