BRAKING HARD To Load

by Bloom, Cassandra

  “Ya look like a retard when ya do that,” Danny said, sitting in the backseat.

  “Shut up!” Candy said. “Backseat passengers have to stay quiet!”

  I couldn’t help the laughter that came from the two’s bickering. I had to admit, that if Danny hadn’t been gay, the two would make a cute couple. Deciding to joke about that at a later date, I turned the ignition and began to drive toward the abandoned factory with Candy’s directions.

  ****

  “So how long have you been with the Crows, anyway,” Candy asked, sounding like she was equally curious and looking to pass the time.

  Danny, not without a well of pride in his voice, said, “Since the beginning; the very beginning.”

  “Oh, wow!” I said. I’d known that he’d been with the Crows for a while—I’d been hearing enough stories of Jace as a child to know that he must have been around for a while—but it had never occurred to me that he might have been around for that long. “Were you always so… um, high-up with them, as well?”

  Nodding, Danny’s smile widened. “Yup. I was pretty close with Jace an’ Michael’s old man, so I was one of the first that he recruited when he first put the group together. Back then we were pretty small-time; mostly money laundering an’ a li’l turf war here-an’-there—just gettin’ the riff-raff out o’ town and such, y’know?”

  I bit my lip at that, finding myself unsettled when I was sure I should have been impressed. “So… you must have known Papa Rave—er, Tyler, right?”

  Danny’s wide grin was wiped away in an instant. His proud posture and nostalgic glow faded. Then he growled. “Unfortunately,” he grumbled.

  “Was he that bad even then?” Candy asked.

  “No, actually,” Danny admitted, sighing. “He was actually pretty charming back then; pretty good friends with the Presleys and even with me.”

  I bit my lip at that. “Why would you look back on him so negatively if he wasn’t always bad?” I asked.

  Danny was so mad now that he was shaking. “Because he killed Roger,” he growled.

  It took me a moment to place the name as that of Jace’s father’s. In the time I’d known Jace and, by extension, the rest of the Crow Gang, I’d come to know the name of their late leader and founder as an almost holy one; it was rarely mentioned and, when it was, it was in a small, hushed setting.

  The casual familiarity with which Danny spoke the name now seemed to almost transform the nature of it, but, even more unnerving, was how Danny seemed to transform in that moment.

  Candy bit her lip. “Wow, Merc. I’ve never seen you so… um, well, like this.”

  I looked over, daring to set a hand on Danny’s arm. As I watched, I saw a tear begin to well in one of my eyes, and, like Candy, I was having a very hard time understanding—or even believing—what I was seeing. “Danny?” I asked, forgetting to use his preferred name.

  He didn’t correct me.

  “I… I just…” he stammered.

  Candy caught on a split-second before I did.

  “Oh my…” she said with a startled, half-sobbing gasp. “You… you loved him, didn’t you?”

  I blushed, realizing it just then, as well. As if to answer both of our suspicions, I felt Danny’s arm tense beneath my hand at her question.

  A long, tense silence followed as we all stopped in mid-step.

  Danny nodded.

  “Did you ever tell him how you felt?” I asked him in a low voice, afraid that anything with more volume would crack and whimper.

  Danny shook his head.

  “Does Jace know?” Candy asked, approaching his other side and reaching out to take his other hand in a comforting gesture.

  Danny scoffed and shook his head. “How’m I supposed to tell ‘im somethin’ like that? ‘Hey, kid, I had the hots for yer pops! By the way, great job with that counterfeiting contract!’” He scoffed and shook his head a second time, looking down at his feet. “No. I never tol’ either of them. Never tol’ anybody fer that matter. I just…” he shrugged.

  “We’re gonna get him,” Candy said then, her voice taking on the motherly tone I’d grown familiar with during my time with her as a whore. “Papa Raven’s gonna die.”

  Danny gave a faint smile and a single nod at that. “I hope so. If nothing else I’d like to be there when that bastard takes his last breath.”

  I offered him a reassuring smile.

  “You wanna touch my titties, you chubby fruitcake?” Candy offered in a comforting-yet-playful tone. “They’re better than the hairy slabs you wipe your lovers’ cum off of.”

