Crimson Footprints lll: The Finale

by Pugh, Shewanda

  The sounds coming from her mouth grated him, so he clamped a hand over her lips when it came time to thrust.

  She was dry and he told her. She was ugly and he told her. He hated this and he told her that, too.

  He hated this girl.

  Eyes clamped tight, he said it was Deena, and that she didn’t want him, that he’d shoved into Deena anyway.

  She-had-no-choice.

  Mike gave a single savage thrust. Her back arched, neck corded, she whimpered behind his hand. Glistening, wide eyes stared back at him. Accusing. And ojiichan called from the end of a tunnel, from a place to far to reach him. Mike’s lungs couldn’t find enough air.

  Fire shot through his veins, unrelenting. He bathed in the ragged up and down of her chest, thrilled at the unchecked fright in her eyes.

  “I’m hurting you,” he said and slammed in.

  She screamed into his palm, back like a bow, raising up as if to meet his assault.

  He took away his hand and kissed her hard on the mouth. He yanked down her shirt and kneaded one triangle of a breast clear down to the ribs. He repeated with the other, twisting both until they reddened. Tears painted her cheeks.

  Mike asked her if he should stop.

  “No,” she said firmly.

  Nothing about her said that she enjoyed being used. Not the tears in her eyes, not the trembling lip. Still, she told him not to stop.

  He hated this girl.

  Mike gripped her waist and rammed, then held with insistent pressure. A gasp escaped her and she shoved at his abdomen; he dug until fresh tears sprang.

  Deena, he thought, unable to stop him from having her. A thrill shot up his spine. One brutal stroke followed another, before a savage rhythm found him. She sobbed, filling the hand that covered her mouth with saliva.

  Deena beneath him, legs open, he told himself, and ignited on a hammer of vicious pumps.

  He didn’t care what she wanted. He didn’t care who she loved. She had no choice but to make him come.

  Mike erupted on a tide of brutal strokes.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Punishment. That’s what his father called this. Chained to a room all day and all night with a narcissist who found his own voice captivating. No satellite meant no television, though Tony did still have his phone. Trading insults via text with Lizard did nothing to lift his mood. He wanted to call Wendy—she could always cheer him—except calling her meant explaining what he’d done.

  He couldn’t do that.

  Tony stared out his bedroom window. For awhile, he’d tried to content himself with the sounds of family having fun. But when that fun came at his expense...

  Lloyd cleared his throat. Standing in the vanity mirror, he straightened the collar of his button shirt and grinned at his reflection.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me where I’m going, roomie?”

  Tony shot him a look.

  “No. Because it’s obvious you want me to.”

  Lloyd turned to face him. With one hand on the vanity stand, he leaned into it, and took in his younger cousin.

  They weren’t so many years apart, Tony, Lloyd and the other two brothers that flanked him most days, Remy and Damien. The oldest of them, Damien, was but 22 to Lloyd’s 21 and Remy’s 20. But they aged like Benjamin Button. Why he hadn’t thought of them when the clothes went missing Tony couldn’t know.

  “I’ve got a date tonight,” Lloyd said. “And I’m prettying myself up for a pretty little girl.”

  “Who could you be seeing? You don’t even know anyone.”

  Lloyd’s eyes danced as if delighted he’d finally asked. “I know one girl. A bare-breasted in the gardens kind of gal.”

  “Lloyd—”

  A grin played across the older boy’s lips.

  Lloyd turned back to the mirror. “You’re not her boyfriend, are you?”

  He smiled at Tony’s sheepish expression. “Exactly.”

  He went back to adjusting the shirt. On squinting, Tony realized it was his.

  He stood.

  “I swear to God, I’m gonna pound you. If you don’t quit playing, I’ll—”

  Lloyd sauntered for the door, arms swinging, pep in his every step.

  “How are you gonna do all that from there, little cuz? Lord knows you wouldn’t try daddy.”

  Tony’s nostrils flared. But as Lloyd said, he rooted into his spot. Not daring to cross the threshold.

  “Night, night, little one.” He shut the door behind him.

  Tony kicked it, then cursed.

