Possession

by T. M. Frazier

  “What about everyone else?” Haze asks, brushing his long beard with the barrel of his gun.

  I check to make sure my own gun is loaded.

  Click. Click. Clack.

  “Everyone else fucking dies.”

  Sandy and Haze leave to get the vans from the storage garage while my men and I finish making sure every weapon we have is Los Muertos killing ready.

  The door in the back of the room opens with a creak, and the room grows silent. Guns being loaded are paused in mid-air. The men part like Moses just entered the room, reverently making room for whoever just walked in. When he’s clear of the last man and standing at the opposite end of the long table from me, I’m able to get a good look at him. I recognize him instantly, even though it’s been a while since I’ve seen him. His dark hair is short on the sides. The top is usually slightly longer, but it’s hiding under his plain black baseball cap. The man is larger than life and all muscle, and when he cracks his knuckles, his biceps flex and strain under his tight v-neck t-shirt. He’s wearing all black from head to toe, but what sets him apart are the black studded leather belts he wears wrapped around his forearms. I know this man. Those belts aren’t decorations.

  They’re weapons.

  Weapons I’ve seen him wrap around a neck or two during the few occasions Belly had brought me with him up to Logan’s Beach for reasons that always started with killing and ended with one fuck of a good party.

  “King,” I greet, with a tip of my chin.

  King walks around the table and more men move aside to give him room to pass. “Grim,” he returns.

  “Didn’t expect you here.” If I sound surprised, it’s because I am. King is otherwise known as The King of the Causeway in Logan’s Beach. He’s got his own problems to solve. His own operation to run. Plus, he’s a family man now with a wife and a gaggle of kids.

  King lights a cigarette and tucks the pack into his back pocket. “Bear called me from his ride to Atlanta. He said you might be in need of an extra hand.” He looks at the weapons on the table, and in the hands and holsters of my men. “Or gun.”

  I nod. “Bear’s right. The more guns and fingers willing to pull triggers the better, but I thought you went legit?”

  He shrugs. “I got people to believe I did. That’s all that matters.” King blows out the smoke. “But I’m here because Belly always came through for me in a pinch. Sorry to hear about him, by the way. He was a good one. I wanted to come to the service, but my girl was in the hospital giving me another beautiful mouth to feed,” he says with a crooked smile and arching a scarred eyebrow.

  I’m not in a celebratory mood, but I manage to say, “Congrats, man.”

  He looks me over like he’s taking me in. Thinking. “Thanks,” he says. “But do me a favor, and say that to me again when this is all over and you mean it. There’ll be plenty of time for all the catching up shit later.” He picks up one of the larger semi-automatic guns from the table, testing the weight of it in his hands with his cigarette dangling from his lips. He takes it from his mouth and scratches the stubble on his jaw. He locks his dark green eyes on me. “Bear said your woman’s in trouble. That right?”

  I light my own cigarette. “I wish it weren’t.”

  King blows smoke out through his nose. He straps the gun to his back. “Then, what’s the motherfucking plan?”

  It’s a simple one. “Kill them all, and hope she’s still fucking breathing when it’s done.”

  King tightens the belts around his arms. “I know how this feels, man. Trust me. I know, and it ain’t fuckin’ good.” He points his cigarette at my chest. “But trust me when I say it’s going to feel a fuck of a lot better when you’re killing all the people standing between you and her.”

  I strap my own gun to my back while the rest of the men start taking the weapons outside to load them into the vans. “I’m not sure of a lot right now, man. But of that…” I raise my hood. “I have no fucking doubt.”

  Thirteen

  Young lovers, kept apart by the feuding of their families, stole kisses in secret. Behind barns. In the middle of pastures. In the confession booth after Sunday Mass.

  One night they met under a full moon. They made their way out of town and were married in secret with only the minister’s wife and grown daughters as witnesses.

  They consummated their love in a hayloft of the minister’s barn while whispering words of forever and planning their future.

