Jason’s head was reeling wildly from Amanda’s hot, sticky tongue and the gallons upon gallons of saliva, acting as a lubricant on his exposed member, that allowed her to swoop her muscle along his body and continually force him to climax into the dark, wet depths of her mouth.  Eventually, Jason had resorted to biting down on his lips and tongue so hard that they both began to bleed.  Pain would help keep his mind off of things.  It worked at first, but even this wasn’t enough to keep the incredible sensation that Amanda’s mammoth tongue was forcing into his body.  He couldn’t help it.  He hated to admit it, but to be perfectly honest with himself, Jason knew he had never experienced sexual pleasure this intense ever before in his life. 

However, after about three rounds, even though he’d stopped being able to produce his microscopic seed to plop into the lake-like cavern of a gullet inside Amanda’s hungry jaws, Jason was getting pretty spent.  After the sixth round, which took slightly longer (although Amanda’s persistence managed to drag a dry climax out of him eventually), Jason’s vision was becoming blurrier, and he felt so light-headed he was pretty sure he was going to fall asleep soon from the exhaustion.  After a painful seventh round, Jason felt himself blackout from the sheer intensity, the last thing in his vision being Amanda’s pink tongue creeping back up his body and smudging goop all over his face wetly like a mother dog on its pup.

Jason quickly came to again, though, as he felt himself hitting the hard shag carpeted ground.  He obviously hadn’t been dropped from the table height, as it would have killed him instantly, but Jason had a feeling Amanda hadn’t made the effort to drop him from right next to the ground.  Wiping loose, freshly cracked dried glue from his arms, Jason turned around to find himself facing five long, almost finger-like toes, painted a threateningly gothic black along the nails.  The big toe lifted up, curling against the carpet, then slid forward, the entire foot dragging along with a shuffling noise against the material of the floor.  Jason pulled himself groggily up, losing more dry crumbles of old glue still attached to his body as he stumbled forward wearily; he didn’t get far, though, before the toe rammed into him, knocking him over against the hard surface of the nail.  He rolled over, aching a little, but at the same time feeling the lingering effects of the almost infinite euphoria. 

Another instant later, Martha plopped onto the carpet right next to Jason, still crying and shivering from the pain and the cold.  The blood seemed to have dried again, but enough had soaked into the band-aid that Jason knew his wife had to be feeling woozy.  And now, Jason couldn’t help but want to forgive his wife’s inability to know simple facts about him, when he had so horribly failed to look upon Amanda’s admittedly gorgeous body without reacting.  She was feeling just as much literal pain as he had felt at her earlier failure.  Probably more, realized Jason, as he looked upon her more closely while approaching her cautiously.

“Martha…” he whispered, his voice choked.  “I’m… I’m so sorry…”

“D-Don’t be… J-Jason…” she said, cringing as she pulled herself to her feet.  She almost fell again, but Jason was quick to throw out a shoulder for her to help support herself again.  “I… I’m s-sorry too…”

“Martha…”

“Jason?”

“Hellooooo, love birds!” called out the voice from far above as Amanda leaned over to get a better look at them, standing before her bare, polished toes on the carpet.  She wiggled them again, her big toe alone just as long as Jason’s body.  “I’m going to count to…” she said, chewing it over for a moment, biting her lip and looking up, before leaning down closer to them, “…TWO HUNDRED.  And when I get there, well… I’m going to come… and I’m going to find you.  And then we’ll play another game.  Together,” she said coolly, leaning against the table and crossing one foot over the other, arching her foot against the carpet, placing her heel at a towering height above the cowering couple.  Her wrinkled sole folded over itself a bit, looking a blushed red still from the pounding it took in her workout earlier, and Jason could easily distinguish dark red circles along the ball of her foot as big as his head.  Blisters.

