by Avelyn Paige
“Wrong fucking answer, asshole,” I seethe. A demented smile forms on his face, as my hand balls into a fist, at my side.
Keep on taunting me, motherfucker. It’ll only make the end more painful for you.
“Raze is a fucking pussy for sending you to do his dirty work, while he plays house with that old lady cast-off,” Hog fires back, seeming more coherent than before. “That’s the difference between me and him. I can handle the dirty work myself. How do you feel about being the puppet of a coward?”
I laugh in his face, and he remains stagnant in his glare.
“A puppet? You were working for the fucking cartel, Hog. The cartel that is dust in the Mexican wind. If anyone is the puppet, it’s you. You chose money over your own fucking brothers.”
Hog forces himself to lift his head, weak from the beatings and starvation over the last few days.
“The only loser here is you, Ratchet. First your sister, and now your woman. Been gone six months now, and I hear that you haven’t even tried to find her,” Hog chides me as my blood begins to boil. “Seems to me that you’d be more careful with the women in your life.”
It’s one thing to try to spout off at the mouth in situational anger, but bringing my personal shit into this? That’s crossing the fucking line. My sister made her choice, but Ricca is an entirely different story. A story that’s been put on hold, until I found Hog. He’s the last fucking loose end, and his end is so near that I can taste his death on my tongue. As soon as he breathes his last ragged breath, she’s my next target.
“I’m guessing from your silence that I hit a nerve,” Hog continues to prod. “If you find that piece of Tribe ass, you should just hand her over to me. Even though she’s been well used, I’d love to hear her scream underneath me.”
Before his mouth can spew any more bullshit, my fist is in the air and connects with his temple. The impact knocks the fight out of him, and I hope he is just unconscious and not dead. The rising and falling of his chest tells me he’s still breathing, which is perfect because I want him to feel every agonizing second of what’s to come next.
“My sister and Ricca are none of your fucking business,” I scream at him, before pulling my knife from its sheath on my hip and plunging it right into his groin. He screams as I twist the knife, severing his favorite appendage from his body. Pulling my knife from his flesh, blood spurts as his cock and balls fall a little bit lower than normal.
“How does it feel to be spineless and dickless, Hog?”
He writhes and wails in pain as I smile watching him suffer. His admission to knowing my personal issues only goes to show that he’s been watching our group long after the Cartel’s massacre. The wheels in my mind turn with the angles he could have been working to need such information, but with the bloody mess pooling between his legs, he doesn’t have much time left.
“Last chance, Hog. Answer my question, and I’ll let you die quickly.”
“Go fuck yourself,” he screams.
My chest heaves as the anger flows freely through my veins. He just doesn’t know when to submit himself to his fate. At least a little information would have made this less painful for him. Well, if it had been someone else down here instead. Myself on the other hand, I have a strict policy on how to handle disloyalty. Zero-fucking-tolerance. You fuck with my family? I fucking kill yours.
“You should have found a better place to hide, motherfucker,” I call out to him knowing he’s watching my every move as I turn on my heels. Stalking to the table behind me, where my tools lie at the ready, I grab the gas can and return to Hog dousing him in the fuel. The can falls to the floor with a thud when I toss it aside, and he jumps from the sound.
“You don’t have the balls, son. Why don’t you call the dogs upstairs down and let them finish up for you? I can see it in your eyes that you don’t have the stomach for this shit.”
“Balls?” I respond. “Who are you to talk to me about balls when yours are dangling by a thread?”
He’s wrong. Hog has always been one of the guys in our club who knew how to spew shit to stall for time. Granted, it was a skill we utilized from time to time in tough spots, but his usefulness died the moment one of his own named him as being in with the cartel. That betrayal stamped his ticket to hell, and I’ll be the ferryman to drop him off on Satan’s doorstep like a gift basket. Well, except for the fact that he’ll be a little bit less visually appealing, but I’m sure that Satan will understand the mess I’m leaving him to deal with.
