Nasty

by Dr. Xyz

  ZANE PRESENTS

  Nasty

  A NOVEL

  Dear Reader:

  Dr. XYZ is a gem. She is a practicing physician in urban areas who grew tired of witnessing people playing Russian Roulette with their lives. Thus, she decided to pen Nasty, about a group of people whose situations collide. Extremely nasty things happen when a rich divorcée, an ambitious music mogul, and an extremely horny high school virgin all cross paths in a delicious web of insatiable lust, obsession, and revenge.

  This book means a lot to me personally. I feel that the wide spread of HIV in the minority community has to be taken under control. As a mother, I am cognizant daily that my children will have to seek love—and ultimately affection—in a society that could lead to them becoming victims unknowingly. Practicing safe sex is essential and we must protect ourselves. Even now, when I do events and ask the women in the audience, how many of them have been tested lately for HIV, less than two percent raise their hands. Yet, the majority of them are sexually active. There is something seriously wrong with that picture. Please take precautions with your life.

  Since it is not my intention to turn this into a public service announcement, I will stop there. Nasty is an entertaining thrill ride that can also serve as an educational tool for many.

  Thank you for supporting Dr. XYZ’s efforts and thank you for supporting one of the dozens of authors published under my imprint, Strebor Books. I try my best to bring you cutting-edge works of literature that will keep your attention and make you think long after you turn the last page.

  Now sit back in your favorite chair or, better yet, chill in the bed, and be prepared to be tantalized by yet another great read.

  Peace and Many Blessings,

  Zane

  Publisher

  Strebor Books International

  www.simonandschuster.com/streborbooks

  Nasty

  A NOVEL

  DR. XYZ

  Strebor Books

  P.O. Box 6505

  Largo, MD 20792

  http://www.streborbooks.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  © 2009 by Dr. XYZ

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever. For information address Strebor Books, P.O. Box 6505, Largo, MD 20792.

  ISBN 978-1-59309-261-0

  LCCN 2009932082

  eISBN 13: 978-1-439-14265-3

  First Strebor Books trade paperback edition September 2009

  Cover design: www.mariondesigns.com

  Cover photograph: © Keith Saunders/Marion Designs

  1 0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  For information regarding special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event. For more information or to book an event, contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  DEDICATION

  To Mrs. M, who warned me to never write about “nasty” things… and her daughter JM, who told me to ignore everything her mama said.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I want to thank the Eternal spirit for all my creativity, discipline and passion for this project. RT, you were my muse and without you, I couldn’t have finished. Bee-Maw and Pop-Pop, thanks for supporting every dream or whim I’ve had over the past ten years. Thanks to all the wonderful folks at Strebor Books who made my dream a reality: Zane, Charmaine and Anita. Keith, your cover was jammin’! Beau, thanks for the intro. To my best friend, JM, your reading of that first “butt-ugly” draft helped to keep the ball rolling. To FS for all her advice and listening to me “whine” about the edit. Dr. ND, for reviving my career, you deserve a special award. To my niece LJ, thanks for keeping me “stylish” during that long writing period. To my brothers, J & W, for the loan and family newsletter (you know who did what). To all my family and friends for their love and support during my years in the “valley.”

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Author’s note: The tale you are about to read is a collage of stories and characters that all meet up at one Nasty ending. Many of these stories are true …but names and details of events have been well hidden to protect identities.

  PROLOGUE

  The pains are bad, real bad. This alien baby is coming out of me now! Oh my Chief …My sweet love. Those bastards stole our baby and put their demon inside me.

  I remember now. It was that fat, greasy white one. Crusty boils all over his face. When they oozed and dripped out that green slime… that sick pervert made me lick them. If that wasn’t bad enough, his breath stank of old whisky and stale garlic. I can still see those boils and smell that godless odor now.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it, Chief. What grossed me most were those nasty, probing experiments. That’s when he switched our baby. Night after night he’d insert his hard alien dick inside me and release his thick fluids. Sometimes he’d yell at me to suck it …suck it real hard. Then he kept slamming it down my throat…choking me when he came. That’s when I knew he wasn’t human. He didn’t taste human. More like an alien from Jupiter…Yeah, he was from Jupiter, all right.

  When I found out he switched our baby…I stabbed him. Stabbed him dead! That was the end of that bastard. But Chief…it was too late. He’d already taken our love child.

  That was three months ago. No…it was last week. A month ago? Oh God! They’ve taken my memory. I don’t even remember when it happened…or…or…if it happened.

  But one thing is for sure, my darling Chief, he left me with this alien baby. Look at this creature. And there’s so much blood. The brightest red I’ve ever seen. The cord’s connected to me. Got to cut the cord like Mama showed me. Umm…no knife. Hey…I’ll bite it off. Yeah, that’s it. Make a knot, too. Yeah. Good! Oh no! It’s moving and crying. STOP CRYING, you beast…STOP CRYING! Why’s it crying so loud?

