Greetings from Sugartown

by Carmen Jenner

  One song leads into the next, and they sway back and forth in one another’s arms. Ana nuzzles into Kick’s chest. Her eyes are closed and a sleepy smile curls her lip. Jealousy twists my gut, unfurling its rancour up my gullet. It’s acid in my mouth.

  “Daniel,” Ana slurs. “Is the room spinning?”

  I realise she’s right—this queasiness in my gut isn’t just about seeing her dancing with another man. The room is spinning, and spots start revolving before my eyes. I try focusing in on the bottle of Blue, but it’s fuzzy. Everything is blurred around the edges, drained of colour and too bright all at once.

  Ana whimpers. My gaze slides back to them, but even that hurts my head. The room’s no longer spinning, it’s swinging from the fucking chandeliers.

  Ana slumps against Kick, her feet barely even touching the ground. She’s like a ragdoll. My heart lurches. My breath rasps its way out through clenched teeth. I try sitting up, but my limbs are heavy. Kick presses a kiss to Ana’s hair. She doesn’t move. She’s out cold.

  I stagger to my feet only to fall down, half on the couch, half on our hardwood floor. I place my hands on the ground to keep from pitching forward, helpless to do much more than watch as Kick shifts his hands beneath Ana’s armpits and drags her over to the couch beside me. Laying her face down on the soft cushions, he tilts her head to the side, gently, almost reverently.

  “What the fuck did you do?” I yell. I shift back to the couch, clumsy but determined to check on Ana. My head is pounding. My breath hitches as I feel her throat for a pulse. It’s faint, but there. Relief floods through me, but it’s short-lived.

  “Rohypnol. She’s fine.” Kick says. Fuck! That mother fucker drugged us. He’s gonna die, a slow, horrible death, and I’m gonna be the one pulling the trigger. He pulls a piece from the back of his pants, and aims it right between my eyes. The low, guttural roar of bikes coming up the drive forces my heart into my throat. Headlights wash over the room. Kick pushes the barrel against my head.

  “You fucking set us up!” Rage ignites, a fuse through my bloodstream. Adrenalin courses through me, my body’s attempt to dull the edge of the drugs pumping in my veins. I can barely stand, but I gotta get her out of here. I have to get Ana safe, then they can do whatever the hell they want with me. I glare up at Kick through my fury.

  “I’m sorry, brother. I had no choice. They have my dad.”

  “You’re dead. You hear me?” I whisper, against the sound of our front door being kicked in. Several bikers come stalking through the doorway—I can’t see how many because Kick moves closer, crowding out the space beyond him. “I’m gonna put a bullet between your eyes the way I should have four years ago.”

  A deep, depraved laugh fills the room. “’Fraid not, Moosey,” the President of the Angels says. He grabs my hair and pulls me to my feet, but my legs won’t hold out, and he kicks me to the ground, presses his boot to the back of my neck. “Been looking for you a long time, kid. For a while there we thought Kick wasn’t gonna give you up.” He pushes his boot up and off my neck, and my spine cracks all the way from my shoulder blades up to my skull in protest. I attempt to scramble to my feet, but Prez kicks me in the junk and I drop to the floor, groaning as my balls try to disappear inside my body.

  “Stay,” he warns. I raise my head as he walks away, and I take in the bikers crowding my lounge room. Seven, all with their guns pointed squarely at my head. Prez pats Kick on the shoulder. “Smart boy.”

  “Where’s my old man?” Kick asks as he shirks off the man’s hold. Prez glares, but doesn’t say anything. He turns and nods to a biker I don’t recognise, who disappears from the room. Prez walks forward, stepping over me and sitting heavily down on the couch beside Ana’s sleeping form. He lifts the bottle of Johnnie Walker from the table, sniffing it before sucking back a hearty gulp. That’s right, fucker, drink it down. I’m gonna put a bullet in your face by the end of the night too. He gasps and smacks his chest as he swallows, then he slams the bottle on the table and leans back. Vaguely, I wonder why Kick didn’t stop him. Prez must be wondering the same thing, because he studies Kick long and hard, and then smirks. “Roofies?”

  That’s why I didn’t know; I couldn’t taste it. The cookies burnt my tastebuds. Ana wouldn’t have known because she doesn’t like whiskey anyway, not really.

