The Feral Sentence- Complete Box Set

by Shade Owens

  “Stop it. You’re killing her!” someone shouted.

  Jack.

  Straddled on top of one of the black women, she swung both fists as hard as she could, the sound of cartilage clicking and crunching with every hit. The woman beneath her lay motionless in a lumpy bed of bloody sand, her body jerking with every blow.

  But Jack wasn’t stopping. Her face was so red and her eyes so big that she didn’t appear human anymore. She had the appearance of an extraterrestrial being wearing its victim’s skin to pass for a human: jiggling skin, an upside-down grimace that took up half her face, an expression that made me fear for my own life even though she was actually defending it.

  “Whoa, whoa,” came Biggie’s voice. She rushed behind Jack, looking three times her size, and waving in a panic grabbed her from underneath her arms.

  “You mother fuckin’ piece o’ shit sugar stick fuckin’ cock suckin’…” Jack shouted, still trying to take swings at the motionless woman in the sand. And it didn’t stop there. She let out other disturbing curse words I’d never heard before, like dinosaur asshole, bile drinker, and beer bottle fucker.

  Where did she come up with that?

  Then, it was as if everyone had realized how bad the fight was getting and that sides didn’t matter anymore. In the end, none of us wanted to die—not over something like this. Biggie wrapped one arm around Jack’s neck and another behind her shoulders, something I’d seen Proxy do before to knock someone out.

  “Piece o’… Fuck…” Jack tried, but her eyes rolled in the back of her head. She clawed at Biggie’s arm, but Biggie wasn’t budging and held on to Jack so tightly her knuckles turned a creamy white. Had Biggie not been twice the size of Jack, she could have pulled her down onto the sand and wrapped her legs around Jack’s torso for maximum control.

  And we all stared, waiting for Jack to pass out. Some women held others by the collars of their shirts, but no one swung any closed fists. It was as if someone had pressed pause on everything.

  Biggie’s chokehold may have lasted a total of five to ten seconds, but it felt like forever. Finally, Jack went limp and Biggie slowly placed her onto the sand.

  “That your girl?” shouted one of the black women, her glare landing on me.

  Then, as if someone hit the play button, everyone started yelling at each other again.

  Jack wasn’t out for long. Slowly, she turned to her side, scratched the top of her head, and sat upright in the middle of the argument. She wiped dark beige sand from her cheek and looked up at me as if trying to understand what had happened.

  But I didn’t have the time to explain to her that she’d only needed a time-out.

  The one who’d yelled at me—a slender black woman with cornrows, plush pink lips, and perfectly shaped eyebrows, dropped to her knees beside her friend and began gently tapping her on the cheek.

  “Dez, come on girl, wake up,” she said. She was so thin that the vertebrae of her spine protruded from her rounded back, and her shoulder blades resembled wiggling baby bird wings as she tried to wake her friend. “Come on, wake up.”

  No one moved, and we all stood in a circle, waiting to see what would happen with Dez.

  When nothing happened, the slender woman’s menacing glare turned on us as if an evil force possessed her. Her thick bottom lip drooped, saliva collecting along its edge, and her eyes were so bloodshot it was difficult to differentiate the iris from the whites of her eyes.

  “You,” she snarled, her gaze now shifting to Jack.

  Jack rubbed the back of her head, then twirled twice on the spot while slapping her hair. Bits of sand sprinkled onto her shoulders, and she smacked it off, too. When she realized we were all staring at her, she stiffened up and glanced back and forth. “What?” she said. “What’re you all lookin’ at? Is it that bad? Is there more?” She twirled again and again and went on to slap her lower back and her thighs so aggressively I wondered if she thought sand carried disease-causing bacteria.

  Did she not remember what she’d done? Had she blacked out? Though it frightened me to know we had a woman among us capable of murdering someone and not even remembering it, a part of me felt bad for her. She was utterly clueless and confused as to why our enemies were staring at her with such hate.