  In the morning they reassured one another that everything would be fine. They planned to tell their families what they’d done that very afternoon.

  As they walked hand in hand back to town, confident in their love and their families forgiveness, a fire brigade raced passed them on the road.

  It turns out they didn’t have to tell their families at all.

  A plume of black smoke filled the sky right above where the ministers house had been.

  They knew.

  * * *

  As a result of my shitty circumstances even my fictional escapes are becoming more and more hopeless.

  Mona enters the room as if to drive home that very point.

  I didn’t think it was possible to hate someone just as much as I hate Marco, especially someone I share a history with, but it is. I hate everything about her, and after I’m free, I’m going to make sure she feels every bit of that hatred.

  Her gaze darts to my naked body. She has a fixed look of disgust written all over her face. At first, I think it could be because I’m tied up and battered, but her gaze lingers, roaming from my breasts to between my legs and back again. It’s not disgust. It’s something else. Something more. Mona’s eyes darken, but this time not with her usual evil, but with...lust? Holy shit, it is, it’s lust.

  I don’t have time to be surprised by her reaction or sexual orientation. I’m sure if I searched the corners of my mind, I would see the signs written in the past, but I don’t have time for that shit right now. If she were anyone else, maybe someone who wasn’t out to kill or torture me, I’d congratulate her and support her by telling her to live her truth, but Mona isn’t anyone else. And she is down for the kill and/or torture of my person. Plus, I’ve been looking for a way to gain Mona’s trust in order to escape, and the look she’s just given me might be the wedge in the door to my escape. It’s up to me to blow that door off the fucking hinges.

  “Do you remember when we were younger and you and I used to play hide and seek with Gabby in the backyard of our foster home?” I ask with false hesitancy, looking at the floor as I speak.

  Mona looks up and appears startled, like she’s been caught doing something she shouldn’t. She pauses for a second, then nods because I don’t think she knows what else to do. She’s off guard and hasn’t yet had time yet to put her angry psychopath persona back in place. I have to act fast.

  I continue, “Do you remember we’d leave Gabby counting beside the shed outside while we went inside to watch TV? How long was she out there, searching for us while we watched Hannah Montana reruns?”

  “A long time,” she says. “At least, two or three episodes.” Her lips flatten suddenly, as if she realizes she’d been smiling.

  I keep my words small and my voice low. “I liked watching TV with you. You knew all the words to the songs,” I say on an almost whisper, recalling every last memory I have of our childhood. Any truth I can use as ammunition to load my gun of lies. I just hope the bullets will be strong enough to penetrate the evil surrounding Mona’s black heart.

  That is, if she even still has one.

  “What are you trying to do here?” she asks skeptically, pursing her lips.

  I let my gaze trail up her body and press my teeth into my bottom lip. “You’ve grown up a lot since then,” I say, before looking away toward the door as if I’m embarrassed by my confession, all the while ignoring her question as if I’m too caught up in our conversation to acknowledge it’s been asked.

  “So, did you,” she says slowly. “But you didn’t an
swer me. What are you getting at, EJ? What’s your angle?”

  I shake my head. “Unbelievable. I’ve been locked in here, getting raped by your brother every time he gets a hard-on for the unwilling. Which is fucking often, by the way. He’ll probably wind up fucking killing me soon. I have nothing to lose here, Mon.”

  She stills at my use of the nickname Gabby and I used to call her as kids. Her shoulders begin to slowly fall. I continue chipping away at the monster she’s become, searching for a sign that the girl she once was might still be alive and be hiding somewhere underneath all that hate.

  “Mon,” I plead.

  This time, Mona winces. I’m hoping it’s because I’ve succeeded in picking through the first layer of evil. I strike again. “I just wanted a few last moments of honesty. With you. Maybe we could...just a few moments of...never mind. It was a stupid idea. I just thought...”

  “What kind of honesty?” she asks, cutting me off. She crosses her arms over her breasts in a defensive stance, but intrigue is written all over her face.

