Make Me: Twelve Tales of Dark Desire

by Aleatha Romig

  I liked it—loved it—lying naked underneath this man I barely knew, yet my sense of connection to him was something beyond most people in my life. And I suppose we’d been through so much intensity together, he and I. And Thor and Zeus.

  “I felt like we were one thing,” I said. “The three of us.”

  Pain in Odin’s eyes. “I know,” he said, and he lowered himself and stretched out next to me, lying half on top of me, draping an arm possessively on my stomach.

  Then Thor came back in and he lay behind Odin, draping an arm around the both of us.

  It surprised me, yet didn’t, that they, too, would feel so comfortable touching each other like that.

  I had joked about them being like the Borg from Star Trek, hive-like space beings that operated as a single entity and rode around in a cube-shaped ship. The Borg shared thoughts and feelings, and couldn’t function individually, disconnected from the hive. And I got a hit of that with them suddenly, seeing them fit together so easily. I got a hit of it because I’d entered into it, just for a little while. And it had been delicious. And seeing them like this, I knew it had only been the tip of the Borg cube.

  I wanted more.

  “Zeus won’t let you stay,” Odin said, as if reading my mind.

  Thor set his chin on Odin’s arm.

  “That looks comfortable,” I said sarcastically.

  Odin turned his head and glanced up at Thor. Something passed between the two men, I didn’t know what. I suppose we weren’t connected in everything.

  The sheep farm seemed so far away.

  So my bank robbers would eject me, I thought with a pang of sadness, but I wouldn’t stay in Baylortown. This, too, I thought with a pang of sadness, but I was suffocating there. These guys had shown me that. That was their gift to me.

  I would dedicate my life to helping the farm, but it wouldn’t be by my presence. Maybe I could use my share of the loot to start an adventure outfit of some kind after college. My bungee jumping school plan. It didn’t feel as exciting as it used to. Bungee jumping seemed downright pathetic when compared to grand larceny and group sex.

  Chapter Five

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  I woke up the next morning alone in the bed. I had dim memories of Thor having spent the night there with me, Odin maybe part of it.

  I got into the shower and let the hot water pound on my skin, thinking about my sisters. What was going on? Surely they’d know from my Paris Hilton message that I was okay.

  I put on my bathrobe, wondering if Thor and Odin would want to have sex right away. And our bargain was that I’d say yes. It made me feel instantly horny, in a prostitute-fantasy way. I slipped out the door; masculine murmurs and the aroma of coffee came from the direction of the main room. The murmurs sounded more and more like arguing as I neared. Something about somebody being unreasonable.

  The talking stopped when I walked in.

  “Good morning, comrades,” I said.

  Zeus eyed me with his usual cool distance, motorcycle boot-clad feet up on the table. His black jeans were faded to gray, and his green military-issue sweater that had frayed around the wrists. All in all he looked like a dangerous mercenary on mercenary casual day, contrasting wildly with the fine china and linens on the table.

  Thor wore a dark blue, long-sleeved T-shirt and also jeans and boots. He’d added a baseball cap.

  “She walks, she talks,” Odin said from the couch, hunched over the coffee table strewn with hardware of some sort, rubbing a black piece of metal with a cloth. It took me while of staring to get that those were gun parts set out on the cloth in front of him—parts from little guns, parts from big guns. Deadly black hardware. I averted my eyes in shock from all the dangerous and probably illegal firepower. But, hello, it wasn’t anything I hadn’t seen before…while they were robbing a bank and taking me hostage.

  “We saved you a seat.” Thor shoved a chair out with his foot. Then he poured coffee into the one empty cup on the table.

  It touched me that they’d set a place for me.

  Enjoy it while you can, I thought.

  “You and your sheep farm and your sisters are all over TV,” Zeus grumbled.

  “Really? Like what? How do they seem?”

  “We should’ve dumped you if we’d known what was good for us,” he said, ignoring my questions.

  “I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “And I’ll do anything to help you. I want this to come out good for all of us.”

