When Elvira Met Bettie Chapter 13 (Patreon)

Danny twisted to look behind him. What he saw he couldn’t immediately identify. It sat in his awareness, flaring, demanding to be recognized, even as deeper in his subconscious, some animal sense urged him to run.

To get away from this mysterious thing that was moving purposefully toward them, its eyes watching their every move with cool intent.

Not the dull, incurious eyes of a herbivore. This was something that was either deciding whether he was prey or that had already made its decision.

“Damn! Up the tree!” Danny snapped, giving up on trying to figure out what it was until he had gotten to safety. He leapt to his feet. “Come on, Bettie!”

Bettie turned blindly to the trunk of the big oak Danny directed her to. He boosted her up, then climbed behind her.

“Higher!” Danny cried, realizing belatedly that by putting Bettie ahead of him, he’d slowed his own progress. There wasn’t room to climb up until she was out of the way. His unthinking chivalry—so contrary to his expressed philosophy of stealing, dealing, getting all he could—had immediately backfired on him. No wonder it had been unthinking! “You’ve got to get higher!”

Bettie almost retched with fear. “Oh, Danny, what’s gonna happen to us?”

“Nothing!” he promised her. “Just keep climbing. It won’t climb a tree, it can’t climb trees!”

He didn’t know which it was or whether his bifurcated statement was true at all, but he had to say something to get Bettie moving. She did, slowly, clumsily, seeming to break every branch she tried to use as a handhold before finally finding one she could drag herself up on. Danny crawled after her, working his way up the toeholds Bettie found moments after her feet left him.

How high had they gotten, in their mad scramble to get away from that thing? Danny felt an ironic sort of vertigo—he was afraid to look down and see that they were only a few feet off the ground, that the creature could easily reach them. The hairs on the back of his neck bristled; his senses extended anxiously out to try to detect a hissing exhale, a padding footstep—any hint of its presence the beast gave off before its attack.

Finally, Danny heard the wind whistling through the tree limbs. It sounded close and there was still no moving without Bettie having vacated the handholds, so he chanced looking down. To his relief, he saw that he was twenty feet up. Then he heard a rending sound… something sharp being pulled through crackling wood… like the sound of a chainsaw carving lumber, without the motor and speeding teeth to obscure the noise of a tree’s flesh being injured.

He looked down to the base of the tree and saw the thing—God, what was it?—scratching at the trunk, scoring deep scars in the bark. Already a pile of halved bark laid among the tree’s roots and the horribly naked yellow of the oak was exposed to open air in jagged cuts. Sawdust hanging in the air from the violence of the creature’s assault.

The animal itself verged on being indescribable. It had a man’s shape, but not a man’s size. It towered upward, maybe eight feet tall, but without the corresponding skinniness Danny would expect of an NBA player or any human at all. No, this thing was thickly built, powerful, huge haunches holding it up and broad shoulders supporting long, loping arms that ran down to its knees. All of it was covered by blackened, simian hair—an odd, coruscating pattern running through its coloring, unlike any ape or monkey or gorilla that Danny had ever seen. The closest thing Danny could compare it to was a skunk and the impossibility of that was maddening.

It slashed deeper into the trunk with razor-sharp claws, cutting into the heartwood now. Its attack shaking the tree all the way up to where Danny hung, on a branch twenty feet in the air. Strange noises—huffing and grunting and high-pitched howls—emanated from the beast as it hacked away. Monomaniacal in the rage it was venting, every cut it made into the trunk adding to the miasma of shredded wood that surrounded it, dusting its long, matted mane.

“Higher, we need to get higher!” Danny cried in panic, not thinking how that would help them if the beast managed to down this tree, only knowing he wanted to get away from it! The further away the better!

Bettie was hardly going to argue. Panting, groaning with her straining efforts, she pulled herself up higher. Danny looked frantically at her bare glutes—once they’d entranced him so much—now he wanted to know why she couldn’t just get out of the way?

With no other recourse, he tore a branch off the tree and threw it down at the beast. It bounced off the creature’s pelt, rising a small cloud of wood particles from its hair. Unaccountably, the beast dropped to all fours, took the stick in its maw, and crushed it between huge teeth.

With that having diverted its interest, its attention next went to the scent of sex and sweat in the air. On all fours, it rooted across the ground to where their clothes and blanket were scattered. With hearty sniffs, its nose pulled at the pants Danny had shed in readiness to penetrate Bettie.

Watching, Bettie hyperventilated fearfully. Tears ran down her cheeks and sobs shook a body that suddenly seemed very fragile; tissue-thin compared to the stolid tree trunk that the creature had rent so easily.

