Miriam's Fall From Grace

This is the first story in a series. Nothing can be copied, used, or reproduced without the permission of the author.

I looked around the room with a sense of relief and satisfaction as I dropped into my favorite chair in the entertainment room of my new home. It had been a long day of telephone interviews and library research, followed by almost five hours of solid writing, but I had worked my way through over sixty-five hundred words of painstakingly detailed new technical text and also made a good start on the "first pass" reread/edit process on a long-term contract proposal for an important new client. Now I could sit down without any guilt and enjoy tonight's ball game and a couple drinks in my new home. The house was almost twenty years old, but it was new to me and that's what counted. I knew myself well enough to know that I'd never want to be in some kind of sterile box with six foot trees and cheap landscaping. I had picked a moderately stylish structure placed within a grove of fully mature oak and hickory trees with good lighting, mature landscaping and several perennial planting beds already established. This should have meant that life was filled with bliss and blue skies all the day long. In fact, the last few weeks had been filled with intermittent problems due to the move, several issues, actually, that were all from one single problem. My best friend, and house partner, was having adjustment issues.

Buddy and I had been together for three years. I had adopted him from the local shelter as a pup, and the little, black, Lab/Shepherd mutt had grown into a fine fellow. living a couple miles out of town in an old farmhouse was the only life that Buddy knew. The place was only a little more than an acre, but all the homes in the area were set into similar or larger parcels of land and the old place seemed spacious by comparison to Buddy. He had been pretty good about staying at home while living at the old place, for the most part, that is, but Buddy did have the run of the neighborhood and there were a couple of widows and older couples who were more than happy to supply all the snack treats and bones he could want. He was used to running his "meat route" daily. Unfortunately, my career success made it necessary for me to move and we had ended up just inside the town limits, in a very nice place on roughly a quarter of the land Buddy was used to having as his personal buffer zone to the world at large. I was making the adjustment nicely, waving and smiling at all the new neighbors, even though sometimes things did seem awfully close quartered, and generally getting along nicely enough with everyone in the area. Having less grass to cut and landscaping to keep up with was also a blessing, what with my new schedule and a larger set of deadlines. I was happy here. Buddy was having some issues.

Buddy just couldn't get it through his head that some people didn't want to see his bright eyes and smiling face at their door looking for handouts. I kept him inside or on a wire run in the backyard most of the time, but let him run free when I was outside to supervise. I was trying to teach him manners and to stay at home and respect property limits. Most of the neighbors were fine with Buddy and just sent him on his way when he would stray too far, he even got along with the other dogs in the neighborhood, but my next door neighbors on one side were not happy.

Buddy had made the mistake of chasing a squirrel past the property line and following it right on into their yard. And that's when he came face to face with the mistress of the manor next door for the very first time.

Buddy bounded around the corner of the house, just behind the squirrel, which was clawing its way right up and over her back to launch itself from off of her shoulder on its way to the squirrel feeder and the safety of the trees beyond that, just as she was filling the feeder with shelled corn and peanuts. She screamed and spun around to face her intruder, corn spilling everywhere, and Buddy, startled by unexpectedly finding himself confronted with a complete stranger, didn't make things any better by letting out a loud bay of his own in return. Miriam stumbled backwards in shock and awe, hooked her heel on the border stones by the patio, and sat down abruptly on concrete. Her tailbone was throbbing painfully and her dignity was in tatters. The last thing she needed was wet kisses from a strange one hundred pound dog who thought she had sat down specifically to introduce herself and pet him!

I made apologies for Buddy, called him off, and helped her up. Miriam was cordial and understanding, but it's just not how you're supposed to meet the neighbors. In the next week, things didn't get any better. Buddy violated jurisdictional boundaries several times in what he unilaterally considered hot pursuit, broke the lead to the wire once, leaving him free for several minutes, and Miriam went to bat for her favorite local wildlife with all the fervor of an anti-war activist. Her doughy husband, (I still don't know his first name, Jerry, I think!), made the mistake of threatening both of us while standing up for his wife. By the time that exchange was over, (public sidewalks must have been invented by cowards), I had made it plain that as far as I was concerned we could all live in peace, with the squirrels mostly taking care of themselves, or someone could get hurt real bad, but "my" dog wasn't going anywhere!

