Linda point-blank absolutely 100% refused to follow after Patricia. But then she had a change of heart. Something about looking at the long list of G-zee’s misdemeanors, felonies, and manslaughter both intentional and unintentional, helped to soften her otherwise steel-resolved heart.

After an hour of sitting in her Prius, Linda knew she would be unable to fool herself. She pinched her lips together, pulled out her not-cell phone, and turned the Prius on. Even as she pulled up the coordinates of Orwell’s Rescue Farm when the new she was wasting valuable resources on an invaluable person. Nonetheless, this was unable to stop her.

Twelve minutes later, Linda pulled up to the farm, slid out from the Prius, slipped through the clumsy forcefield of the shrubbery, and snuck her way into G-zee’s “home”.

But Linda and G-zee both knew it was a front. G-zee, however, did not know that Linda knew. And neither Linda nor G-zee knew that Patricia knew, and that was the start of the mayhem.

Linda slunk through the living room, her small feet barely disturbing more than 20 pounds of dust. She reached the archway that lead into the kitchen, keeping her back pressed against the wall and holding her hands as though they were holding a gun. They hadn’t in several years, but old habits die hard. As Linda had been doing her slunking about, short snaps of dialogue sounded from the kitchen, punctuated by short gagging noises.

“Pineapple,” a faint voice called.

“I think we’re a little beyond safe words,” Linda peered around the corner.

Then very desperately wished she hadn’t, while at the same time quite glad she had.

Patricia was topless, as far as Linda could glimpse, and for someone who had claimed to be a nudist, her breasts were startlingly white. Linda scrubbed her face and tried to focus on the relevant details she had seen. Although Linda failed to realize the white-ink tattoo stamped onto Patricia’s left breast, just above the areola was actually quite relevant.

“Pineapple,” G-zee tried again.

Linda hadn’t considered that Patricia would be able to handle herself against the crazed murderer and did not know if she should reveal herself now to intervene on G-zee’s behalf, or simply wait outside and let nature take its course.

Patricia decided for her.“You gonna help or what, Linda?”

Linda stepped out from the living room, her eyes carefully focused on the mop that rested beside the fridge. “It seems you don’t need help.”

Linda spoke far too soon.

G-zee’s long, spindly fingers finally reached underneath the lip of the counter and grasped the pistol he had taped under there for far-fetched moments such as these. It was one of the benefits of having complex guilt and mild-to-moderate paranoia. Primed and ready, G-zee ripped the pistol from it’s hiding place, took no aim whatsoever, and grazed Patricia’s thigh with the bullet.

All the same, a graze from a bullet is painful, and the ringing in the ears from being so close from discharge is more than annoying.

“Shit!” Patricia screamed as she fell to the floor, clutching her thigh.

Linda didn’t say a damned thing. She raced into the room and tackled G-zee from behind.

G-zee turned to aim his next shot at Linda but was woefully slow. Linda’s hands wrapped around G-zee’s waist and she tackled him to the ground, on top of a very nude, and bleeding Patricia.

If a person had been walking about Orville’s farm, hear the commotion, entered into the hedges around the house, and managed to find the window that looked into the kitchen, they would probably think they had found an orgy.

What they would actually see was one totally nude person, at last in her true element, reaching for a gun, one partially clothed individual also reaching for a gun, and one completely dressed and also at last in her true element person going the direct opposite way from the other people but nonetheless tangled betwixt their bodies.

“I’ve got—“ Patricia began to shout.

G-zee crawled over Patricia and slammed his fist on top of her hand, knocking the gun from her possession. “Ha!”

Patricia knocked her elbow back into G-zee’s nose, then turned onto her back, quick to wrap her hands around his scrawny neck. A familiar lightness began to tingle in Patricia’s loins and her eyes danced with the glow of a lover.

G-zee squirmed. He knew that look, he knew exactly what Patricia was feeling since he had felt it just before he killed every one of his 16 victims.

“Pineapple,” he whispered hoarsely. The last safeword he could ever remember.

The pop of a shot rang out in the kitchen, and G-zee’s head exploded.

It was quite gross.