  Then, it was like a second personality took her over. Her curly-haired brows came together and she stomped her way over to me in the sand. “Did I miss something, Brone? Are these women givin’ you a hard time?” She swung her head at our enemies. “’Cause if they are, I swear to God, I’ll fuckin’ slice ’em up—”

  “No,” I said, not wanting to aggravate the situation any further. “It’s fine, Jack. We were just leaving.”

  The slender black woman stood up, her birdlike shoulders drawn back in an attempt to make herself look bigger, though it didn’t work. “Leaving?” she repeated. “You think you’re off the hook?”

  “Girl, calm your damn pom-pom,” Biggie said. This time, she was the one to come stomping toward me, the dozens of silver loops on her ears dancing with her movements. Biggie was the most smiley of the group, but right then, even I felt intimidated by her. She was scowling so hard that little bumps formed on her chin and thick rolls formed on her forehead. “Your girl ain’t dead—she’s unconscious.” She pointed at the woman who lay still on the sand. “I can see her damn chest movin’ up and down.”

  The slender woman didn’t seem too impressed by Biggie’s sense of observation. “Well, she isn’t moving!”

  Beside her, a short, stubby-limbed woman with fuzzy hair and skin as black as night stepped out like a bulldog, chest heaving and wide lower jaw pulled out farther than her upper teeth. She looked like a complete moron, but I supposed the anger had gotten the best of her, and she wasn’t thinking about the face she was making.

  “She ain’t movin’!” said the bulldog-looking one. “And it’s your fault!” she jabbed a fat finger toward Jack.

  “My fault?” Jack pointed at herself. But then she caught a glimpse of something on her hand and looked down where rust-colored blood coated her pointed knuckles. “Oh,” she said casually.

  All at once, the entire group of black women started moving forward, fists clenched and eyes that stuck out so much they looked like wet, oversized cotton balls.

  Despite having an entire crew of angry women coming toward us, I couldn’t help but look over the slender one’s shoulder and back at Hawkins’s women. They stood with arms crossed loosely over their chests and smirks on their ugly faces. They were loving this. And why wouldn’t they be? We’d taken the heat off them, and now, they were enjoying the show.

  “Maybe you should be focusing on the real problem,” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at the two bullies.

  The slender woman, apparently the leader of the gang, curled her lip over her yellow upper teeth. If there hadn’t been so many voices erupting around me, I might have heard a hiss escape her mouth. But despite her probable desire to murder me, my words seemed to resonate. She glanced back at Hawkins’s women and then at me.

  “I came here to help you,” I said. “We have nothing against you. This whole thing’s a complete misunderstanding.”

  They weren’t buying it. Most offered looks full of attitude—ones that said, Bitch, please—while the others glared at me as if I were the reason they’d ended up on this island to begin with.

  I couldn’t understand why they held on to so much hatred. Though it frustrated me beyond belief, no doubt there was a reason for it.

  “Look,” I added. “I’m not asking you guys to be our best friends. You can go on living however it is you’re living here. But I don’t understand why these two idiots”—I pointed an open hand at the bullies behind them, whose grins suddenly vanished from their faces—“can go around accusing people of stealing their things. They’re causing unnecessary conflict. We don’t all have to be friends. There’s nothing wrong with that. But do you enjoy living in a place where people are always trying to cause fights?”
r />   Several exchanged glances, the hardness on their faces disappearing. Was I getting through to them? Was my reasoning sinking in?

  “Stupid girl is right,” said the slender one. She stood up, her head sticking up higher than anyone else’s, and played with the red beaded necklace she wore. It appeared constructed of painted wood carved into small balls. That’s when I noticed that most of them wore wooden jewelry of sorts—beaded bracelets, large gauge earrings, and even cylinder-shaped bits dangling from their woolly braided hair.

  I wasn’t sure where they were obtaining the color to decorate the wood, but it wasn’t the first time I’d seen painted wood on Kormace Island. I looked to the back of the Cove and at the base of the cliff, where partially built cabins sat in the sand reminding me of a construction site. Planks of weathered wood, obviously taken from fallen trees, were laid out in a perfect square. The cabin on the far right had one wall up, but that was it. I hadn’t seen anyone work on them since we’d arrived, most likely because they didn’t have adequate resources or the required expertise.

