by Sweet, Izzy
Gremlin snickers loudly as the head rolls off the pile of body parts and lands at his feet with a wet thump.
Lifting it up by the hair, he turns it to face him. “What did this fucker do?”
Jude shrugs his thick shoulders, and I notice that despite the messy state of the body, his suit is still pristine. “Fuck if I know. I was told to make it last and make sure he didn’t go peacefully.”
Fuck.
This is going to be a mess. At least some of the body has already been cut up… I guess there’s a silver lining in that.
Heading over to the workshop area, I start grabbing black rolls of plastic sheeting, rubber gloves, and three smocks.
Walking back over to Jude and Gremlin, I start handing the shit out, but Gremlin holds his hands up. “This one’s on you, prospect. I gotta take a piss.”
“Fucking dick,” I snap at him before I throw his set of shit over to the work area.
“We all gotta pay our dues, Coy, my boy,” Gremlin sing-songs at my ass as he walks out the back of the building.
Fucking animal doesn’t even use the fucking toilet, he just gonna piss on the side of the building.
Jude turns his cold eyes on me. “You’ve made your bones, Coy, this isn’t anything new.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I smirk at him. “But what the fuck did you do his dick? Jesus, fuck, man.”
Jude smiles like he’s fucking proud of himself. “I stuck a metal rod down it then I used an apple corer.”
He takes off his black suit jacket and heads over to an empty chair. Draping the jacket over the back of the chair, he removes his suit vest.
“The fuck?” I ask and begin debating my life choices.
“Eh, it was the start of our little heart to heart. I wanted to make sure I started off on the right foot,” Jude says, removing his crisp white shirt.
Underneath all the spit and polish of his clothing, this motherfucker is just like me. Fucking tatts all over his body and full sleeves. Looking over a few of them, I get a sense of his style. There’s demons and angels everywhere. Some are graphically beautiful and some look like the artistry of a child.
Grabbing the amputated feet, I look at him and ask, “Any reason you took the feet and hands off?”
“Call it professional pride, I guess. I wanted to see if I could remove them one by one at the end and not have him bleed out before I was done.”
Fuck, that’s… Well, that’s kinda talented, I think, after everything else that’s been done to the corpse.
“How did it go? Did you make it?” I ask as I throw the feet into the cremator we use for the larger animals.
Jude sighs. “I made it to the last foot before he died. I really should have cauterized the stumps, but I wanted to race myself.”
I chuckle because the fucker looks seriously disappointed in himself.
“Well, I’ve got a five-spot sayin’ you’ll get it next time,” I say, grinning at him.
Heading over to the back of the Tahoe, I start to reach in to grab the legs of the torso when Gremlin comes rushing into the building like the fucking devil himself is chasing him.
“Coy!” Gremlin shouts to me. “Where the fuck is your phone?!”
Slapping my hands down at my pockets, I look around for a moment, not feeling it in my back pocket. Walking over to the chair where my kutte is, I grab it out of my pocket.
“What the fuck?” I ask as I look at Gremlin then down to my phone.
Fuck me, I had it on silent.
On the home screen it shows I’ve got almost thirty missed calls, all back to back.
All from my old man.
“Dude, call your dad now,” Gremlin says, coming up to me and putting his hand on my shoulder.
Looking at his hand, I stare into his green eyes for a moment, trying to figure out why the fuck he’s touching me.
I don’t like people touching me, everyone in the fucking club knows that shit.
The only reason I even force myself to shake someone’s hand is because my old man wouldn’t let me get away with not doing it.
He doesn’t want me to look like a little bitch.
Fuck, it took Allie a full fucking month of constant touching to get past my reservations about touching outside of fucking. I love the girl with all my heart, but even with her I wasn’t too thrilled with it in the beginning. She broke through all those walls though, kicked ‘em down and said I’m here motherfucker, get used to it.
Allie’s the only one I let touch me. The only one who can touch me and not make my skin crawl.
And now that she’s broken the dam, I can’t get enough of how she feels against my skin. The soft, silky feel of her tender skin calls to my rough calloused hands.
Trying to shrug Gremlin’s hand off my shoulder doesn’t work though. He keeps it right where it is.
“Call him,” Gremlin says, and I can see he ain’t fuckin’ around.
Pushing dial on the phone, I only have to wait one ring before my old man comes on the line.
Short and to the point, he says, “Meet me at Baptist Health.”
* * *
Meet me at Baptist Health. Fuck. The old man didn’t say anything else. He disconnected as soon as he got that out.
Taking every curve and corner of the roads to the hospital at almost twice the posted speed limit pushes even my bike to the limits. I’ve done a lot of shit on this bike, but I’ve never pushed it like this.
The warm night blows cold against my skin as I push my steel bitch harder, and when I finally reach the hospital, it feels like I’m moving through the world at a snail’s pace.
My eyes aches from the intensity of the flashing lights coming from the ambulances and cop cars, but what causes my heart to drop in my chest is seeing a shit ton of the club’s bikes already here.
There’s even some of our club vans here for the guys who were too drunk to ride.
Fuck.