  I know. It’s sending transmissions to the mother ship. That’s what all this crying is about. I know it. Stop crying now! It must be quiet or the head aliens will send their people down here and come and get me and their baby. Probably need me to breastfeed. They’ll kill me once it’s weaned. That’s how they do it on Jupiter.

  It must be silenced. I’ll take this stick…shove it down its throat. Keep shoving till it stops.

  Good…it’s only gurgling now.

  The aliens are here! I didn’t stop the transmissions in time. They’re trying to knock the door down. Oh Chief…what can I do? They want their alien baby bad and they’re going to take me, too. Can’t let that happen. Got to get away. Tell the government about their plot to destroy the earth. I can’t let them catch me.

  There’s a window here.

  Perfect.

  Got to leave New York now. Just fly back to my Chief…I love you, Chief…I’ll be there soon. Safe from the aliens. It’s a good thing I have my wings to fly. I knew it was right to stop taking those poison pills they were giving me. Made me forget I have powers…forget about my angel wings. I can fly back to you, Chief…back home to safety.

  Here I come, baby! Here I come…

  NEWS HEADLINE

  A sad New Year’s Tragedy. The body of an escaped mental patient, Lizette Odinga, was discovered in front of the Nicola Building in the early hours of the New Year. After allegedly shoving a stick down the throat of her newborn infant, she apparently jumped out of the tenth-floor window of this historic Brooklyn building. Paramedics on the scene rushed
the seriously injured infant to Kings County Hospital. Doctors performed emergency surgery on the infant girl, currently listed in critical condition.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “So this is where it all happened.” Nicola stared up at the dilapidated pre-war building. This ten-story monstrosity was her birthplace. Only a few letters of their shared name had survived the unforgiving forces of neglect and time. A once bustling factory, the city’s approval for condo conversion was the only thing that blocked its path to rebirth.

  A week had passed since she’d last met with the private investigator she’d hired to track down her biological parents. Initially wanting nothing to do with the information he’d gathered, Nicola had awakened that morning, determined to see the building where it had all begun.

  Oblivious to the cold winter evening, she’d tried to enter and go up to the top floor where the shameful deed had taken place. All the entrances were boarded up. Frustrated, she’d banged on and repeatedly kicked the front door, stopping only when she spotted blood trickling down from her knuckles.

  Nicola hung her head as low as it would go. It didn’t take a rocket scientist or years of psychoanalysis for her to figure out that her real purpose for coming all the way to “do or die” Bedford-Stuyvesant was to, in some way, punish the building for providing her mother sanctuary on that fateful night twentytwo years ago. Now that her plan to do God knows what to the building had failed, Nicola paced back and forth. She needed to perform some ritual to help dim the sadness growing inside her. And then it hit her. Fire! Fire had always helped her in the past.

  Armed with a new, quickly forming idea, Nicola bolted across the street and opened the passenger door of a salmon-pink BMW sports coupe. She reached inside the glove compartment and pulled out a cigarette lighter and the old news clipping that revealed the tragic details of her birth.

  Slamming the door behind her, Nicola walked over to the nearest garbage can. Hands trembling, she tried to ignite the article. The wind kept blowing out the flame.

  “Just burn, dammit!” she yelled out loud.

  The few people, who were still out on an evening that promised to be the coldest night of the year, looked at the beautiful woman and how she desperately tried to encourage the flame from her cigarette lighter. Some brave passersby even stopped to ask if anything was wrong. Nicola couldn’t hear or see them. The only thing that concerned her, at that moment, was the news about her parents.

  She could still hear the portly private investigator with the funny high-pitched voice beg not to make him reveal all of his findings. He’d even offered to return the cash.

  “You sure you wanna hear all of this, Ms. Martin? It ain’t a pretty story.”

  But she had insisted. She was marrying Harrison James, the love of her life. A man who believed that family meant everything. Though he had gone out of his way to convince her that she’d become a member of his clan with full privileges, she still wanted her own. How bad could her parents have been? At the worst, they’d been a couple of teenagers who were too young to cope with the responsibilities of raising an infant. She had listened intently as the PI talked about her father, a brilliant chemist from Kenya, who had met and married her mother while he was teaching at New York University. Nicola could still feel the pride of knowing her father had been an accomplished individual. All her fears about a tragic beginning had been in error, she had thought. But just as she was about to stamp her parents as “normal,” the PI’s story took a dismal turn.

  Her mother had been pregnant when her parents tied the knot. She had been enjoying an uneventful second trimester when she learned that her husband had been killed in a freak laboratory accident.

  “Well, that’s kinda when things got, uh, confusing for your mother.”

  “Confusing?”

  “Yeah, well, they had to send her to the ‘G’ building.”

  “‘G’ Building?”

  “Sorry; you gotta be a Brooklynite to know what that means. Uh, well, what it means is your mother lost it. You know, mentally, and, well, the ‘G’ building is for the mentals. You know, when you lose it.”

  “So she went crazy?”