“One…” cooed Amanda calmly and slowly, leaning her head playfully against her shoulder and pulling her eyes away from her two tiny playthings far below on the ground.  “Twooooo…”

                “Martha, come on!” said Jason firmly without sounding pushy, placing his other arm over Martha’s back to support her, and the pair began hobbling forward across the massive expanse of shag carpet, surrounded by table legs that stretched into the sky like temple pillars, the countertops like office buildings, the flower pots like oak trees.  Jason didn’t really have much of a plan; he just saw what looked like an opportunity to get away.  Amanda was insane beyond belief; that much was certain.  However, she was also (painfully) a woman of her word, and Jason had a strong feeling just as strong as the one that she would indeed engage in another game if she could catch them: she would count to two hundred before coming.  And that meant that if he made a real effort to find a hiding place with his wife until a real opportunity to get out of the apartment presented itself, he might redeem himself for the last of Amanda’s “games.”

                Exiting the kitchen with Martha and heading into what seemed like Amanda’s bedroom, Jason heard Amanda continuing to count with a mercifully slow pace as she hit the number thirty-eight.  Shivering, Jason knew that with how cocky she was about her position of power, she felt she could take all the time she wanted to count and still manage to find them.

                The sheets of the bed hung neatly downward like cascading spires of thick, quilted fabric, looking to Jason like an endless sequence of Oriental rugs stitched neatly together.  His eyes darted around the room desperately, looking for a hiding spot.  Shelves containing books, all ordered perfectly in bookends, sat dozens of stories above his head, far out of reach.  A vanity with a tall mirror was positioned against the wall.  There was plenty of legroom underneath it, making it impractical as a hiding place.  A walk-in closet was accessible through the far wall.  Ideal, but far away.  Jason looked at Martha, whose eyes were drooping a bit.

                “Martha?  Can you make it over there?” he asked, pointing to the door.  She winced a little, looked to it, then nodded slowly.  “Are you sure?”

                “Just… g-get us out of here, Jason,” she wheezed, hugging herself a little closer to his body.  In spite of the horrible situation, Jason felt oddly comforted by his estranged wife’s embrace, even though he knew it was mostly just so she could stand up easier.

                “All right,” he answered gravely, taking off for the door with new fortitude.  Listening carefully to the other room, Jason heard Amanda reach ninety-seven just as they passed the threshold of the closet.  The clothes hung like a jungle of dresses and pants all around them.  A high rack of a dozen or so truck-sized shoes was stored to the left.  Jason rubbed his temple feverishly, his breathing becoming heavier.  Never in his life had he had this much responsibility thrown into his lap.  Not only was he now obligated to protect his own life and that of his wife, but their lives were actually being actively threatened without ceasing, and there was no clear escape.  It wasn’t like being mugged, or held up, where he could simply surrender and almost guarantee his safety.  Surrendering was actually worse than fighting back in this case, and now Jason was faced with a miniscule opportunity for escape.  He would never forgive himself if he failed now.

                Jason’s eyes caught on the base of a wooden hamper, which seemed to have a tiny crawlspace underneath between the base and the carpet.  It looked just tall enough for himself and Martha to get underneath on their stomachs.  Indicating gently to his wounded wife to move toward it, Jason stopped in front of it, gulping and helping Martha into a crouching position.

                “Jason…”

                “I know, but it’s the best place to go… I think…” mumbled Jason guiltily.

                “Help me,” Martha asked, lowering herself onto her stomach and scooching forward with Jason’s assistance.  With Martha safely in the hiding place, Jason made his move as well, joining her underneath.

                They crawled as far into the middle as they could go, encased completely in darkness.  The wooden base of the hamper didn’t leave any wiggle room at all, forcing the pair to plant their faces against the carpet, which led to the extensive number of dust balls rolling around underneath getting caught in their faces and hair.  Jason kept his eyes trained on the crack of light leading into Amanda’s bedroom, unable to hear the colossal captor’s active count any longer.

                “Jason…”

                “Yeah?” he asked, distracted still with keeping watch over the opening.

