Blood in the Water (Kairos)

by Catherine Johnson

  1999

  “Happy Birthday, baby bird.” Her daddy slung his arm around her shoulder and pulled her into a one-armed hug as he carried on shucking the pancakes he was making in the griddle pan. She kissed him on the cheek and let him get back to the cooking.

  “Happy Birthday, Tinky.” Her brother sputtered around a mouthful of pancakes. Her daddy must be on his second batch already. That didn’t mean she was late, just that Dean had gotten there first.

  Using the nickname earned him a clip around the back of his head from her mama, who was putting a fresh carton of juice on the kitchen island. Ashleigh crossed to the cupboard to retrieve a glass.

  “Happy Birthday, sweetheart...” Her mama’s smile faded only a little as she cut herself off before she said anything else, sighed and carried on with her next breakfast task.

  It was the boots. Ashleigh knew it was about the boots. Her mama hated her wearing these battered old engineer boots that she’d found at a tabletop sale to school, but they were comfy and she could go pretty much anywhere in them. Considering her momma’s own outrageous shoe collection it was no surprise that the mottled and chapped brown leather affronted her. Ashleigh was used to it; she didn’t take offence. At least her mama had stopped commenting on the rest of her outfit choices.

  Ashleigh preferred baggy combat trousers, a beater and one of her dad’s flannel work shirts above anything remotely involving tailoring or, God forbid, Lycra. The big trend at school was tiny, little, plaid, pleated skirts and knee-high, white socks with little, shiny, plastic rucksacks that looked like they’d been shrunk in the wash. No way was Ashleigh wearing that crap. Half the girls looked like they belonged in the clubhouse on a Friday night. She didn’t follow a trend. She wasn’t truly grunge and with her blonde hair, blue eyes and minimal makeup she was leagues away from the kids who played at being Goths. She didn’t want the attention that came with fitting into a clique; she just wanted to be herself. Her dad raised his eyebrows when he realized she’d “borrowed” another one of his shirts, but they both knew he’d be a whole lot more upset if she wore what passed for trendy, so he said nothing; or at least, not much.

  “’Tween you and your brother, baby bird, I ain’t gonna have a whole lotta clothes left.” Ashleigh looked over and realized Dean had “borrowed” one of their dad’s shirts too.

  Ashleigh shrugged, “I can go for the catholic school girl hooker look if you prefer?”

  “None doin’, baby bird. You carry on stealin’ my shirts.” Her dad grinned at her.

  “Are you gonna... what’re you plannin’ on.... “Ashleigh had to laugh at her mama’s stuttering. She knew damn well what her mama was trying to get at. She really honestly didn’t mind because she appreciated that her mama was trying not to foist her own sense of fashion on her - failing, but trying nonetheless.

  “Spit it out, Mama.”

  Her mama gave her a withering look. “Are you plannin’ on wearin’ somethin’ for your party tonight that won’t have your Aunt Dolly on my back about how I’m lettin’ you turn into a complete savage?”

  Ashleigh settled herself on a stool at the island opposite her brother with the plate, cutlery and glass that she’d collected. Her father came over with a plate stacked with fresh pancakes and placed it on the counter in between Ashleigh and Dean. Ashleigh swatted her brother’s hand away when he tried to pull the plate towards him.

  “I was thinkin’ of wearin’ that little brown dress. You know, the one Aunt Dolly thought maybe signaled the second comin’ of Christ when I pulled it off the rail?”

  She saw her daddy raise his brows in question at her mama. He hadn’t seen the dress yet. She knew Uncle Terry made fun all the time of how her daddy was going to be spending more time in prison after he pulled his shotgun on some poor boy looking at his daughter. And since Ashleigh hadn’t been on any dates yet, her daddy was thinking he might make it to her eighteenth birthday without being charged with murder. She could see that now he was getting a little worried, probably because she’d described the dress as ‘little’. Her mama was wearing a big smile of relief, though.

  “That’ll be just fine, sweetheart. You might want to put your black jacket over it, though, for the clubhouse.”

  The dress was dark chocolate velvet. It was cut like a t-shirt around the neck with little cap sleeves. It barely even showed her collar bones let alone any cleavage, but it was short, several inches above her knees, and only just long enough to be decent. It flared from the hip, which saved it from looking completely slutty, but it needed a bit more coverage for the clubhouse in party mode. She was the President’s daughter, she was very definitely off limits and very definitely jail-bait; but the booze and the weed would be in full swing regardless of the fact that it was effectively her birthday party and since there would likely be visitors it wouldn’t do for anyone to get confused.

  At least she’d managed to talk everyone out of throwing a huge party for her; and by everyone she meant her mama and Aunt Dolly. Her daddy had looked kind of relieved. He seemed a little sad, too, but if he was sorry for her that she wasn’t getting a party, he respected her decision and didn’t say anything. Ashleigh figured her mama knew what her reasons were, reading between the lines of the spiel she’d given them about not being into that sort of thing and finding the one-upmanship consumerism of massive Sweet Sixteen celebrations morally offensive.

