The sun was shining and birds were singing as Gerald parked his SUV in front of Joan's house.  The peaceful suburban neighborhood did not look, to the unlearned eye, to be a place where sexual deviants would play, but Gerald had learned long ago that such settings were actually quite typical.

He was in a good mood, enjoying the afternoon sun, and feeling quite satisfied with himself at the moment.  He'd just made a sale, and the merchandise didn't even know it yet.

Oh, these women always said the same things over the web, that they want to be used, abused, et cetera, but when it really came down to it, they had no idea what they wanted. 

Gerald knew, though.  They wanted to kneel, beg, be pampered like a pet and maybe suck some dick.  With the possible exception of the last, most men, Gerald's clients included, weren't particularly interested in such things.  In fact, from Gerald's point of view, the entire concept of meeting someone online that would be so tame was rather silly.  If he or his clients wanted a woman to put on a pedestal, they could easily find one at the local bar or singles party. 

No, what Gerald's clients wanted was someone to use, abuse, and torture, and they certainly paid him good money to acquire these women.  Most of Gerald's job wasn't so much to find the women, as they were a dime a dozen, but to carefully engineer the situation to look as if they consented to everything that happened to them.  Recorded IM conversations, exchanged pictures, public posts on forums, and a camera in his SUV pointing at her front door were all things that could be used in court if need be, though they hadn't been needed so far.  All that he required was a lonely woman who thought she was a submissive and was brave, or stupid enough, to tell a complete stranger her home address. 

Joan had been the perfect example.  He'd found her in a BDSM chat room, acting very much the submissive, complete with capital S's for sir and lower case J's for her own name.  Typical of her type, she was very quick to enter a private conversation with Gerald whom, in the beginning, seemed very gentlemanly, almost to the point of seeming too nice to be a Dom. 

Being a master at his art, however, Gerald waited until just the right moment to begin being aggressive, and soon had Joan agreeing to do just about anything.  Of course, while she was licking his feet in the chat room, she was probably masturbating in front of her computer. 

Before everything was said and done, Joan, like all the others before her, had enthusiastically agreed to do anything, ANYTHING.  Not that she had any real idea what this would consist of, but that was part of the fun for her, part of the submission.  The reality was, of course, far from her mind.

He knocked on the door and waited, silently measuring how long it took her to answer.  Though it hardly mattered, such small things told him whether this was a real submissive he was dealing with, or just some woman that thought she wanted some kink.  If the door opened quickly, it was a real submissive, responding to her master's command.   Every once in a while he managed to find an actual, true submissive, one who took everything they did to her in stride and loved it.  Those women were special, and he generally tried to match them up as a life partner for one of his clients.  If there was a "dramatic pause," however, this would be far more fun, and less work to boot.

The submissive women usually fared better than those that weren't.  Something about a woman resisting really fired Gerald's clients up, and the more submissive ones generally ended up being “part of the gang” before everything was said and done.  Three actual submissives had, in fact, married men that they had met through Gerald.

After an unusually long pause, the door opened, and there stood Joan, dressed in a long nightgown that flattered her slender body, yet wearing make-up as if she were planning to go out on the town. 

"Gerald?" she said, with a slight smile.

"Mmhmm," he replied, looking her up and down and putting his hands in his pockets.

Late thirties, small breasts, shoulder length blond hair; just as her picture depicted her.  Having recent pictures ready at hand on her computer was another sign of vanity.  Oh, this one would be fun. 

"Come on in, hun," she said, backing up and giving him room. 

Go in he did, glancing around the home which he would inhabit for the next few days, possibly longer if there was still money to be made and Joan was still in fuckable shape.  There were some things even his clients wouldn't stick their dick in, and there was always the chance someone would buy her outright. 

Hearing the door shut behind him, Gerald turned to watch Joan lock all three of the locks on her door.  A single woman could never be too careful, after all.  Gerald shook his head, chuckling to himself.

Joan turned around, and the smile on her face turned to a look of shock and horror as she saw Gerald's hand hurtling toward her left breast, syringe extended.  She made a feeble attempt to back up and block him, as well as a tiny noise that may have been the beginning of a scream, but the speed at which he attacked took her completely off guard. 

The needle plunged into her left breast and its contents were injected.  Joan felt the thick liquid burn under her skin, and before she could do anything else, her motor functions were completely paralyzed.

Though conscious, Joan was utterly powerless as this man whom she thought may be her next lover watched as she crumbled to the ground.