I pull out the gun seated in the holster at my hip and press the barrel to his forehead. He remains motionless when I pull back the hammer, my chest heaving in a mixture of anger and excitement. There’s no denying that I am a sick motherfucker, but I’d wear that shit on a badge everyday if it meant my brothers and their families were safe. Sometimes it’s just easier to take the smudge of darkness onto my soul, than to let those around me suffer in the weight of guilt from killing someone. Good thing for me that my conscience has never been something I cared about.
“Go to hell with the rest of your family, asshole,” I declare, pulling the trigger and ending his miserable existence. The force of the shot sends his brains splattering against the wall behind him. Clumps of brain matter stick to every crevasse of the wall behind him.
“No one has the right to question my loyalty,” I scream at his corpse.
Stowing my firearm and retrieving the book of matches from my back pocket, I look at each one individually, before selecting the last one in the pack. Striking its red tip against the grit, it ignites. I watch the red glow of the flame dance for just a second, before tossing it onto Hog. His body begins to illuminate as the flames spread and when they finally reach his face, my body stills. It’s in that moment when peace fills me. The moment when someone evil is wiped from this Earth at my hand. Some might call me an arsonist or a firebug, but until they’ve experienced what I have, they’ll never truly understand what it means to watch fire remake something so new again. Fire chars everything in its path, but even in the blackened soil, life can renew.
I only linger a moment, before turning away from his now fully engulfed body and gather my tools. Quickly glancing back to make sure nothing is left behind, I leave him alone to burn for his crimes and ascend the stairs to my brothers waiting for me.
I can hear Hero’s heavy boot steps pacing on the floor above, so I know time is running short.
“Here’s Ratchet-y,” Voodoo mimics one of the classic horror movies he’s been forcing us all to watch lately as I hit the second floor. “Did someone have fun?”
“It’s fucking work, Voodoo. Not fun,” I bark back at him.
“Someone pissed in your cereal this morning. I figured you’d be in a better mood with Hog cooking downstairs. Oh!” Voodoo squeals. “Can we stop for BBQ on the way home?”
Voodoo has always had a screw lose, but I think all those hours in front of his computers is starting to fry the brain cells he has left.
I glare at him as Hero takes long strides towards me.
“Is it done?” Hero asks, eyeing the blood on my shirt.
The smoke begins to billow out from the basement below and pools around my feet.
“It’s done, and we have about five minutes to clear out before we end up extra crispy like Hog.”
Hero nods before turning back to the men with us.
“You heard the man. Time to ride.”
Falling out behind Hero, we stalk to our bikes as the fire begins to burn the first floor of the abandoned house we used for our interrogation. Sliding onto the cool metal of my Harley, I pop the kickstand and turn on the ignition. My bike rumbles to life as I turn to watch the flames just one more time, before riding out with my brothers at my side.
As soon as we hit the road, the calmness I felt dissipates with each mile ticking away bringing me closer to the clubhouse and to finding Ricca. I knew before I even opened the clubhouse door, after Mexico, that she was gon
e. Call it a hunch or intuition, but I just knew. For weeks, she hinted at leaving so why should I be surprised that she took the first chance to bail. After what she’d been through, I couldn’t blame her, but I still wanted to know why. Why she ran after our one night together? Why she waited until I finally broke down her walls to stomp all over the progress we’d made in her past issues? Why she couldn’t give me a chance to help her learn to trust again?
All I wanted was a chance to prove to her that even though my monsters still lingered, that they would play nice with hers. She could hide her emotions from her time in Twisted Tribe’s dungeon, but she couldn’t hide from me. I could see through the façade and look beneath it to find the pain she had behind her beautifully haunted eyes. She was broken like me, and it only made my attraction to her stronger. Unlike other guys, I didn’t want to fix her. I wanted her just as she was, a tattered soul that understands me.