  Zeus scowled.

  But they were good for their promises, these guys. Maybe they had a fucked-up code by some standards. Okay, most standards. But hey, they had a code.

  Zeus eyed me as I sat. “Get the laptop, Thor.”

  “Let her have some coffee first,” Thor said. “Cream?”

  “Oh, yes please. And sugar, thanks.”

  Thor smiled wickedly, pushing the little china vessels across the table to me. “Cream and sugar it is, then.”

  Leave it to Thor to make even that exchange sound dirty. I fixed up my coffee and sipped, coming to life as the caffeine infused my brain.

  Thor pulled a laptop out of a black case and set it up on the table in front of me. “You can’t freak out,” he said.

  “I won’t,” I said.

  Thor navigated to a northern Wisconsin news station. I could feel Zeus watching me as the video started to play. The conference started with the Baylortown police answering questions. The time stamp said eight p.m. last night, central time. So after I’d ordered the quilt. Around the time I was cavorting in a hot tub with my two bandits.

  Some police chief I’d never heard of was heading the investigation. They had no leads at this time.

  “Because we’re fucking-g awesome,” Odin said from the couch.

  They were pursuing several avenues that could yield promise. No, they couldn’t comment further.

  “Code for not a fucking-g clue,” Odin added. “Nobody catches us.”

  And then my three sisters filed up to the microphone, bright red hair, pale skin. Candy, who’d just graduated high school, and my youngest sister, fifteen-year-old Kaitlin, were crying.

  “Bring Melinda home, she’s done nothing to you!” Kaitlin wailed.

  Vanessa, the oldest of my younger sisters, took the microphone then. “We ask that you bring Melinda back to us. We lost our parents and she’s all we have. All the money in the world can’t make up for our sister.” She changed her demeanor, stared into the camera. “Melinda, we’re not going to give up on you. You’ve done everything for us. We’re going to get you home. We’ll make everything right. We need you and miss you.”

  Candy had the microphone. Sobbing. “Bring our sister home, please.”

  My heart lurched and my eyes misted.

  I pressed my hand to mouth, willing myself not to cry. Had they not gotten the Paris Hilton message? Did they not understand that I was okay? I wished I could reassure them and let them know I was happy. Did they not see that part of the message about the happy home?

  Then there were questions for some other official. Zeus shut the laptop. “The rest is bullshit. What do you say?”

  I took a deep breath. “Shit.”

  Zeus said, “You can go back, you know. It’s been two days. This is plausible.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  Zeus crossed his arms. “Anything pop out?”

  “Like what?”

  “You know your sisters. You see something we didn’t?”

  “I can’t tell if they understood the message. You know, with the quilt order. The orders feed into email and Vanessa would’ve checked. Candy and Kaitlin seemed so upset, though. But, assuming Vanessa got the message and understood, she wouldn’t have told Candy or Kaitlin.” I pondered. “Vanessa said that one thing—‘all the money in the world can’t make up for our sister.’ It could mean she’s sorry I had to take the bank job, or else it could mean she knows I slid them that Paris Hilton comforter order and she still wants me to come back.”


  “It’s pretty clear they need you home,” Zeus said.

  “They need me, yes,” I said. “But they don’t need me home. They’re better off with me out here. I think we’ve established that.”

  “The fuck we’ve established that,” Zeus said.

  Thor shot him a look. “You gonna stop riding her on this anytime soon?”

  Zeus grunted.

  “Say what you want,” I said to Zeus. “Those three, they love the farm. They need me to help support it, and yeah, we’re sisters, we love each other. But I’ve only ever wanted to leave. They know that.” For the first time, I felt a little anger toward my sisters.

  Or maybe it was more that I accessed anger I didn’t know I felt. Why did I have to stay all those years? Why did I have to feel shitty for a couple days of freedom? It was totally irrational to be angry with them, I knew that. Still.

  “What?” Thor came behind me and massaged my shoulders. “What is it?”

