by Huss, JA
Is this that end? Is this the last chance I’m ever going to get?
So I guess I have to ask myself an honest question.
Do I want to fight her? Lose her? Mourn the loss of her for lifetimes to come just because—as Alec put it—I was never good at sharing?
Is it even a concession at this point? I mean, as much as I tell myself I hate him—hate what he did to us, hate what he turned us into—do I? Do I really hate who I am?
Because that’s some bullshit, right there.
I don’t hate myself.
I don’t regret what we did. I don’t think back and say, I’d do all different.
And I don’t hate him either. I just hate the way he forced my hand. Because he was always ready for the next step. He was pushing it right along with her. It was always me drawing that imaginary line. It was always me who wanted stagnation.
But I can’t see the logic anymore.
She’s not a kid. I’m not a kid. And she doesn’t need me the way she did back then. I’m not her only choice. She’s got plenty of options. And one of those is Alec minus Danny.
And that… that I cannot stand.
I kiss her harder. My fingers—already threaded into her hair—tug. She hisses out a breath of pain and I remember her stitches. I loosen my hold but still force her closer, which isn’t even possible. Her breasts are already crushed up to my chest. Alec, doing his part on that end. Because he’s got her pinned to me. Both of his hands caressing her full breasts. His hips grinding against her ass as he nips her neck.
I am as aware of him as I am of her.
One day, I think absently as our tongues twist together, our mouths pliant against one another. One day I will look back on this moment and know—this is when it truly began.
Not back in that gym. Not back in the alley.
Here. This morning in my apartment. The cold seeping in from outside like a creeping arm of death and destruction.
And when that day comes—when the shit is probably falling apart all around us—I will finally take responsibility.
Because it’s me.
I’m the reason for everything that happens that day in the future. I’m the reason the world ends.
Because I’m weak with love for this girl. And if that means Alec gets to come along for the ride…
Fuck it. I don’t care.
I let go of her hair with one hand and find her hand inside my jacket. It’s warm now. Our body heat mixing together. Our blood heating up with the moment, or the reunion, or the potential danger hanging like a dreary gray cloud all around us. Who the fuck knows why we’re running hot right now. It’s just not cold, that’s all I know.
I drag it down and across my lower abs. Slip it inside my pants. Her fingers find my cock, instinctively wrapping around it.
I stop kissing her and close my eyes. Drop my head a little and let myself enjoy it.
Alec’s mouth takes my place on hers. He smells like… Alec. Which makes me smile. He smells like money. He smells like the past, and danger, and something exotically erotic.
Her other hand comes up and rests on mine, which is still tangled up in her thick mane of auburn hair. She slowly pries it away, the kiss she’s sharing with Alec more urgent, and she drags my hand down her body. For a brief moment it brushes against Alec’s hand, still gripping her tit with insistent need, and then she moves on. Down to her hips, to her thigh, and then she grips my hand and my cock with the same squeezing pressure and blows my mind.
But she’s not done. Because she moves on once again. Placing my palm against Alec’s hip. His thigh. Then his thick, hard cock pressing up against his stupid dress slacks.
I don’t know why I think about his clothes in this moment. I should be backing up. I should be shaking my head no. I should be coming up with all sorts of reasons why this won’t happen.
But I think about his clothes instead. How his broad shoulders fill in his button-down shirts. How he always looks so put together. How every time we have a problem he’s got the answer. Confidence. I think that’s what seeps out of Alec. The con man confidence.
She lets go of my hand and forces me to focus.
In? Or out?
Make a decision and commit.
So I do.
I don’t pull away. I lean in to them. Hating myself for letting them win, but loving the agony of defeat. And hating myself for that too.
Because I have already committed to Brasil. Because I chose a side too early. Because—it’s true. I will be the reason the world ends.
I will blow these two people apart like a goddamned bomb.
And I do it anyway.
I lean into their kiss and join in.
And even though I thought that first kiss was the true first kiss, it wasn’t.
This one is.
This is the moment it all begins.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - ALEC
People have called me complicated.
I’m not.
The motor that drives me to do the things I do in my life is fueled by a simple source: Power.
I’d love to pretend that it’s more complex than that and that underneath it all I’m more sophisticated, but I ain’t. I just like getting the things I want, and I like knowing I can. And I feel like what separates me from all the other okes out there who try, and fail, is that I’m honest about it.
With myself anyway.
I was already getting hard before Danny and Christine got swept up in the heat of the moment. I was hard as I sat, watching them sleep. I didn’t know for certain that this would happen, but I had a fair suspicion. And the fact that I was right, and that it means that I’m responsible for making it so, fills me with as much energy as the heat of our bodies coming together.
I’m not the only one in this room who has wanted this for the last handful of years. I’m just the only one who’s been willing to do what’s necessary to make it happen.
My fingers twisting Christine’s nipples cause her to bite hard on my lip. Her neck twists harder so she can reach my mouth but not be pulled away from Danny. I gasp at the rush of pain and pleasure, a needy groan bounding out from deep in my lungs.