  Lila. His Lila.

  No, she wasn’t his girlfriend, but he had a claim on her nonetheless.

  Didn’t he?

  Tony turned in a circle. He needed out of that room. He needed to see where Lloyd was going, what he was doing, and for how long. He needed to know if Lila had turned to his cousin and away from him.

  He wasn’t fool enough to think that she was his alone, especially when his visits were sporadic. Still, he held on to the notion that Tony in Aruba meant only Tony with Lila.

  He ventured to the window. A jump straight down could chuck him onto a terrace table, shattering it and ending his chance for answers. He’d have to slither down the wall for results. Which, of course, was stupid.

  There was only the door.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Tony’s door swung open with deceptive simplicity. He stood there, Adam’s apple mobile, and contemplated retreating. His father’s punishments were notorious, brutal in their creativity all the while delivering an unequivocal message. On the day that he got his Porsche, he’d stayed out two hours past curfew. The next night, he did the same. On coming home that time, he found a note attached to the door. In his father’s large, lazy script were instructions he never forgot: Step One: Open the box on the porch. Step Two: Remove blankets and pillow. Step Three: Sleep in the hammock out back. Next time, there’ll be no box.

  Still, Tony stepped out, a single step, and cocked his head for a concentrated listen. He frowned at the silence.

  Door closed behind him, he started for the stairs. The hall stretched on in a magician’s trick that never ended. Door after door, mile after mile, until his heartbeat assaulted his ears. A moan of ecstasy drifted toward him. Tony’s mouth curled down with repulsion as a single word rattled plain in his head: gross.

  He put a hand on the rail and a foot on the stair. Too many to go down, too certain to creak. A glance down showed a scurrying maid. He hissed at her. She stopped. Looked up.

  “Help me,” Tony said. “I need to get out. Is anyone down there?”

  She made the sign of the cross and ran.

  Coward.

  He started down the stairs. Music from the backyard drew near. Bass-laden old funk gave a cover that could only help, masking the sound of his descent.

  He made it to the entrance hall and cast a glance left then right for his sister. She was the only one he’d trust to help him, the only one he felt sure of.

  Tony slammed into Mia on turning a corner.

  “Watch where you’re going,” she spat, skateboard tucked under one arm.

  Then her brows knitted for the long look.

  “What are you doing down here? Dad’ll murder you, you know. Turn you into kielbasa sausage or something.”

  Tony’s cheeks warmed. While he’d wanted his sister’s help, now that she stood there, he couldn’t form the right words.

  “Lloyd. He—he says he’s going out on a date with Lila.”

  Mia’s face wrapped into a scowl, before she dropped her skateboard and mounted it. She shoved wild, jet black coils from her face, only to have them spring back in. A resonated sigh later, she shook her head.

  “I’ve told you about that girl. Over the summer, I told you—”

  “That was the summer, Me. Now could you keep it down? I’ve got to know what’s happening.”

  “What’s happening is that you’re obsessed with some skank because her knockers are huge. You, like every other guy, use her
appearance to bolster your ego.” Mia shrugged. “I don’t get it. But maybe in a year or two I’ll look like Mom, guys’ll go in heat at the sight of me, and then I’ll understand.”

  Truth was, boys were already half gone over her. Truth was, his kid sister, straddling the fence of puberty, had begun a not-so-subtle shift that hadn’t escaped notice. Boys left notes in her locker; one once wrote her a poem. Tony trashed them and ran the guys off with threats of mutilation. It wasn’t that he liked or particularly wanted the stereotype of fierce older brother. It was only that in thinking of Lila, in the way he thought of Lila, he had no stomach for his baby sister in a similar role.

  “Tony,” Mia said, voice softened. “Did you see if the sedan was out front? If the driver’s here, then Lloyd’s here and probably in the billiard room playing Pac Man.”

  She was right.

  All three brothers huddled at the Pac-Man machine, with Lloyd at the center jerking it and kicking. To the left of them was the button up he’d worn for Tony’s benefit, draped across a chair unwrinkled.

  Remy saw Tony first, then nudged the others.