  Danny gave a weak chuckle then, which, after an uncertain pause, shifted to a belching laugh. This, however, soon turned to a full-on, rolling belly cackle. Then, shaking his head, he gave her a smile and a nudge.

  “Thanks for that, ya cod-stinking gutter-whore, but ain’t a fuckin’ thing in this world better than my hairy man-boobs!” he teased, then, in an unsettling and instantaneous shift, reverted to what could only be described as “business mode.” He looked up at the building ahead of us, sighed heavily, and muttered, “An’ here we be.”

  “Here we be,” indeed, I thought.

  The location was a dump and while Danny had said something about renovations, I couldn’t see much in the way of work from the outside, at least. I glanced over at the two as they stepped out of the car. Danny pulled out a duffle bag, handing out two automatic rifles, one for Candy and one for me.

  “I do have a gun in my purse,” I said, frowning at how heavy the rifle felt in my hands.

  “Yeah, yer handgun ain’t gonna help if we’re fighting more than one guy,” Danny said, shrugging as he holstered his own rifle.

  He handed us each a holster for the rifle and I placed it on my shoulder. When we were armed, we turned back to the building, staring at the sight of the destroyed factory. Taking a deep breath, I followed after Candy and Danny, who’d already begun to move.

  “Creepy place, ain’t it?” Candy said, trying to mask how nervous her voice sounded.

  “Yeah, it really is,” I said, frowning.

  As we stepped through the doors, I glanced around, seeing that they had obviously done some work on the inside of the factory. A new paint job had been given to the large space and I could see that a few of the large metal columns had been worked on. I realized those must’ve what helped the integrity of the building. As we stepped further inside, I shivered, hating how quiet and dark it was. Aside from the natural moonlight coming in from the limited ceiling windows, there was no sign of any other kind of lighting to be had.

  “Fuckin’ quiet in here, ain’t it?” Danny said.

  “Too quiet,” Candy said, her voice a whisper, as if afraid to make any too loud of sounds.

  As if to challenge both Danny and her comment…

  “Well ain’t this a charming sight?” a voice that I was almost certain belonged to a smoker called out towards us, “It’s a whole cluster of cocksuckers: some wayward Carrion whores and the Crow’s token faggot!”

  Candy and I both cringed at “Carrion whores,” though I imagined that she was flinching at only half of it—I, on the other hand, couldn’t decide which part of the two-part insult stung me more.

  Danny, however, seemed unaffected.

  The three of us turned to face the speaker, who was standing on a stretch of balcony that overlooked the central floor of the factory. The perforated metal grating that made up the surface of the balcony allowed us to see the man in his entirety, though only half of him—the upper-half—was clearly visible, his legs reduced to a seemingly pixelated cluster of blackness offset against an off-black backdrop of the dimly-lit ceiling. The upper-half was enough, though. It was enough to see the dirty, gray tank top stretched to its limits over a barrel chest and a set of shoulders that, I swear, looked to be made of at least five smaller men’s shoulders. Arms that would have looked more appropriate on a gorilla flexed, urging a layer of furious-looking veins to throb against the surface of his skin
, and a pair of hands that each looked like a cluster of bananas clung to the railing. I was certain that the lower-half, partially hidden behind the perforated metal grating and our forced, upward angle, would prove no less massive than the upper-half.

  “Liam, m’boy!” Danny called, sounding almost cheerful. “I see someone’s been eatin’ their Wheaties.”

  “Wheaties nothing!” Candy said with a stabbing scoff. “Motherfucker’s been juicing since before I even knew him!”

  I looked over at that, blanching at her words. “Candy?” I caught myself whispering, “You know that guy?”

  Candy smirked at the question, shrugged, and said—very much not in a whisper—“T-Built used to rent me out to this douche-canoe as an ‘interoffice favor,’ You remember T-Built’s rule on being chatty, so there was never much conversation between the two of us, but… while I can’t I know him all that well, you could say that I’d become rather well acquainted with his dick. Or, rather, what passes for a dick with him,” she said, no less jabby than before. She held up her hand, her pointer and thumb held up in a close pinch that was separated by barely an inch. “Let’s just say that the job don’t get much easier than when I gotta work with someone of Liam’s caliber.”