  Aunt Dolly had been mortified. Ashleigh thought maybe Aunt Dolly had been planning a party for her for this birthday since the day she’d been born. Aunt Dolly didn’t seem to cotton to the way that Ashleigh had been talking her way out of birthday parties for years. Dean never had the same hassle. Probably because he had a small circle of friends at school and he had been happy to throw ideas like paintballing or go-karting in the way of celebrations at their mama. Aunt Dolly, however, still continued to ask when Ashleigh was going to try out for the cheer team. Yeah, like that would ever happen. Being part of the cheer squad was pretty much Ashleigh’s idea of one of the lower circles of hell.

  Ashleigh didn’t have any friends at school, except Jason, and he was as much of the club as she was. His daddy had sat at the table with her daddy for just as long. As she was buried so deeply within the club, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to a lot of people, a lot of civilian people at least, if she’d have gone off the rails, but Ashleigh knew better. There wouldn’t be one person in the club, even the fucking Prospects most likely, not on her case in a heartbeat if she did anything out of line. She couldn’t get away with squat in this goddamn town without her parents finding out. They were okay about a lot of stuff, and that gave her enough room to breathe, but if she ever got caught shoplifting like Tanya had been last semester or cut class and got drunk in the bayou and nearly drowned like Melody had, she’d be on lockdown for months.

  Ashleigh didn’t give a shit about fitting in at high school. The ‘cool’ kids bored her. They talked about TV shows that Ashleigh found absolutely mind-numbing, and they wouldn’t read anything unless it was Cosmo or Vogue. They were completely culturally vapid, in her opinion. Not that she considered herself anything special, but she took an interest. She liked to know stuff, to understand it and she liked to be aware of things like local politics. The popular crowd at school didn’t even seem to give a shit where their oxygen came from unless Greenpeace were the in-thing that week. She didn’t give a shit at all that they didn’t like her. She didn’t need them. She had the club. Whatever happened in her life she would always have the club.

  High school was temporary, her family, the whole extended chaos of it, was permanent. All she had to do was survive the next two years. There was no way in heaven or earth or in any place in between that her parents would let her drop out, not that she wanted to, but some days it was a damn attractive option. She could not wait for graduation day. There had been a lot of good times in her life so far, but Ashleigh was pretty certain that graduation day, the relief of never having to set foot inside that building ever again
, was going to be high up on her list of incredible days. It wasn’t enough to put her off college, but she sure hoped that college wouldn’t be exactly like high school or she was going to have to alter some major life decisions. She wanted to work with animals. She wanted to be married with a family, as well. It was conventional shit, but she knew it would be what made her happy, it was in her genetics. Despite all those years her daddy had been away, she wanted to be just like her parents.

  Jason was planning to join the Navy out of high school. He wanted to see the world and there was next to no chance he’d ever be able to afford to do that if he stayed in Absolution. He planned to become a Marine and let the US Government pay for his travel. He was a lot less bothered than Ashleigh was that it meant that people would be shooting at him. Ashleigh knew that the club would be just as proud of him joining the military as they would be if he decided to Prospect, but her parents would be far happier that he had a good, solid, civilian job if he ever made good on those promises he’d been half-making to her lately. Knowing that her parents would be letting loose at her party and drinking and relaxing more than they usually did, Jason had told her that he had something planned for them for the night of her birthday party, an after party, a celebration involving just the two of them. Ashleigh found it hard to concentrate on every day stuff when she thought about that. She was nervous, scared and excited all over every time she let her mind wander over what it might be like.

  Trying to ignore that strange tingling that she felt whenever she thought of Jason Palmer and the ‘gift’ he had planned for her, Ashleigh finished eating her breakfast, rinsed her plates and put them in the dishwasher. She gave each of her parents a kiss on the cheek before following her brother upstairs. She needed to grab her school bag and get going or they’d miss the bus.

  2000

  The scream echoed around the empty barn. The man who had released the unholy screech was dangling from one of the beams. His wrists had been tied behind his back and then a length of rope looped around those bonds and then thrown over a beam so that the body could be hoisted up and down at will. Currently, as the man was hoisted up, his shoulders were slowly dislocating under his own weight. That in itself was painful enough, but he’d stopped screaming about that pain long ago. Or maybe he was still screaming about it, but the fact that he was missing some fairly important facial features which now lay in a pitiful bloody pile in front of him was probably what he was screaming about now. He was definitely screaming about the fact that the man with the big knife was getting closer again.

  “See now, Paul, if they’d’ve taught this shit in history class you’d’ve gone to school.”

  Paul moved around the body so he could see the area that Maguire was going to work on next. He didn’t actually need to respond. Maguire was often quite conversational when he was working someone over, but quite happy for the conversation to be one-sided, especially if he was in lecture mode.

  “According to the books, they used to take the eyelids fairly early on. Me, I prefer not to. It’s up to you. Either it’s bad ‘cause you can’t see what’s coming, or it’s bad ‘cause you can. Do whatever you think works.”

  Maguire brought his knife up and carefully sliced around the man’s left ear until he had cut it away from the skull. The blood flowed freely from the wound over the man’s neck and chest as the ear was dropped onto the pile to join the right ear, the nose and a pair of lips. The first couple of pieces had sent up little puffs of dust when they landed. Subsequent pieces had made more of a wet splat as they’d hit the ground. The man’s body odor was strong and rank, completely eclipsing the dry, dusty smell of the long-disused structure.

