The PMS Outlaws: An Elizabeth MacPherson Novel

I
f he stayed chained naked to this post much longer, there just wouldn’t be any afterward to the foreplay.

Randy Templeton shivered in the soft darkness, wondering whether the girls would think him ungrateful if he called out to hurry them along. It was damp and nearly dark in the basement of the Lonesome Rose Bar, but mostly it was cold. People could say what they wanted to about extra body fat; the spare tire around his middle wasn’t doing a thing to keep him warm. He hated to think what shape he’d be in without it.

Whoever had air-conditioned the roadhouse had made a pitiful job of it, too. The barroom itself was hotter than a hubcap in August, while down here beneath, it felt like penguin heaven. If it weren’t so dark, he could probably see his breath. He wondered if the girls would mind the cold. He could suggest someplace more comfortable, but he didn’t want to ruin
the spontaneity of the occasion. Besides, he wasn’t sure that motels in his price range took postdated checks.

Randy hoped there weren’t any rats around. He had seen a horror movie once where a guy was chained in a dungeon someplace, and rats had come out and started gnawing on his toes. Just thinking about it made him shiver even more than he already had been. He’d never hear rats over the thump of the jukebox from above. At least he had kept his boots on. He wriggled his wrists in the handcuffs, thinking they must be trick cuffs from a store that specialized in magic items and practical jokes, but the steel bands remained firmly shut, yielding no hidden catch. His fingers were beginning to feel numb. Real handcuffs … his mind shied away from any more speculation on this point. What with the cold and all, he was having a hard enough time maintaining the mood without going into philosophical suppositions about sexy and gorgeous chicks who carried regulation handcuffs.

Where were those two girls, anyhow? They said they’d gone off to slip into something leather and scanty, but he didn’t hear any giggles around the corner. The jukebox again, probably. Its base notes were rolling across the floor above him in a tidal wave of noise. What were those girls’ names again? He couldn’t quite remember. Maybe he should just stick to calling them “Honey” and “Darlin’ ”—women were so touchy about things like proper names. He didn’t want to spoil the evening, which was the most exciting thing that had happened to him since he’d got one of the lucky bottle caps in the drink machine at the plant and won a hundred bucks just in time to make a car payment.

He couldn’t believe his luck this time. He’d stopped in at
the roadhouse after work for a quick one (by which he meant a drink), and before he could say “Colorado Kool-Aid” (by which he meant Coors), two good-looking women in jean shorts and halter tops had come up to him, one on each side, smiling up at him, until he began to wonder who they had mistaken him for. People did say he looked a little like Randy Travis in the right light—if he sucked in his gut and combed his hair forward over his bald spot.

He thought the game would be up when he told them his name. He said, “I’m Randy …” and for a few seconds he thought about saying, “… Travis,” but nervousness impaired his fluency in lying, and he had blurted out “Templeton,” the only word in his otherwise empty brain. They just kept smiling, as if they weren’t disappointed at all. Then they started making small talk, only instead of yelling loud enough to be heard over the music, they had whispered up close in his ear, until their tongues almost touched his earlobes. It warmed him up just thinking about it. He had made a few gallant remarks about how the two of them were prettier than … something or other.… He couldn’t quite remember what he had said, but it must have been good, because they had smiled knowingly at him and edged in even closer.

But there were two of them. One part of his mind kept waiting for them to ask him if he had a friend, while his remaining brain cells tried to choose which one he wanted and then decide how to get her away from her companion. One of them was a wiry-looking blonde who looked like she played softball or rode horses—a real tomboy; the other one was a top-heavy Miss America type, just shy of being plump, but with the few extra pounds distributed in some wonderful places. What were
their names? They were pretty all right, but they weren’t the usual sort of girl that you saw in the Lonesome Rose. They talked like schoolteachers, now that he thought about it: all carefully pronounced words, with proper English as far as he could tell, and not much drawl in their voices. Maybe they were schoolteachers. Maybe those X-rated skin flicks he checked out from the Video Mart & Tanning Parlor, with titles like
Lessons in Lust
and
Sex Ed at Honey High
, were documentaries.