  “BITCH!” the gorilla named Liam snarled, his banana-hands tightening around the balcony’s railing and actually earning a metallic groan for his efforts.

  More veins, if such a thing were actually possible, rose to the surface, throbbing. I felt a wave of bile rising up the back of my throat as the image of a nest of fleshy snakes slithered into my brain.

  “Gross…” I whimpered, trying to stifle my urge to vomit.

  Candy offered me a sympathetic pat on the back, but all the same said, “You have no idea, darling.” Then, still patting me, she turned to Danny and asked, “So how do you know the pencil eraser?”

  Danny, grinning at that, actually looked away from the man to answer. This, I saw, didn’t settle well with Liam, who immediately released the railing and started an angry stroll across the grating towards the nearest set of stairs.

  “Used to be a Crow, actually,” Danny said, either not noticing the man’s approach or not caring. Shrugging, he added, “Was a lot smaller then; a lot smarter, too.”

  “I’M GONNA TAKE YOU ALL BACK TO PAPA RAVEN IN PIECES!” Liam announced in a near-roar as he started to stomp down the stairs. “BUT FIRST,” he growled, nearly missing one of the steps and making a loud, metallic clatter as he fumbled to keep his footing, “I’M GONNA SKULL-FUCK EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YOU!” Then, finally reaching the ground level in one piece, he paused to level one of his massive arms in a bulgy attempt to point at Danny. “Starting with you, faggot!”

  Though the last part was spoken in the closest thing this Liam-guy could bring to an “indoor voice,” it resounded in my ears as being the most aggressive.

  Words like “whore” and “faggot” genuinely hit my ears the way acid hit flesh.

  Though it wasn’t a great leap from my initial impression of him—not by any stretch of the mind—I decided then that I really wanted to see Liam hurt.

  “Ya used to know better than to say shit like that to me, Liam,” Danny said, still grinning. “The Carrions turnin’ yer brain to mush… or ya just ‘roidin’ too bad to use what’s between yer ears?”

  “I’m gonna use what’s between my legs to choke the life outta you, faggot!” Liam snarled, spittle sailing past his lips as he did. His massive legs began carrying him towards the three of us.

  Candy, ignoring the gargantuan man’s approach, actually started laughing hard enough to double herself over. “WHAT’RE YOU KEEPING IN THERE?” she cried out in hysterics, “LORD KNOWS THERE’S ROOM TO KEEP ANYTHING!”

  “Should’ve turned you inside-out when I had the chance,” Liam, seething, said as he drew near enough for me to smell him, “you stupid slag of a who—”

  I never even saw Danny’s arm move.

  Somewhere between the end of the word “a” and the beginning of the word “whore,” a sound that was very far from a word echoed past Liam’s parted lips. His open mouth, acting as a sort of echo chamber for the event, and increasing proximity made it possible for Candy and I to hear every layer of sound as Danny’s punch found its mark. I imagined that he’d been aiming for the would-be attacker’s jaw, but, given the size of Danny’s fist, it seemed ridiculous to think that aiming should ever be a factor. Though I was far from able—or willing—to commit to any actual measurements to verify this prediction, I figured that if the bottom of Danny’s fist had met with the bottom of Liam’s jawline then the top of his fist would come to rest somewhere above the start of his hairline.

  Simply put, Danny’s punch caught Liam in nearly the entire side of his beet-red face.

  And Candy and I heard everything as the impact of that punch started rearranging the layout of that face.

  The crunches of teeth all-but jumping from Liam’s skull that sounded like a baby’s rattle as they clattered against the teeth that managed to stay in place.

  A snap, like someone snapping a dry tree branch across their knee, was accompanied by a wet, slurping sound—something that dredged up memories of the larger penises I’d worked with as they slipped free from an orifice that was eager to suck in new air.

  A meaty thud, like somebody taking a baseball bat to the side of a slab of beef.

  A small series of popcorn kernel-like pops from a few of the knuckles in Danny’s hand, accompanied by the owner of that hand offering a contemplative hum—as though cracking his knuckles was more satisfying than the act itself.