  “Can’t believe the fucker’s still screaming after the lips. That must sting some. Anyway, I’m fuckin’ tired of this shrieking shit. Hold his mouth open for me.”

  The man’s chin was slippery with gore from the gaping nasal cavity and the open flesh around his exposed teeth and gums. Paul struggled a little to get a good grip. Eventually he gave up trying to squeeze the jaw bones open and pried his fingers between the man’s teeth, pulling the upper and lower jaws apart. The man’s struggling increased, and two wet pops announced the full dislocation of both his shoulders. The weakened body was no match for Paul’s strength, though. Paul hadn’t been small since well before his sixteenth year; now he was positively massive. Thanks to a brief and foolish fling with steroids, he had mass that he couldn’t lose; he was just a little less insanely ripped and a lot less irritable since he’d stopped the shots. At six foot six inches and still around two hundred and sixty pounds of muscle, he towered over just about everybody he’d ever met.

  Maguire moved in with the knife. The tongue plopped onto the heap on the floor and the man’s screams became throat-tearing grunts and squeals. It was a gruesome sight, no doubt. Paul thought that maybe he should feel sick at the sight of the meaningless, mewling lump of flesh that they’d reduced a fellow human being to, but he didn’t. They were pulling him apart systematically. To Paul’s mind, it was a little like working on an engine without having drained the oil first, but instead of fixing it, they were breaking it. It had all the relevance to Paul of taking a carburetor apart. Maybe that made him a psychopath or something. He didn’t give a flying fuck. He loved his brothers; he’d lay down his life for them. He figured that made him human enough.

  That’s why they were here in the first place. The whimpering mess dangling in front of them had given information to some rivals. Paul and his brothers had been expecting to ride to a location near the Mexican border to pick up a consignment of drugs and illegal immigrants, which they would transport to the border with Louisiana. They’d been met by men wielding semi-automatics, who’d killed two of Paul’s friends and injured five others. The death of the worthless shit in front of them was assured, but he was enduring this pain as a message to anyone else looking to make a fast buck by selling the club out.

  Paul had started on his current path by begging a job in the garage owned by the Rabid Dogs MC when he’d finished his last stint in Juvie. He’d done anything they’d asked, cleaned tools, fetched sandwiches, swept and mopped, anything. He’d started prospecting with the club after his eighteenth birthday, along with his friend Charlie. Charlie had moved to Louisiana with his dad before they patched in. Paul had stayed. Sure Charlie was his friend, but it didn’t mean he had to chase him across the state. He was comfortable where he was. He’d been awarded his full colors not long after he turned nineteen and the club had been his whole life since.

  As a kid he’d wanted nothing more than freedom and control over his own life, to be just like Han Solo. He’d found his Millennium Falcon in his Harley. He could ride for days, only stopping to undertake basic bodily functions and to assuage the need to eat and sleep. Riding felt like flying; it was the closest thing he knew to being weightless both metaphorically and physically. Out on the road on his own he had no responsibilities, no cares, no worries, no stress. With membership of the MC came responsibilities and duties, but since it was something that he’d chosen, Paul embraced it all with a joyful heart.

  Maguire had taken on the role of tutor in the art of torture when it became apparent Paul didn’t balk at this kind of work like some of his weaker-stomached brothers. Maguire might be nearing sixty, but he kept himself in excellent condition. Only a loosening of the skin over his muscles gave any indication of his age, and that was hard to see past the ink that covered almost every inch of his body from his neck down. Only his palms, the soles of his feet and his genitals were bare of art. Maguire’s complete lack of inhibitions ensured his brothers were all far more aware than they wanted to be about the extent of his body art. It seemed that sometimes he forgot that his tattoos weren’t actual clothes.

  “The trick is not to go too fast, or too slow. You wanna get the pace just right or the shock brought on by pain’ll kill ‘em. It’ll kill ‘em anyway, but you want to be the one to decide when that happens and if you want to speed it up some.”<
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  As he was talking, Maguire added toes to the growing grisly pile. “The trick with this bit is to get the tip of your knife in between the joints. It’s easier than just hacking away and blunting your blade on the bone.”

  The remnants of the human being swaying on the rope seemed to be cycling through stages of unconsciousness without fully coming to by the time Maguire had finished with its feet. They couldn’t repeat the process with the hands as they were in an awkward spot, but from the dark, mottled purple color of the skin, it looked as though the restricted circulation was doing a dandy job without their help.

  “We gonna speed this fella up?”

  “Fuck no! This little girl won’t last much longer, but he’s goin’ hard all the way. Or not, as the case may be. Move over, son.”

  Paul stepped back to give Maguire room to start working the knife around the flaccid penis of the condemned man, who flinched back into almost full awareness. The animal-like noises picked up in frequency and pitch, melding into one continual sound as the man’s crown jewels joined his facial features in the dust. This was standard for Maguire’s method of instruction. The first time he would show Paul how it was done. The next time he would stand back and observe Paul as he put what he’d learned into practice.