Island Retreat 3: Part 3

James felt the ground underfoot turn from grass to the rockier instability of the land near the beach. And with every step, he felt his mind vacillating between the two extremes of his thoughts. One step: We have to get away. Next step: Were those women actually cows? Next step: I have to get Maggie out of here. Next step: What would Maggie look like on her hands and knees like the women in the field? He hated himself for his attraction to something so clearly extreme and deviant, but he could not deny how the images of the women lowing in the fields stuck in his mind.

The trail they found was the wider one, the one Miss Perez took when she excused herself for a bathroom break, before the two of them had gone exploring. That all seemed like a million years ago now. Those events took place in a world before seeing the women in the field and the sudden understanding that the world was a much bigger and stranger place than James ever imagined.

“It’s gone!”

Maggie stopped short, just over the bend of the hill, and James had to stutter-step to avoid crashing into her and sending them both tumbling down the hill toward the dock. James followed Maggie’s gaze to the empty dock. The boat and its captain were indeed gone. He scanned the horizon for some sign of it, maybe the captain as testing the repairs or something, but there was nothing but the undulating waves and the sky above, now gray and angry-looking. Any moment it might start raining. Would the cow-women have to be moved inside? Did they live in some kind of barn?

“What are we going to do?”

Maggie turned to him, bringing him back to the moment and not his reveries about the cow-women. He took her in his arms, one hand moving up into the silk of her light blonde hair. Her body was small against his. Could she feel his erection still throbbing between his legs? What would she think if she did?

“It’s going to be alright, Mags. We’ll find Miss Perez and Marla. They’ll know what to do. They probably went to the house we saw. We’ll go find them and they can call someone and get us out of here.”

Maggie pushed away from him. “I am not going to that house! Where do you think those women came from, James? They did something to them.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know. Who ever it was that put those women in that field and made them moo like cows.”

“So what do you want to do, Maggie? Wait here?”

“I don’t know what I want to do!” She smacked his chest, unsure what else to do with the anger and frustration.

James held her close again and whispered to her, telling her everything was going to be alright. Looking at the empty ocean beyond the dock, he had no surety that everything would be alright. He could not assure her of that at all. But it was something to say, and sometimes that’s all there was.

“Come on. We have to find Marla and Miss Perez. We’ll see if we can find them outside the house. If not… We’ll decide then. Okay?”

She was reluctant, but finally said, “Fine. But at the first sign of something weird, we come back here.”

“Agreed.”

They were following the main trail away from the dock and had only been at it for a few minutes when James thought he saw something coming from a clutch of trees at the bend of the trail. He squinted, leaning forward as if he could will himself to see around the corner. There was a flash of something, something black and glossy, and then there was a sharp prick at his throat. He grabbed it and pulled the offending object away. It was some kind of dart with red feathers at the opposite end of the needle. As he recognized it for a dart of some kind, he felt woozy.

“Mags,” he said.

He saw that she had a similar dart coming out of her shoulder. She looked at him with her wide blue eyes, a pleading look, asking him to explain what was happening to them. He wanted to help her, but he was falling. He landed hard on his right shoulder, a pain he knew would come, but he felt very far away from his body and the worry that he had been drugged. He was tumbling toward oblivion. Maggie’s eyes were rolling up beside him after her own collapse to the unforgiving earth.

The last thing he saw was a figure moving toward him, feminine in shape and proportion, but unknowable due to the black rubber stretched over it s body. A hood covered its face, offering only the suggestion of features like nose and mouth. It was smooth and dark and moved with efficiency as it bent to check his state of consciousness. The faceless mask was close to his face and he had enough time to wonder how the thing breathed or if it did at all before the oblivion swallowed him.

The doll saw that both subjects were now unconscious. It rose and stood patiently while three others joined it. They were identical in all but height, their individuality erased by the seamless latex suits that erased any pretense of identity. They were obedience wrapped in latex, and they gathered the two students as they had been instructed and began the journey back to the house. As they moved, they shivered with the pleasure of obeying their instructions and considered how delicious it was to be such good dolls.

Selma’s lips were pursed so tight together, Marla thought she might accidentally swallow her face. The thought led to an inappropriate chuckle, one Marla refused to explain when Selma pressed her.

“We are in a very unusual situation,” Selma chided.

“I don’t agree with that at all. I don’t think you’re helping with all the anxiety, though.”

Carmen, their hostess, excused herself to make a call on their behalf. She would have her caretakers search for the students and report back as soon as they were found. It was a small island, Carmen told them. They could not have gone far or be missing for long.

Selma paced, worried about the missing kids, the boat and the threat of it leaving, and the strange house in which they’d found themselves. While it was richly and tastefully furnished, the décor was of a decidedly erotic bent. There were painting of couples in the midst of lovemaking, and statues that looked shockingly real. The nude form was not without its allure, but Selma believed that was the sort of thing that was relegated to private life, not something you displayed out in the open.

She reached out to touch the marble statue of the woman, her head cast back in a display of wanton lust, mouth open, eyes shut tight in anticipation of some invisible touch.

“Lovely, isn’t she?”

Selma jerked her hand away before she could make contact with the statue. She spun and found Carmen standing in the now-open doorway. A sliding door hid her for her call, and now she was moving again into the welcoming living room.

“I suppose.”

“She is only with us for another week. I will miss her when she goes.”

“Did someone buy it?”

Carmen laughed. She had the easy laughter of a woman possessed of utter self-assurance. It was enviable.

“You misunderstand. She is not made of marble, although you could not tell by looking. She is a woman from Peoria, if I remember correctly. And she chose to serve as a statue here for her getaway.”

Selma looked back to the statue, gaping. “She’s real?”

“Oh yes. Would you care for a drink?”

“I’d love a gin and tonic,” Marla said.

At the same time, Selma stated, “I don’t drink.”

“I’ll get your drink,” Carmen said to Marla with a sly wink. As she worked to make a pair of drinks, she continued. “While it may offend your sensibilities, Miss Perez, I assure you that the work of this island is to make people happy.”

“She’s motionless!”

“Yes. Her fantasy was to be an object. To be reduced to a thing. She derives great pleasure from it. While it may no be your kink, or even mine, to be honest, being freed of worry and concerns to simply be an object of beauty… well, that has its appeal, do you agree?”

“Perhaps, but I can’t even see her breathe.”

“She does. But part of the training she undergoes to serve as this statue you see is to make her breath shallow. That same process will still her mind and spirit and fill her with nothing but the joy of that stillness. She will be awakened from that stillness in a week. If history is any judge, she will return home feeling more peaceful and relaxed than she ever has before.”