Danny made no move to comfort her. Bettie did nothing to sooth herself. She could only keep staring at the thing, in an agony of suspense over what it would do next… what it even was.

Its forepaws… hands?... came down on Danny’s pants, holding them to the ground while it caught some of the fabric in its jaws and pulled. Stretching the trousers until they ripped. The creature rolled around in the torn clothing, then raked its claws through it more, bit at it more… Bettie could only gape, imagining how her tender flesh would fare when that tough, durable clothing was coming apart like musty old paper.

Then she looked over at Danny, wondering if he’d protect her, if he could protect her… he’d been surprisingly solicitous, insisting on her going up the tree first, then attacking the beast with a thrown projectile.

Of course, it had been that or let the creature keep pursuing them… he’d had nothing to lose and he’d been defending himself as much as her. After how he’d acted, Bettie couldn’t forget how self-serving he really was.

Yet she found it ever so slightly reassuring to know she wasn’t alone in this impossible madness, even if she was only here because Danny had compelled her to meet him.

But she made excuses for him: with that thing in the area, couldn’t they have been bound to run into it? Perhaps this was the best case scenario. They’d managed to successfully escape its attention; now they could warn the others. Assuming it left…

Bettie frightened herself with the thought that, at any moment, it might remember its hunger and make another attack. She couldn’t let herself think that—she focused on Danny instead.

In spite of her fear, Bettie smiled at the picture he made. Only his underwear on, and that enormous bulge she remembered had disappeared from view. Funny to think of how intimidating it had been to her, and such a short time ago…

“Imagine!” she said. “A little thing like that putting you off your game!”

Danny looked down unselfconsciously at his lost erection. Chuckling as he realized her meaning. “Try not to take it too personally. If there were anyone that could keep a man in the mood after all that, it’d be you!”

Far below, the beast found Bettie’s top. It slashed at them ferociously, cutting and ripping the garment for nothing more than the novelty of destroying something unknown to it. Its backlegs kicked out, scraping the ground as it worried the clothing into nothingness. It caught the pistol from the disembodied pocket of Danny’s pants and sent it flying several feet away.

The giant lumbered after it, nudging the gun around with its nose and its paws, then picking it up in its mouth. After that it disappeared into the underbrush, taking the weapon with it.

Danny and Bettie watched, enslaved by their curiosity and disbelief. At this sign of intelligence, they were rendered mute. They didn’t even dare to breathe until their bodies forced them to. And then, into the maddening void of suspense left of agonizing over their possible demise, next having that agony suspended… not resolved, not rescued, for the beast was still in the area, might come back at any moment… into the abyss, Bettie now felt her whirling mind go to what else loomed large in her memory.

The inescapable facts that had already made a crater in her. There was no denying them, now that the beast’s antagonism was absent. She couldn’t forget—she had to remember—the sexual ecstasy she had sampled before they were so vehemently interrupted.

She recalled her shame and humiliation too, the trepidation before things had gotten underway with Danny, but they seemed more distant, less important. The mere thought of the pleasure she’d felt… it could seize control of her.

She fought it, trying to pretend that nothing had changed. There’d been sex before, orgasms before… but she’d never reached the heights she had with Danny Cannon before.

She tried to imagine Irvin fucking her that way and just couldn’t. The thought of it brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. She’d pictured herself trying to apologize to Izzy for what she’d had to do to get him his painkillers, but how could she apologize for enjoying it?

We’ve never fucked before, Izzy… not really… now I feel like I’ve been fucked for the first time in my life. And you’ve got a lot to learn if you’re going to satisfy me like he did. And if it’s true you bargained with Gordon, you’ll have to strike a new deal. I’m damaged goods now… ruined for other men… and if you’ve never been able to truly sate me, then I doubt Gordon will either!

So lost was she in her own thoughts that when Danny finally broke the silence, he intruded on her musing like a wrecking ball going into a condemned building.

“It… it disarmed us… took the gun… it recognized the gun, that it was a threat, and it took it away from us… so we can’t hurt him… so we’ll be defenseless!”

“That’s impossible!” Bettie exclaimed. “Even if it is some… undiscovered kind of animal, it’s still just an animal! It can’t think! It must’ve just… I don’t know… the gun struck its fancy…”

“You saw it, Bettie, it was more than that. It had a purpose… maybe it wouldn’t have left until it was sure we were no longer a threat to it… it saw the gun and searched for it in our things. If it hadn’t found it…”

“You’re saying that it wasn’t just following its instincts? That it actually meant to do all that it did…”

“Yes!” Danny enthused. “There’ve been apes, dolphins, even parrots almost as smart as humans… why not whatever that is?”