Noting the awkward position in which she landed, Gerald was satisfied that the drug had done its work.  Not that it ever failed. 

He then made himself a sandwich in Joan's kitchen. 

------------------------------------------------------------------

Sitting on Joan's couch, his feet propped on her coffee table, Gerald enjoyed a rerun of his favorite comedy on her television while eating a sandwich.  He always made it a habit to eat before he began working, and there wasn't much of a point in paying for food when you were going to invade someone's home and live in it anyway.  Besides, it was simply more interesting to eat whatever it was the victim had in their fridge.  Get a sort of taste for their personality.  Or something.

Once the sandwich was gone, Gerald went back out to his SUV, stepping over the still paralyzed and terrified Joan, to retrieve his laptop.  He'd have to remember to edit this part out of the film which was being recorded from the camera in his SUV as Joan had inconveniently crumbled within its sight. 

His new laptop was lighter than his old one, so he was also able to grab his small tool bag. 

Although he'd been able to slip out the door with her partially blocking it, he was unable to fit quite as easily while carrying two bags, forcing him to use some force, shoving Joan out of the way.  After much grunting, groaning, cursing, and badly spraining Joan's wrist, which happened to be trapped at the most interesting angle beneath her body, Gerald was able to squeeze into the house.  He'd definitely have to edit this part out.

After setting his laptop on Joan's coffee table, Gerald set about securing her home.  This wasn't something he took incredibly seriously, as Joan would spend most of her time bound, drugged, or being tortured, but it was worth the short amount of time he invested just for piece of mind.

Opening his tool bag, he retrieved a screwdriver, a deadbolt lock, and a dremmel tool.  He changed one of the deadbolts on her door to one that had a key for both sides, then removed the key to his pocket.  After locking each window, he used the dremmel tool to remove the piece of the lock that one would typically grip, being careful to leave a jagged edge.  Blood on the windows would be a good indicator that he wasn't drugging her enough.  Well, that was the theory; it had never happened. 

Annoyingly, Joan also had a back door, so Gerald simply hollowed out the inside of the tumbler on its deadbolt with his dremmel, effectively fusing it shut like her windows. 

Sure, if Joan had some vice grips, she might be able to find enough lever on a window to pry it open; or if she was some sort of awesome locksmith, she might be able to pick the lock on her front door, but for most women, she was sealed in.  Before his stay was done, Gerald sometimes added a deadbolt to the master bedroom as that's where his victims were generally kept, but there would be plenty of time for that later, if he felt it was necessary.

Whistling, his hardest work done, Gerald returned his tools to his tool bag in the living room.  Out of the corner of his eye he saw Joan's hand twitch.  For a skinny chick, her body was filtering the toxin pretty quickly.  Still, Gerald figured he had at least an hour or so before she was able to do much more than twitch and maybe moan a bit. 

Light women did definitely provide other advantages.  He was able to easily pitch Joan over his shoulder and carry her to her bedroom, throwing her onto her bed, snickering as a bit of spittle flew from her lax mouth.  He simply didn't feel like trying to kick her out of the way for the even bigger things that he was about to unload.  Besides, his customers tended to prefer their women relatively undamaged to start with, which was one of the many reasons he opted to incapacitate them with drugs as opposed to, say, a baseball bat. 

After unloading the rest of his luggage into her bedroom, to include a large rolling tool chest filled with toys for his customers to use, as well as a large dog cage with locks at every corner, he poked her in the breast where he had injected her, checking for a reaction.  Still just a light twitching of the fingers.  Good. 

Humming contentedly to himself, Gerald took a marker and a stud finder and began marking the walls with X's.  This was a request one of his customers had made a while back, and it had proved enormously popular.  In the heat of the moment, when one wanted to attach something to a stable point on the wall, finding a stud or drilling through drywall was just annoying. 

Once done, he wandered back over to his computer and checked for responses to the email he had sent out before heading here.  Since only a few hours ago, twelve men had indicated interest in “meeting” Joan.  Of the first five, four were previous customers, and one was a recent referral, so Gerald recognized all of the names.  As he only allowed five at once, since he liked to watch and there were only three holes, after all, Gerald replied to all but the first five with his generic but polite email telling them to watch for his next query, but this one was all full. 

To the four known customers, he simply replied with the house address.  They knew what his SUV looked like and could find their own directions.  They knew the routine. 

For the new one, though, Gerald searched through his saved emails.  Something seemed significant about this guy, but he couldn't remember what it was. 

