Rampage

by Naomi West

  The clubhouse is always a welcome sight, a home, if a man like me can be said to have a home. The words Filthy Fools are carved above the door in wood. Around fifty bikes are parked out front, along with a few jeeps and other cars. From the garage, a blowtorch hisses. I go into the clubhouse and into the bar, where the men shoot pool and drink and play poker. I nod to the men, joining Lex and Clint and Dagger at the corner table. We’re the main enforcers of the club and tend to stick together.

  “Here he is,” Lex says. He’s old and shaven on top, his skin as wrinkled as leather. His voice is raspy from decades of smoking. “Did you really stop for that girl? You in love now, kid?”

  “Call me kid again, old man.” I offer him a sideways grin.

  Dagger flips his butterfly knife around constantly, his grin just as sharp. His hair is blond but his skin is lighter, albino-white. “Didn’t you know, gentleman? Dusty is a romantic at heart.”

  Clint is a vending machine of a man but with a soft face and a relative soft heart. I remember once when we just got back from a job, a job which involved some killing, and Clint found a dying bird outside the club entrance. He took that bird to the vet’s office with dead men’s blood on his hands. Said it was the bird’s, I reckon. He murmurs softly, “Dusty isn’t a romantic, is he? Are you, Dusty?”

  “Goddamn, you guys must be fuckin’ bored. You’re a bunch of old women, sitting around talking about who’s courting who. Get a hobby.”

  “Don’t get so defensive.” Dagger winks at me. “It’s starting to sound like you’ve got something to hide.”

  I pour myself a glass of whisky and listen to Johnny Cash, trying to tune the fellas out. But they’re not letting this one go.

  “Okay, so you don’t want this girl. So you won’t mind if I swing by? I think I remember where she lives. That’ll be fine with you, will it?”

  “Maybe I’ll join you.” Lex strokes his sparse white beard. “It’s been a while since I wooed a lovely lady like that. I was riding hard, but she seemed like the sort who’d appreciate an experienced older man.”

  They all turn to me, smiling and laughing. I’d smile and laugh, too, usually. These are my brothers and I don’t know that girl one bit. I spoke to her for a few minutes and that was that, at least it should be. But I keep thinking about how tight and pert her body was, how beautiful her pale eyes were. I keep thinking about that bastard growling from the house. Her dad, or stepdad, or her mom’s boyfriend. I think about her neck, and how some of the makeup was smudged so I could see the yellow bruise.

  “If you touch her, I won’t be happy. You can use your imagination to work out what’d happen.”

  “I know,” Dagger says. “You’ll stuff us in an industrial freezer but forget to check that it’s turned on.”

  “Hey!” Clint snaps. “That was an accident. How was I supposed to know it wasn’t on?”

  “How about because everything was defrosted, rubber-head? Or how about because the generator was as quiet as a gravesite? Or how about because the lights wouldn’t turn on? Or—and I know this might seem difficult to a man like you—but how about because it wasn’t fucking cold?”

  “I could crush your head in one of my hands,” Clint says. He sounds completely calm, as though stating that it’s getting dark outside.

  “I’m sure you could, but you’d have to catch me first. Or maybe I’d slit you before you got off your feet.” He flicks his knife into the air, catching it as it closes, and then flips it open again.

  “What a fuckin’ magician,” I say, clapping my hands together sarcastically. “Goddamn, Dagger, you really are a prick sometimes.”

  We all laugh then and they drop the subject of the girl, even though I keep thinking about her. I can’t get her smile out of my head, shy but almost hungry, as though she wanted me to hang around and talk to her a while longer. I wonder what it would’ve been like if it was just the two of us. Maybe I’d walk up those porch stairs and lay my hand on her leg, and she’d stare up at me with those wide eyes, lips trembling in lust and nerves and all the rest of it, and then she’d open her mouth and I’d slip my finger in, and she’d suck as though she was sucking a cock. Then I’d take my cock out and she’d suck for real. I’d lift her up and yank down her pink pajama bottoms, kiss those thighs and listen to her soft breathing—

  “The girls are here!” one of the fellas roars, taking me out of my fantasy.

  It’s a Friday night, so of course the club girls are here. They fill the place with the smell of perfume, most of them dressed in skirts shorter than fuses, their bare legs on display, some with fishnet stockings or colorful tights. Dagger, Clint, and Lex leave me almost immediately. I stay where I am, glad to be on my own anyhow. I want to get drunk and think about Marilee. Even her name is something different. Marilee. I say it in my head, stretching out each syllable. It beats Tammy or Lacey or Crystal. The music goes from country to metal and a few of the girls start dancing, each one of them vying for attention, shaking their asses, shaking their breasts. I just look down at my whisky and wonder how close in color the liquid is to Marilee’s bruise. That shouting bastard really did a number on her. Maybe I ought to have done something, but the way she was looking at me I knew I’d just make it worse.