  “It’s just that, when my folks died, I didn’t just lose the two most important people in my life. It put an end to all my dreams. I was the only adult and I had to stay, you know? I had to keep things going. For five years I put everything on hold. But the three of them are adults now. And they have twenty grand. There’re people they can hire.” I stared straight at Zeus. “You don’t want me along with you, Zeus? I get that. But after everything that has happened? I need to be free. When our gig is up, yeah, I’ll go back to Baylortown and do whatever you want me to do to make it look good. You know I can pull it off. But after that, I’m off. I’ll find a way to get them money, but it’s not going to be stitching quilts or feeding sheep or working as a teller in a goddamn bank back there.”

  “All righty, then,” Zeus said.

  “So don’t tell me if they need me or not, or how they need me, that’s all. I get that they miss me. But I’m doing some good for the farm right now, and I’ll be home soon enough. We’re getting publicity and we can’t be foreclosed. I don’t see why I can’t enjoy that, and why you have to make me the bad guy.”

  Snicks and clacks from the couch. Odin shoved a clip into a gun. He stood. Like Zeus, he was dressed in mercenary casual. He strolled over and pointed a giant gun at the picture on the wall, one I particularly hated. It had a cabin with a candle in the window. A flowered trellis. “Pow!” Odin said.

  “It’s inappropriate to shoot the bad art,” I said.

  Odin squinted. “We’re criminals, baby. Everything we do is inappropriate.”

  I grinned. If I were writing an adventure essay about this experience I would totally use that line. But of course, I wouldn’t be writing this up. Even as a temporary member of the god pack, I was determined to play by their rules, to follow their code. It made me feel more like an insider.

  Zeus wandered over to the coffee table and picked out a gun, then he went and stood by Odin and aimed at the picture. “Daddy wants to go to the range.”

  “Let’s hit it before we sit on the bank.” Odin was still aiming, squinting. Maybe he was checking the sights or something. They made quite the picture. Still life with outlaws.

  Zeus shoved his gun into a holster under his sweater. “You two stay here. Got it? Stay out of trouble.”

  “Don’t worry,” Thor said.

  Zeus and Odin left soon after. I poured more coffee. “No shooting range for you?”

  Thor stared into his coffee. “I’m not much for it.”

  “But you carry a gun,” I observed.

  “We are criminals.” The bitter edge in Thor’s voice told me he didn’t find the term as amusing as Odin did. It struck me that criminals was a name that was applied to them, not one they’d chosen.

  At the bank, we tellers had once heard Hank Vernon call us ignorant hoes and thereafter, we’d use it on one another, like, Come on, share your cookies with the rest of us ignorant hoes. Using the phrase on ourselves gave us power. Showed we were more. With a little bit of anger and hate in the mix.

  That’s the way Thor used the word criminal. It made me wonder who he hated.

  “Did you ever have to shoot one at a person?” I asked. “A gun?”

  He crumbled a scone, looking ponderous, one chunk of hair over his eyes. “Once,” he said, softly. It weighed on him—grief, guilt—I couldn’t tell how it weighed, only that it weighed. I got up and went behind where he sat, put my hands on his shoulders and rubbed gently.

  Thor sighed when I touched him like that. The sigh sounded like relief, like he needed this empathy. Thor was a doctor, and he clearly loved people, yet he’d shot, maybe killed a person. I stayed there, consoling him, wanting to rub the hurt away, knowing I couldn’t.

  Suddenly he pushed away his plate. “Get dressed, we have errands to run.”

  “But Zeus and Odin took the van.”

  He looked up with a devilish smile. “You think we need the van to run an errand? Put on that sundress again.”

  I narrowed my eyes. Odin and Zeus had told us to stay put. What errands did Thor suddenly want to run? I went to put on my sundress. When I came out, he was nowhere. I poured another cup of coffee and went online to www.SunnySistersSheepFarm.com.