Then he found it.  The new guy, a career plastic surgeon, enjoyed using needles and other sharp objects in ways that his customers simply did not allow.  Although Gerald had passed this particular guy up a few times in the past, he decided that he'd invite him over for Joan for one reason, and one reason only. 

He pulled up his profile sheet for the woman laying paralyzed in her own bed. 

Joan

Age: 38

Breast size: 34A

Weight: 110 lbs

Hair: Blond, shoulder length

Marital Status: Single/Divorced

Prefers: Anal

Soft limits: Oral

Hard Limits: Needles

Oh yes, Gerald loved hard limits, and his victims simply handed them to him on a silver platter.  Not only that, but the doctor had mentioned previously that he would be very interested in buying a woman with such a hard limit outright.

On her belly with her face smashed against the back of the cage, Joan began to truly feel the horrors of her current predicament.  The dog cage was a humane size for a medium dog, which was an inhumane size for just about any human.  On her knees and crouching, Joan would've barely fit.  Instead, Gerald had shoved her in face first, lifted her feet as they stuck out a good ways, and shut the door quickly, pushing and shoving until he was able to slip the lock around the door and the cage, leaving the poor woman shaped like a boomerang. 

Joan's limbs were finally beginning to respond, though sluggishly.  She was able to slowly, painfully pull her left arm from under her body and her right leg down from its extremely awkward angle up and against the door of the cage she now inhabited, and bend it up under her which, while not exactly comfortable, was a far more natural position. 

Feebly she kicked at the door with her left leg, as it was beginning to get feeling back, but the door didn't budge. 

She heard voices coming from her living room.  It sounded like three or four different ones, all male.  She couldn't hear what they were saying, but she could tell they were laughing and joking and having a good time in general. 

This had obviously been a huge mistake.  She'd wanted to be dominated, not tortured.  Obviously, though, this man, who went by Master Jerry online, had no interest in romance or even respect of any sort.  The first thing he had done, before saying a word to her, was violate her hard limit which was something, according to everything she read, a good Dom would never do. 

She would've complained, tried to get him to leave her home, but well before the drugs had worn off, before he'd shoved her contorted body into the cage, he had fitted her limp mouth with a large ring gag.  Her speech was now limited to incomprehensible ooo's and aah's, and from her experiences browsing the web, she knew there were far more devious uses for her mouth in its current position. 

Once the drug began to wear off, its effects rapidly diminished, and within thirty torturous minutes Joan had nearly full use of her body, though her mind was still a bit muddled.  She had managed to pull both her legs up underneath her body, which enabled her to pull her face away from the back of the cage and support herself on her hands and knees, leaving about six inches of space in front and behind.  

She tried to turn around so that she could more easily see the door of the cage, but there simply wasn't enough room, no matter how much she tried to squeeze herself.  Joan was thin, but she was also tall, and her extra length was a definite disadvantage in this case. 

Footsteps were coming down the hall, and the voices, still talking and laughing, were getting closer. 

Joan began trembling uncontrollably, tears streaming down her already make-up streaked face, as even the drugs had not prevented her from crying.

------------------------------------------------------------------

“I don't know, there's something to be said for the really light, skinny ones, too,” said Gerald, in the midst of an ongoing conversation with one of his clients, whom he also considered friends and kindred spirits.

“Oh I agree!” said an unusually large man, named Tim, with a very deep voice, “but I see a woman with big tits and ass and I just wanna hop in bed and make love to her all night.  Skinny ones like this, I want to torture, to break.  It's weird.”

“Not really,” replied Gerald, “actually I'd say the tall and thin ones usually have a shorter lifespan with my clients.  Petite, curvy girls tend to go home with someone who halfway falls in love with them.  Big girls, skinny or otherwise, seem to catch hell.”

“I guess I haven't been doing this long enough,” said a third voice, coming from an older man named Joe, “but I still get excited at the idea of playing with any of Gerald's toys, regardless of build or anything else.”

“We all do,” said Tim, “but you'll get preferences, eventually.  My ex-wife was tall and skinny, so I think that's why I prefer smaller, curvy women to love on, and ones like Joan to torture.  I keep getting meaner, though, I think.  After doing this for a few years, I guess I'm getting desensitized, though I haven't killed any of them, I don't think.”

“Pfft,” replied Gerald, “you're a big teddy bear compared to Sam.”

“Heh,” stated a gravely voice with very little actual humor. The voice belonged to a small, psychotic looking man with gray hair, bright blue eyes, and pocked skin.  The others didn't seem to expect him to add anything further to the conversation.