None of this is a good sign.
I slow my ride to a crawl as I meet up with most of the guys sitting outside on their bikes. Each one of these motherfuckers is a brother to me, and the grim looks on their faces stops me from asking the questions I need to find answers for.
I need to find the old man.
Shutting my bike down next to the guys, I climb off, and for some reason my legs feel like leaden rods.
“Where’s Hound?” I ask Whitey, the VP.
He’s one of the blackest men I’ve ever met, but his real name is Whitey and that’s what he wants us to call him so we roll with it.
His deep rumble comes out from behind his thick, long beard, “Coy…”
“What happened?” I ask. “Hound okay?”
“Head into the ER, he should be waitin’ for you right inside the doors,” Whitey says.
“What the fuck is going on?” I snarl more to myself than anyone else.
Jogging toward the entrance, I hear even more bikes pulling into the parking lot behind me. I want to look back to see if I can figure anything else out before I walk into whatever hell I’m about to enter, but I don’t.
The doors don’t open fast enough for me and I have to come to a stop in front of them. When I get past them, I look all around me and I can tell something’s gone down and it ain’t good.
My old man is standing at the reception desk, bent over, talking to a woman. His kutte showing the skull, wings, and bikes of the Royal Bastards.
When he turns at the sound of the doors sliding shut behind me, we stare at each other for a long time. His eyes showing emotions I can barely register.
He calls me over to the receptionist desk, his normal straight and rigid back almost bent. “Coy.”
I’ve never seen the old man look as tired as he does right now.
“What’s going on?” I ask when I finally cross the short distance.
It may have only been a few feet, but it feels like miles.
“Son…” he begins, but his voice trails off.
He hasn’t called me that in years, it’s always
Coy or prospect now.
Repeating the same three words, I feel like I’ve been asking them all night, “What’s going on?”
He straightens to his full height.
Looking me in the eyes, he says, “Coy, ain’t no easy way to say this.”
“Then fucking spit it out,” I growl at him, and he doesn’t even flinch at my insolent tone.
“Allison and Horse were in a bad wreck,” he says, watching my face.
His eyes hold nothing but sympathy for me, and I’ve never seen the look he’s giving me right now.
Accident.
Accident with any other vehicle wouldn’t carry the same gravity as this type does. Bike accidents are never a happily ever after type of story.
Never.
My voice comes out in a croak as it tries to get past the massive lump that’s forming in my throat. “How bad?”
“Real bad, Coy. Horse didn’t make it.” He puts an arm around my shoulders and leads me over to a small alcove that’s out of the way of all the people coming in and out of the ER.
“Allie?” I ask.
“She’s in a bad way. Thank any god you can thank, she was wearing your old leathers and a brain bucket,” he says, but with the way he’s talking, even more bad news is coming my way.
“Where is she?” I ask, wanting to pull away from his touch, wanting his words to disappear like this whole night.
“Coy, she’s back in surgery right now. She broke both her ankles, her rotator cuff is…” he trails off.
“Can I see her?” I ask.
At least, I think I ask. My lungs feel like they’re never going to breathe again.
“Coy, she’s in surgery… She… She…” He stumbles over his words for a few seconds. “She wasn’t responsive when the paramedics got to the scene.”
“Where is she?”
My heart and everything I’ve ever felt good in this world is tied to her existence, and right now I can feel it dying.
Slowly, with each breath I take, I can feel it crumbling to ashy pieces.
“Let’s go see what we can find out,” he says then lets out a huge sigh. “One thing you need to know… Coy, it happened near her parent’s house. They were there when they put her in the ambulance.”
* * *
Time around me seems to move differently than anything I’ve ever known. It’s like each moment I breathe, I can feel the world moving past my pain. People and faces move and say words to me. Some in anger, some in sorrow, some in rage. Most in emotions I don’t really understand.
When I was in high school, I remember a physics teacher I had describing time as a fixed point. That it neither moves nor stays still. He was trying to explain something to us, but I can’t really remember much beyond him saying we could feel stuck in a moment of time for what seems like an eternity, or we could be flung through the hours and days as if it happens in the blink of an eye.
The last however many days have been a blur of words I don’t understand or want to hear. Especially when they say the word coma. That’s bad. I’ve looked it up and what I found wasn’t fuckin’ good, not good at all. They spoke about numbers and shit like that, but I don’t really understand it much.
All I understand is dying and vegetative state. Those ain’t good either. I don’t know what I’ll do if she dies, and if she goes into one of them long comas where she eventually dies anyway, what will I do?
I’ve tried to stay at the hospital as much as I can, but they’ve got some security team there now that’s been runnin’ interference between me and her.
She’s a minor and I’m not. She’s still under her parent’s legal guardianship. Not like I could do anything even if she wasn’t. My old man’s buddy, a lawyer, explained it to me. She isn’t able to give any kind of consent, so she’s under their care.
Fuckers. They say this is my fault, every damn bit of it. They ain’t wrong, but fuck if I wouldn’t go back in time and put myself in her position if I could.
I’d die and go to where I’m supposed to if I could just save her ass from all this shit.
