Stella: When I awoke, the room was dark and cold. My face was buried in Matty’s sweaty breasts. Matty breathed slowly as she slept. I jumped out of bed and walked carefully to the door. It was still locked when I tried it. I took a swig of whiskey and opened the windows. It had stopped snowing and there was a clear blue sky. I checked my watch and it was 2 in the afternoon. I figured that the Todhunters had left us here to freeze to death. They might check on us soon. I did not know when. I decided to wake up Matty.

Matty: I got out of bed and Stella showed me the clear skies. The sun was out, and we could see her car from the window. I told her that we would have to escape out of the window by tying the bedsheets together and making a rope. I had seen it getting done in the movies. We put some clothes on and stuffed whatever money we had, the car key and our wallets into our jeans. We pulled a couple of sheets off the bed and tied them together. I took a spare jean out of my bag and tied it to the end of the bedsheet. I placed a chair near the windowsill and climbed onto it. The steel curtain rod looked sturdy and it felt heavy in my hands when I removed it off the rod holder. Stella passed me the rope that we made with the bedsheets and my jeans. I hooked the jeans onto the curtain rod through a belt loop. I placed the curtain rod back into the holder and got down.

Stella: We threw the rope out of the window and it hung around five feet from the icy ground. I told Matty to go down first and that I would follow her. I held a part of the bedsheet in my hand, in case the curtain rod gave, as Matty slid down the rope first unsteadily and then finding her grip. She fell easily onto the icy snow. She was up on her feet in a jiffy, looking around her and then signalled to me to come down. I wrapped my body around the rope and went down easily. It helped that I was quite thin. I fell beside Matty and she gave me a hand up.

Matty: We dashed towards the car. There was no sign of the Todhunters. Stella got into the driver’s seat and started the car as I got in beside her. She raced the car a few times before we sped off the motel grounds. I looked back at the motel to see if the Todhunters were following us but there was no sign of them. Stella sped across the narrow winding roads and we reached the highway in a canter. There was no other car on the highway behind us. I heaved a sigh a of relief. Then I remembered my typewriter.

Stella: I knew a small town called Gackle, on the highway between Bismarck and Fargo. It had a nice little hotel called Arnie’s run by an old man named Arnie and his wife. I had stopped over there on the way to a film festival, a few years ago. We decided to drive down there. I drove continuously and we reached Gackle in a couple of hours. Matty bought a couple of Jim Beam’s at the local liquor store. I called the newspaper and told Joey about what had happened to us. He told me how sorry he was and that he just wanted to book us into the most obscure place in North Dakota. He said he would call the Sheriff and inform him about the Todhunters. He still asked if we could post the new column. He had to run a newspaper after all. I said we would do the best we could. I exited the phone booth and looked around Gackle, taking in the fresh air. It was a typical American small town. It had a gas station, a liquor store, a bar, a little diner and a drugstore. All on the same road. Nothing complicated. As I enjoyed the idyllic small-town ambience, I felt relaxed. Matty came out of the liquor store with the bottles and we got into the car.

Matty: Stella drove the car off the road into a pathway which took us to the grassy banks of a little stream. She killed the engine and we sat there for a few moments. It was a clear evening. I opened a Jim Beam, took a couple of swigs and handed the bottle to Stella. She hit the bottle hard. I pulled her towards me, and our lips locked together in a tender kiss. Then Stella’s kissing gathered steam and we threw our arms around each other.

Stella: Matty smelled of sweat and whiskey. The Jim Beam had gone to my head and my sexual arousal was tinged with belligerence. As we kissed, I got off my seat, moving sideways and lowered myself onto Matty's lap. She welcomed me eagerly and we kissed with our upper bodies pressed together. We took our shirts off and embraced tightly, clinging to each other in the narrow space of the front seat, taut hard breasts jammed against each other.

Matty: Stella's mouth was pummelling my face. I fought back with my tongue and our mouths were literally glued together. We buried our fingers in each other's hair as we kissed. Her kissing was fast and intense, our mouths shifting in various angles of contact as her tongue briskly battled mine. Stella had always been the aggressor in our sexual union and this encounter was no different. I deliberately slowed the pace of my kissing, withdrawing my tongue from hers in short intervals, intent on calming her down. She seemed to understand, and we kissed slowly, letting our tongues linger over each other. I caught her by surprise when I pushed some saliva from my mouth into hers. We transferred saliva into each other's mouths as we kissed slowly. I was glad to have exerted some control over Stella.

Stella: I was enjoying the intimacy of the two of us exchanging saliva when Matty aggressively pulled my hands over my head. She buried her face in my armpit, licking at my sweat. What she did to me, I had to do to her as well in this frenzied sexual back and forth that we were locked together in. I licked one sweaty armpit and then moved to her other armpit, drinking down her salty sweat, enjoying her musky whisky sweat. Eager to not be left behind in this escalation of sexual intimacy between us, I unbuckled my jeans and inserted two fingers into my dripping vagina, until it was covered with my nether fluid. I pushed the fingers into Matty's mouth, and she sucked on them like a baby. Matty was forced to match my move and she inserted her fingers into her vagina and then grabbed me by the hair and pushed her fingers into my mouth. I licked them eagerly, content in the knowledge that the culmination of this competitive exchange of bodily fluids had been initiated by me.

Matty: We had now exchanged saliva. Licked each other's armpits. Drank down the other's vaginal fluids. Stella and I had attained a level of sexual intimacy that most people could only fantasize about. So, when Stella grabbed me by the hair and asked me if I was hers, I rasped a yes, just before our mouths locked together again.

THE END