  There was the home page with its photo of the four of us girls holding hands surrounded by sheep. I’d worked hard on that site; building it turned out to be 80% tutorial watching and 20% site building. There was a page where I described the artisan blue cheese we make. Small-batch cheese making is a long, multi-staged process; one of my sisters would be taking over my parts. Probably Vanessa. When I clicked the to page for the natural wool comforters we make, I saw, that Vanessa had raised the price of our double from $280 to $420, and that they were delivering in seven to ten weeks, whereas it used to be three to five. Were they getting a ton of orders? That had to be why! I clicked to the blog and saw a new entry, dated this morning, entitled “Update on our sister,” with a photo of me with my formerly long red hair.

  Thank you to everyone for the outpouring of support, prayers and well wishes. Thanks to the kindness of people, so many that we do not even know, our sister will have a farm to come back to. Please continue to pray and to keep an eye out for her.

  We are also grateful for the comforter orders pouring in, but of course, most of all, we need our sister.

  Melinda, if you’re reading this, we miss you so much! We love you. We know, also, how hard you worked and how much we were suffocating you. When you come back, we’ll make it up to you, and this will include tater tots with every meal, Candy doing the dishes, a way to send you around the world to make connections with retail outlets, and of course, no more working at a bank ever again! We will give you the Paris Hilton treatment! Please, bank robbers, let our sister come home!

  I knew how Vanessa’s mind worked—the fact that she’d mentioned Paris Hilton was significant; it was like a secret code, telling me she’d gotten my message, and understood that I was happy being away. She wouldn’t have apologized like that otherwise. It made me feel so terrible to know she felt this guilty. I wished I could leave a comment on the post—It’s not about you! I would say. Don’t feel guilty! Be happy for me and let me do this!

  Way too risky.

  We suffocated you…

  I scrolled to the older entries, but it was all my writing, posts about different sheep in the dairy flock and shearing and all that. Our Friesago was up for an award. Evilly, I wondered if the judges might give it to us for pity.

  Twenty minutes later, Thor and I were slipping out the back of the hotel. We strolled through the pool area and out to the far section of the parking lot.

  Thor stopped in front of a silver Camaro. “Hello.” He pulled a long, flat piece of metal from his sports coat and shoved it roughly against the window and down into the door housing.

  I gasped. “What are you doing?”

  “Opening the door.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Relax.”

  “I thought you were the doctor,” I said.

  “I’m the doctor wit
h the mostest.” He jerked out the strip and pulled open the door. The horn began to honk and he and dove under the dash and did something I couldn’t see to stop it. A minute later, the car roared to life. He got out and smiled at me, all mischievous and gorgeous.

  “I can’t believe you just did that.”

  He leaned back on the car and motioned for me to get in the driver’s seat. “You’re driving.”

  “A stolen car?”

  “You can drive stick, can’t you?”

  “Hello, it’s stolen.” Playfully, I grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked it back and forth.

  He put his hands on my hips and pulled me to him. “And? You want to be the driver on a job and you can’t drive a stolen car?”

  “It’s not an issue of can. I can drive it.” I leaned fully into him, pressing him against the car, letting him take my weight, enjoying the feel of his cock at my pelvis.

  He kissed my neck. “Driving in a crime situation is different from driving in a normal situation. We’re going across town to get some catfish sandwiches for the guys for lunch. Let’s see if you have the nerve.”

  “Did you just think of this? Is this something Odin and Zeus are on board with?”

  “You want to stand here arguing? Can you drive it or not?”

  “Of course I can.” I was proud of being a girl who was good at driving stick. I swung in.

  “Out,” he said.

  Aha, so he was just seeing if I would, I thought. I got out of the car again.

  He lowered his voice. “Remove your panties.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Don’t argue.”

  My blood raced. I had this dim thought that maybe it was a test. That other girl, Venus, had driven for them. “You’ll see I can drive under any and all conditions.” I took off my panties, handed them over, and got in. He stuffed them in his pocket and got in the passenger side.

  I put it into gear and slammed out of there.