Gerald and Tim were the first to come in to view.  Gerald tossed his keys to Tim who caught them in mid-air and pocketed them.  As Sam and Joe entered the room, Tim looked down to examine their latest victim. 

“Going soft, Gerald?” Tim said.  “This cage is a bit big for her, isn't it?”

“Eh, the other cage is all bent up from the last girl, I still need to replace it,” Gerald replied. 

“Gee, I wonder how that happened?” said Tim, and all the men chuckled.  Joan wasn't sure that she wanted in on the joke.

“Aren't there usually five of us?” asked Joe.

“Yeah,” said Gerald, “but Wes called me a few minutes after he replied to the email and said he wouldn't be able to make it, had a business meeting he'd forgotten about.  The other guy is new, and he said he wanted to come tomorrow.”

“Oh?” said Tim, his eyebrows raised, “why is that?”

“He's a plastic surgeon,” said Gerald, “gets his kicks off doing shit with needles, didn't want to get in the way the first day.”

Joan began screaming and bouncing around in her cage, exhibiting far more energy than Gerald would've thought she'd have at this stage.  Panic can be a wonderful motivator, however.

Sam found this hilarious.  The other two men were taken aback.

“Wow, hard limit?” asked Tim.

“Hah, yeah, damn,” replied Gerald, obviously a bit surprised himself. 

Still laughing, Sam closed the bedroom door. 

“We ready?” he said, with a voice that sounded as if he'd smoked cigarettes since birth.

“Sure,” said Tim, “let's do this.”

Tim unlocked the cage, opened the door, and reached over Joan's back to grab her hair, tugging on it to force her to back out of the cage, then standing her up. 

Her legs, still wobbly, fought to support her weight so that her hair wouldn't have to.  Tim, still holding her upright, used his other hand to begin fondling her breasts through the silky night gown material.  Joan reflexively lifted her hands to attempt to deflect, and Sam promptly kneed her in the stomach for her effort, completely deflating her lungs and causing her body to try to bend forward.  Tim, however, was having none of it, and held on to her hair with a death grip.

As she gasped for air, desperately trying to breath, Joe was alternately putting his fingers in and covering her open mouth, pinching her nose shut, and putting pressure on random places on her throat, increasing her terror.   Her eyes were wide in horror and she was making strange gurgling noises from her gagged mouth.  Joe grinned and snickered quietly, obviously getting a kick out of her discomfort.

“You guys wanna fuck her straight out or hurt her some?” Tim asked as if he were asking his buddies which football game they wanted to watch.

“Let's put the shock collar on her and play 'Pinball'” said Joe.

“Okay,” said Tim, looking toward Gerald who was already walking to his tool chest to retrieve the needed items. 

“I got a new shock collar, actually,” said Gerald, sounding excited. 

“Glad to see our dough goes to a good cause,” Sam replied.

Gerald pulled the collar out of the box and tossed it to Tim, who was surprised to see to see four leads with alligator clips on the ends coming out of the black box attached to the collar.

It was fairly obvious what the leads were for, even to Joan, who would've slumped in defeat had she not been still held upright by her hair.

Tim pulled the woman's arms behind her back, holding her slender wrists together easily with just one hand, and grabbed her chin, angling it upward, with the other. 

Joe secured the collar to Joan's throat with a look of concentration on his face, showing his lack of experience compared to the other men.  Joan strained her eyes downward to try to see what he was doing while Tim held her fast.  Once the collar was on and buckled, Joe tucked the leads into the front of her gown. 

He then lifted the gown, fully exposing the terrified woman, and grabbed the leads, two short and two long.  As he clamped one of the short ones onto her left nipple, Joan squealed and began to stomp her foot as she struggled against Tim's insurmountable strength.  Tim had moved his hand a bit further down and was firmly grasping Joan's neck.  The right nipple elicited yet another long scream, and Joan began to wriggle in earnest, blindly trying to escape Tim's grip without any thought of the consequences.

The clips were obviously designed to be painful as they drew little droplets of blood as soon as they gripped her tender flesh. 

Joe then knelt and began spreading Joan's vulva.  The woman tried to twist a bit more as her flesh turned red from embarrassment at this humiliation. 

“Nice pussy,” Joe said to no one in particular as he grasped at her small, tight vulval lip with his thumb and forefinger, and yanked downward.  Once he'd stretched it down about an inch, he clipped another of the leads onto it, piercing her immediately with six tiny holes. 

Joan continued whining and squirming as Joe also clamped the last lead onto the other side of her pussy. 