At that point in the conversation, Randy had been thinking that he could star in a skin flick called
Horny Zombie in Deep Shock
, when those two gorgeous creatures made it clear that he didn’t have to choose between them. He could have them both. They worked as a team, they said. Well, hot damn.

He had allowed himself to be led to the basement by these two whispering playmates, and his brain had pretty much been in neutral, while the rest of him was going into overdrive. While he was still speechless with astonishment, “Honey” and “Darlin’ ” had whispered intoxicating promises in his ear, and working in tandem they divested him of his clothes before he even had time to think about it.

“If you’ll put on these handcuffs, Sugar, we can have a real party,” said the wiry blonde.

“Like nothing you ever felt before,” cooed the plump Miss America.

Speechless with lust and anticipation, he had made a gurgling sound in his throat and held up his wrists, eager for the games to begin.

That had been … oh … fifteen minutes ago. The chill of the darkened basement and the fear of creepy-crawly things he could not see had taken the edge off his eagerness for erotic
games, but he was sure that the reappearance of those two luscious beauties would revive him again. Where were they, anyhow? He gave a tug on his handcuffs, but they held as tightly as ever.

“Hello, darlin’?” he called out tentatively into the darkness. Then he tried to cover his nervousness by making a joke of it. “That wasn’t a Conway Twitty imitation,” he said. “But it has been a long time. Are y’all about ready?”

There was no answer. The rumble of the jukebox continued uninterrupted above him.

“Sweet thangs?” he called out, a little louder now. “Are you coming? I’m handcuffed naked to this post here.”

A few minutes later, the silence had so unnerved him that he knelt down and picked up a discarded curtain rod to try to reach for his clothes. He distinctly remembered seeing one of the girls fold his clothes neatly and place them in the corner. After many minutes of futile prodding with the curtain rod in the dark corner, he had to face the unpleasant fact that his clothes and his wallet were gone.

Upstairs on the jukebox, the thunder of drumbeats had subsided, and, as if in mockery of his predicament, Randy distinctly heard Hank Williams’s voice crooning “I’m Walking the Floor over You.”

“I
’m in the living room of our house in Scotland, right? Edinburgh, near the Firth of Forth, which I couldn’t bear to look at any more. That cruel stretch of gray water …” The soft voice in the darkness faltered.

“Skip that part,” said the woman in the circle of lamplight.

“Okay.” A sharp intake of breath. “I’m okay now. Living room. The curtains are drawn. And I’m sitting on the sofa, reading a magazine, I think. I’m not too clear on that. I was alone, of course. I might have been watching television, but I doubt it. I don’t remember a television program. I was probably reading.”

“Go on, please.”

“So, anyway, in the silence I hear the front door open and close, and I practically jump out of my skin because I’m so startled.
I’m thinking that an intruder has got into the house, and I’m wondering whether to run or to pick up the poker from the fireplace and go down fighting.”

“You think the person who has come in is an intruder?”

“A burglar, maybe. Someone who didn’t belong there, anyhow. And I’m wavering between fight or flight.”

“Which option did you choose?”

“Well, neither of them, really. It all happens too fast. I get up from the sofa, and I take a few steps toward the front hall to see who’s there, and then I start to scream.”

“In terror?”

“No. Shock. I’m rooted to the spot, waiting to see who it is. And then I’m laughing and crying at the same time, because there in the hall, dripping wet in his old mackintosh and muddy boots is my husband, Cameron Dawson. He went away on an expedition in the North Sea weeks and weeks ago, in a tiny, dilapidated boat, and no one had heard from him since. The boat is missing. He’s gone. So, of course, I’ve been just out of my mind with grief and fear. We had been married only a couple of years, and I had just about given up on him. Then, without a word of warning, the door just opens and in he walks, with a scruffy beard and a sheepish grin, like ‘Hi, honey! I’m back,’ as if he had only been gone for the afternoon. And I’m too stunned to yell at him for scaring me half to death. I throw myself into his arms, still screaming for joy.”

“And then what?”

Elizabeth MacPherson’s voice quavered. “And then … I wake up.”

Cherry Hill Psychiatric Hospital

Thursday. Or not.