In A Beautiful Place Out in the Country, Chapter 3 [First Access] (Patreon)

“Do you want to take a little walk?” Kat offered.

“Yeah, that’d be great.”

“I can show you around. You can see the barn.”

“Is the barn where you sacrifice people?”

She laughed and tilted her head in confusion. “No… Well, we haven’t ever sacrificed anyone there before. I suppose there’s a first time for everything though. But I promise that I wouldn’t do it until after dinner.”

“That seems fair.”

The first half of the walk to the barn was mostly in silence. I could feel the tension in the air around us, as I was sure she could. She knew I had questions.

Finally, she let out a quick sigh and asked: “I’m sorry about earlier. I probably looked like a creep, skulking around and running away from you.”

“I’m the one who should be sorry. This is your home. I’d probably get antsy if I was in my home and some stranger suddenly showed up, taking beer out of my fridge.”

She laughed. “It’s complicated. Out here? In the middle of nowhere? I guess I take it for granted that we can just be anything we want to be, all the time. And there’s nobody here to judge us or tell us that we can’t.”

“That does sound nice,” I said. “But for what it’s worth, back in the city, nobody bats an eye at two women walking down the street together while holding hands.”

“I…” She seemed to be carefully considering what she wanted to say. “That’s true. And I certainly like how the world is changing in that regard. But...it’s also more than that. Like, here? On the farm? We can do whatever we want to. Like...anything.”

I wanted to ask: Like film each other to sell on the internet? But I could never, even if I had no intended malice.

“Honestly, that sounds amazing,” I said instead.

“I just want to say that if I ever get real awkward or shy again later - please don’t take that personally.”

“Oh,” I said. “Well...sure. But would it be because of Lily and I’s presence?”

“No. Well...yes.” She laughed at her own contradiction. “But not because you’re doing anything wrong. We just...we have our own little lifestyle out here, you know? And I’m used to having all the space in the world to do my own thing. So living that lifestyle with other people around is just kind of a new challenge for me. I know myself, and I know that there are going to be times when I’m all shy about it. So just...be aware of that, I guess.”

I nodded. I wasn’t really sure what she meant by most of what she just said. But I appreciated her opening up on some level. I wondered if I’d know what she was talking about when I saw it.

“I’m being really vague, aren’t I?” she said with a laugh.

I laughed too, nodding my head.

She opened the giant doors of the barn, wheeling them aside. Again, no altars. A giant tractor, a rather impressive stack of hay bales, and various farming equipment and tools were arranged throughout. We stepped in and she hung back a little while I took a walk around the barn. I must’ve looked like a little boy, ooh-ing and aww-ing over the big tractor and the array of tools and contraptions.

“Sometimes I forget how cool it all is,” Kat said from behind me. “Like, a few years ago, I was just working as a bartender. I had never set on a tractor in my life, let alone milk a cow.”

“So what brought you out to the country?”

“I think of it like a jigsaw puzzle,” she said. “It was a lot of little things that just sort of clicked into place. We met online, fell for each other, and it made sense to live together. Click. And then we had this...lifestyle we wanted to explore, and there was nobody to stop us. So we started doing that. Click. We wanted to share our lives with some folks online who might have similar interests. So we did that, and it went really well. Click. Then we wanted more space. A place to call our own. A place that afforded us not just privacy in the home, but out of the home. So we bought a farm. Click. Then, so long as we had a farm, we figured we might as well get some animals. Click.”

I laughed, impressed by her metaphor. Still, for as many questions as she answered, she seemed to leave me with more questions. I wanted to know everything - which seemed like a lot to ask of two strangers I had just met.

She pointed to a ladder that led up to a loft. I couldn’t see what was on the loft from my vantage point, but I followed her up. At the top, I found it to be mostly cleared out, save for some chairs, a table, a radio and a small area with some hay scattered across the floor with a folded up blanket nearby.

“What is this area used for?” I asked.

“It was used to store hay by the previous owners. We haven’t had as much use for it ourselves though. We have a big hayfield, but we’ve had another local farmer to cut it and bail it the last few years. He keeps most of the hay for himself and his farm, but we keep some for ourselves, though it's down on the first level. Eventually we’d like to take care of that ourselves - but we’re not quite there yet. So, far now, it’s kind of a little retreat. Sometimes I’ll do some reading up here. Maddy likes to paint up here. We also...film up here sometimes.”

I nodded. It was pretty tranquil up here, the scents of old wood, hay and motor oil merging into something strangely comforting. Still, we were just beating around the bush here. Almost everything she talked about seemed to be skirting around whatever their “lifestyle” was.

“Can...I just ask what it is you two do?” I finally said. “I mean no disrespect, and you don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. It’s just this elephant in the barn, you know?”

She laughed and nodded. “That’s fair. I think that's why Kat sent us off anyways. She was going to tell your wife about it, and I’m supposed to talk to you about it. If you’re going to be here for a few days, you’d find out sooner or later anyways.”

I took a seat on one of the chairs, and she sat on another on the other side of the small folding table. She took her phone out of her pocket and tapped away at it for a few minutes, swiping through something before finally finding what she was looking for.

“What if I showed you?” she asked.

“I mean...are you sure you want to introduce me to your lifestyle by showing me some video of you and Maddy…”

“No, no,” she said with a laugh, blushing a little. “It’s not like the two of us rolling around naked while fucking each other. It’s...well, I’m just thinking it might make more sense for you to see it than for me to explain it to you. Trust me, this one is a little more mild - but I think it serves as a good introduction.”

I nodded, taking the phone from her hesitantly. The website displayed on the phone was called BabyKat & Mommy. In hindsight it was a pretty obvious name, yet in that moment, it felt like another strange hint that I lacked the context to better understand.

I pressed the ‘play’ button on the video she had loaded.