  The laughter started. Deep, rolling guffaws that landed one boy on top of the other. Smacks of the thigh and belly clenching, they were bent over and howling with it.

  He thought of the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, where the brunt of joke would have his head transformed into a massive red sucker. If that weren’t bad enough, the massive lollipop would have “SUCKER” printed across it.

  “Look at his face,” Damien gasped. “We need a camera. We need a picture. Lloyd said you’d be a—”

  “Sucker,” Tony supplied.

  “And it was true,” Lloyd said. “Only, you got here too early. I had plans for lipstick on my shirt, a bit of perfume. Anything to watch you go ape up the walls, little cousin. You’re just so good at it.”

  Tony thought back to the boy who’d been desperate for a family. The old him who’d hitchhiked from Bismarck. He wanted to tell them that this wasn’t exactly what he meant.

  “I should pound you,” was what he said instead.

  But Lloyd only turned back to his game.

  “You’ve got a temper, little cousin. Counseling might help.”

  “You actually thought he’d sleep with your girl,” Remy said, smile now fading. “Your own cousin, messing with your girl? You must think so much of us.”

  And the tide rushed back, shifting fault from them to him. He was the one who disappointed. He was the reason the joke worked.

  Tony groped for tendrils of victimhood, sought ways to plead his own case. They were Hammonds, he wanted to say, and in their family, worse things had happened. Except none of those things involved them, so who knew how it all really went? Everything involved dead people with versions never told. They had nothing of the anger and envy that ripped their parents’ generation. The most they felt was a scratch of annoyance when the grownups harped on old things.

  He decided to leave. But not before cursing each one: to an accidental step on a rusty nail, to a growth of man boobs in their prime.

  Then he started for his bedroom.

  “Wait,” Lloyd said. “At least let us help you get back up.”

  Tony blinked once, in surprise, before following his cousin’s lead.

  Chapter Thirty

  Tak rolled in bed and collided with a patch of ice. A hand across white sheets confirmed that his wife had abandoned their hibernation. But she couldn’t have gone far. Gelatinous legs were no good for walking, and he’d given her a pair on that day.

  He climbed out of bed. Mike in the house meant Mike into mischief and the need for a closer eye on his wife. Naked, Tak pulled on a gray tee that said “Big Easy” and slipped in wrinkled jeans from the floor.

  A sweep of the house gave Tak a glimpse of John lying on a couch in the entrance hall staring at the wall. It took him to Tak’s father flipping through The Discourse That Sets Turning the Wheel of Truth in the library, smiling as if it were the Sunday comics; and it took him to Aunt Caroline and Aunt Asami, drinking beer in the reception room. Neither had seen Deena.

  More searching brought him to his grandmother seated with Grandma Emma, both women caught in a smile. Tak resisted the urge to join them and hurried onward in his hunt. His wife had to be somewhere. That somewhere had better not be with Mike.

  A head in the pantry revealed the backside of a tall, dark, thrusting figure, jeans pooled at the ankles. Pale legs wrapped his waist, arms wrapped his neck, and the face at his shoulder was familiar. As for the guy, Tak couldn’t think of which cousin he might be, but the girl was definitely Lauren. A tall white shelf stacked to overflow with cans, supported both their weights. It jerked and jerked and a can sprung free. Bush’s Baked Beans with extra brown sugar rolled to Tak’s feet.

  He backed out the way he’d came.

  And collided with Tony.

  “Jesus, kid!” he cried and snatched shut the pantry door. Heart heaving, he looked back at it with an expectation of betrayal.

  “Dad,” Tony said. “You’ve gotta come.”

  It was then that Tak remembered who was who and that Tony, not him, should fear detection.”

  “You’re out of your room. I told you that if you come out again—”

  “Mike’s on the roof, dad. He’s gonna jump.”

  “Wait.” Tak’s mouth snapped shut on a reprimand. “What?”

  “Hurry,” Tony said and ran.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  They tore through the house, toppling a wild haired bust before sliding through the entrance hall and spilling into the driveway. Tony pointed upward.

