With my time at the professor’s estate drawing to a close, I wondered if Harry would ever finish his portico. It stood half-finished, untouched since he’d won the affections of his wife. A pile of cut-and-ready boards nearby, already worn from weather.
Until one morning I heard the familiar sound of his hammer. I was watching him through the kitchen window with my coffee when Clara gave me a big hug from behind.
“Everything all right with him?” I asked.
“Sure, as far as I know,” she shrugged.
“You didn’t confront him about Madison?”
She shrugged again and shook her head.
But every time I saw them together there was an unspoken tension. They avoided eye contact and seemed to only speak the occasional, perfunctory “excuse me” or “pass the tartar sauce, please.” Clara spent more time in the library and I even saw Harry take the boat out alone.
With me, meanwhile, she was more affectionate than ever. If we passed each other, she took and squeezed my hand. She pulled me into secret nooks around the house for a quick kiss. “Will you visit after you go?” she’d ask. She came to me at night and wouldn’t return to Harry until the early hours of the morning.
On Thursday I needed to check her vitals before I left for good. She sat in the chair by my desk in a paper-thin white sundress. Harry worked at his station a few desks away.
“One final physical,” she smiled. “Make it a good one.”
I overheard their arguments through the vents. He’d accuse her of hanging wet towels over the doors, she’d call him fat, but they never directly addressed what was bothering them.
And then I opened the door one morning to find an invitation to a farewell shooting party, a double-barrel shotgun leaning against the wall.
***
Madison and I walked to the garage together, each of us sporting our best impression of an aristocratic gamesman. We were dressed much the same—brown and green jackets with brown boots—except Madison wore tight white jeans, probably brighter than the traditional hunter.
“Just you today?” I asked.
Madison shrugged. “Just the one gun.”
Harry was busy loading gear into one of two vintage sports cars. Clara sat in the passenger seat with one leg on the ground through the open door. Her dark pants, the knee-high boots—I thought about our first time in the stable.
“Good, we’re all here,” Harry said. “I thought we’d take the Healeys out into the mud.” He slammed the trunk and didn’t seem especially excited about the activity he’d arranged.
“Beautiful cars,” I said, trying not to look at Clara.
“Two to a car,” he said. “So first things first, who’s riding with who?”
“I’ll drive that one,” I said, walking toward Clara’s car. She smiled.
“Does this thing come with goggles?” I asked Clara as I shut the door.
“I wish you’d picked the other car,” she said, touching my thigh. “He’s already suspicious.”
I leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the lips when I was reasonably sure he wasn’t looking.
We started the cars and I let Harry lead us along the service roads into the interior forests of the estate. Clara held both our shotguns upright between her legs.
We could see Harry and Madison’s heads through their rear window as we drove. One occasionally turned to the other.
“You know how to use one of those?” I asked.
“A little. Shells go in the back. Squeeze a little to shoot one, squeeze a lot to shoot both,” she said. “Do you?”
“Not at all,” I said. “Does he?”
“Not that I know of. Not the old Harry.”
We saw Madison’s head duck below the seat back. She didn’t re-emerge for a few minutes.
“Do I have anything to worry about here?” I asked.
Clara glanced at me. She said no, she said of course not, but she didn’t seem to find the notion as emphatically ridiculous as I had hoped.
We arrived on the edge of a large field. “We’re looking for quail,” Harry shouted as Clara and I stepped out of the car. “We’ll wander as a group. If you see one scatter, call it, then fire. I trust you all know how to use the gun.”
“No clue,” I said, purposefully holding it by the wrong end.
“Clara can help you,” he said. “We walk!” He fired his gun into the air, but accidentally set off both barrels. Every quail within earshot immediately took off from the brush, but Harry simply reloaded and marched into the field as if this was no set back at all.
I followed behind Clara. I kept my eyes along the top of the grass for any sign of movement, but I mostly watched the tips brush against her jeans as she walked.
A flurry of movement, shouts, then a gunshot. I turned to see smoke billowing from Madison’s shotgun, raised toward the sky.
“Did I get him?” She asked.
“Missed,” Harry said.
Another flurry, another bird likely inspired by the first. Clara took aim and fired low into the grass.
“You have to call it!” Harry shouted. “Mine!” And he fired at the bird Clara missed as it hurried up into the sky, but he also missed.
I stopped watching for birds, stopped watching Clara walk, and instead began to take stock of everyone’s position in the field. The four of us responding to random patterns of birds, firing in different directions—it was clear none of us knew what we were doing.
“Mine!” Madison shouted. She fired at the sky over Harry’s head. Not close, but worryingly near enough that he instinctively ducked. Seeing that she’d missed, he held his gun straight up and fired his own useless shot.
“I think we should leave,” I told Clara.
“No sneaking away, Charlie,” she said.
“Not that, I just have a bad feeling.”
Another gunshot. Harry firing into the trees.
A bird in the sky. The wrong kind. Out of range. Clara took a shot anyway. Harry, not to be outdone, took his own. “I think that’s an eagle,” Clara said. Everyone reloaded.
“Mine!” Harry shouted. He fired just to my right.
Then a scream. We all looked toward Madison, crouched down in the grass, holding her leg.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Just—” she started to stand, then crouched again. “I may have twisted my ankle.”
Harry strapped his gun across his back and pressed through the grass.
“Harry to the rescue,” Clara said derisively, loud enough for us all to hear.
He knelt next to Madison and we watched as they spoke, as he held his hands against her leg.
“Poor dear,” Clara said with a tight grin, loud enough only for me.
After a moment he took Madison’s gun, wore it next to his own, and lifted her gently from the ground in both arms.
