by J. T. Warren
The song changed to “Back to the Life,” opening with a maniacal laugh. Her eyes went to the receiver, on which the song title was spelled out, and Tyler’s eyes went to her breasts. The heavy beat of the song unleashed something inside him, something like instinct, and he moved in for the kill.
Their lips met again, softly at first and then he pressed harder and his tongue found its way into her mouth where it slipped over and around her tongue like two slugs mating. Her snaggletooth pressed against his teeth like a popcorn kernel, but the discomfort only spurred him on. His hands groped at her back, found the edge of her shirt and pulled it up all the way to her chin. Then his hands were on her breasts, caressing them, squeezing them. Something red and hot burned inside him and grew hotter and hotter. He went for her bra strap with both hands, just to be sure, and unclasped it almost immediately. The excitement at this accomplishment pushed his tongue more forcefully against hers and he lifted her and shifted so that her head lay against the door and her legs tangled with his around the shifter.
He tore her bra off and finally broke the kiss. She gasped for air as if she had been under water. Her breasts were even larger than he had hoped. He grabbed one and began sucking forcefully on the other. Still, the red hotness burned, throbbed, screamed inside him. This is what he had wanted for so long, so fucking long, oh how fucking wonderful. Her hands grabbed at his hair and tugged playfully. He shook them off and sucked even harder on her breast until her moan morphed into a cry of pain. He pulled off of her breast, tugging at her nipple, and stared at her for a moment. The shadows had shifted on her face and now made her appear younger, smaller. She started to speak, and Tyler suffocated her words with his mouth.
Women love being dominated, a website declared.
His hands found the edge of her jeans and tore open the fly. The hot redness burned hotter and hotter and hotter, screaming for him to keep going. This was going to be wonderful, so fucking wonderful. He slipped one hand behind her and shifted his weight to that arm while his other hand jumped onto her crotch. Her panties stuck to her groin in a patch of moisture: she wanted this just as much as he. This was too wonderful to believe. He found the seat lever and yanked it almost hard enough to snap it while he picked her up again and flopped her down on the seat, forcing it backwards, nearly flat. The part of him that would have stalled the engine of his passion had fallen off somewhere and now stood back, shocked and delighted.
Another deep-probing kiss later, Tyler pulled off her jeans and let his fingers explore her most sensitive of areas. She moaned and repeated his name again and again but he barely heard that over the monstrous pounding of the screaming red inside him. It could have been an alarm shouting FIRE! FIRE! but it only pushed him farther. He undid his own fly and pushed his pants and boxers past his knees and wriggled them to his ankles. Her moans grew louder and her hands grabbed more roughly at his hair and arms. He drove his tongue against hers once more, her snaggletooth crushing his gums, and then he went for everything in one quick gesture—he pulled her panties to the side and slipped the head of his penis into her where her muscles stopped it and her fingers clawed more desperately at him and then he shoved all of himself into her as he released a powerful grunt of pleasure. The hot redness hollered louder and louder still until his entire body burned with the screaming lust. And when he released that hot redness inside her, Tyler finally noticed the tears on her cheeks, green in the light, and heard her begging, “No, stop, no, stop, Tyler, stop, stopstopstoppleasestop!”
He slumped back into the driver’s seat without bringing up his pants. Sasha curled into a fetal position on the passenger seat and sobbed. Across the lake, a giant monster watched it all through a hundred glowing eyes.
2
The knock at the front door pulled Anthony’s attention from the eggs quickly cooking in the pan in front of him. Brendan was already up and watching a cartoon about two bunnies dressed as Mexican lawmen (complete with bandoliers) hunting for a third, presumably evil, bunny that had stolen a supply of carrots. The animation in the show shuttered like the light from a strobe and the show jumped from scene-to-scene at such a frenetic pace that the few times Anthony tried to watch the show with his twelve-year old, he always left the room before his burgeoning headache evolved into a migraine. And yet, Brendan could watch hours of similar-style animation without the slightest apparent damage. Except, of course, for the ADD, which, as good parents, he and Chloe tried to keep under control with the little white pills Dr. Carroll prescribed. Those pills were best taken with food and Brendan’s favorite Saturday morning meal was scrambled eggs and bacon, eggs cooked in the bacon fat.