Tim let her loose, Joe stood back, and Joan stumbled forward, nearly falling but regaining her balance at the last moment.  She hesitated for a few seconds as the men stared at her, waiting for her to react to her sudden freedom. 

Joan did the first thing any woman in her situation would have done.  She reached down to remove the clamp from her cunt. 

White fire lanced through her insides, emanating from her tits and pussy, sending her crashing spasmodically to the floor on her side, twitching violently, her tongue sticking out of the ring gag and flailing about.  It had looked as if her feet and legs had suddenly tried to outrun her body, and partially succeeded. 

All of the men laughed. 

“Damn, Gerald!” Joe said between gasps of laughter, “don't you think that was a bit overboard?”

Gerald, laughing hardest of them all, partially in embarrassment, said, “Yeah, I had it set where I used to set the old one, about halfway up.  I guess that's overboard for this one.” 

Adjusting the remote that he still held in his hand, Gerald dialed the power down a few notches as Tim, once again, helped Joan to her feet, this time facing him, by use of her hair.  She was still jerking a bit, barely able to support herself when released.

“Okay, here's the game,” Tim said, looking straight at Joan, who was still shuddering and blinking spasmodically, obviously not yet fully recovered from the effects of the shock.  “We each are going to hold out a needle, like so.”

Tim pointed at Gerald who showed her a needle, about three inches long, with a pronounced head. 

It was unclear if Joan was trembling in terror of the needle or still suffering from the electricity.  She wanted to wrap her arms around herself, but she didn't dare make Gerald think she was going to touch the biting clamps.  Instead, she alternately flexed and stretched her hands, holding them well away from her body, while doing her best to say “no, no, no, no” through the ring gag.  If they could tell what she was saying, they didn't care.

“You're going to walk up to one of us and point to a body part,” Gerald continued, “and we're going to hold the needle up to that body part while you impale yourself on it.”

Joan looked incredulous.  Surely they didn't expect her to actually do this...did they?

“Do you understand?” Gerald asked. “Nod your head yes, or no.”

Joan began backing away from him and his distended needle, shaking her head in horror.  She jumped when she heard a gravelly voice from behind her say, “Which part?”

She spun around and saw Sam holding yet another needle out toward her, smiling evilly.  Reflexively, Joan again tried to back up.  Only this time she got shocked, albeit with less power than the first time. 

“You have to pick a spot,” said Gerald, “can't just walk off.   You picked Sam, now where do you want him to put it?  I suggest a breast.  It's soft, heals quick, and there's nothing vital in there.  You better decide quick, too, or Sam will decide for you.”

“Heh,” said Sam, staring at the tortured woman with a gleam in his eye. 

“Ah kah!  Ah kah!  O, eee” said Joan, attempting to tell them that she couldn't do this and beg them to not make her. 

Sam was having none of it.  With lightning speed, his right hand popped her throat, sending her to her knees, gasping for breath.  With his left hand, he propped Joan's right eye open while pushing her back toward the ground.  Her elbow was painfully stressed as Sam's strength worked against Joan's bracing right hand.  Even her left eye was wide, and she made choking and gasping sounds as her left hand pawed at her throat.

No one really saw it coming, including Joan, ironically.  The other men could've probably guessed had they had time to think on it, but such was the nature of Sam; no matter how brutal they thought he might be, he always proved that they had underestimated him. 

“Be still,” he told her, and she stayed as still as she could while gasping and wheezing. 

Then, with his right hand, Sam took the sharp, gleaming needle, and drove all three inches of it straight into Joan's pupil. 

Joan made a very strange, high pitched screaming roar as she fell backward onto the floor and began rolling back and forth with her hands covering her eyes while kicking her feet in the air, still coughing violently. 

The other three men reflexively turned away in horror while Sam watched the tortured woman with interest, one corner of his mouth turned up in a grin. 

Within seconds they had all recovered and were again watching the woman squirm about.

“Fuck me, Sam, that was...wow...” said Joe, shock and awe apparent on his face. 

Tim, being the intellectual of the group, had his head cocked and brow furrowed in thought as he said, “I guess I'm sort of surprised she didn't move out of the way, though if someone told me to be still and came at my eye with a needle, I'm not sure what I'd do.”

Watching her roll around on the ground, Sam began to unbuckle his belt.  Pinball was over before it had begun as no one had ever been brave enough to stand between Sam and his victim once he had done something to her vicious enough to make him horny.

Joan, face down on the ground, howling, did not see the long, thin, hooked penis coming at her from behind.