  In front of these partial cabins were wooden stakes jabbed into little hills of sand. They were painted yellow and stood out against the dark gray wood. Flags of cotton hung loosely at the wood’s highest point. Did this represent something? Perhaps it was one’s way of claiming the territory.

  “You,” said the slender woman, and I refocused my attention toward where she was pointing—at the two bullies. “Get out of here before this ends badly.”

  The taller bully scoffed and planted a white-knuckled fist on her waist. Her lips, which had once formed a contemptuous smile, now drooped upside down as if the result of severe nausea.

  “You think you’re getting away with theft?” Her shoulders expanded with every breath. She was apparently the type who wasn’t afraid to fight or take a beating for that matter—like she’d been through hundreds of fights before, which she probably had. One of her front teeth was chipped and her left ear, which I assumed was once decorated by a looped earing, had a long scar on the lobe most likely the result of tearing. It had surely once hung in two parts but over the years had fused itself back together.

  Lacy, the shorter of the two bullies, pulled her hair back behind her neck, giving off the appearance of a mullet—something Mom said made a reappearance in the 2040s—and sucked on her teeth. She reached behind her belt and extracted a blade so short it was a wonder how she even held on to it.

  “We can go the easy way or the hard way,” she said, her foul smile returning.

  All at once, voices exploded around me, and I couldn’t tell who was shouting at who. Part of me wanted to throw both arms in the air as a way of saying, Forget this, but the other part felt responsible for the fight. Maybe if I’d minded my own business, things wouldn’t have escalated this far.

  “Thought ya said she was dead!” shouted Jack, pointing a stubby finger at Dez.

  Dez slowly sat up in a daze. Her nose, now a flat mess of black and red, barely resembled a nose at all. There was no doubt Jack had broken it in more than one spot. Two of her top teeth were missing, which was probably the reason Jack’s knuckles were so bloody, and her right eye was swelling so fast it was taking over half her face.

  Poor woman.

  I swallowed past a lump in my throat. How awful—not only because of her pain but also the disfigurement Jack had caused.

  It was my fault.

  Lacy, the short bully with the tiny shiv in her hand, leaped forward with her teeth clenched so tight that her overbite caused her bottom lip to disappear. But she didn’t have the time to swing her weapons at anyone.

  Out of nowhere, a stern, authoritative voice carried over all of us. “Enough!”

  It was so confident, so bold, that even I found myself curiously searching for the source. Everyone split apart, feet dragging in the sand. Behind them, Hawkins stood tall, the afternoon sun landing at the top of her head and making part of her already light hair look white.

  “What the hell’s going on here?” she said.

  She reminded me of a strict, over-the-top mother who often found herself scolding not only her own kids, but all the kids in the neighborhood. Yet Hawkins was far more terrifying than a mother; a mother wouldn’t kill you where you stood, whereas Hawkins would, undoubtedly, cut you to pieces without ever batting an eyelash.

  And like an overbearing mother, she appeared inherently tired. The bags that sat underneath her eyes looked like they’d been there all her life, as did the few wrinkles forming on her temples. She still had a mesmerizing beauty about her, only, in a mature way.

  A streak of blood stained her right forearm, reminding me of the life she’d taken only hours ago onshore.

  The women bowed their heads and stepped back even farther. Their scowling faces indicated they weren’t doing it out of respect but rather to avoid pissing her off.

  So, this was the Cove’s wannabe leader, I thought.

  CHAPTER 7

  “What’s the problem, Granger?” Hawkins asked, glancing sideways at the taller of her two bullies.

  Dozens of her followers observed from a distance, weapons in hand as if prepared to attack with a click of Hawkins’s fingers. Granger stuck a thumb out at her sidekick, Lacy. “Lacy here lost her necklace, and I reckon one of these bitches took it.”