The knock came again. Whoever it was standing outside on the front porch, their knock suggested neither aggression nor impatience; it was a simple declaration of presence. Even so, Anthony didn’t want to leave whoever it was stranded outside when that person could clearly hear the cartoon bunnies galloping after the evil bunny and shouting, Badges? We don’t need no stinkin badges in a mockery of a Mexican accent.
He thought of telling Brendan to answer the door but that was an invitation for trouble, something newspapers would tout in giant headlines after some escaped sex offender made off with Brendan after the innocent boy answered the door. FATHER TOLD BOY TO ANSWER DOOR. Father claims he was too busy “cooking eggs” to see who the stranger was himself. Now, the father is on a hot-plate of his own as accusations of bad parenting and suspicions of the father’s complicit role in the scenario play out across the country. Did Anthony Williams not only know his son’s kidnapper but actually broker the deal as a way to pay his mounting drug debts to a secret Mexican cartel? While the father denies ever suffering any kind of drug addiction, his wife, Chloe, 39, admits that Anthony was a heavy pot smoker in college and that behavior might have served as a gateway to more dangerous drugs and a secret addiction he hid from his entire family.
Would Chloe sell him out that quickly? A mother’s love was stalwart. For the drug angle to work, though, the newspapers would have to believe that a man who never takes anything stronger than aspirin could somehow get wrapped up in the underworld dealings of Mexican drug trafficking, and all from his humble home in Sky View Estates in Orange County, New York. If anyone was going to go under the microscope of drug use it would be Chloe. Her pills were best taken with food as well. She preferred her eggs sunny side down. How appropriate.
He pushed the scrambled eggs onto a plate and dropped three pieces of bacon next to them. He set the plate on the kitchen table and, as he passed through the family room, told Brendan to get his breakfast while the bacon fat was still hot and tasty.
Anthony opened the front door. A tall man in a black suit had his hand raised to knock again. He slowly brought it down to cup the Bible held in his other hand. His suit was freshly pressed and tailored perfectly to his thin frame. Another man, shorter, though bulkier, like a lineman, also dressed in a black suit, also well-tailored, stood next to the first. This man’s suit was clean, but wrinkles weaved over the pants and jacket like varicose veins. Nearly identical smiles emerged on their faces like the multi-toothed grins of sharks breaking the water’s surface to snatch unsuspecting birds.
“Good morning,” the tall man said. His black hair was parted on the right side and gelled against his scalp; the color matched his suit. “How are you today?”
The shorter man’s hair was also parted on the right side but he had used less gel and several strands of hair were blowing around on top of his head. Neither of the men’s smiles wavered. Sharks approaching for the kill.
“I’m making breakfast, actually,” Anthony said. “For the family.”
Both men nodded in sync. They were either robots or they had done this routine a million times and knew the proper responses intuitively.
“We won’t take but a minute of your time,” the first man said. “We’re here about an exciting opportunity.”
Anthony offered a sarcastic grin. “We already have a vacuum.”
&nbs
p; “This is an opportunity to discover your lord and savior,” the second man said and held out a folded pamphlet showcasing a picture of Jesus on the cross with the crown of thorns digging into his skin and blood trickling down His temple.
Anthony should have known. Easter was only a week away, which meant it was prime time for Jehovah’s Witnesses to spread the Good News. He held up his hand and shook his head. The shorter man looked strong enough to break Anthony’s arm in one quick move, if he wanted. Did Jehovahs get angry?
“May we leave you with some reading material?” the first man asked.
Reading material. What a clever way to disguise the blatant flier full of Jesus-touting rhetoric. Was Brendan eating his breakfast yet or still watching his Attention Deficit Disorder-inducing cartoon? Delaney would be up soon—she had her SAT prep course this morning—and Brendan had his bowling league and Tyler would be rising from the dead soon, too. Would Tyler mention his date last night and if not was it uncool to ask him about it?