“Coy,” Gremlin calls to me as I walk out of the clubhouse and head to my bike.
“What?” I ask as I mount my bike and stand it up, kicking the kickstand up.
“You headin’ to the hospital?” he asks as he walks past me to his bike.
Staring at him, I wonder just how fucking thick he is to even bother askin’. I’ve been going there every day since the accident.
Nodding my head, I say, “Yeah.”
“Alright, let’s go,” he grunts.
“Any reason you’re comin’?” I ask.
“Yeah, I gotta talk to you about some shit.”
I try not to sigh. “Club business?”
The Royal Bastards are my family and my life, but right now I need things to just fucking pause so I can fall apart for a few moments in my timeline. I need time to come to terms with knowing that the longer Allie stays the way she is, the more likely it is that our last words have already been spoken.
Nodding his head, I can see the understanding on his face, but he says “Yeah, got shit we need to go over.”
Time waits for no man’s tragedies.
“Alright, we’ll do it there. Not like I can get past the waiting rooms, anyways.”
“Nah, I also got a plan for that,” he says with a smirk.
“Seriously?” I ask and for the briefest of moments I can feel my heart pounding in my chest.
“Yup,” he grins and starts his bike.
He revs the engine for a couple beats before looking back to me.
Fuck me, this is not gonna be good. Well, I mean it will, but I know we’re about to get in some shit.
Smiling over at him, I nod my head and then tear ass out of the clubhouse parking lot.
Just the possibility of getting more than a brief passing look of Allie has my heart thumping nonstop in my chest.
* * *
Walking up the stairwell to the third floor, I look over at Gremlin and still can’t believe I’m gonna get to see Allie.
See and maybe touch her again.
“One thing I need to talk to you about though, before we get started,” he says and looks over at me seriously.
“Yeah?” I pause on the landing, waiting for him to continue.
“You’re not in the right spot for the shit coming down the pipe, brother. I know this shit’s got your focus, and we as a family understand that,” he says. “But shit is happening soon, and I need to know you’re gonna be with the club. You can’t live in two worlds; you won’t ever win this girl’s parent’s approval.”
My mind blanks for a long time. I don’t have an answer to anything he’s just said to me. I know I need to keep fucking moving, keep Allie in my heart and keep the club in my head.
“I ain’t gonna go straight for her parents when all this shit’s over with. She’s coming home to be with her old man,” I say firmly.
“Even if she asks you to?”
That’s a tough question, her or the club? Do I have an answer for that?
“She wouldn’t, and if she does, I’ll chain her up in the clubhouse,” I say with a smile.
And for the first fucking time since this shit happened, I actually feel like I’m giving a real smile.
“Fuck, man, that’s a good answer,” he snickers before he starts taking his kutte and shirt off.
“Dude, what the fuck are you doing?” I ask as he hands me his kutte. “You ain’t, uh, tryin’ to tell me somethin’, are you?”
Looking at me, he grins even bigger. “Been awhile since I’ve been behind some bars, but this should do the trick.”
With those words, he kicks off his boots and then shucks his pants down to the ground.
“The fuck?” I ask.
“Grab my shit, brother. You won’t have long.”
With that, the fucker rips open the stairwell door and starts whooping and hollering like he’s some batshit insane mental patient.
; Trying to stick somewhat close to him, I watch as he stops directly in front of a cute little nurse and does a few rotations of the helicopter in front of her.
Leaning down, he kisses her right on the forehead before skipping toward a stunned doctor.
And I mean skipping like a little fucking girl down the hallway, shouting something about tulips up his ass.
Shit all over the hall gets tossed in the air as he goes about his happy little rampage.
“Fuckin’ love that dude,” I mutter to myself before heading directly for Allie’s room.
All the security for this floor is now trying to chase Gremlin down, so now’s my chance to be close to her again.
I don’t see any of her security outside so I open the door as quietly as I possibly can. Looking in, I crane my head around the door to see if I can spot anyone. I don’t see her parents or any nurses either, thank fuck.
Stepping fully into the room, I can feel my fingers twitching in the anticipation of finally feeling the one person in this world that I want to touch.
That soft, silky feeling of her cheek.
The way her golden hair feels as it slides through my fingers.
Even if I don’t have long, I have to have one touch.
I need to feel her to ground me back to earth. To help me stabilize my heartbeats, to keep me sane.
But there’s nothing here, only an empty bed with the sheets removed. Allie’s not here, and I don’t see any sort of flower arrangement or cards set up anywhere.
What the fuck?
Running out of the room, I rush up to the nurse’s desk.
I can barely breathe by the time my thick tongue feels like it can move. “Where is she?”
Eyes wide and looking at me like I’m some sort of fucking nut, the nurse says, “Sir? How can I help you?”
“Where’s Allie Stack at?” I nearly shout.
Her voice raises close to mine, “Excuse me?”
“Where is the girl? Allison Stack? She was in a coma right the fuck over there!” I snarl out, my temper finally breaking through all the pain and suffering I’ve been drowning in.
The nurse stands up from her chair. “She’s gone! She’s no longer with us!”
