by Keri Lake
Ty captured my hand, weaving his fingers in mine, staring at me. I could feel his eyes watching me, felt the heat, the want rolling off of him in waves. We sat like that for another minute or so, and then it stopped. Like a switch had been flipped, he retracted his hand and closed the book, shoving it back in front of me. “I have to go.”
He stood up from the table and, without saying goodbye, spun away from me and strode off.
A paper wedged inside the book he’d been studying snagged my attention. I tugged out the page filled with scribbles I didn’t bother to read, holding it up in the air. “Ty! Wait!” Jumping up from my chair knocked it backward in a clamor that failed to make him stop.
I caught up with him just in time for him to spin around and pin me to the bookshelves behind me, crinkling the paper in my hands. A surging tide of desire rolled through my veins, stoking my pulse. For one brief moment, he stared at my lips, and the energy between us crackled. I waited for the boom. As though he were lightning, and I thunder, and the pause in between were our heartbeats counting down the seconds.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four …
Until, at last, he pressed his lips to mine, and I could swear the earth shook beneath my feet. It weakened my knees as he held my wrists pinned. Set me off balance and lit up my sky with an electric heat so intense, it stole my breath.
I tugged the collar of his shirt, drawing him closer, kissing him harder, ravenously. He tasted like warm cinnamon on my tongue, and his lips were soft, but imposing. Demanding my surrender. My body melted into his, the electricity burning me where I stood clutching him for stability.
He groaned against my lips, lodging his fingers into my hair, and his other hand slipped beneath my thigh, hoisting me up. Pinned against the criminal psychology books behind me, I fought for the breath he stole from my mouth.
His kiss wasn’t sweet, or reverent, but fervent and greedy. It felt forbidden, as if we shouldn’t, for a hundred different reasons—not a single one of which came to mind in that moment. I didn’t want the air that wrenched at my lungs, because doing so meant breaking the kiss, floating back down to earth, and I wanted to stay in that place forever. I realized then, in that moment, I’d never truly been kissed before, and those who had kissed me hadn’t known what the hell they were doing.
Ty had transcended me.
His lips broke from mine first, our foreheads still pressed together as we fought for the small bit of air between us. Fingers loosening their grip, he set me back down, his eyes riveted on my mouth. One more slant of his lips over mine told me he was still hungry, and the sharp bite of his tangled fingers nipping at my scalp, along with the slight tremble in his arm, confessed the extent of his appetite.
Something deep inside my bones told me if we weren’t within earshot of others, he’d have torn me apart and left me begging for more.
“I’ll see you Friday,” he whispered, sliding the ruined page of notes from my hand, and walked away.
He was bad for me, I knew that. He’d undoubtedly break my heart if ever I handed it over to him. But part of me wanted that fire, in spite of the burn. I wanted to know just how hot it could get before I’d be consumed in flames, because I had a feeling I’d never know that heat again. I’d never know passion so intense, the kind my mother always told me to find and hold onto.
As I watched him disappear around the corner, I had to remind myself to breathe again.
The urge to draw tingled my fingertips. I could see the dark lines on the page, the fast strokes capturing his chiseled jawline and those piercing eyes.
A buzz against my ass jerked me forward, and I lifted my phone to see Ty’s number popped up on my screen.
I’ll send you a dick pic tonight.
I smiled down at that, sucking my still swollen lip between my teeth.
ME: Don’t be pissed at me if you wake up to find it trending on social media tomorrow.
TY: I’m not sure you want all that attention.
ME: That impressive, is it?
TY: Keep your phone by your bed. I’ll let you be the judge.
ME: Or you can upload it yourself and spare me the trouble of getting blocked on Facebook.
The three dots told me he was writing back, but after a minute, they disappeared, and after three minutes with no text, I set my phone down on the table and returned to my studies.
17
Jameson
Nine years ago …
A voice roused me from the black void that’d begun to move in from the fringes of my mind—one I didn’t recognize. I screamed, and the pressure of my plea beat back against my mouth, as the air remained trapped behind the duct tape smoothed across my lips.