But everything would be for nothing, if I couldn’t track her down again. Voodoo had been hot on her trails for months, while I forced myself to stay behind to clean up Maj’s mess. Raze tried for weeks to make me go, but I wasn’t the kind of person who walked away from their duties and let someone else pick up the slack. Even with that beast of a guy named Thor that Raze called up from another chapter, it wasn’t enough to make me leave.
I still had a job to do and no one else was going to take my place.
But with Hog on his way to hell, I was free to find her.
And come hell or high water, she will be mine.
I’ll admit I’ve made a few mistakes in my life.
Who am I kidding?
My entire life has been one fuck up after another with the blame solely falling onto my shoulders. Those horror stories you see on T.V. specials? Yeah, the kind of things that make you sick to your stomach reading about? I’ve lived them. Nightmares, which haunt every waking minute of my life. All because of my unquenchable thirst for bad boys and drugs to numb the pain.
Take my most recent fuck-up for example. California was meant to be my chance to start over, but like usual, I ditched common sense for a hot guy and an endless supply of heroin. When I realized I was in too deep, I ended up in an even worse situation than before. A situation that I still force myself to try and forget every single fucking day.
But it wasn’t always dark. I had some fun between the shit storms, even if they were only temporary reprieves. Every time something good would happen in my life, I would find a way to counteract it. Just like now. I ran away from the first sliver of hope that I’ve ever had in my life. Granted, the feeling of hope laid back in California in the bed of a biker who grunted more than he ever communicated, but with him, I felt safe.
Too safe. I knew that in some way or another that my life would come crashing down like it always does. It’s my fault. I am the person responsible for the scars both mentally and physically marring my body. I am also responsible for the bodies left behind in my wake.
My past may be lined with the ghosts of my mistakes, but unfortunately for me, my ghosts never seemed to stay in the shadows. No, mine liked to wait until the moment I found a piece of happiness, before haunting me again.
Those ghosts are why I’m back in the cow shit corner of Willow Branch, Kentucky. Population fourteen hundred, if you count the livestock roaming around the hills. It doesn’t even have a gas station or a post office, but we sure as shit had two local honky-tonk bars. It’s just another typical old boomtown that was left to rot when the natural gas disappeared. It didn’t help that it was filled with people who refuse to give up the country life to move where the jobs are now.
To most, it was the perfect place to raise a family, until the day my white trash mother brought me into this world. My birth marked a black stain being smudged onto Willow Branch’s perfect reputation. Well, at least for my parents. My momma wasn’t exactly what you call a respectable woman, and having a daughter out of wedlock with the married local pastor, didn’t help cement her into the saint hall of fame. Her actions and of course my birth, broke up a good family, which she blamed me for my entire my life. Call it delusional or insane, but she was convinced that he would still want her. Little did she realize she was a play toy on the side for my religious father, and that she could be wished away with atonement and prayer. It’s almost ironic that I turned out to be just like her. Coming full circle as you could say.
The images of her withered face, on the day I claimed her body, pops into my mind. Gone was the beauty she once was and in its place was the face of a woman who lived a hardened, drug addicted life. Her creamy, smooth skin had transformed into wrinkled leather. Her hair was all but gone, with patches of dark strands left sparingly over her head. Even her teeth were yellowed and broken into jagged pieces as if she chewed on glass every single day. The last ten years didn’t do any kind favors for my mother. That was the last time I saw her, before I relinquished her body to a pauper’s funeral and walked away from her. This was never about coming back for her anyway. My mission and goal were singular in nature, and sending her off in a grand fashion was never my intention from the moment they told me she died. After everything that she had done to me as a child, I couldn’t stand by her side at the funeral as a mournful daughter. The tears I had for her had long dried up, and wasting another minute in her presence wasn’t something I had in mind to do any longer than necessary. I wanted it to be done and over. And that’s what I did. Never wanting to look upon her face again.
A bell dings, snapping me back to reality and the job that I was supposed to be doing.
