Rampage

by Naomi West

  “You’re beautiful,” he whispers, kissing me softly on the nape of the neck. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in my whole damn life.”

  We make love, then. We don’t just fuck or screw. He pushes into me slowly, sensually, savoring every tiny movement. And I do the same with him, wrapping my arms around him and kissing him over and over, feeling more exposed and intimate than I’ve ever dreamed was possible. I feel close to him, unbreakably close. We kiss as he spends the last of his pleasure, arching his back and thrusting one final time inside of me. Then he kisses me and collapses atop me, staying like this for a long time as his cock wilts inside of me.

  “Hello,” I say, meeting his eye.

  He smiles. “Hello.” He kisses my nose and my forehead and my eye and my neck and my breasts and my belly, and then stays near my belly, one hand draped across it and the other on my knee. “This is usually the point I’d get dressed and leave and you’d go and find some other guy.”

  “But not now?” I ask, half hopeful, half worried.

  “Not now.” He shimmies up the bed and wraps his arm around me, pulling me close to him. “I don’t know if you’ve got a magic pussy or somethin’, but the way things are right now, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more protective over anybody or anything in my entire life. I’m with you now, all right? You’ve got me. We’re going to face this thing together. We’re going to make it so that our kid doesn’t have to deal with the shit we’ve had to deal with.”

  “That sounds perfect.”

  I bury my face in his muscled, scarred face, afraid that I might cry.

  “Oh, by the way,” he says after a while.

  “Mm-mm?”

  “I got you a present.” He presses the Zippo lighter into my hand. “I thought you might want it back.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Marilee

  We could have gotten better seats. At least, I think we could have. Dusty is working at the garage and making decent money. Sooner or later he’ll be made manager, the way they’ve got him working there, and I’m trying my hand at being a housewife, but maybe when our little soldier’s old enough I’ll do some studying, try and get a job. We sit at the back of the auditorium, watching the magician on stage. He paces up and down in a suit colored like a rainbow, his mustache curled up at the tips, his top hat reaching almost to the roof. I don’t know how it balances; it’s quite impressive. He twirls a cane the same deep black as Dusty’s hair.

  “Ladies and gentleman,” he says, “tonight is a very special night. Tonight we’re going to make Marilee and Dusty disappear. You see, they think they can make something special. They think that they—and remember, ladies and gentlemen, both of them are damaged and ugly inside—can have a good life together!” The crowd explodes into raucous laughter. “Yes, yes.” The magician waves his hand. “I agree with you. But please, quiet down. Because, my esteemed guests, we actually have the lucky couple with us tonight!”

  The spotlight swivels from the stage to us, the light blinding. I cover my eyes, squinting through my fingers and trying to regain some of my sight.

  “Oh . . .” The magician’s voice drops. “Oh, my . . . It looks like . . . I apologize for this, everybody, but I think we’re going to have to end the show early . . .”

  I turn to Dusty, but Dusty isn’t there. In his place there’s a skeleton wearing a leather jacket and jeans, its skeletal thumbs hooked through its belt loops.

  I jolt upright, the morning sunlight resting on my face, sweat coating my body. Dusty sleeps beside me, snoring softly, his face pressed into his pillow so that his nose whistles. I can’t know it for sure, but I suspect that this is the first peaceful sleep he’s had in a long time. I climb out of bed and go to the window, looking down into the street, trying to dislodge the nightmare from my mind. It’s always difficult for me with nightmares; they always cling to me with savage tenacity. I find my trousers on the floor and take out my cellphone and turn it on, meaning to browse the net and zombify myself for a few minutes, the best way I know to completely zone out from the world. But I don’t even get as far as a top ten article. I have three missed calls and one voicemail, all from Mom.

  Something in my belly drops as I navigate my voicemail menu. The dream was a portent. I’ve never been superstitious, but I can’t shake the feeling. Something is horribly wrong. I tell myself I’m being silly. Any second now I’ll hear Mom’s chirpy voice telling me that the motel room is fine and what they had for dinner and how everything is looking brighter than it did yesterday.

  “I bet you thought you were pretty clever, didn’t you, whore? I bet you thought that was pretty big and clever to have your fucking attack dog pounce on me like that. What sort of bastard sucker punches a man when he’s drunk? You tell me that. Anyway, this is over. I’m not taking it anymore. I’ve taken it for long enough. It’s all nonsense. It’s all a fucking joke. You think you can just go around doing anything you want? Is that how this works? You need to come and see me, Marilee. You need to come and see me or I think something very, very bad is going to happen to little Travis. Oh, and come alone, or I’ll really hurt him.” The line cuts out for a moment, and then Travis’s voice replaces Greg’s. “Don’t do it! Don’t do what he says!”

  “You hear that?” I can hear his sneer through the phone. “What a brave little prick, right? See you soon, whore. See you fucking—To listen to the message again, press one, to save the message, press—”

  I place the phone on the bedside table and then get dressed as quietly as I can, making sure not to wake Dusty up. Come alone. I know this is a trap. I know that when I get there he’s going to do something horrible to me, but what choice do I have? It’s either that or just leave Travis in Greg’s clutches. I stand at the foot of the bed once I’m dressed, looking down at Dusty and wondering if I shouldn’t wake him. He’d help me. I know he would. But then what if Greg sees Dusty coming and decides to do something really drastic? The memory of how Dusty beat the hell out of him must still be fresh.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, and then turn away.