  “You reckon, do you?” Hawkins asked, an eyebrow arching high on her forehead.

  Granger cleared her throat and her face reddened. “We think it was them, Hawk.”

  Hawkins, now resembling a mediator, crossed her wood-plated arms over her belly. “Do you have proof?” She turned sideways to stare at Granger, the sound of wood rubbing against wood reminding me of an amateur version of the Northers’ armor. Was that what it was? Armor? Why did she need armor if we were all meant to coexist here? As she turned, the sea trident tattoo on her neck stretched with her skin, and I couldn’t help but get lost in the skull designs extending along with it.

  Granger, apparently stunned by Hawkins’s disapproving demeanor, stammered a few times before finally saying, “W-we don’t know for sure, Hawk, but I mean, come on. Who else would it be?”

  One of the black women raised a tight fist by her face, nostrils wide and shoulders pulled back. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

  “Back off, dipshit,” Lacy growled. She reminded me of someone too weak to fight her own battles—someone who always found a way to remain safe alongside a stronger ally. Every time she’d opened her mouth to insult someone, she had side-glanced Granger, and now, her gaze kept darting toward Hawkins.

  “There was no reason for this,” I said, and my face warmed the moment the words came out, but I couldn’t make my mouth stop. “These ladies were minding their business”—I pointed at the group of black women who seemed a bit surprised that I was standing up for them against Hawkins—“and these two goofs decided to start trouble.”

  Why couldn’t I shut up? God, what was wrong with me? I’d done the same thing when imprisoned by the Northers. Where had my filter gone?

  Everyone went quiet, undoubtedly shocked by my forwardness with Hawkins. I bit down on my teeth, prepared to get the shit kicked out of me again, when Hawkins let out a laugh. It was rough sounding, like a smoker’s laugh, but it seemed genuine.

  She turned sideways again toward Granger and Lacy, her lips pressed together for a moment. “Goofs?”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The word had just come out. I hadn’t put any thought into it and tried to use the least offensive word I knew. When Hawkins looked at me again, however, I realized that goof meant something I wasn’t familiar with. Her gaze narrowed, and she searched me as if trying to understand how some newbie like me had the courage to say something like that.

  “Why don’t you mind your own business, dipshit?” Granger said. “What was your stupid name again? Brone? You look like a fuckin’ bone.”

  Hawkins’s face changed so quickly it was as if a mask had fallen off. The skin of her temples tighten
ed, and her hairline fell back. Her amusement only moments ago disappeared and was replaced by a bite of her bottom lip. Why was she looking at me like that?

  “Brone?” Hawkins said as if she’d spoken my name countless times before.

  Although I didn’t know her, I couldn’t help but feel like she knew me.

  She wiggled her fingers in the air, and without even looking at Granger or Lacy, she said, “You two, fuck off.”

  They both glowered at me but did as they were told, storming off in the sand like children, their shoulders slouched, spitting sharp words between them.

  Hawkins stared at me, wincing. Was I in trouble, or was she simply interested in meeting me for the first time? Was this Rocket’s doing? I’d seen the way her women had stared at me—almost starstruck. Had Hawkins also heard about what I’d done and everything I’d gone through?

  “You’re the heroic Archer,” she said, and I nearly laughed in her face. I held it back, though; considering the way she stared at me, never blinking, she clearly believed it.

  Heroic was a bit of an overstatement, and to be honest, I didn’t like the sound of it. I’d killed my mom’s boyfriend with a cast iron frying pan, ended up on some remote island, and now had become a cold-blooded killer only to stay alive.

  That didn’t merit the title of hero.

  She must have sensed my unwillingness to agree with her because she straightened her stance and elevated her chin, the bun of her hair touching her upper back. “Come with me.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Brone, don’t do it,” Biggie hissed.

  The way she leaned forward, the entire upper half of her body towering over the shorter women around her, she reminded me of a giraffe. They, too, seemed to agree that following Hawkins was a bad idea.