“I appreciate you guys have to do this and all,” Anthony said, “but we’re not interested in being witnesses to Jehovah. Thanks anyway.”
The second man did not lower the pamphlet and the first man’s smile did not waver. His dark stare betrayed that smile, though. Something lingered in those eyes that was not wholesome. Maybe the guy was pissed at him for not taking the damned flier, but it could be something else, something stronger than anger.
“We’re not Witnesses,” the first man said. “We’re from the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered. We’re not here to spout the old diatribe but to invoke the New Order. Jesus Christ is your savior and His empowerment can empower you.”
“Can He make breakfast for my family?” Anthony immediately regretted being such a smart ass.
The first man’s smile actually widened, showing off even more of his large, white teeth. Now Anthony knew what that emotion was stirring in those dark eyes—not anger, but malevolence. That sounded extreme, yes, but Anthony was so sure that something was off about the first guy, probably both guys, that he thought again of sensationalist newspaper headlines. CRAZED JESUS FREAKS SLAUGHTER FATHER, MOTHER; KIDNAP KIDS. Whether the recent brutal slaying of a family in a gated community in Stone Creek, New York, was the work of a non-recognized sect of Christianity or if the Jesus-themed pamphlets left in the piles of the victims’ blood was a decoy for the growing Mexican sex trade is impossible to tell. Police are as shocked as the neighbors of the family, though one neighbor remarked that she had seen two men in suits walking the neighborhood and was immediately alarmed. “I wasn’t going to open the door for them,” she said. “This is a gated community, so how did they even get past the guard? There was just something not right about the two of them. The father should have known.”
“I’m not interested,” Anthony said with more firmness. The radical newspaper headlines running in his head were ridiculous, of course, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be cautious. The world was full of horrible people who did horrible things and you never knew when one of those people would step into your life.
“Please, sir,” the first man said. His long fingers flexed wide and then squeezed the Bible he was holding over his crotch. Now, there was a great example of symbolism for the book Anthony was currently editing at Prentice Hall: Reading Like a Scholar: Finding the Deeper Meaning in Everything.
The second man stepped forward and the pamphlet grazed Anthony’s chest. Had it been a knife, Anthony would be on the ground screaming. Jesus’ upside down eyes gazed up at him in a tortured expression of anguish.
“You will need this,” the second man said. “Trust me.”
Unlike the first man’s dark, sinister eyes, this man’s were light blue, yet something stirred in them as well. It wasn’t malevolence, but perhaps something not far off. Anthony wanted to trust him, despite the part of his brain warning that the first man might slide a butcher knife out from his large Bible and begin the slaughter. Perhaps the second man was better at hiding ulterior motives. Experienced sex traffickers were excellent actors, or so Anthony assumed.
The stocky man’s sincerity combined with the tall man’s latent wickedness and Anthony’s own concern for his family, the rest of whom might be rising now and hoping to find the Saturday Breakfast Ritual intact, kept Anthony’s mouth shut and made him grab the flier. A clump of egg dropped off the spatula he had been holding and rolled across Jesus’ face.
The men nodded in sync and turned away.
“Who’re they?” Delaney stood next to him in shorts and a T-shirt with a giant heart on it. She had come down the steps so quietly to stand next to him that Anthony twitched in surprise. “Don’t have a heart attack, old man. Mom would be upset.” She patted his back and laughed. The sound was high and light and wonderful.
He smirked at her. “Only Mom would be upset, huh?”
“Well,” Delaney said, “she’s the only one who really likes your eggs anyway.”
He grabbed her in a loose headlock and she immediately started to giggle the way she used to when she was a kid and he’d chase her around the house pretending to be a monster. “Nobody likes my eggs, you say?” he said in an exaggerated baritone.
“That voice is sooo dumb, Dad.”
He found the ticklish spot under her arm and she squirmed her way out of his grip in a cackle of laughter. “I have to get ready for SAT prep,” she said. “Where’s my breakfast?”
“Coming right up, your majesty,” he said and started to close the door.
