Funland by Richard Laymon

smoothness of her skin. Her hand crept down into the front of his pants and stroked him.
    “Why don’t we go back to the motel?” he whispered.
    “Why don’t we not?”
    “I don’t like it here.”
    “Feels like you like it.”
    He squirmed.
    While she caressed him, he stared past the side of her head. The planks of the boardwalk were moon-bleached bone. The black shadows weren’t empty. They were hiding places.
    I’m really getting paranoid, he told himself.
    And felt his pants drop down around his ankles. The wind wrapped his bare skin.
    “Woops,” Kim said.
    He bent over. As he grabbed the top of his pants, Kim tugged the blanket off him and whirled away with it and trotted down the stairs to the beach.
    “Dammit, Kim!”
    She danced on the sand, spinning and swinging the blanket overhead like a giant flag.
    Baxter pulled his drawstring tight and knotted it. He descended the stairs. Not rushing. Watching Kim cavort.
    He stepped off the last stair. The sand was soft and silent under his shoes. It pushed this way and that as he walked toward her. He wanted to run at her and grab her and carry her to safety. But if he made quick moves, she would flee, laughing.
    He stopped. “Come here,” he said.
    She smiled. She draped the blanket over her shoulders. “What’ll you give me?”
    “A kiss.”
    “What else?”
    “Kim, come on. I mean it. This place gives me the creeps.”
    “I think it’s neat.”
    He made a dash for her.
    Kim lurched aside. He grabbed a handful of the blanket, but she got away. Laughing, just as he’d guessed. She ran along the beach, kicking up plumes of sand, angling gradually closer to the dark shadow cast by the boardwalk. Baxter, in pursuit, couldn’t rush full speed because of the blanket. He gathered it in as he chased her. Once it was wadded and pinned under his left arm, he began to catch up. But Kim was already far ahead of him.
    She looked over her shoulder. In a singsong voice she called, “Slowpoke, slowpoke, you’re so slow it ain’t no joke.”
    Doesn’t she realize?
    Realize what? We’re alone out here. She’s having a good time. I’m the one with the problem.
    But Baxter didn’t like the way she was getting closer to the boardwalk, closer to its long shadow and the dark land of pilings below the fun zone.
    She glanced back at him again. “Catch!” she called, and pulled the sweatshirt over her head and tossed it high. The wind snagged the shirt and tossed it toward the shadow. Baxter almost caught a sleeve as it tumbled away. He dodged to the left and snatched it off the sand at the edge of the darkness. He ran a few more strides, then had an idea. He stopped.
    “So long, Kim. Have fun walking back to the motel.”
    She slowed. She halted. She turned around and put her hands on her hips. Her chest was heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Her breasts rose and fell. The rest of her skin was dusky. Her breasts looked as if they’d been dipped in cream. And the cream had been licked off the nipples, leaving them dark.
    Baxter stared at her. She stared back.
    “I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” she said.
    The beach seemed no less forbidding than before, and Baxter felt as if eyes were watching from the black area under the boardwalk, but Kim was right. He no longer had the urge to escape from this place.
    Kim was bare to the waist, exposed and vulnerable.
    Baxter wanted her.
    He wanted her right here, right now.
    Hands still on her hips, Kim ambled toward him.
    He glanced into the dark forest of pilings, and shivered, and knew he wouldn’t run.
    His fear, moments ago crying out warnings to flee, now felt like icy fingers caressing him, tickling and stroking him, the fingers of a phantom whore sick with lust and aching for the party to start.
    Kim halted a few paces in front of him.
    “You must be freezing,” he said.
    “I’m not. Feels good.”
    He supposed the running had warmed her up. He no longer felt the cold himself. The shivers that