  I look to the ceiling like I’m searching for answers. “I don’t know. I mean, I guess the kind where I tell you things I normally wouldn’t if I wasn’t possibly facing death?” I look her in the eye and lower my voice. “The kind I was too embarrassed to tell you when we were younger...”

  My voice trails off. I imagine standing naked in front of a thousand strangers so that a blush appears on my cheeks.

  “I call bullshit,” Mona spits. The look of intrigue quickly disappears, replaced with one of anger. She wrinkles her forehead and takes a swaying step back. I spot confusion thrown into the mix. A lot of it. She’s wrestling with this. With me. With the truth. With possibility. All hasn’t yet been lost.

  I’m still in the game.

  And I will fucking win.

  I shrug as much as I can with my arms bound above my head. “You can call it whatever you want. I’m tied up. I have nothing to gain.”

  Her eyebrows arch with skepticism.

  “Come on,” I say. “You had to have seen it. The looks I used to give you when we stripped the clothes off our Barbie dolls. The way I used to tease you more than anyone else?”

  “Yeah,” she answers with hesitance.

  I’ve tossed out the line, and she’s chasing it. Now, to reel her in. “I was a kid with a crush. That’s how I thought it was done.”

  “That does make sense now that I think about it,” she says, taking a step forward. The hook is now in her mouth. I think she’s coming to the bed, but she passes me and goes into the bathroom. I hear running water. A moment later, when she comes back out, she’s holding a large plastic bowl and wringing out a washcloth. She sits beside me on the mattress. “You’re a mess. Let me fix you up.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper, sounding like a dying soldier grateful for a nurse’s touch. Mona begins to wipe the warm soapy washcloth over my sensitive and bruised skin.

  “If you’re playing some sort of game, then stop right now,” Mona warns, pausing the cloth over my right nipple. “No matter what you say...or do, it’s not going to set you free. I can’t set you free.”

  Oh, but you can. Just not in the way that you think.

  “I know that,” I say. “And I’m not asking you to set me free. I’m just asking for...”

  She moves the cloth slowly down my stomach, and I pretend to hiss when she reaches the sensitive spot between my legs. It feels like an invasion. Like death. It’s made worse by her gentle touch. At least, Marco was a proper rapist. Violent. Rough. My body knew how to respond. How to detest him. In this moment, I want to chop off her arm and feed it to her inch by inch until she chokes on it, but I maintain my role as seductress.

  “Maybe, just a little happiness in all this darkness.”

  Mona smiles, and it’s genuine. It’s the first time I’ve seen her smile since I knew she was one of the people responsible for me being tied to this bed. I hate her, but memories of my childhood, where that smile was a semi-regular occurrence, begin to flood my memory. I push them back down because they aren’t going to help me now. Mona isn’t that girl anymore, and what she’s become...there is no going back. So, I don’t go back.

  “Now a little happiness?” she asks in a low, sultry voice. “That I can manage.”

  She cups my vagina with the cloth, and I close my eyes and moan as if in ecstasy and not agony. She continues to wipe the dirt and her brother’s filth from the rest of my body before climbing over me on the bed. She presses her lips to my stomach. Her touch is gentle and soft. The opposite of her brother and the opposite of what she’s shown me thus far. It doesn’t feel good because I don’t want her to touch me, but physically it doesn’t feel terrible either. However, I’m going to have to make this show real in every way possible to convince her that I’m into this. That my words are truth. So, I close my eyes and picture the one person whose hands I do want on me. Whose lips set my body to tingles. Whose words make me melt into a pool of lustful want.

  Mona trails her lips and tongue around my nipple. I imagine it’s Grim. It’s hard at first because she feels so different than he does. Smaller. Softer. But acting isn’t going to get me out of this mess and save my life. I have to actually feel it. I continue to picture Grim, sucking my nipples into his mouth and swirling his tongue over the sensitive bud. I imagine it’s him they’re growing hard for. Him I’m wet between my legs for.