A week or so went by, and then one day Buddy started moping about and acting listless. It wasn't the heat, (too early in summer for that), but he had a bad case of diarrhea, quit eating, and didn't act like he was feeling well. The vet said he looked anemic by the color of his gums, and sold me some vitamin and mineral supplements. We wrote it off to the change in location and activity level.

Three days later I walked out the back door to bring Buddy inside, just at dusk, and noticed he was chewing on something in his mouth that he greedily swallowed before I could see what it was. Then I heard door closing sounds over at Miriam's place, but nobody came outside. I went back in for a flashlight and looked around on the ground where Buddy had been eating. I didn't find much more than a couple of broken pieces, but it looked like the fish flavored bait pellets I had bought to kill mice out in the garden shed at the old place.

I went back inside and stuck my fingers down Buddy's throat until he brought up some cooked hamburger and more pellets! I took them over to the vet and he confirmed my identification, cautioned me about letting buddy get into stuff like that, (I omitted the part about the hamburger), told me how lucky I was, and sent me home to worry while Buddy spent the night with the vet.

I came home, fuming and skipped my dinner while doing a little brainstorming and internet research, and also knocking back a couple of drinks. The end result was a plan and a trip into the city, first thing the next morning. I picked up Buddy in the afternoon and watched everything carefully whenever Buddy was outside for the next week or so. Twice I caught Miriam walking a curious circular path when taking bags of trash out to the big cans behind their shed. This was also something I only saw her do when Buddy was outside by himself as well. She would walk a random path through the side yard near our property line while intently looking around on the ground and over her flower beds and such like she was searching for something that was missing, all the while carrying the bag of trash instead of dumping it in the can first and then wandering about. It looked a bit forced and awkward to me, and she seemed mostly interested in only this side of her backyard. I came out a couple of times and noticed she would break off, going straight to the trashcan as soon as she knew I was there, and then quick march straight back inside the house with her back ramrod stiff and never looking to either side.

At least the view was nice. Miriam was a dark mahogany redhead with a few accents of grey, better than average size tits that were still firm and perky. She was fairly tall due to a pair of long lean legs hooked to a fine looking ass; overall a pretty good figure for a woman in her later forties. Her ass was pleasantly generous, well muscled instead of blubber, and still carried high and firm. No hint of a satchel ass or saddlebags on this chassis. Her stiff-backed walk made her tits bounce deliciously, proving that she was still in pretty good shape for her age. The second time I intercepted her during one of these excursions, I went out the front door and came around the opposite side of the house. Miriam, almost crossing over into my yard by that point, made an immediate reversal in direction and went to her trash cans by the shed before bee-lining back to the house. Despite the low light of late evening, I still noticed that something had caused her adrenaline levels to skyrocket. Her cheeks were flushed high scarlet and her large nipples were erect and prominently on display under a thin shirt. By the way they were tenting the material of her cotton tee-shirt due to their fully erect condition; they had to be more than a half an inch long and thicker than my little finger. She seemed awfully nervous and hurriedly marched straight inside with one hand up to her throat while wiping the other on her shorts as she walked quickly to their back door.

I pulled Buddy inside and waited for it to get dark. Then, I pulled the blackout flashlight from my kit, checked to make sure the red filter was in place, checked the batteries, waited another thirty minutes, until it was fully dark, and then turned off all the lights and sat down in the darkened living room with my eyes closed for a good fifteen minutes to make sure my night vision was at its peak. I left the house by the front door, turned and walked around the corner on the far side of the house, turned again and went all the way to the back of the property before finally turning towards the other property line and the spot beside the garden shed where Miriam and her husband kept their trash cans. I set the lens for a diffuse beam and cupped the flashlight with my hand to throttle back the light output, keeping it aimed down just beyond my feet as I crossed over the line into Miriam's back yard and walked up to their trash cans.