  “There,” he said. “Stand back to see him better.”

  Tak kept his face skyward, but walked back, just as his son had instructed. On the roof of his house, Mike stood, a silhouette against the moon, hair flapping.

  “Go get his dad,” Tak said.

  “No! Get my parents and I’ll be dead before they get here. I don’t want them to see me.”

  Tak dropped his gaze to Tony, who stood in taunt expectation. 18 years of life shrank to insignificance; he needed his father to tell him what to do.

  Tak turned to the roof.

  “Listen to me,” he said. “Let’s talk. We’re still family. It’s not too late.”

  Mike came all the way to the roof’s edge. Only his head jutted out for Tak’s view.

  “You don’t even know what you’re talking about,” he said.

  Mike drew back, leaving Tak to stare at a gaping darkness, a void where his cousin had been.

  “Mike.” Tak heard the fissures in his voice. “Mike, I’m going to come up now.”

  He searched for how his cousin had done it, but saw nothing to aid understanding. A quick study of the house showed him grooves good enough for scaling. He stepped back, got a running start and leaped to latch on to the first floor balustrade. Their house, hoisted on a foundation, meant that even the lowest floor stood a little tall.

  Tak pulled himself up with a yawn of muscle, before swinging a leg onto the ledge. He looked up, grabbed the grooved end of the French arch separating first floor from second, and used it to hoist up yet again. He repeated for the second floor, before feeling for a column that ran to the roof. Tak used it to scramble up to a smaller window, feet pedaling in the throes of a near-slip. Finally, he grabbed hold of the roof, pawed around for the parapet, and used it to heave himself up.

  Chest heaving, Tak flopped onto his back and blinked at the multitude of stars.

  “You climbed the house,” Mike said, voice strained, as if Tak were a lab rat who’d grown a massive penis. Disgust tinged with fascination.

  Tak looked around.

  “How’d you get here?”

  Mike pointed to the side of the house, where the top prongs of a ladder rested.

  Great.

  He turned back to face Tak and studied him as if he hoped to learn.

  “You came to stop me,” Mike said. “After all I’ve done. But if you knew t
he half of it, you’d shove me off this thing instead.”

  Tak’s stomach instinctively clenched. What he shoved back was a myriad of possibilities. Mike had done something or a series of somethings so vile that he wanted to die. Couple that with his general inability to conjure up contrition and Tak’s hands wanted to cover his ears.

  “Tell me,” he said instead. “Tell me why you’re up here.”

  Mike shoved both hands in the pockets of his jeans and turned to face an oversized moon. It was the kind that a kid on a bicycle pedaled by, with an alien in a basket heading home.

  “I think about old stuff,” he said. “Swimming in Blue Lake Reservoir. John hurling on Mister Twister. Us running away to try and sign up as rodeo clowns.” He shot Tak a grin. “That meat we tried to feed the lions at Denver Zoo. You were there for all of it, I realized. Me and John’s best memories.”

  Mike turned on him abruptly.

  “I want you off this roof.”

  “No.”

  Tak clamored to his feet.

  “What am I supposed to tell my best friend when you jump? My aunt and uncle? My grandmother? That I left you up here so you could kill yourself properly?”

  “So, you’re here for them.”

  “Yes, I’m here for them!” Tak cried. “I’m here for you, too, you moron.”

  Mike’s nostrils flared.

  “You’re not here for me. You don’t even like me.”

  Well, he had a point there. Tak sighed.

  “Not liking you is not the same as wanting you dead.”

  He had the same memories as Mike. Splashing in lake waters at summer time, gnawing on candy coated apples by the bushel. Once, they’d camped in the backyard and told ghost stories, after which Tak felt too paranoid to sleep. On telling Mike, he sat up, flashlight in hand and guarded the tent with darting eyes until Tak found rest at last.

  “I misled you,” Mike said. “When I said I knew Deena. I did, but she didn’t know me. I admired her, left gifts for her sometime, but never did I find courage enough to speak.”

  Tak felt none of the usual burn that accompanied Mike’s confessions of unrequited love. Instead, a slow sorrow spread through him.