“Table five’s order is up,” the cook yells from behind the counter. “Get moving, girl. I don’t pay you to just stand around and be pretty,” he snaps at me when I don’t move fast enough for his liking. “Food’s getting cold.”
“I’m coming, asshole,” I mutter under my breath.
“You say something?” he hollers back over the sound of clanking pans and dishes.
I plaster a fake smile on my face, and shake my head no. I never thought I would say this, but this place is a downgrade from Red’s back in Upland. Even as handsy as Red could be, Big Joe the cook, smelled ten times worse and took every opportunity he could to corner me in the diner. He may consider himself a ladies man, but I never wanted to catch myself downwind from him.
I grab the two hot plates of sandwiches and fries, while still holding on to that fake smile. I turn on my heel and nearly run right into Susie, the other waitress working the lunch shift. This place is about as small town as you can get, and a day doesn’t go by where I don’t collide into someone. The plates wobble in my hands, but thankfully don’t come crashing to the ground.
“Shit, sorry,” Susie stutters. “I didn’t realize that you hadn’t seen me behind you.”
“It’s okay,” I coolly utter back to her, sidestepping around her and walking towards the table of customers waiting on their food.
With only five tables and a bar top, we rarely see anyone other than the same locals day in and day out. I hated every minute I had to spend in this place, but small towns don’t exactly have a booming job market. The choices and the pay were very limited. Between my day shift here and bartending at Wild Willie’s at night, I was making enough to keep a roof over my head and food in my belly. The roof may be leaky and the food isn’t exactly gourmet, but I was still making it the best I could.
The two older men clap at my booth as I slide their plates onto their table like it’s some major accomplishment. I force myself to not roll my eyes in lieu of losing the tip money I so desperately need. Joe’s Diner isn’t exactly a five-star restaurant and neither is the pay, and I needed every penny I could earn.
“Close call there, darling,” the man on the left teases. “You know,” he says, while his eyes roam my body, “I could use a girl like you down at the construction office. What do you think, Jerry?”
His friend mimics his lingering look over my body and nods at his question.
“Sure do, Billy. I bet this filly here would be great at being a secretary.”
The man I now know as Billy cocks a smile as his hand creeps across the table and straight for my ass. I step away from the table just before he touches me, and smack his hand away.
“Oh, she’s feisty,” Billy, laughs. “I like my it when my secretaries play hard to get.” He reaches towards me again, and I slap his hand away a second time. He recoils from the hit, but only laughs while looking back to his friend.
“Come on, darling. We’re just having a little fun with you,” Jerry, the other man chimes in. “Amuse a couple of old guys, and give us a little show, will ya?”
“A show, huh?” I coo back, while plotting my revenge. “What kind of show are you wanting, handsome?”
Fuck the tip money. No one has the right to touch me without my permission, and I, for damn sure, will not just walk away from these two dick heads. They need to be taught a lesson.
Both men smirk, but it’s Billy who makes a move. He grabs a hold of me and pulls me into the red vinyl booth next to him. My body tries to recoil, but I force myself to endure his touch knowing what I am about to do to him. His arm slides around my shoulders, and his hand grazes the top of my breast over my uniform top. I cringe, but keep the charade going because Billy is too fixated on my tits and doesn’t notice my fingers sliding towards the switchblade I have strapped underneath my skirt.
“You’re far too pretty of a girl to be waiting tables, when you could be working for a guy like me who’d appreciate your beauty more. How about you follow me out to my truck, and we’ll have ourselves a little job interview.”
I innocently smile back, before flicking open the blade with my fingers. The sound instantly draws his attention to my lap, and shock fills his eyes. I maneuver the blade ever so carefully towards his crotch and stop short of pressing it against his zipper.
“Touch me one more fucking time, and you’ll be singing soprano the rest of your life. Do you understand me, Billy? Now be a good boy and let me go because I am not the kind of bitch you want to mess with, old man.” I whisper into his ear.