Bettie looked out at the bushes and shrubs that had taken the beast’s departing form, wiping it from existence… but for how long?

If it was intelligent, what did it want? Would it be satisfied with merely disarming them or was that only a prelude to a larger goal? What that might be, she could only imagine… but just looking at the thing, she knew it was no herd animal. Its towering body held all the malevolence she remembered from certain animals she’d grown up with on the farm… chickens, geese… but their small stature rendered them an annoyance rather than a threat. While that giant…

She wondered now if it could’ve uprooted the tree at any time and had them? It seemed likely, if her memories weren’t exaggerating its size and bulky, powerful musculature. So why hadn’t it? Was it sadism? Like some cruel hunter, did it want to savor the chase before it finally brought down its prey?

Danny came closer, stirring the branch they were on with his motion. Bettie clung tighter to the tree limb. She didn’t notice how close Danny was getting until he rasped in her ear. “It’s awful that we had to stop, but at least you didn’t have a chance to get dressed. I think I’m getting a better look at you now than if we had gone through with it!”

“Should I take that as a compliment?” Bettie asked him, trying not to let on that she felt the caress of his praise—her heart racing, her breasts swelling.

“Absolutely,” Danny told her. “The last thing I’d want you to feel is insulted. And it didn’t seem like you felt that way when I had my tongue inside you…”

“I… I may have found some pleasure in what you did,” Bettie admitted. “But none at all at the way you forced me into it.”

“What choice did I have?” Danny asked defensively. “You’re a woman who absolutely refuses to be wooed. But you have to admit, it wasn’t exactly torture I put you through.”

“No, it wasn’t… I never thought… it wasn’t awful,” Bettie allowed, refusing to give him the satisfaction from any more of a confession.

“And now that I’ve dragged that out of you,” he said suggestively, “maybe we can try it again. If you’re curious how things would’ve developed without interruptions.”

“Curious?” Bettie repeated. “You don’t leave much room for curiosity… you educated me very heavy-handedly. And now you want me to be curious. To like what you did. Well, I won’t pretend I’m angry.” Her voice became demure. “You took care to make it the sort of thing a woman isn’t angry over. But that’s a far cry from wanting a repeat performance! Now, if you’ll give me some room? It seems you should appreciate the close quarters we’ve been forced into before you start trying for even more!”

Bemused, Danny obeyed, winding his way back down the branch until he leaned against the trunk. “It’s hard to be appreciative when you’re not satisfied.”

“You’ll just have to be satisfied with what you got. I agreed to one… exhibition… not to be a sex slave at your beck and call!”

Danny only grinned. “Talk about browbeating! I wouldn’t expect you to go on an offensive after all we shared.”

“All we shared was a business arrangement. My body for Izzy’s pills. And I want them, right now!” Bettie countered.

Danny chortled to himself. “Feel free to get them. The bottle’s down there in my shirt pocket. It didn’t look like that animal got to them, but if it did…” He shrugged and happily echoed her words: “You’ll just have to be satisfied with what you got!”

Fuming, Bettie climbed down the tree. Now, without a feeling of panic moving her, she felt each scratch she received coming down the unforgiving wood with no clothes on to protect her. But when she got to the ground and saw up close what the beast had done to their clothes, she decided that a few scrapes were something she could live with!

She picked up Danny’s shirt and fished her hand into the pocket, extracting the pill bottle from it. To her relief, the container was unharmed, the pills inside mostly intact. A few were broken into halves or thirds, but she had to suppose that they would still be effective.

Danny hit the ground beside her. He ran a hand along her back. “As promised,” he grinned.

“You really were sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

“Some might say I was cocky,” Danny retorted. “But I had reason to be.”

He picked up the jeans and examined them. The waistband and crotch were intact, but starting at the legs they resembled a loincloth more than anything else. The beast’s tooth marks further compromised their censorship. Bettie could only imagine the picture he’d make wearing them—he’d make Tarzan look modest!

“What are we going to do for clothes?” Danny asked. “Izzy might get the right idea if we come back looking like this…”

“I’ll wrap the blanket around me,” Bettie said. “We can say we went skinny-dipping and the animal got to our clothes. That’s truthful enough and we need to tell the others about that thing anyway.”

“And me?” Danny complained. “I don’t have a spare set of pants.”

“I think Izzy has another pair,” Bettie said helpfully.

“Great! I’ll take those.”

Bettie smiled sweetly up at him. “And what will Izzy get for them?”

Danny let out a full-throated laugh. “Ha! You’re learning.”

“I had one hell of a teacher,” Bettie allowed as her grin got even wider.