by Tia Wilson
I got off him and waved the glass back and forth, pushing him towards the door.
“You are fucking crazy kid. You will never amount to anything” he said as he backed towards the door.
He opened the door without turning his back on me and then he was gone. My mother sank to a heap on the floor balling her eyes out. I dropped the glass shard and it went skittering across the floor sending glints of light off it as it spun.
“What have you done Jack” she sobbed into her hands.
“What have you done?”
“He was going to hurt you,” I said as I bent to hug her.
She wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close. I felt safe and loved in her embrace. I felt needed, I had made a difference for her. My emotions spilled over and I cried into the folds of her shoulder as she stroked my hair and calmed me down.
That had happened when I was twelve years old. A door was opened up inside me that night. I had gotten a thrill out of protecting my Mother, it had felt like the right thing to do. Even more I had gotten a bigger thrill out of the violence. I wouldn’t fully say that what happened put me on my current path, but it was another totem that showed me that I wasn’t destined to live a regular nine to five life.
I was dragged back to the present by a sharp pain in my ribs. The bullet had passed right through me but I was pretty sure two of my ribs had been broken. I could feel a raspy sensation every time I breathed in as if something was loose inside me. Blood had continued to trickle down my side and pool in my boot.
I didn’t believe in luck but if I did Linda Lake would be luck personified. Without her help back in the bar I might not of made it out of there alive. I knew who the culprit was. Only one member of our gang knew where I would be today. That rat fucks hours on this planet were limited. He deserved nothing less than the liars tomb.
Linda shifted on the bike as we entered a long flat bend. It felt good to have her pressed against my back. A warm reassuring presence. Back at the gas station I had spoken to my contact in the police department. I had some dirt on him when he was caught with his trousers around his ankles with some young guy. This is something his pretty new blonde wife might not want to see pictures of.
He had access to some of the police systems and could get his hands on most files if we needed them. We had built up a nice collection of intel on various members of the vice squad.
I had gotten him to do a quick background check on Linda and her dead husband. Unlucky for her she only put him in the hospital. Judging by her face he was the kind of bastard who deserved to be killed. This is something I could arrange if she wanted.
I had gotten my source to check if there was any heat out on Linda. So far it looked like nothing major and if the husband recovered it would be up to him to press charges if he wanted to take it any further.
The roads where empty of traffic and I gunned the engine as we headed up into the mountains. My gang had a simple wooden shack on a couple of acres of scrub land that we used from time to time. We had several of these places around the county. I didn’t like to meet at the same place too many times in a row. After today I wouldn’t be returning to this place as it would be too risky.
I turned off the main road and slowed down as I got near to the thick chain strung across the road. I pulled the bike to a stop and got off.
“How are you doing?” I asked as I unwrapped the chain from a tree.
“I could do with a drink. I’m still shook up about my husband being still alive. I felt sick to my stomach that I had killed him and at the same time I also felt huge relief that he was gone. Is that messed up?” she said.
“Any man that did what he did to you doesn’t deserve to feel the sun on his face. Fuck him I say. Don’t waste your time feeling guilty about him,” I replied.
“What if he comes after me?” she said.
I locked eyes with her and said in a calm and steady voice “He is never going to hurt you again.”
She lowered her gaze and I could see tears welling up. My first instinct was to hop on the bike and head straight for the hospital. I could feel my vision begin to strobe with bright flashes of white in the corners.
I could feel my hands wrapping around his neck. See his eyes wide in fear as I squeezed every last bit of hateful life out of his frail and broken body. His windpipe creaking and then snapping as my fingers crush with all my force. Only then would the strobing white light in my vision recede and the beast within stop beating against my chest.
It was a familiar feeling. A pressure behind my eyes as if I was filling up inside with a thick and viscous fluid. My fingers would feel fat and unwieldy as if I was made out of thick slabs of meat. The pressure inside would grown and grow and unless I did something about it I would explode. I had never let it get to that stage. I was afraid to let the pressure build. I did not want to let it obliterate me, ripping and tearing at my flesh as it found the point of least resistance and ripped through my soft weak body. I had found a way to relieve the building pressure. The crushing and breaking of weak men, the kind of men who took advantage of women, these where my pressure valves. I would rend them until they where nothing but a grease stain on the ground.