Kicking my feet hard against the door set the metal of the bedsprings rattling, and stilled to listen, when the voices grew louder, sharper.
Closer.
The door clicked, and light bled through the cracks of the closet, just enough to show silhouettes. Rolling back brought me peering through the cracks, but I couldn’t make out anything more than shadows on the floor. Whoever it was remained in the hallway, well out of my view.
“Boy’s in that box. Got ‘im all cleaned up. Ain’t nobody touched ‘im that way. I can swear to you,” Fox said.
“He can’t hear me right now.” It wasn’t a question, but a statement. As though the two had made the agreement prior.
“Nope. ‘Cept for Dave Mustaine screamin’ in his ears.” Fox’s laughter filled the room, and the rich scent of a cigar watered my mouth.
“Good. Then, you did as I asked?”
“Yes, sir. I guarantee he won’t go near her again. Gua-ran-tee.”
Her? Who the hell were they talking about? And what did it have to do with Eli that it would warrant this treatment?
“Leave us.”
The light disappeared beneath darkness, and for a moment, I thought we were alone again, until I heard a ruffling sound. Someone still in the room. A pitch black room. I couldn’t see my own nose in the gloom, let alone who remained, so I listened.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought about this.” The stranger’s voice didn’t carry the hard clips and slurs of someone who lived in Detroit. Definitely wasn’t urban, or white trash, from what I could gather, but more articulate in his speech. “You’ve no idea how it feels to live behind a mask every day. To hide what you are, for fear that someone will come along and destroy everything you’ve worked so hard for.”
A hard thump sounded, as if someone had collapsed, until the quiet zipper skated along my spine. “This is who I am. So fucking deal with it.” A long moan carried over Eli’s muffled scream. More grunting. More muffled screaming.
Suddenly everything was clear. Why we were there. Why we’d been picked up like rats in the street, and placed in cages.
His grunts heightened, the hard slaps beating down my spine.
I didn’t scream, or say a word, for fear he’d find me next, but I wept. I wept for my best friend, and for the helplessness that I felt in that moment.
Vomit carried up my throat, and I curled into a ball, praying, in spite of the barrier at my mouth. The act took me back seven years into my past, and not even the tight clasp of my eyelids could shield out the memories trickling in from the fringes of my conscience.
Momma sits me down in front of the TV. She tells me that she’s going to do some cleaning, and I need to stay occupied. I’m seven years old, and I know what that word means. It means I don’t make a move until she tells me that I can get up. It’s okay, though, because she makes popcorn and chocolate milk during the times she wants me to be occupied. I’m not supposed to move one single little muscle.
I love Pinocchio. It’s my favorite. I’m pretty sure I’ve saw it like one, no, two hundred times now. Even more. I used to be afraid of Monstro. Kinda. Not really, but he was a little bit scary.
But now I can watch it with no problem. Even when he eats Pinocchio. It’s only a little scary.
I scoop up a handful of popcorn and bite down. A loud crack sounds like it’s in my ears, but it isn’t. It’s in my mouth. I spit out all the chewed up popcorn into my palm and little bits of red, I don’t know where from. I think its blood. Oh, no. Did I bite my tongue? I roll it around in my mouth, and even when it hits my tooth, it doesn’t hurt. I’m scared to see blood, but then I notice something next to a broken kernel.
Small, white, and it’s not squishy like the chewy popcorn. My tooth. It’s my third tooth!
“Momma!” I jump to my feet to show her, but stop in my tracks. I’m not supposed to move a muscle.
Shoot.
But momma would wanna know about my tooth. We have to put it under my pillow for the tooth fairy. I know she got mad when I needed to ask her a question last time I was staying occupied, but this is different. This is my tooth! She told me to pull it this morning, because it was gross, but I didn’t have to. The popcorn pulled it for me!
I run down the hall to where I hear her.
“Momma!” I shout, but she doesn’t hear me.
She’s screaming. Why is she screaming? Is she hurt?