                “We… I… I think we need to talk about…”

                “We’ll get there when we get there, Martha; I’m not sure what we’re going to do next.  We just… have to camp here for a little while.”

                “That’s not what I mean…”

                “What, then?” asked Jason, on edge.

                “I want to talk about us.”

                Jason looked in her general direction, even though the darkness was obscuring him from seeing her face clearly, disbelieving.

                “Us?  Here?  Now?”

                “Yes,” she said softly, sounding resolute.  “I want to talk about us now.”

                “Martha, we’re… I mean, look at us.  We’re hiding.  We… We might not be safe for much longer,” stumbled Jason, unable to bring himself to point out the obvious fact that he and his wife could very well be dead soon.

                “Exactly,” said Martha.

                At this point, Jason understood, and crawled a few millimeters closer to his wife to hear her whispers better.  “Oh… um, okay.”

                “I…” began Martha, unsure exactly of what to say.

                “Martha, we’re…”

                “No, Jason, let me talk.  I… I j-just want to make sure we’re okay with… one another… I mean, just in case we…” she stuttered, equally unable to admit the possibility of their fates.

                Jason sighed.  “I know.  I do too.  I just… you can’t understand how it’s been for me.  I’ve never been able to handle anything like this, I… I just feel like I…”

                “Then MAKE me understand!” begged Martha, touching his shoulder.

                “I’ve… never heard much from you about… about our way of life.  I don’t mean I wanted thanks.  I just… never felt like I had provided enough for you.  Like it wasn’t enough.  I…”

                “Jason, I never wanted you to think that, I j-just…”

                “What?”

                “You’re out there.  Everyday.  I know you told me that you wanted to provide for me, and didn’t want me to have to work, but… I w-want to.”

                Jason wrinkled his forehead, ruffling his saliva-sticky hair.  “Martha…”

                “When I was in college, I used to have… all these dreams.  Things I wanted to do, you know?  I wanted to… I wanted to start my own company, maybe.  I don’t know.  Something.  And then, after we got married, all of that just… well, it had to go away…”

                This time, Jason laid a hand on his wife’s cold shoulder.  “Martha, I would never have wanted you to do all that…”

                “I know you didn’t, but that’s just what happened.  I don’t think either of us wanted to do anything about it.”

                “It wasn’t that Martha, it was just, we… well… we just never…”

                “Talked,” finished Martha, and Jason nodded silently in the dark.  At this, he actually had to suppress a chuckle.  Even though he was currently hiding under a dusty clothes hamper, his life in more danger than it had ever been before in his life, he was actually feeling the odd feeling coming back, stronger than before.  It was something that felt so foreign, and yet familiar, like a childhood memory.  But it wasn’t that old, he realized now as he slipped comfortably back into it like a good, worn-out high school jersey.  It wasn’t what he had been expecting or even able to predict, but it was here.  Something that hadn’t been there since shortly after he had been married.

                “I love you, Martha,” he stated simply, closing his eyes in the dark.  Silence hung for a minute.

                “What did you say?”

                “I said I love you, Martha,” he repeated in the same tone.  “I… I guess I just…”

                “Forgot,” she answered in an understanding voice.  “Me too.”

                “Really?” he asked, with growing hope.  She moved her face closer to his, so he could hear his lowest whisper.  She sniffled lightly, coughing as she inhaled a few more dust particles.

                “Yes.”

                For a few moments, Jason and Martha simply breathed in and out, listening to one another.  Jason was, shockingly to himself, content.  Completely content.  He grabbed Martha’s cheeks gently and pulled her in, quickly pecking her on the lips.  He pulled away, giving her space, but Martha didn’t allow this, grasping a little more roughly at Jason’s head and yanking him closer, giving him the most passionate kiss either of them had experienced in the last year.

                The moment was split up with a gleeful, girly shout from far off: “TWO HUNDRED!”