  I get to thinking about leaving—going home and jerking off with Marilee still fresh in my mind—when Alice drops into the seat opposite me. Alice is tall and skinny with a slightly strung-out look, her eye makeup always pitch black and her lips always blood-red. She wears a tank top with the straps of her bra showing, and her dyed-pink hair falls across her forehead. She folds her legs and pouts at me. She’s one of the fishnet girls. I barely know her but she’s been coming after me for a while now. I don’t know why I haven’t fucked her, since I’m usually pretty quick to fuck. Maybe it’s ’cause she seems too desperate. I definitely won’t be fucking her tonight. I know that much. It’d seem absurd to go with some club girl when I’ve just been speaking with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met.

  “Hey,” Alice says.

  “Hi, Alice.”

  “You look grumpy.”

  “Not grumpy.” I sip my whisky. “Just relaxing.”

  “You done much this week?”

  “Sure. Working. You?”

  “I’ve been really busy with my course. Did I tell you I’m studying to become a beautician?”

  I shrug and keep on drinking, hoping she’ll get the hint and go and fuck someone else. But she doesn’t. Instead, she shimmies around the table and sits close to me, throwing me one of her pouts. It looks like a little stamp of blood. “You don’t much like talking to me, do you? What’s your problem?”

  “Problem?” I laugh gruffly. “That’s a stupid question to ask a man, ’cause once he gets to talking on that subject, he’ll never stop. No, I haven’t got a problem, Alice. I’m just having a drink.”

  “You’re normally down there with the others. You never sit up here like some lonely drunk. What is it? You met a girl or something?”

  I click my neck from side to side. Her words crawl under my skin and needle me. “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.” I don’t want to tear open my chest for this woman, show her my heart, because that road leads to feelings and feelings just get folk hurt. I learned a long time ago that to be happy, a man’s got to forget he has feelings. Maybe I should just fuck Alice, then, since surely daydreaming about Marilee is just as bad.

  “Whoa!” She holds her hands up. Each nail is painted a different color. “I’m just talking! But I’m right though, aren’t I? You’ve met a girl. Is she prettier than me?”

  “Who do you think I am, exactly?” I ask. “Every time you girls come by, you always come over to me. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  “I know you’re dangerous.”

  I hate the way she says it: all breathy like it’s getting her off, like the word “dangerous” is a tongue or a finger.

  “Me? I’m not dangerous. I’m the safest man you’re ever like
ly to meet. Are you done now?”

  “Done? I’m not a chore.” She leans forward in a calculated way so that I can fully see down her top. If I cared to look, I know I’d see her bare breasts. But something holds me back tonight as it wouldn’t other nights. Marilee had a bruise; it was yellow. And a little brother who looked at me like I wasn’t a piece of shit. “I could make you happy,” she goes on. “I could make you forget whatever’s bothering you.”

  The thing is, I’m sure she could. I’m sure that if I let myself, I can throw her on the back of my bike and take her to a motel and have a night that’ll make me forget about Marilee, even if it’s just for a little while. But when the sun rises tomorrow and I see this woman lying next to me, I’ll remember again, and I’ll feel like shit. I’ll feel like shit because I want Marilee, this strange new girl, this girl who’s captivated me like nobody ever has before. I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make a lick of sense. Maybe she cast a goddamn spell on me. Right now that seems about as likely as anything else.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to say no to that one.”

  “No to that one . . .” She leans back, mouth falling open. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you think I’m hot? I don’t get it. I know for a fact you’ve been with Charlotte. I’m hotter than Charlotte. Everybody says that.”

  I don’t even remember which one Charlotte is, is the truth of it, but I don’t see how telling Alice will do any good. She’d just take it as a challenge.

  “I’m going.” I drain my whisky and stand up.

  “Going?” The word is a gasp. She stares up at me in disbelief. “It isn’t even seven! Where are you going at quarter to seven on a Friday night?”

  “I didn’t realize you were my secretary. I’m going. It doesn’t matter where.”

  I push past her before she can say anything else. Dagger tries to talk to me, but the music is loud and there are too many people between him and me, so I’m able to slip out without interruption. I climb onto my bike and ride away, glad when the pumping music recedes into the background and the growling of my bike rises into the air. Engines have always helped me think, but tonight the engine becomes Marilee moaning, screaming, begging. There was a bruise on her neck, a bruise as yellow as a slice of cheese.

  I end up outside her house, gliding my bike quietly to the edge of the sidewalk. The downstairs lights are on and shadows move about, but it’s impossible to make out who is who. Somewhere down the street, rap music plays; in the other direction there’s country. Birds caw out into the evening and I feel at peace, oddly, knowing that the woman I met today is right over there, and if I wanted to I could go and say hello. Screw the old man, screw my pledge to myself.

  But then I see it: a bullet tearing through a black-haired woman’s head in slow-motion, the bone and skin and brain breaking apart like wet paper. It’s crazy what a bullet can do to a person, that’s for sure. I push down my feelings, whatever feelings are there, and ride away from the house and all its temptations.

  Back at my place I slug down some more whisky and then turn on the TV, watching but not watching, really just thinking about the bruised girl and the plea in her eyes.