Linda’s story gave me something to latch onto, a release point for the growing weight behind my eyes. I think a visit to the hospital to take care of a loose end for her was inevitable. Rationally I knew the visit could bring untoward attention to me, but my heart told me it was the right thing to do. It was the only way to ease the mounting pressure.
I reattached the chain to the tree stump as we headed up the dirt road to the small wood cabin.
The cabin stood in a small clearing surrounded by silver birch trees. Parked outside were three motorbikes. The sun glinted off the polished chrome of the exhaust pipes. Birds chirped as they dove into a dark cloud of insects buzzing in the air, snatching mouthfuls of the bugs as they swooped about.
As Blackjack pulled up in front of the cabin the door opened and a man with greasy blonde hair walked out. He wore a beaten up leather jacket that looked like it had seen several lifetimes of action. The elbows where scuffed and worn and it looked like the man lived in the jacket.
Blackjack stopped the bike and got off. The blonde haired man came down the steps and they hugged like brothers.
“This here is Linda Lake, she helped me out back at the ambush,” Blackjack said.
The blonde man tipped a hat that wasn’t there towards her.
“I’m Bill, but everyone calls me Red,” he said extending a hand to Linda.
She took his hand and it was engulfed in a large warm and calloused embrace.
“That’s one hell of a shiner you have there,” Red said.
“You should see the other guy,” Linda said and giggled nervously.
Red winked at her and turned to Blackjack.
“Is he ready?” said Blackjack.
“Yeah we got the jump on him when he was leaving some whores place in old-town. He didn’t know what hit him. He's inside cooling his heals right now. He will be happy to see you,” said Red smiling a shark tooth grin.
“Is everything else set up?” asked Blackjack.
Red nodded and leaned up against his bike. He took out a match from a back pocket in his grease stained jeans and started to pick his teeth with it.
“How bad was the fracas at the bar?”
“Nothing I couldn’t handle. They where packing some serious heat. I didn’t recognise any of them. They looked like out of town help. Things got dicey for a minute. Linda helped even the odds.”
“You can handle yourself?” said Red admiringly to Linda.
“I know which end of a gun to point at trouble,” Linda deadpanned.
Red let out a snort of a laughter and said “you’re a veritable Calamity Jane, good for you”.
Linda gave him a slight smile. He seemed friendly enough, but she could see that behind his openness and jokey charm was a darting furtive intelligence. She could feel herself being siz
ed up even as he smiled innocently and laughed along with her.
“I think we have let him stew long enough, lets do this,” Blackjack said and walked towards the door.
“What about her?” asked Red.
“You wait outside while I have a little chat with a compatriot of mine. It wont take too long,” said Blackjack.
Linda nodded and hung back by the bikes. There was nothing she could do. She knew from studying the stacks of files on motorcycle gangs that most of them never let any of the women be involved or witness anything they got up to. She was lucky to have got this far so quickly.
She ground her boots into the soft earth kicking up puffs of dirt trying to bury her frustration about being left outside. She needed to work on making herself indispensable to Blackjack. She needed to get to a point where he never wanted her away from his side. She thought she knew exactly what she needed to do.
CHAPTER THREE
Blackjack and Red entered the gloom of the one room cabin. The first thing that hit Blackjacks senses was the acrid smell of piss. Clearly the prisoner had soiled himself in fear. He should be afraid, Blackjack thought darkly to himself.
In the middle of the room was an old beaten up armchair. Chunks of the foam padding poked out through holes in the faded green material. The chair was flanked by two large bald men. They both had the same large crooked nose and jug ears. They were the gangs enforcers known simply as “the brothers”.
Tied to the chair and the source of the acrid piss was a young man in his early twenties. In better times he would have been called good looking, the sort of guy who always had a beautiful woman on his arm and a devilish glint in his eyes. Right now a woman would have screamed at the sight of him.
His nose was flattened and broken on his face. Blood streamed down his chin and ran down his naked chest. His face was puffy and uneven from multiples blows to the head. The brothers had worked him over good. Three of his fingers on his right hand were broken. They had been pulled back until the knuckles popped and cracked as if they were brittle twigs. He had passed out briefly from the pain of the second finger snapping. The brothers allowed the black veil to swallow him momentarily then one of them wrapped his hands around the bound mans neck and began to squeeze. His eyes shot open immediately in panic and he flailed weakly against his constraints.
“Wake up fucker” said the brother as he released his grip on his neck.