Thank God for plastic cans! I silently lifted the lid to the first can. Seeing that it was empty, I replaced the cover and pulled off the lid for number two. There, sitting right on top of the bag of trash Miriam had put in the can was a baseball sized chunk of cooked ground meat. Putting the light between my teeth, I picked it up and it was still slightly warm.

I replaced the lid and retreated back to my own yard, retracing my path before turning and cutting directly across the grass to go in the back door and into the kitchen. There I broke open the meatball in the sink and spilled out the small pile of poison pellets cached inside. I was seeing as red as the light from the lamp in my hand, so I bagged the poisoned meat, cleaned up the kitchen, and sat down to let myself calm down and figure out how best to handle this. Then I went back out and quietly dumped Miriam's can over, pulled the lid off and scattered bits and pieces of trash and garbage from inside the bag she had left there. With any luck, she would think she had baited some poor raccoon family to an early death.

The next day I went back into the city and purchased the spotting camera I had looked at earlier and a few other items I was going to need. I played fetch with Buddy and let him run free in the back yard while I puttered around in the flower beds and such, trying to be inconspicuous about making my preparations for later. Just before dusk, I pulled out of the driveway in my pickup, leaving Buddy out on the lead in the backyard. Parking a few streets over, I waited out most of the light by walking a big circle and came in from the other side where my return path was screened from Miriam's windows by the house.

When it was almost totally dark I quietly pulled Buddy inside and set up the infrared video camera on the mounting post I had installed in the flowerbed beside the back door, plugging it up to the buried power supply and data cables as well. I went back inside, checked the video image on the computer, and picked up the motion sensitive spotting camera, checked the battery charge and my earlier setup to make sure it would flash properly and take wide-angle color images roughly covering a fifteen foot by fifteen foot area, all in good focus, and walked back outside. I made a slight adjustment to the video camera and walked out to the tree near where Buddy usually rested while he spent time on the line. There I set the camera into its mounting bracket I had earlier installed on the side of the tree opposite Miriam's property so the camera couldn't be seen by anyone from their side and the motion sensitive camera wouldn't trigger unless something was well inside my property lines.

After going inside to check the computer screen again and being satisfied that I was getting a good image of the targeted side of my backyard, I picked up the small digital camera and the flashlight and went back out into the night. There I settled into the folding chair I had picked up from beside the back door on my way out and parked myself a few yards away from and obliquely behind the spotting camera, careful to make sure I was still shielded from Miriam's backdoor by a conveniently placed burning bush growing in the yard. Without any light from my patio it would be impossible for anyone to see me from Miriam's side until they were well into my yard and I became silhouetted by the street light at the next corner and light coming from the house on the other side of mine.

I settled into the chair, pulled a hat down over my eyes, and waited for something to happen until well past midnight. I did the same thing for the next three nights in a row, checking the ground carefully every morning before I let Buddy out to make sure I wasn't bushwhacked by someone willing to outwait me.

On the fourth night, it rained lightly for several hours, enough to completely soak and chill me, and then I gave it up and went inside as the rain got heavy enough to really start drenching me. I toweled off, changed clothes, and moved to the computer, watching the video monitor record the rainfall and sipping on a beer. Just before midnight it let up and I had almost called it a night, but decided to go back out for a bit because Miriam's house still had some faint light showing through the windows. The usual pattern had been complete blackout by ten o'clock or just a bit after that on nearly every single night. I knew her husband was always up early in the mornings because I heard their car and the garage door every morning before six am.