  Kick nods, and Prez shakes his head. “Ah, Kick, you always were Ethan’s little bitch, weren’t you?”

  “Does it look like I’m his bitch, Prez?” he challenges, his gun still aimed at my head. “I gave you what you wanted. Now give me my old man.”

  “You boys held so much promise. I blame your old men for fucking you up and turning you both into pussies.” Prez brushes the hair back from Ana’s face with the butt of his gun, and rests the other hand on her arse. “And speaking of pussy …”

  I scramble to my hands and knees, hell-bent on taking the fucker out, but his leg rears back and his steel-toed boot kicks me in the face. Pain lances through my head. I rock back from the blow, landing on the floor once more.

  “I said stay,” Prez hisses. “Now, this hot piece of arse here, she your girlfriend?”

  “Flatmate,” I lie, when I can coax the muscles in my face to work again.

  He laughs, but none of it meets his eyes—they’re just as cold and black as they were when he kicked my face in a second ago. “Flatmate, huh? Well, shit, ain’t no way I’d let a piece of tail like her walk around my house without sticking it to her.” He turns to Kick with a malicious grin. “Did you boys tag this one too?”

  Kick glances briefly at Prez, and shakes his head. His gun, along with four others, is still trained on me. “Kick’s told me some things about your nice little life here: a fiancée with a fancy business, steady job, father-in-law, kid brother … But if I didn’t know better, I’d say his loyalty to the club had strayed. This little incident by the side of the road a few years back caused a whole lotta shit for me with the Bandidos chapter. Imagine their surprise when we busted down their door and started shootin’ motherfuckers left, right, and centre.

  “And then there’s the thing with the rapist. Don’t worry; we cleaned up the mess. Moved the bones. Right now the field’s bein’ razed, and your little ex-girlfriend is currently bein’ used as a chew toy for my Pit Bulls. Cops’ll never find out ’bout any of it.” Prez runs a hand over his pockmarked, scarred jaw. His eyes are dark and serious and I’m reminded why I felt both elation and dread when the judge ordered me to run from the MC. I knew then that if Prez ever caught up with me, I’d never live to see another day. “No one will ever know, so long as you give me what your old man wouldn’t. See, he stole a shitload of money from me, from the club. And I think you know where it is.”

  I glare at Kick. I thought I knew rage, but what Scott did to Ana could be considered kind compared to what the club will do. He knows it, and he betrayed me anyway. He betrayed her. And he’ll die for it. I’ll bring the reaper, and I’ll grin as my oldest friend stares death in the face. “I haven’t seen my old man since I got put away. Why the fuck would I know anything?”

  Prez leans forward, close enough that I smell the foul odour of cigarettes, whiskey and tooth decay on his breath. “I had a feeling you’d play hard to get, Moose. But don’t you worry; when your little wifey here wakes up, we’ll have ourselves a party. See if we can’t make her scream the way your daddy did.” He winks and slaps her arse hard enough to leave a welt, and he stares down at me, daring me to come at him again. The absent biker enters the room then, escorting in a stocky man with filthy clothes and a black bag covering his head. Juke.

  “I wanna see his face,” Kick demands, turning to look at Prez. Kick steps towards them, but Juke’s minder cocks the pistol and aims it at him. Kick holds up his hands, attempting to placate him. Now would be a wonderful time to swing into action, while the three of them are distracted, but I’m dizzy as fuck, and there’s still another four guns trained on my head, and I have no fucking doubt they’ve been ordered to sh
oot if I so much as move a muscle. I dare a glance at Ana. Her chest is rising and falling with shallow, even breaths.

  I don’t know how we get out of this one, baby girl. My only consolation is that she’s not awake to see all this. There’s a big part of me that hopes it will stay that way.

  Prez nods towards the minder, and the guy removes the mask. The man standing before us could be anyone; he’s unrecognisable, because his face has been so badly beaten in I wonder how he’s still breathing. His nose is badly broken, mangled to the point where you can no longer discern it from his cheek. Crusted blood coats his beard. How the fuck is he able to stand in front of us right now? Dude should be in a fucking hospital having facial reconstruction surgery. He mouths something at Kick, but no one has any hope of hearing what’s being said.