  “Yeah, and that ain’t the half of it.”

  The PI reluctantly pulled a news clipping out of a manila envelope.

  “This is the last info that I have on your parents, and it’s not great; not even a little bit.”

  Nicola’s heart beat wildly. How bad could this information be? Anxious to know the entire story, she grabbed the article out of the PI’s hand. Her eyes filled with disappointment and horror as she read the details of how her mother had committed two despicable acts: suicide and attempted infanticide.

  Something snapped inside of Nicola. She wanted nothing to do with this newly discovered past. She hurriedly wrote out a check and threw it at the investigator. Never comfortable with giving people bad news, he tried to soften the blow by revealing information about her other relatives.

  Uninterested in anything but amnesia for the entire story, she yelled back at the PI as she stormed out of his office. “Throw that info in the garbage. I have no one, no one, but Harrison James. You hear that. Nobody! Just throw it all away!”

  “At last.” Nicola smiled when she saw that the winds had died down enough to let the weak flame ignite the newspaper article. The orange glow intensified, causing the corners of the page to curl up. The slow moving flame destroyed all the information in its path. When the trail of burning embers met up with the picture of a pretty, smiling student nurse holding a tiny baby in her arms with the caption: “Infant survives near-fatal attack at the hands of her late mother.” Nicola dropped the clipping into the garbage can.

  “It never happened.”

  She watched the flames dance and engage in a wild, tribal ritual. Her smile broadened across her chiseled face and totally replaced the gloomed hopeless expression that had inhabited it since she’d left the PI’s office. She loved watching fires. They calmed her down. She took pleasure in how the flames destroyed everything in their path; especially the bad things.

  Watching the fire build, Nicola massaged her neck, caressing the ever-present scarf she wore to cover the thick linear scar that was her only physical imperfection. Neither her adopted parents, nor the counselors at the residential unit she’d lived in after they died, could ever explain exactly what had happened to her. The best explanation was that it was a rare birth defect that had destroyed her voice box. The scar, they all guessed, was probably a result of corrective surgery performed when she was an infant.

  She now understood that the real defect was having an insane lunatic for a mother. Using the deep, sultry voice that she had cultivated after years of speech therapy, a voice that drove all the men she had ignored in college wild, Nicola yelled out unanswerable questions into the freezing night.

  “God, why me? WHY ME?”

  The smiles had all vanished. Staring at the fire, Nicola now felt terribly alone. It was almost as if she missed parents she’d never known. All week long she had tried to hate the woman who’d attempted to kill her. But even she could figure out that her mother’s only crime had been loving a man way too much.

  What if her dad had lived? What if her mother hadn’t loved her father so intensely? What if she hadn’t lost her mind? For all the what-ifs in her life, Nicola began to sob like a brand-new baby. She collapsed on the ground. The freezing air hugged her tightly in a bear-like grip. Through the tears, Nicola’s body trembled with epileptic fervor.

  And then, as if Mother Nature wanted to console her, Nicola could no longer feel the sub-zero blistering January winds. Instead, she felt bathed in a gathering of cleansing, healing spirits. Almost immediately, an exhilaration of courage swelled within her deepest core, warming her soul.

  Liberated, she pulled herself up and ripped off the pink Hermès scarf that hid her scar and the horror of a past that had recently revealed itself. Into the fire it went, joining the newspaper clippings. Hot red sparks spit out at the fre
ezing night as flames consumed the silk fibers. Since her adolescence, thoughts that she was not good enough often haunted Nicola. Blessed with dark creamy cocoa, flawless skin, she had amazing brown eyes that sparkled so brilliantly, jealous stars in the skies hated it when she came out at night. She’d been told by many that she was exquisitely beautiful. She chose to ignore these compliments and, instead, saw only an ugly, dirty, unfit young woman staring back at her whenever she looked into the mirror to adjust the scarf around her neck, trying to hide what she felt was a hideous scar.

  It wasn’t until she’d met Harrison that she began to doubt her self-assessment. Her fiancé had spent the last year coaxing her out of a shell of lies that had become her emotional prison.

  Well, thought Nicola, the turtle has finally emerged. She’d never try to hide or cover her neck again. Never entertain thoughts that she was less than anyone. The lesion would forever be a reminder to her that she was not only a beautiful woman but a strong, beautiful black woman. She had survived her mother’s unfortunate attack. And with Harrison by her side, her best friend, the love and light of her life, she’d never be a victim again.

  Nicola flipped her thick, waist-length hair out of her face and hopped into the car Harrison had surprised her with on her birthday. No longer a casualty of events she had no control over, she now focused on the future.

  Pushing down heavy and hard on the accelerator, she pulled away from the bad memories that lay in the ashes behind. Nicola was glad she’d ordered the PI to trash the information about her Southern roots. She had no desire to contact her grandmother. Pleased with the decision, she glanced at the rearview mirror and smiled as the image of the burning garbage can quickly morphed into an indistinguishable red dot.