“Slight sprain,” he shouted to us as he carried Madison toward the cars.
As we watched them move toward the edge of the field, Clara stepped closer to me. Her right arm brushed against my left, her hip against my fingers.
They rounded the back of their car. He opened the driver-side door. He set her in the seat, he knelt, and then they were both out of sight.
Clara watched, clearly expecting her husband to re-emerge, his good deed done. When he didn’t, him or Madison only occasionally visible through the rear window, Clara let out a deep sigh and turned to me.
“Have you shot that yet?” She asked, eyeing my shotgun.
“No,” I said.
“Didn’t Harry say I should show you how?” She smiled and placed a hand between my legs.
“Jesus Christ, Clara,” I said, swatting her hand away. “Terrible idea.”
She moved around behind me. I felt her chest press against my back.
“Put your fingers around it.” She held my left hand and placed it beneath the shotgun barrel. “Aim for that treetop over there. Look down the barrel.”
“These are very obvious tips,” I said.
“You know these?”
“Everyone knows these.”
“And don’t fire before you’re ready,” she said, slipping her hand into my pants.
I kept my eyes on the car. Harry was still crouched out of sight, or sitting in the driver’s seat, or lying back across the seat, or whatever on earth he was doing with Madison.
Clara pressed her pelvis against my ass.
“Just take a deep breath,” she said, caressing my growing cock between her thumb and forefinger. “Shoot whenever you’re ready.”
“You’re going to get us both killed,” I said. I lowered the gun, pulled her hand away, and turned to face her. She held her chest against mine.
“I think my husband is occupied—”
A gunshot. Not mine, the pellets falling in the grass somewhere behind Clara. I never heard a bird. She squeezed my arms, eyes wide, then peeled her body from mine as I jerked around to see Harry walking toward us from the edge of the field, lowering one gun from his shoulder, the other still sling across his back. Behind him the car was pulling away, heading back along the overgrown road.
“Nothing too serious, but she’s going to wait for us at the house,” he shouted.
Clara and I watched as he approached.
“Don’t run,” she said quietly.
“I wasn’t going to. Should I?”
“No,” she stressed.
Harry held the gun against his shoulder as he stepped toward us, the metal barrel clanking against the second gun. He looked each of us over.
“Did she show you a thing or two?” he asked me. I didn’t know what to say, and he walked past us, scanning the field for quail.
I looked at Clara and she looked at me, both of us unsure.
Another gunshot as a bird took flight. Another miss. Harry began to reload his gun.
“Harry, sir,” I said. “With one injury already on the books, maybe we should all call it a day.”
“And let you end your stay here without bagging a bird? Nonsense.”
“I was only here for the experiment. Resounding success, as you said.”
He fired off another two quick shots—at what, I have no idea—and promptly reloaded.
“Take a shot, Charlie!” He shouted.
I glanced at Clara. She nodded, and not seeing any quail, I took aim at a distant tree. I fired both rounds, the pellets falling far short of my target, and I fished two new shells from my pocket.
“Don’t they typically use hunting dogs for this?” Clara asked.
“Don’t have any,” Harry said. “Could have made some, I suppose, but like I said, Charlie’s leaving us soon.”
“And Madison,” she added.
“Yes yes.” He fired another shot.
A quail took off from the middle of the field, the closest any had been thus far. “Mine!” Clara called, but as she held the gun to her shoulder, lining up her shot, Harry fired himself. The bird dropped, the first stolen kill. But worse than that, based on his position, based on the quail’s, Harry had nearly shot me in the process.
Rather than fear, I suddenly found myself very angry. At best, I was nearly killed because Harry refused to abide by his own rules. At worst, he wanted me dead for sleeping with the woman he was cheating on.
“Watch it, old man,” I said.
“Care to go fetch my kill, Charlie?”
“Fuck you.”
“Fuck me or fuck my wife?” He laughed, reloading.
“Boys, okay,” Clara interjected.
“You want me to fetch you’re fucking bird?” I stomped through the field, searching the grass. He fired in the air to my left. I found the first sign of feathers. He fired to my right. Finding the bird, I punted it as far as I could, which ended up not being very far at all.
“Stop it,” Clara said.
Harry came after me, and rather than reload he threw his entire gun at me, then pulled the second from behind his back, accidentally firing both rounds into the ground in the process. I took my gun by the end of the barrel and began swinging in his general direction, his body a good twenty yards from the end of my club.
“Stop stop stop!” Clara shouted, then fired her own gun into the air.
We all stood for a moment. The smoke swirled from Clara’s barrel, a sodden cloud hung by Harry’s ankles.
“Who’s it going to be, Clara,” Harry said after a few moments.
“What?” she asked.
“Me or him?”
“Bored with your coed?” she asked.
“Yes, frankly! Bored with yours?”
Clara looked at me, started to say something, but then turned back to Harry. “He reminded me of you,” she said.
“That’s it, then?” I said.
“No!” she said.
“No?” Harry said.
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Who’s it going to be?” Harry repeated.
“I don’t know.”
“Harry or Charlie.”
“I don’t know.”
“Your husband or a little boy?”
“I don’t know!” She threw her gun on the ground, where it went off and we all did a nervous little hop.
Clara watched the smoke rise from the barrel.
“I need one more night,” she said.
Her response didn’t particularly thrill Harry nor I, but short of murder, what else could we do. With the sun setting, the three of us walked in silence toward the edge of the field. Harry threw his kill into the trunk along with the shotguns and the three of us squeezed into the two-seater for the drive home, Clara between the two of us, straddling the gear shift.
Source: reddit.com/r/Erotica/comments/129qaon/forever_hung_part_22_scifi_slow_burn_all