  I go down into the street and use the app on my phone to pay for a taxi, and then wait on the curb, biting my fingernails down to stubs. Dusty lives in a decent neighborhood, women jogging and people walking their dogs. Once all the nails on my left hand are done, I move onto my right. I’ve just started on my thumb when the car pulls up, a small green sedan. A lady wearing a flowery pink dress steps out and waves me over. “Hi,” she chirps.

  “Hey,” I reply.

  I try and call Mom from the back of the car, but it goes straight to voicemail. I wonder what Greg has done with her. He didn’t mention her. Maybe he . . . I can’t finish the thought, not because it is too painful to think about, but because it is too confusing to think about. Travis is the one I need to think about; Travis is the one I need to save. Mom and I have not been close ever since she invited the monster into our house. How could a woman do something like that? How could she be so weak? How could she put herself before her children? I touch my belly, promising myself that I’ll never do the same.

  I say goodbye to the chirpy lady and jog to my motel room door. It’s swinging on its hinges, whining softly. I push through, ready to face Greg, ready to save Travis, but all I find is Mom laid out on the floor, eyes half open, staring up at the ceiling.

  “Mom!” I gasp, for a moment forgetting that part of me hates this woman. I kneel down beside her and cradle her head. “Mom?”

  Slowly, she opens her eyes. She looks confused, glancing around as though she doesn’t know where she is. “Marilee?”

  “Mom. What happened? Where’s Travis?”

  “Travis is . . . Oh, no. Travis is . . . I can’t think. I need to sit down. I need a drink of water.”

  Gritting my teeth to stop myself from snapping, I help her to her feet and lower her down onto the bed. Then I go into the kitchen and pour her a glass of water, telling myself all the while to be calm and not to push her too hard. It�
�s important that I do this properly.

  I return to her with a calm look on my face, or what I hope is a calm look. She sits on the edge of the bed, gripping her knees, panting and rocking back and forth and generally looking like a woman who hasn’t faced her emotions in years. She stares at the wall with her wide terrified eyes. I remember how she looked when she told Travis and me that Dad was dead. She had those same eyes, as though life had slipped into another dimension and would never slip back again. I kneel down next to her and bring the water to her lips. “Drink, Mom.”

  She sips as I tip the glass, dribbling some of it down her chin. “I just . . .” She trails off, gazing into the distance. “I thought he loved me.”

  “Mom, can you listen to me, please? Mom? Mom?”

  “I thought . . . He was so nice, Marilee—”

  “Mom!” I snap, but she just goes on. It’s like she has to finish what she’s saying, as though some force has compelled her. I intuit that she won’t talk to me until she’s gotten this out. I sigh, fold my arms. “Go on,” I say, praying that she’s quick.

  “He was so nice, at the beginning. I was at the supermarket picking up a few things and I just stood in the can aisle, staring at the orange soda, wondering if I would ever feel okay again, and I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t concentrate, you know, and then he comes swooping down the aisle. He was skinnier then, handsomer, funnier. He was a good man. He introduced himself and helped me with the rest of the shopping, and that was it. He was in charge. He was my master.” Life comes into her eyes. She turns to me. “I understand now. I know that you must hate me. I can’t blame you for hating me. I think I would hate me if I was in your position. It’s a difficult thing, to be hated by my daughter. But I understand it completely.”

  “Mom.” I touch her hand. “Where’s Travis?”

  “My head . . . Okay, let me think. Everything is so groggy. Travis, my sweet little Travis, my little soldier, my little angel, my little warrior. He would never leave without me, would he? You two think I’m so silly. You think I’m such an idiot. But I heard. Travis would never leave his mommy.”

  “Mom!” I grip her face, forcing her to face me. Anger explodes out of me. “I need to know where he is. Greg’s going to hurt him. Do you understand me? He’s going to hurt him and I don’t know where he is!”

  “Okay!” She slaps my hands away. “Just let me think.”

  I pace the room as she closes her eyes and thinks, which turns out to be a minutes-long process for somebody who has just woken up from bump on the head. She makes humming noises and massages her temples. It’s like she’s trying to cast a spell or hypnotize me. Finally, she says, “I remember. I think I do, anyway. I called Greg—”

  “You called Greg?” I’m shocked but I shouldn’t be. Of course, she called Greg. She can’t help but call Greg.

  “I called him to tell him it was over!” she protests. “I called him and I said to him, said it without sounding scared or anything, that it was over and I was never coming back, that he ought to go someplace else because I was never going to do what he wanted again. But then he started asking me questions, asking them quickly, and I got to answering them. I just . . . when he asks me questions, I answer them. That’s what I do. It’s been that way for years. I wouldn’t let anything slip, though.”

  “What did he ask you?”

  “He asked where we were, and I said I wouldn’t tell him, but then he started asking if that was the road he could hear, if it was a fancy place, and I just . . . It seems so silly now.”