  And, carrying all of these sounds along, was the rising, shifting groan of agony; the word “whore” shifting to something that spanned a full range of vowel sounds—“who-aaeeiiooouuuUUUUUU”—until it sounded as though Liam was howling. This, I imagined, wasn’t too far from the reality of his situation.

  The muscled man’s body toppled to the side, Danny’s punch tearing him off his feet and actually sending his body into a half-turn that had him falling to the floor on his opposite shoulder, now facing away from us. He was still howling, though the sound was hollow and edging closer and closer to a sound that typically served as a precursor to a child’s sobs. It was a strange thing to hear from a grown man, especially one that looked like a comic book supervillain, but… well, there it was.

  Liam’s muscled arms strained as he worked to push himself up. The shoulder he’d landed on bulged irregularly, and he cried out as he tried to put weight on it.

  “Dislocated…” I heard Candy whisper, her voice still awed by the spectacle of what we’d just witnessed.

  Liam, abandoning the effort to use his bad shoulder, pushed himself up with the arm that still worked. He turned to face us, still staggering as he did.

  Candy and I both sneered.

  Danny shook his hand and flexed its fingers; he barely even registered Liam’s existence.

  “Y-yhe fuhging fhehggot!” Liam garbled around his broken jaw, half of which hung from the side of his face—looking as though the bottom-end of his skull had decided to seek better company and attempt to flee from the rest of his head—and gave him a lopsided and nearly cartoonish grin.

  “Funny thing ‘bout bein’ a fag,” Danny said, taking a long step towards Liam, both of his hands now fisted and raised. “Ya learn to deal with annoyin’ pieces of shit!”

  ****

  “I’m still not sure it was necessary for you to kick the man in the balls,” I said to Candy as we walked away from what remained of the monstrosity formally known as Liam.

  Candy only shrugged. “None of it was necessary,” she reminded me, nodding back towards Danny. “The big, gay redneck has a gun, after all.”

  I blushed at that, realizing that the unmerciful beating had, in its entirety, been unnecessary. “Y-yeah,” I said, stammering on my own embarrassment, “but… but still.”

  “Look, sweetie,” Candy said, sounding suddenly serious, “I can’t say what sort of hist
ory that guy had with Mercury, though if I had to judge based on the way he talked to him I’d imagine he had it coming. What I can say is that, being as lacking in the downstairs department as he was, that Liam-bastard had a nasty habit of using other things to serve the purposes that his dick couldn’t. You ever had your pussy fisted while you were fucked in the ass with the fat-end of a Wiffleball bat, Mia?”

  I bit my lip at that. Though I had been subjected to any number of painful and humiliating acts in my time as a whore for the Carrion Crew, I couldn’t boast anything quite like that. I shook my head.

  Candy nodded. “Yeah, well…” she sighed and shrugged, “It’s not as fun as it sounds. Least not when that asshole’s the one doing it. So, yeah, pardon-the-fuck-outta me for giving his raisins a send-off with my boots. Chances are he didn’t feel it, anyway; chances are he was already dead. I mean, did you see what Merc did to him?”

  I shook my head again. “I had my eyes covered for most of it,” I confessed.

  “Consider yourself fortunate,” she said, still shaking her own head in amazement. “Who knew the big, gay teddy bear had it in him, huh?”

  I stared at her for a moment. “I’d imagine anyone who stopped to look at him would know that he had it in him, Candy. Have you ever stopped to look at him? He looks like he could carry a truck like it was a toy!”

  “Yeah, well, whatever,” she said with a shrug. “All’s I know is that if that man wasn’t gay I’d let him to play Wiffleball with me.”

  “I heard that,” Danny said as he walked by us. I noticed with no small amount of shock and disgust that he was using a grease rag that he normally kept in his back pocket to wipe blood off his hands. “An’ I still ain’t interested, ya skanky whore!”

  “ONLY ‘CAUSE YOU CAN’T AFFORD ME, YOU FATASS FAGGOT!” Candy screamed after him.

  I could only stare after the two, astonished at how, only a few moments after such an insane display of aggression and violence had ensued following words like “whore” and “faggot,” these two could casually throw them around as playfully as they were.