It’s actually only been a few weeks since we’ve been together like this. Christine and I, that is. But it’s been a lifetime since all three of us have been together. And never quite like this. Not for lack of desire, of course. The timing and the circumstance are not precisely how I foresaw this moment occurring, but that it is now is satisfactory enough for me.
I’m made even harder by feeling that I’m the one who orchestrated it. It’s because I chose to call Danny and convinced him to do as I asked that this is happening. And there’s nothing under the bright yellow sun that feels better than that. That knowledge that I win.
There is possibly only one thing that could soften the feeling of strength I have right here in the now of now. And unfortunately…
The bullets come pouring through the windows of Danny’s apartment like a herd of stampeding rhino. Like a flash flood. No test shot. No delicate precision. Indiscriminate. An assault. Meant to shock and immobilize. It’s not elegant or sophisticated. But it is effective.
The reflexive conditioning all three of us display is synchronized. It would be graceful if not for the fact that each of us tries, instinctively, to protect the other. Danny and I step to shield Christine. She tries powering past us to do the same. And the resulting action is an inept ballet, as the three of us inadvertently wrestle with each other to try to save the other two.
Much like the biblical account of Jacob wrestling the angel, it is a scene that in theory should be poetic and beautiful, but in practice is blunt and desperate.
It feels like we’re the goddamn Keystone Kops.
“What the fuck?” Danny shouts as the three of us take refuge in the toilet. “What did you do?” he says, slamming the door and pushing me against the wall.
There’s a moment where I almost yell back, but instead I take a breath, fill my body with air
, and say, “I didn’t do nothing, man. It ain’t my house they’re shooting at.”
Danny starts to grab for my throat and I’m curious to know what he thinks he’ll do, exactly, but Christine intervenes, stepping between us and saying, “Stop! You both have big dicks! How the fuck do we get out of here?”
I don’t mean to smile, but I can’t help myself. Both because she’s right, we do, and also because I’ve missed this.
“Is there another way out?” Christine asks Danny.
“No. Just the stairs,” he says.
“You don’t have an escape route?” I ask him, somewhat surprised.
“Yeah. It’s called the fuckin’ stairs,” he snaps.
“Shame,” I say, drawing my pistol from inside my topcoat and reaching for the door handle.
“Wait!” Danny shouts. The sound of automatic weapons fire from the other room is like white noise in the background.
He pulls open the medicine chest, presses a release lever hidden inside, and the whole thing pops forward, revealing a small cache of firearms buried in the wall. I roll my eyes in spite of myself.
“Brilliant. And yet there’s no escape route…”
He ignores me, grabbing two pistols for himself and handing a shotgun to Christine. He doesn’t offer me any auxiliary form of protection. That’s fine. I wasn’t expecting it.
There is no further discussion. No conversation about improvised strategy or the best way to take flight. Like any act of muscle memory, the body knows how to react when conditions are familiar. And for the three of us, this something we’ve done a number of times before.
It’s like going for a swim.
With sharks.
Or taking a bike tour.
Off the side of a mountain.
And just like those, what we’re about to head into might be incredible and invigorating or it might very well kill us.
But of all the things we have in common, the most unifying is our shared lack of fear of death. We’ve never chatted about it aloud, but I know that our absence of dismay over dying is because the thing we share most—well above all else—is that we all came to accept, at a very early age, that death is an inevitability. A necessary payment for the privilege of living.
Eish, man, I don’t think any of us expected to live past the age of eighteen. So every day since then has just been a bonus.
In any case, what takes the place of a colloquy on how we get out of this is a brief look between us. We make eye contact for just long enough to confirm that we’re all still who we know each other to be, and once that’s done, Danny grabs at the door, flings it open, and we get ready to fokken shoot our way out.
We sprint through the apartment, toward the lone front door which stands as a poor and shameful excuse for an escape route, taking our individual postures of choice to try to avoid being shot. Danny crouches and moves swiftly, Christine favors staying close to the wall, I face the windows, the direction from whence hot metal is raining sideways, and move laterally.
I don’t so much try to avoid being shot as I dare the shots to hit me. I challenge them to try to take my life. Silently, I shout at them, Fok julle naaiers! The only thing that can kill Alec van den Berg is Alec van den Berg. I decided this long ago. And I’m not in the mood to die today.
When we arrive at the door and open it, it sets off the alarm. The wail of the siren is amplified by the wailing of another siren that also just went off. Not cops. Another alarm siren.
And as we step through the doorway, we discover, predictably, that a small platoon of large-ish okes is making its way up the stairs toward us.
They’re not wearing body armor or anything, which seems ill advised, but they are all wearing masks that cover their faces. Nothing extraordinary, just ski masks. To me this suggests a hastily thrown together operation. No faceplates or tactical gear. Just big, lumbering okes, identities clumsily shrouded with hackneyed disguises, making their way oafishly up the stairs to confront our motley little band like they was in some second-rate gangster picture.
They fail to reach us where we stand, however. Christine’s shotgun puts a rugby-ball-sized-hole in the chest of the daft fucker who presumed to be the tip of the spear. The blast echoes loudly off the metal steps.
Danny and I had squared off to face down the invading horde, but Christine pushed past us, edging us out of the way with the gun’s barrel, and sent the first oke tumbling back down the stairs far quicker than he came up. She immediately racks another round into the chamber and blasts again. This time sending two more falling.