  “You’ve seen him,” Prez says, his voice terse, cold. The minder puts the gun to Juke’s head and pulls the trigger. Blood and brain matter spray Kick’s face. He moves on instinct, lifting his gun and shooting the minder, then turning and taking the Prez down in the blink of an eye. Shots go off around us. A strangled scream sounds behind me. Fear spreads through me, cold and black as the blood that creeps across the floor. I crawl on the ground, snatch up the minder’s gun, and just start shooting. I don’t care who I hit first, but not a single one of these motherfuckers are leaving my lounge room alive. All I see is the red cloud of hate, blood, and death.

  A bullet grazes my arm. It forces the gun from my hand, forces my head to rock back with the blow, forces me to the ground beside her … forces me to see. Crimson blooms from Ana’s side. She’s awake, but she’s not really here either. Her eyes roll back in her head. She makes no sound, save for the blood that’s gurgling up in her throat.

  I roll her over, face up on the couch, and press my hand against her abdomen. I panic when my fingers find exposed flesh. This isn’t a simple entry wound. Her guts are on the outside of her body. I don’t even know what to apply pressure to at this point. “Ana. I need you to stay with me, baby girl,” I whisper. “Stay with me.” Gunshots continue to go off all around me as I grab Kick’s phone from the table, hit speaker-phone and dial triple zero.

  A disembodied voice comes across the line, “Police Emergency, what’s your location?” I scream my response into the receiver, but I can’t hear anything beyond the sound of gunfire in my tiny living room. At this point I know Kick’s still alive, because the gunshots are still going off, and they’re not aimed at me.

  Staggering to my feet, I sweep Ana into my arms, ensuring my back is to the room, and praying like hell I make it long enough to get her outside.

  I carry the woman I love. I carry her through a rain of bullets. I walk without any intention other than to get her away from all this, a life and a darkness that never should have touched hers. Once I’m out on the front porch, I sink to my knees, Ana still in my arms. The phone slides off her lap. The woman on the line sounds panicked. “Sir? Sir? What’s your emergency?”

  “My girlfriend’s been shot,” I snap into the receiver. She tells me to stay on the line and asks for my address and I rattle it off, but I don’t know much past that. I should have tried getting her out of there as soon as the guns went off. Instinct kicked in, but it was the wrong one. I should have thrown myself on top of her, taken the hit. I should have … fuck!

  “Baby girl, stay with me,” I whisper, stroking her hair. Her eyes aren’t rolling back anymore, but she’s white as a fucking sheet. Her expression is serene. “Don’t you fucking leave me, you hear me? You stay here. You stay with me. They’re coming, baby, they’re gonna fix you, okay? Good as new. You just stay here, just stay with me.”

  Ana’s starts convulsing. My hands are pressed to her stomach, in her stomach. They slip further, and I have to pull them free so I don’t do more damage. I hold her down, but my hands are slick with blood. Sirens sound in the distance down on Main Street, but they’re still too far away. There’s nothing I can do to fix this.

  I can’t fix this.

  A part of me is aware that the gunfire has stopped. I know because it’s deathly quiet, save for Ana’s body smacking against the bloodstained boards.

  All at once, she stops convulsing. She takes a ragged breath—it’s a fear-inducing, gut-hollowing sound. Her whole body slackens. My heart stops.

  “No. You fucking stay with me! You fucking stay. You promised,” I howl. “You promised.”

  I check for a pulse. There’s nothing. No movement beneath my slick hands. There’s only blood, and the smell of gunpowder on the air. My need to protect her, to always be the one to save her takes over, and I start pounding on her chest. I tip her head back, open her mouth and breathe air into her lungs. I don’t know how long I do this. I know I’m still breathing for her when the red and blue lights of the ambulance wash over us and light up her body like Christmas. She’s too still. Lifeless.

  The paramedics ask me several times to step back and let them take over, but I can’t. It isn’t until one of them physically pushes me away from Ana that I shrink back and let them do their job. The female asks if there’s anyone else inside that needs medical assistance. I shake my head. I don’t have the breath for words. I can only sit, and wait.