He stopped. The broad-shouldered man, with the loose wisps of hair and the wrinkle veins in his suit stood at the bottom of the front porch steps, watching him with those blue eyes. Something about those eyes, something in that expression.
“Can I help you?” Anthony tried to sound annoyed but his voice cracked with concern.
“Your daughter,” the man said and smiled large again. A shark smile. “She’s very pretty.”
Then he turned and walked down the driveway, following after the tall guy who was already down the road, nearly out of sight.
Uneven. The man had an uneven expression in his eyes. Now, there was a quote for a newspaper article.
3
Brendan awoke before seven, turned off his alarm clock five minutes before it would buzz to life, and began the ritual. He made his bed first, pulling the sheets tight and folding the corners snug under the mattress. Then he showered. He had only started showering two years ago and only did it three or four times weekly and usually only at his mother’s insistence and always at night before bed. There was never anytime in the mornings before school for Brendan to shower with Tyler and Delaney fighting over use of the bathroom, not that Brendan wanted to, anyway. Showering was annoying. He didn’t miss baths (they were too childish), but he didn’t care for showers. It was like standing in a downpour. Sometimes his mother had to tell him to get back in the shower because he had forgotten to shampoo his hair or clean the dirt out from under his nails. Sometimes he just stood in the shower and counted the seconds until he knew five minutes had passed: the required minimum number of seconds (300) his mother deemed necessary for a shower to be truly effective. Adults, as well as his teenage siblings, seemed to enjoy showering. Brendan didn’t understand. Maybe they enjoyed standing naked in the rain.
Mom’s insistence about his bathing habits had stopped. She no longer ushered him into the bathroom to shower during Jeopardy! or checked if his hair was clean after he finished. She no longer did much at all. Dad had said that Mom needed a lot of rest and understanding and that everyone would have to do a lot more around the house. In school, he had learned that thousands of African babies died every day from all kinds of diseases, even dehydration. Though Brendan hadn’t wanted another sibling anyway, he was sad when the baby died, mostly because of Mom’s reaction and the way Dad, Tyler, and Delaney had walked around the house like zombies.
The gods demanded a sacrifice.
Dad wasn’t as good as Mom about forcing Bre
ndan to shower and then checking on the shower’s effectiveness, but he tried his best. He made sure Brendan was up on school days in time for a bowl of cereal and maybe a few minutes of cartoons before handing him some money for lunch and telling him to have a good day. He always reminded Tyler to drive him and Delaney to school, but the second half of his senior year gave Tyler something called Late Arrival, which meant he didn’t have to get up until after his brother and sister were both on the school bus. Delaney always wanted Brendan to sit next to him on the bus, but he never wanted to. All she ever did was complain to her friends, through text-messages, how unfair it was that she was sixteen and didn’t have a car. Dad said she was smart, but Brendan didn’t see it.
But those were weekdays; today was Saturday and Saturday was a unique day that had to be observed correctly. When the original calendar was created, Saturday was deemed a magic day—the Romans used it as the first day of the week, meaning it was symbolic of Creation Day. Most sacrifices to the gods (offerings of animals), which were meant to win the favor of the gods, were performed on Saturday. A holy day. A day to be respected and acknowledged. Or else suffer the consequences. He knew this was true because he had read it.
Dr. Carroll had given him the book (along with little white pills meant to help him “focus”) back in October. The book was titled Finding God: a History of Appeasing Higher Powers and Fulfilling Man’s Destiny.
Even on Saturday, however, showering was annoying, yet Brendan spent an extra long time, nearly fifteen minutes, during his Saturday showers to get his hair really clean and his nails dirt-free. He even scrubbed behind his ears, though he wasn’t sure how dirt could settle there in the first place. He rubbed soap over his face and furiously sanded it into his skin because Delaney had told him that twelve-years-old was the age when blackheads started forming, especially on the nose. He had asked her what blackheads were and she said they were like zits only they created craters in the skin and got filled with dirt, which got infected and could even rot skin enough for it to fall off. He figured she was lying, at least stretching the truth, but that didn’t stop him from soaping up his face and scrubbing until his flesh burned.