The shot must hit an artery on at least one of them, because arterial spray paints the stairwell wine red. And I suddenly realize that I’m going to have to accept... I’m simply not going to be able to escape without mucking up my lekker crocodile shoes. Shame.
The three remaining muscle are firing indiscriminately in our direction. One of the bullets catches the fabric of my topcoat, cutting through the lining and puncturing the cashmere shell. My mouth contorts on its own and I twist my neck sideways as I shove my own gun back inside my newly blemished finery and march in their direction.
“Alec!” shouts Christine. But it sounds a long way off because of the inharmonic duet being sung by the battling alarm systems, and because my limbs are now getting hot and growing in size. Inflating. Pulsing. The blood in my body pumping wildly but methodically, making me bigger than I am.
I don’t know who these hol naaiers are, or who sent them, but I suspect they must be part of the same group who tried to harm Christine; who did, in fact, harm her, even if they failed to kill her, because my girl is hard to kill; who disrupted a beautiful moment that I was enjoying with her and Danny; who splashed blood everywhere, making my lekker shoes slick and wet with their cunting blood; and who have now ruined a perfectly beautiful topcoat.
And I’m gatvol with their fokken bullshit.
I wrench the handgun from the shaking grip of the masked naaier standing in front of me, shove it directly under his chin, and pull the trigger twice. A single pull of the trigger would have gotten the job done, but I’m frustrated right now.
It is, perhaps, the cloudiness that accompanies my frustration that disallows me awareness of the gun pointed at my temple. I’m so fixated on blowing this poepol’s head off his shoulders that I neglect to see the barrel that’s about to take mine own head from me.
But—in what I choose to think of as an act of love in spite of himself—Danny does see the pistol and comes flying down from one of the steps above me, tackling the would-be assassin to the ground. Why he didn’t simply shoot him, I don’t know.
Perhaps, like me, he’s taking this all somewhat personally and wanted the feeling of taking a life from close range. There is something uniquely satisfying and intimate about it. I heard a rumor once that eating a bit of chocolate will rid one of blue balls. In the event that one experiences coitus interruptus, the legend goes that eating a bit of chocolate will trigger the same chemicals in the body and mitigate the throbbing ache in one’s groin. Perhaps looking someone in the eye before you extinguish their candle triggers the same wave of chemicals.
Whether that is true or not, Danny is flooded with some type of energy from somewhere, because he lands on the oke with force, strips him of his gun, and begins whipping him with what can only be described as a sanguinary relentlessness.
It is beautiful to watch.
He pulverizes the poor bastard’s face with the butt of his own bloomin’ pistol until the ski mask he wears darkens further with blood. That’s unfortunate. It must be embarrassing to be ferried to another dimension of consciousness by the ass end of your own weapon. Shame indeed.
The alarms continue to blare, mingled with the sound of continuing gunfire. I’ve been so distracted by watching Danny pistol-whip a person to death that I almost completely forget there’s still another masked assailant inside our perimeter. It’s not his gun that I hear now, however. It’s the booming blast of Christine’s shotgun once agai
n, as she nearly removes the lower half of his legs just below the knees, and he sprawls onto the ground, pulling himself along the cold, concrete floor of Danny’s garage.
Christine descends to stand beside me now, and we watch, for a brief moment, as Danny, almost mechanically at this point, continues thrashing the ever-softening brains of the oke on the ground beneath him. I suspect he feels us staring at him because he glances over his shoulder, sees us watching this grotesquerie unfold, and shouts, “What?”
At that, he stands, having dispatched the fellow to Hell or wherever he’s gone, and the three of us walk in the direction of the near-half-legless fokker dragging himself along the floor of Fortnight’s Custom Bike Shop.
Christine pokes him in the ass with the barrel of the shotgun and he stops struggling along. He rolls over to face us, pulling the ski-mask up above his eyes, I presume because it’s likely now hard for him to breathe and also because at this point, honestly, who fokken gives a shit?
I don’t recognize him. By the non-looks on their faces, neither do Danny nor Christine. Christine puts the barrel of the shotgun against his throat and over the still-blaring siren says, “Who are you?”
He strains to speak, but no words come out. Or if they do, they’re impossible to hear over the wailing tocsin that blasts all about.
She follows up her own question with, “Who sent you? What’s this about?”
I can’t imagine that if he’ll not answer a simple, “who are you?” that peppering him with more questions is likely to garner a different result, but to my surprise, he manages to sputter out, in a voice just loud enough for us to hear, “Fuck you, bitch.”
American. Both in accent and in the almost cartoonish way he clings to his misogynistic machismo as he faces down his last moment. Eish, man. Have the decency to die with a little grace.
Christine pulls the trigger and relieves him of the burden of his brains.
We recognize, collectively, that there’s no time to assess the situation further, although my eyes do pass over the carnage that surrounds us. It’s really quite something. Even in our most daring and active moments in our shared past, we never left behind a scene like this. A wave of worry rumbles through me. A feeling that I do not care for and to which I am generally unaccustomed.