The soft snap of a twig was my first alert and I just had enough time to cover my eyes and protect my night vision when the flash on the spotting camera began firing at three frames a second. I pulled hard on the camouflage patterned parachute cord I had carefully strung in a complex pattern of trip lines crisscrossing the target box covered by the camera. The trip lines came up to their intended six inches height, and I had just enough time to pull all the slack out of the lines, before there was an answering pull against the line I was holding, a wavering cry of fear, and a solid thump as something big hit the wet ground hard.

The camera shut down automatically after five seconds. I flipped on the red light. The wide angle spot illuminated Miriam sprawled out at my feet. She was flat on her back, gasping in silent agony as she lay there trying to re-inflate her lungs. The deer in the headlights look on her face told me that she had taken a hard fall, probably bouncing her head off the damp ground as well as fully emptying her lungs and paralyzing her diaphragm when she hit the ground. Her eyes were moving rapidly without really seeing anything but the afterimages of all the camera flashes. I reached over and shut off the spotting camera after firing it for another three second burst.

She had managed to tangle both feet in the trip lines by hooking the lines as she fell and then churning her legs about when turning around to run away. The result was a pair of feet neatly snared at the ankles by thin, almost unbreakable, nylon parachute cord and they would stay that way as long as I kept the lines tight. She had continued spinning as she fell, finally landing flat on her back with nothing to break her fall, knocking the air completely out of her body as the weight of her organs pushed her diaphragm high into her chest cavity from the momentum of her fall.

I watched her struggle for a minute, keeping the light shining directly into her eyes as I focused the beam down into a smaller cone of red light just large enough to light her face and upper body. After a minute I could hear her starting to get some air back inside her chest and when her eyes oriented to the red beam of light aimed into her face, I decided to press my advantage, keeping her mentally off balance and confused as much as possible.

I set the flashlight down aiming it to keep Miriam illuminated while also grabbing the digital camera from the cup holder in the chair, closed my eyes tightly, and popped the flash right in front of her face, keeping her blinded for the moment. I dropped my voice a little and told her to "Freeze! Stay right where you are".

Miriam whimpered, a tremulous little bit of sound coming from deep in the back of her throat at the sound of my voice, and drew in a ragged sobbing breath. I knew right then that she was really scared. Her trapped legs were thrashing about and her hands were plucking at the cords randomly, but she wasn't really going anywhere.

I brusquely told her to stop moving and lay still. She started whimpering again and I could see her arms were trembling with shock and fear. Her whole upper body was shaking, making her tits bounce suggestively under her tee shirt. She started reaching for her ankles and I pulled harshly on the line, to make her realize that someone else had control of her feet. I triggered another burst from the flash camera and she let out a soft wail of fear.

"Don't hurt me anymore, please!" she sobbed. "I'm not going to run away." She was starting to cry real tears, now. Big ones that cascaded down her cheeks on both sides when she screwed her eyes tightly shut after I hit the flash again.

I had messed it up a little bit that time, too. I forgot to close my eyes tightly enough and needed to stall for time while I recovered some vision myself. I was just lucky that I hadn't been looking directly into the light and would recover much faster than Miriam.

She sat there quietly crying while I waited for the flash afterimage to die down a bit. The first thing I could see when my eyesight returned was Miriam's nipples were jutting out prominently from her rapidly rising and falling chest. They rose and fell with her rapid breathing; seemingly to swell with each breath and her tits would bounce delightfully with every shuddering sob Miriam was taking. Miriam's knees were splayed out to either side and I could see a band of thin cloth tightly stretched while covering her gash through the leg hole of her jogging shorts. The lips of her pussy were clearly outlined by the tightly stretched material. I triggered another flash right in her face to give my vision more of an edge and Miriam let out another low quavering moan of fear and lowered her upper body back to the wet ground from held upright with her weight against her shaking arms. She lay there sobbing heavily with her hands plucking futilely at the parachute cord and her splayed legs hanging slackly wide open in utter defeat. Her tits were flattened out but her nipples still jutted straight out and those tits were really rocking and rolling as her chest shook with each shuddering breath.