  Chapter Three

  Marilee

  “I told you to keep that lighter. Now do what I say.”

  I flick the Zippo, revealing the blazing blue flame. Then I toss it at him, still alight. “That’s for talking to me in that tone,” I tell him, leaping to my feet. I feel confident and sexy, far more so than I ever have before. I’m in control now; nobody can tell me what to do. This is my moment. I strut down the porch steps and place my hand on his crotch, pressing firmly, perhaps too firmly. I might hurt him. But that’s okay. He can take it. I grab so hard that he winces, and then grab even harder. His cock is rock-solid. It doesn’t wilt under my grip. He must be twenty inches, impossibly big, a huge rod down to his knee.

  “You’re one twisted freak,” he says. With one slice of his hand he takes off my shirt, revealing my breasts. “I’m going to suck your fucking nipples until they turn red, until it hurts. I’m going to suck your fucking nipples until you beg me to stop.”

  He does as he says, sucking them for seconds or years, turning them as red as skin freshly slapped, as red as blood, as red as aching lust. He pushes them together and then everything shifts and I’m on my knees, forcing my face down on his huge cock, a cock bigger than reason. It’s so big it pushes all the way through my body to my pussy; he fucks my mouth, the tip of his cock pressed against my clit. There’s something off about this, not quite right, but I don’t care. I ride and suck him at the same time, bouncing and choking and moaning and the orgasm rushes on, a hunting bird loosed within me, its wings sending airwaves of pleasure cascading through me. I twist, moan, suck . . .

  “You don’t think I can do better than you? Are you fucking kidding me?”

  No, no! I will myself back to Dusty, dusty with his tattooed hands and his stern expression, the biker with the destructively massive cock, the man who can bend reality. “Suck on my clit,” I tell him. “Suck it. Make it swollen. I want it to ache.”

  All at once he’s doing as I ask, my thighs locked around his head, his mouth pressed wet and hot against my clit, sucking with all his might, his cheeks going hollow with the force of his sucking.

  “Is that really what you think, that you’re some sort of catch? You’re a joke, you’ve always been a joke, and you’ll always be a joke. That’s the truth of the matter, Dana, and the saddest part is that you know it, too!”

  “Suck harder,” I beg him. “Bite it. Bite it!”

  Just as he bites it, the dream world turns into pixels, like when I’m streaming videos online and the Internet goes slow, the image turning hazy, and then the connection cuts out altogether. I open my eyes, staring at the ceiling with a crack running through the middle, returned forcibly to reality.

  I lean up and glance across the room at my digital clock. It’s pink, the same clock Mom bought for me when I was fourteen years old. That was a year after Dad died, before she met Greg. That was when there was still some fierceness left in her. I remember how she thrust the clock at me as though that should be enough, as though I should be able to be as strong as her now. And then she decided that being strong was too difficult and she needed a big bad Greg to tell her what to do. It’s half past seven in the morning, an hour and a half until I have to be at work. I get dressed quickly and hover near my bedroom door. I want to go to the bathroom, but going to the bathroom means walking by Mom and Greg.

  “Women are always giving me looks,” Grey says. He’s so full of shit. He’s always bragging about how tough he is, how much women want him, all nonsense so that he can make Mom feel small. “Do you think I couldn’t get someone better if I really wanted to? You live in a dreamland, Dana.”

  I don’t know what to do. I could wait until they retreat to some other part of the house, but sometimes it seems as if Greg chooses the upstairs hallway on purpose because he knows Travis and I have no choice but to listen. I take my bathrobe from the chair in the corner and throw it on, and then pull the door open, keeping my face as calm and composed possible, so composed that perhaps I can pretend I haven’t heard a thing.

  Greg and Mom turn to me, Greg shirtless with his gray chest hair matted and stretchmarks across his lower belly, Mom already covered in makeup, wearing a flimsy spring dress as she often does: a pathetic attempt to try and make Greg want her.

  “Well, well.” Greg offers a gummy smile. “Look who’s up.”

  “Your brother has soccer practice today,” Mom says. “Take him, will you?”

  “Mom, I have work.”

  “Mari, please!”

  “Why can’t you do it?” I ask. I know I’m walking on thin ice here, but I’ve been walking on thin ice for most of my teenage life. Thin ice and I are friends now.

  “Mari!” Mom snaps.

  I hate how desperate she looks, how her lips curl and her eyebrows shoot up in that expression I k
now so well. It’s the expression that blames me for being difficult without acknowledging that this is her fault for allowing Greg to stay, for insisting that he’s a good man even when he beats her, and even when he so clearly is not a good man. He’s uglier than her, poorer than her, and stupider than her, and yet she still wants to pretend that he has something to offer.

  “I have to—want to—make Greg a nice breakfast today, so I can’t, okay?”

  Mom is almost forty years old, but the way she looks right now, she could be fifteen. She toes the floor and touches her straightened brown hair softly, her eyes flitting all over the place like a nervous rodent.