I take another step, clutching my tooth in my hand with all the popcorn so I don’t drop it.
I put my ear to the door and listen. There’s a banging sound, and I hear a growly noise like something a monster would make.
“Momma?”
What if there’s a monster in there with her? What if he’s eating her, just like Monstro ate Pinocchio and his dad? And Jiminy?
My chest hurts like my heart is beating really fast. The growly voice says a bad word, like it’s mad. I turn the knob and push the door open. It’s not a monster. It’s the man who came to fix our TV so I could watch cartoons. He fixes our cable a lot.
He’s naked and pulling my momma’s hair, and she’s naked, too, and screaming like it hurts.
“Stop it! Get away from my momma! Get away, or I’ll kill you!”
The two of them stop, and he lets go of my momma’s hair, grabbing his pants and covering his privates.
“Jamie, get the fuck out of here! I thought I told you to watch your cartoons! Get out of here now!”
“I know you! I’m telling the police who you are! I know you!”
Shouting ripped me out of the memory, throwing me into my present nightmare. Chaos that I’d missed in all my ruminating.
Light hemorrhaged into the room, and I caught the drops of blood just outside the box.
Eli screamed from his cage. “I know you! I know who you are! I know you!”
Over top of that, the stranger from before shouted at the men, where they stood in the hallway. I could see their shadows bickering away at one another. Gideon, whose shoulders slumped, Fox, wearing his ball cap and beer belly, and a third man with his hands fumbling at his pants and a strap, like a belt, hanging off him.
“You said he couldn’t hear me! You told me he wouldn’t hear a thing!”
Fox threw Gideon against the wall behind him, their dark reflections rollicking across the cement in front of me. “What the fuck did you do, asshole?”
“N-n-n-nothing!”
“I’m not paying you a dime. A single fucking dime!” The stranger’s words sank to the depths of my stomach, where they agitated the disgust already churning there. He’d paid to hurt Eli.
I’d heard of men like him. We’d all been told horrific tales of kids getting swiped off the streets by monsters who found pleasure in the unimaginable.
Up until then, that was all they’d been to me: nothing but bedtime stories parents told their kids to keep them from running the streets.
What’d happen to Eli was no cautionary tale, or imagined. Like the scene in Pinocchio, when the boys realized they’d been lured by a predator, turned into donkeys, and the overwhelming regret of having ignored the warnings. It wasn’t until later that, once I’d watched a hundred times, I realized the meaning behind that scene, the symbolism buried beneath an innocent storyline. I’d only just begun to understand the truths it conveyed.
Monsters did exist. And they did horrible, unimaginable things.
Removing his hat, Fox slammed it to the floor. “That’s bullshit! We did what you asked! We got you the boy!”
“He said my fucking name!” the stranger bellowed back. “He knows who I am, thanks to you fucking idiots! So you can kiss that money goodbye.”
Eli’s shouts died down to a hysterical cry. Not as loud as before, but the undertone of misery crawled along my spine, bringing tears to my own eyes, as I imagined myself trapped inside that box.
Fox removed a gun from his side, it’s shape clear as day in its shadow on the wall, and held it toward the man’s head. “You will pay me. I don’t think you want this getting out.”
The stranger leaned into the gun, the sight of which had me squeezing my eyes shut to keep from watching his chest blown open. At least I’d only have to see the mimicked bits and blood.
“You’d dare threaten me, when your brother’s freedom is on the line? Or yours, for that matter?” The chasing pause encouraged me to open my eyes in disbelief that they hadn’t killed him yet. “How would you like to get roped in as an accomplice? Hmmm? Twenty to life sound appealing to you, Fox?” Another brief pause stirred the tension in my stomach, until Fox shook his head, and the stranger added, “Didn’t think so.”
The stranger jutted his chin and turned away from Fox. Whoever he was, he must’ve had something over him, because instead of shooting him in the back, as I’d have done right then, Fox lowered his gun.