  “Silly, yeah, Mom. Silly. Then what?”

  “Then I heard a commotion outside, Greg shouting at one of the ladies who works here. I looked out the window and it was like he was waiting for just that, because as soon as I moved the curtain, his head snapped right to us. He marched in here and kicked the door down and threw me across the room. He picked up Travis and screamed at me . . . I can’t repeat it. It’s too horrible.”

  “Mom!”

  She sighs, and then says, “‘Tell that little C-word that I’ll be at her special little booth.’ That’s what he said.”

  “Okay.”

  I go to the door, and then stop and turn to Mom. “Car keys,” I tell her.

  She goes to the bedside table, opens the drawer, and tosses them to me. “Shall I come?” she asks.

  “No. You need to get yourself to a hospital.”

  I run across the parking lot to Mom’s car. I drive toward the booth faster than I should, speeding between traffic. I’ve made this drive dozens of times over the past few weeks, but never with this fire under me, never with this fear squeezing down on my chest. Greg might have already killed him. It doesn’t make sense, since he needs him to get me there, but how do I know he’s alive? Maybe he did it by accident, just hit him a little too hard, and now my brave baby brother is dead.

  “You touch one hair on his head,” I whisper, squeezing the steering wheel so that my knuckles turn white. “One fucking hair . . .”

  Then I start thinking about my baby and my anger flares doubled. Men like Greg don’t deserve to live. I push down on the pedal.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Dusty

  “You need to come over here right now and show me how it’s done, then.”

  She gestures at me with the spanner, winking and looking sexy as hell in her pale blue overalls, almost the same color as her eyes. The overalls are specked with oil and grime but her face is completely clean, her smile as bright as ever. I go to her and take the spanner and gesture down at the bike. “I reckon you can do this,” I tell her. “It don’t take much, once you know the technique.”

  “But I’m too weak.” She pouts, trying to derail me. She doesn’t want to do this; she wants to do something else. That’s probably why she kept bending over the bike and looking back at me with those big come-on eyes. “I just can’t do it. I need a big scary outlaw.” She throws herself forward and knocks the spanner out of my hand, and then presses her hand against the front of my jumpsuit. “Or maybe I could do this instead? Huh? What about that?”

  “That could work.” I grab her ass, and damn, it’s a fine ass, pert and tight, two tight balls just ready to be grabbed and spanked and bitten. It’s the sort of ass that makes me forget who I am and who I’ve been for a long time. It’s the sort of ass that makes me wonder if a different life might be possible. I move my hand from her ass to her pussy, which is tight and cute and warm and safe. “That could really work . . .”

  I wake up with a hard-on that feels like it could explode. I roll over and reach out for Marilee. I’ll grab her and pull her toward me and feel her tight body pressed against mine, and then I’ll slide my hand down her belly to her pussy and rub, rub, rub . . . But all I grasp instead are sheets. I sit up and listen. Listening is a funny thing for an outlaw. Sometimes it can mean the difference between life and death. Sometimes it can mean the different between the end and fighting another day. I’ve listened for the quietest footstep, to a hushed cough, to somebody telling somebody else to shut the hell up, they’ll give them away. My ears are well-honed, and right now I don’t hear a thing: no faucets running, no toilets flushing, no bacon frying, no TV playing.

  I jump to my feet and throw on my leather and my jeans, pacing around the apartment and double-checking. She’s nowhere. I wonder for a moment if she’s done what I did to her last time we had sex, but I just don’t buy it. Maybe I have it in me to play the jerk-off and leave her like that, but I don’t reckon she does. But still, it’s possible. It’s not completely ridiculous. Maybe she woke up and looked at me and wondered what the hell she was doing. She realized that I’m just an outlaw and she can’t give birth to an outlaw’s baby.

  “Calm down,” I tell myself.

  I kick on my boots and go down to my bike. I head for the motel as the sun rises slowly toward its midday height. This is the latest I’ve slept in in a long, long time, perhaps since I was a kid and Mom was still alive. I dart between cars, speeding, wind bat
tering my helmet. I screech to a halt outside Marilee’s room and run straight in, since the door swings back and forth on its hinges. I don’t find Marilee. Instead, I find her mother, sitting on the edge of the bed with her legs stretched out in front of her. It’s an oddly childlike way to sit, her feet crossed at the ankles.

  She looks up at me like somebody on drugs. “Hello . . . It’s Busty, right?”

  “Dusty,” I say. I kneel down next to her and inspect her head. “You’ve had a fall, Dana.”

  “Yes,” she says. “I had a fall. I’ve had lots of falls. Greg is very good at that.”

  “Wait here.”

  I go to the front desk and ask the young pregnant woman to call for a doctor. “A doctor, big man?” the woman says, eyebrows raised. “Has there been a shooting or something? Because you’ll need an ambulance for that.”

  “Just call a doctor.” I return to the bedroom and take my place next to Dana. “I need you to tell me what happened here.” It takes a hell of a long time to drag the story out of her. Her eyes keep straying around the room as though unfixed in her skull. Finally, she settles her gaze on me and tells me what happened. I get angrier and angrier as she talks, and eventually jump to my feet and sprint from the room.