Gerald had once asked Sam why his penis was hooked, pointed upward for the last inch.  It was very strange looking, and obviously not natural.  According to Sam, he had purposely gotten as hard as he possibly could, then broke it himself so that it would heal in a shape that would hurt women when he raped them. 

Had it been anyone else that had told him such a story, Gerald would've laughed at them.  He wasn't even sure he believed Sam, but he did believe him to be more capable of such a thing than any other man he'd known.

With but a grunt, Sam was on top of the woman and shoving his penis inside of her cunt, her flimsy nightgown providing no protection.  The intrusion caught Joan completely off guard, and Gerald had the most amazing view of her staring straight at him with eyes wide, pin still lodged in her pupil, as she wrenched her head up to scream anew. 

Sam pumped in and out of the poor woman, and it was obvious by the look on his face that he knew and enjoyed the fact that he was stabbing her on the inside.  He'd push in hard and fast, and then pull out slowly, steadily.  The pulling out seemed to hurt the most, going by the expressions on Joan's face. 

Gerald wondered how much fucking a woman could take from Sam before it killed her.  He hoped he wouldn't find out there and then as he really didn't want to have to refund the other customers' money, which he would certainly do if old Sam ripped her guts out with his dick.  Gerald did admit to himself that, if worse came to worse, seeing a woman disemboweled through her vagina would certainly be novel. 

Though she was bleeding by the time he was done, Joan survived the assault.  Gerald would've been very surprised had she not bled; she would've been the first. 

To some men, a bleeding, cum filled woman laying on the ground after such a brutal encounter would be considered sloppy seconds at best, horrifying at worst.  To Gerald's customers, it was hot as hell.

Sam laid on the woman for a moment with his eyes closed, breathing heavily, his weapon of a penis still lodged inside of her. 

Joan breathed in and out, but otherwise it was hard to tell if she was alive.  Her eyes were partially open and her body lay limp.  Gerald figured she probably would've closed her eyes, but doing so was likely more painful than it was worth at this particular moment.

Then, as if he were a cyborg that had just recharged, Sam's eyes shot open and he stood.  Now that he was flaccid, he penis just looked kind of broken.  Being covered in blood didn't do much to dispel the idea. 

Sam then went to the restroom, which was attached to the master bedroom, and closed the door. 

“Well then,” said Tim, looking at Joan, still laying still on the ground.  That was what he always said after Sam was done.  Or, rather, almost done.

“So,” began Joe, “what now?”

“Wait for it,” Gerald said, holding a finger up.  This was only Joe's third outing with Sam.

Tim, who was more experienced, laughed.

The restroom door opened, and out came Sam, again fully dressed and looking as if nothing had happened.  Without a word to any of the others, the gray haired man walked up to Joan who weakly turned her head to look at him.  The pleading look was gone from her eyes.  For the moment, she was completely defeated and broken. 

They all held their breath.  They knew what was coming, but even for Gerald, who had watched this routine at least a dozen times, the exchange of looks between the rapist and victim was still quite dramatic. 

After staring at her for a moment, Sam reared his right foot up in the air behind him and kicked the shit out of the poor woman with his steel toed boots.  Gerald had never known Sam to not break a rib at this point, and he didn't disappoint this time around. 

Joe, Tim, and Gerald all cringed as they heard the “snap” sound that, although they were expecting, was still very disturbing. 

Joan's eyes again went wide as the air rushed from her lungs and the impact from Sam's foot rolled her over onto her back.  Nothing could've prepared the woman for this, and the shock in her eyes was profound.  Gerald was positive she would've screamed if she were able.

Then, without a word, Sam turned around and left.  The men all watched him go, not at all surprised, but still amazed. 

They turned their attention back to Joan, watching her writhe about in agony while making hiccuping sounds, trying desperately to fill her lungs with air. 

Gerald could only imagine how much it must hurt to try to catch ones breath after such an impact, and he hoped he'd never have to find out.  Her side would be deeply black and blue within twelve hours.

Gerald heard Sam's old muscle car start, but he did not pull off. Instead, he idled in front of Joan's house, waiting.

They all knew what he was waiting for, and they watched Joan in anticipation.

After a series of wheezes and squeals, Joan was finally able to take a somewhat deep breath. 

Everyone plugged their ears with their fingers.

The loudest, most pained scream imaginable rang out through the neighborhood streets, echoing off the concrete and carrying for hundreds of feet in all directions. 

The woman then quieted, moaning piteously to herself, and the men listened as Sam's car drove off into the distance.