Blackjack circled the broken and bleeding man, pacing in long slow loops of the chair and saying nothing. The tied up man followed Blackjack , tilting his head back and forth so as not to lose sight of him. His eyes bulged in his head in fear, afraid if he lost sight of him the cobra would strike.
Blackjack stopped circling and dropped to his hunkers in front of the man.
“Pike, you look like you have seen a ghost. Did you really think your plan was going to work?” Blackjack asked.
Pike began to babble “I made a mistake, please Blackjack please let me explain.”
Blackjack nodded to go on.
“The Man approached me himself, gave me a deal. If I could tell him a place and time were you would be he would erase you. He would make sure I would be leader of this gang.” Pike lowered his voice in a conspiratorial tone and continued. “The Man didn’t know I was playing him. We met at his secret clubhouse. I was doing it for you. We can stop him and his gang now. I know how he operates, I know where he hangs out, we can get him. It was all for you Blackjack, all for our gang. We can finally stop The Man and his band of degenerates. Please Blackjack, I was playing him, please I …”
Blackjack was all too familiar with The Man as he liked to be called, his real name was Diaz Jones. He was a punk ass beaner from across town with delusions of grandeur. His gang was nothing more than a loose group of wannabes and burnt out junkies. They would have never registered as any kind of serious threat to him. Blackjack had some low level dealings with him over the years, but nothing that would of predicted an all out assault on him. Something big was going down he thought, there was no way that Diaz could of organised something like this with his gang of low level fools. There was someone else behind it.
Blackjack stood up and turned to Red “Is the liars tomb ready?”.
“Everything is set up outside” replied Red.
Pike started to thrash in the chair his breath coming out in ragged gasps as tears and snot streamed down his broken face.
“Blackjack look at me, I did it for us, for us.”
His voice trailed off and he gently rocked against his constraints repeating again and again “Believe me”.
Blackjack nodded towards the brothers and said “Hang back for a minute and then bring him out”.
The backdoor groaned loudly as Blackjack opened it, the rusty hinges sounding like the wailing lament of a broken hearted woman. Red followed him outside.
Blackjack looked over the setup for the liars tomb and nodded grimly. It was something his gang had used for a long time against anyone found to be doing anything detrimental to the gang. When money and power was involved Blackjack had found that even the most trustworthy of men could sometimes falter. The liars tomb was the great boogie man of his gang, often whispered about by the lower down members.
Blackjack had to employ its use only twice in the ten years of the gang. The first time was to his trusted right hand man Drake “The beast” Cray. Blackjack had started to notice little by little how Drake would slightly undermine him in front of other gang members. At first it came across as a nothing but some gentle ribbing. Drake would joke about Blackjacks penchant for only sleeping with African American woman, jokingly calling him a traitor to his race. Then Drake would start to second guess Blackjacks plans or instructions in front of the other men. Little by little chipping away at Blackjack. He could handle the insults to his choice in women, but second guessing him in front of others could not stand.
Blackjack confronted him about it in a knock down drag out drunken fistfight. Drake swore that it was nothing more then brotherly rivalry to keep Blackjack on his toes. He didn’t believe him. He knew what was really going on. Drake was planning a coup.
Blackjack had only one course of action. He needed to show his strength to the rest of the gang. Show that he was a strong and decisive leader who would not take any disrespect. He needed to show that nobody was above reproach even someone like Drake who he had grown up with and at one time was his most trusted brother.
The truth came out when Drake was introduced to the liars tomb. It always did. After that Blackjacks legend grew as a ruthless and cold leader. He only had to use the tomb once more after that. That time he had been wrong about the man and he pulled back from using it again. He had promised himself not to use it another time, until now.
The rat fuck Pike deserved it and it was the only way to find out the full truth.
Red walked over to the pit and kicked a sod of dirt in. He had supervised the setup of the liars tomb that afternoon. Grim work for him and the brothers. They had dug the pit in a frenzied two hour session of digging, hopped up on a potent mix of corn whiskey and speedballs.
The soil was soft from heavy rains the night before and the digging went easy. Once the brothers finished they surveyed their handy work. The coffin and the modified lid lay off to the side. A dark duffel bag sat beside the coffin awaiting the time when its contents would be used like a demon spectre haunched over a struggling man ominous in its existence.
Blackjack walked around the open grave and nodded to himself, “Bring out Pike” he said to the two bald and gargantuan brothers standing like stone implacable gargoyles at the backdoor to the cabin. They went inside to grab the whimpering Pike.