  When she trails her tongue down my body to my core, I arch my back off the bed because it’s Grim whose tongue is lapping over my clit, sucking it, fucking it into my tight channel. I almost buck her away when she pushes a finger inside of me, but when she adds another, it’s easier to imagine it’s one of Grim’s fingers, caressing me from within, hooking and rubbing me in just the right spot. It’s his warm mouth making me writhe off the mattress.

  And finally, it’s Grim who makes me come undone.

  Mona looks up at me and pushes her long dark hair behind her ears. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. Her eyelids are hooded. Eyes shining and black as night, gleaming with satisfaction. “You came,” she says. “You really weren’t lying.”

  I did come, but not for you, bitch.

  I shake my head and try to catch my breath. “No, I really wasn’t lying.”

  She shifts to the side of the bed. Her fingers tap the side of her jaw.

  Now is my chance. “Look, I don’t expect you to release me, or even untie me so I can return—”

  Mona cuts me off by leaning over and kissing me full on the lips. Her tongue darts into my mouth, and I briefly taste myself before she breaks the kiss and sits back up.

  “Only your legs and one arm,” she says wickedly pointing her finger at me like a naughty school teacher scolding her pupil. She stands and crosses the room to make sure the door is locked. When she comes back, she unties my feet, and as promised, just one of my arms.

  It’s all I need.

  The second she’s done with the knots, I grab her face with my free hands and kiss her with all the passion I can muster. I push her down onto the bed and raise her dress over her head, tossing it to the floor before lowering my mouth to her nipple. I lick around the hardened peak before sucking it into my mouth. Releasing it with a pop. She moans and rubs her thighs together. I move down her body, slowly kissing and sucking her non-bruised, perfect, olive skin. I work my way down to her thighs while at the same time working my magic. My best trick yet. Well, maybe not my best. But the one with the most on the line.

  More sleight of mouth and less sleight of hand.

  I peel her panties off with one hand and toss them to the side. I run my fingers from her breastbone down to her core and lower my head between her legs just as I manage to free my bound limb from the last of the knots.

  “One more kiss, before I...” I say before I start traveling up her body. I interrupt my own sentence by kissing her passionately on the lips, massaging her tongue with mine and her nipple with my thumb. I move my hand to her shoulders, cares
sing them as she moans into my mouth. I break the kiss and push her hands above her head. She tilts her head to the side so I can kiss and tongue the sensitive skin on her neck.

  With that move, she swallows the hook.

  Mona is so lost in lust she doesn’t see or feel the rope I’ve wrapped around her face until it’s too late. I’ve already pulled it tight, and she’s forced to bite down around it. Her eyes spring open in horror as realization sets in. Her screams are muffled as I sit up and get off the bed. My very strong guess is that she’s swearing at me and tossing in a few threats to boot.

  I stand from the bed, and she makes a move to follow me, but she can’t. Her wrists are bound to the headboard. I tie her kicking feet to the footboard with knots a sailor couldn’t begin to unravel before picking her dress up off the floor and pulling it over my head. I push my feet into her shoes and grab her hat from the dresser, tucking my unruly curls underneath. I place her large sunglasses over my eyes and head to the window. She’s still yelling around the rope as I slide open the pane and place one leg over the ledge. I look back to Mona, flailing against her restraints, eyes bulging out of her head with anger. Her face is so far past red it’s purple.

  I want to feel bad for her. I really do.

  But I don’t. I can’t. Not anymore.

  And never again.

  “Fuck you!” she cries through the rope in her mouth.

  I laugh. “No, fuck you, Mona. And you can quote me on that.”

  I leap from the window and fall hard onto the grass. I stand up and brush off any pain because there’s no time for pain, only escape. The darkness disorients me, along with the realization that I’m not in front of Marco’s building, but one of the many others. Most of the buildings look the same. In the dark I can’t tell if I’m in the middle, side, front, or back of the compound.

  I pick a random direction and limp off into the night as fast as I can manage, hoping that the way I’ve chosen will be the one that leads me back to Grim.