  I watch for an eternity, rocking back and forth against the hard floorboards. My blood-soaked hand covers my mouth so I don’t scream. In my head, I whisper one word over and over. A mantra. A curse. A promise.

  Stay.

  I CAN’T watch them work over Ana’s lifeless body any longer. And I certainly can’t sit here when they call it. I slowly rise and stumble inside. Bodies are everywhere. Every one of the fuckers that invaded my house tonight are dead. All but one, who’s slumped against the couch, sporting a bullet hole in his shoulder, and one further down in his chest. He has the bottle of Blue in his hands, seeking out the drugs to dull the pain. He doesn’t get an out. If I don’t, if Ana didn’t, he doesn’t either. I stalk over and snatch the bottle from his hands, smashing it on the coffee table and pressing the jagged edge into his throat.

  “You betrayed me,” I hiss through clenched teeth. “You betrayed her, and now she’s dead.”

  “It wasn’t … meant to go… that way,” he rasps. I’m betting the bullet collapsed his lung. He coughs, and blood mists my face. “They had … Dad. He’s all … I had left.”

  “She’s dead because of you.” I sink my fingers into the bullet hole in his shoulder, relishing in his pain as his mouth opens in a silent scream that leaves him gasping for breath.

  “I’m sorry … Brother.”

  “I am not your brother,” I spit. I rear my arm back, and plunge the broken bottle into his stomach. Kick’s face twists with pain, my own twists into a sneer. Tears burn my cheeks as they slide down my cheeks and glance off my jaw. I drop the bottle and fall back against the couch, waiting for death to take me away too, though fate’s never been that kind, so why the fuck should it start now?

  Outside I hear the wail of another ambulance, and cop cars. People are shuffling up the front porch stairs, and then they’re moving inside, talking to me and attempting to find out why the hell an entire MC lies dead in my lounge room. And still I sit here, and wish I could trade places with Kick, or Juke, or Prez, or one of the other bodies cluttering my floor … because she promised me she’d stay, and she left.

  A LUMP forms in my throat as I glance around the diner at our family and friends. Everyone I love is here, except her. My four year old squirms in my lap as a fourteen-year-old Sammy and his mate Jake pull faces at her. Bob catches the action, and raises his stubby in salute with a, “glad it’s you and not me” look. He’s a lot greyer than when I first met him. Grief will do that to you. I roll my eyes, and give him a weak smile. “Lil, stop squirming.”

  “I got the sillies billies, Daddy, and Sam Sam and Jakey are pulling faces again.”

  “You’ve had too much sugar, Princess.” I tweak her nose with my thumb and forefinger and set her down. Her long blonde hair gets caught up in her fa
iry wings for the millionth time today. I set it free, and readjust the soft pink glittery wings until I know they’re sitting just the way she likes them. The light catches the swallow pendant around her neck. The one that belonged to my sister all those years ago, the one that Ana wore religiously until recently. Lilly’s so much like Ana it’s heartbreaking. “Sam the man, why don’t you take the rest of the kids outside so they can write their name with sparklers?”

  “Okay,” Sam says and he and his friend—who might be a strawberry-blonde, wiry-haired little dipshit, but he’s pretty well an extension of the family—leave the booth we’re sitting in.

  “Hey Pepper, you coming?” Sam asks, as he stops by the hostile little ranga’s table. She glares up at him, and goes back to tattooing her forearm with a sharpie. I remember when she used to be as sweet and happy as my Lil, and I feel a hint of remorse that one day my daughter’s going to be as bitter and sullen as every other Justin Bieber loving tween on the planet.

  Jake leans in and whispers to Sammy, just loud enough for the entire room to hear, “Your cousin’s kind of a bitch.”

  “Shut the hell up, man.” Sammy punches Jake in the chest. He might look like his sister, but he didn’t get Ana’s tiny height. He was always kinda weedy as a kid, but when his balls dropped, he shot up as tall and wide-framed as Jack. “And she isn’t my cousin.”

  “Whatever. This party blows,” Jake says, and walks towards the front door.

  “Hey, dipshit, you’re lucky to be invited to a party as awesome as this. It’ll probably be the only invite you ever get from a pretty blonde, so shut the fuck up. And apologise to my princess now before I take your balls and turn them into fairy wings.”