“What am I supposed to do with the kid?” Fox’s question quickened my pulse, and I kept my eyes on the shadowed gun still caught in his hand.
“I don’t give a fuck,” the stranger volleyed back. “You make sure he can’t talk. To anyone.”
My eyes shot toward Eli’s cage, and I scratched at the bindings at my wrists held behind my back, desperate to tear them away and save my friend.
A door slammed somewhere in the house, the crack of it bouncing across my bones, and not a second later, Fox spun around, swinging. He knocked Gideon in the face, creating a spray of faint black rain over his silhouette.
A sharp sting struck my nail as I lodged it beneath the rope and it bent. I lowered my bound hands to the metal on the floor, scraping my wrists across the steel prongs of the bedsprings, the squeals hardly carrying over the thumps of their fighting.
“You fucking piece of shit! You forgot to secure the goddamn headphones!”
“I’m s-s-s-s-sorry!”
Fire licked my skin where the metal gouged my flesh. I didn’t care, though. I had to get free. As I sawed away at the rope, I kept my eyes locked on the two of them through the hole in the door.
“You’re gonna be sorry.” Grabbing him by his shirt, Fox pulled him to a stand. “But first, you’re going to get him out of that fucking cage and get him as high as a fucking kite. Give him some alcohol, too. Not too much. Don’t need the little prick bleeding out.”
Pausing mid-saw, I froze at Fox’s words.
“W-w-w-w-why?” The Pawn’s question echoed the words bouncing inside my own head.
“You don’t ask why. You just do it.” Fox stormed off, rubbing his nape, and the way Gideon stared into the room toward Eli’s box shot bullets of terror straight to my gut.
* * *
When we were ten years old, Eli and I had gotten our hands on a bootlegged copy of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Some kid down the street had stolen it from a video store, and Eli’d paid him a pack of his mom’s smokes to borrow it. We’d watched it at our buddy’s house after his mom took her Xanax and passed out. Not the old, outdated version, the newer one.
The fucked up version.
I was terrified. I’d never seen gore like that before, and such little regard for human life. First time I’d realized the world was full of psychopaths. From that point on, I’d become almost addicted to those movies—the gorier the better—and by the time I’d turned twelve, I could pretty m
uch stomach anything the horror genre threw at me.
Not even that could numb me to the fear washing over me, when Gideon and Fox dragged Eli back into the room, the bottom half of his face wrapped in white gauze that was saturated in so much red, my stomach lurched with the urge to either shit or puke.
Eli’s head wobbled as if he were passed out.
Every muscle in my body shook, as the two of them quietly secured him back inside his closet.
I sat, listening for any explanation of what they’d done, my heart pounding so hard against my chest, and the air exploding out of my nose over the duct tape still stuck to my face.
The lock rattled on the door to my closet. Jolts of panic shot through my body, and I kicked myself back, as Fox threw back the door, staring down at me like a true predatory fox. Dots of red glistened in the light hitting his face. More red coated his hand, which held the hunting knife he’d used before at his side. “Do I need to cut out your tongue, too?”
An incoherent sound I didn’t even know I’d made bounced back at me from the tape, and I shook my head, drawing my knees tightly into my chest.
“Good. It’s a nasty fucking job that I do not care to do again.”
Fucking Christ. Jesus Christ. They cut out his tongue. They cut out his tongue!
The thought of that failed to sink in. It failed to frighten me as much as I knew it would later when I’d think back on it.
Fox slammed the closet door shut again, the sound of the lock shuddering through me as my stomach eased its grip of my lungs, and I lay down on the bed springs.
“F-F-Fox? What’re we gonna do? Ain’t Jimmy g-g-g-gonna be mad, if you don’t p-p-pay—”
Fox pitched his fist, and the crack against Gideon’s face failed to rattle me that time.
I hoped he’d beat the shit out of the kid. I hoped he’d kill him in front of me.
“You are gonna take care of that one through the night. You’re gonna give him water when he needs it, without drowning the little shithead, and make sure he don’t fuckin’ bleed out.”
