by Chuck Rogers
"And Dez?"
"She's sort of hot, in a super skanky kind of way. I'll fuck her if it helps us, but when I make member I'm taking the bitch to fight night and making her submit. Though she'd probably like it. I've heard rumors about her."
So had I.
"So, you can do this?"
"I did some porn. I only did girls."
All righty then.
"Be nice. She just lost her sister."
"Good, because I heard rumors about what those two did as a unit. Fucking sickos. I just know she's going to make me do, stuff, and I think she's going to do stuff to me."
I just hoped there wasn't any cutting.
"Listen, Leatha. Why don't you get out of here."
"I don't want to get on Dez's bad side."
"I got a feeling Dez doesn't respect weakness. Get out of here. I'll deal with her. If it's a problem there's always tomorrow night."
"Are you sure?"
"Go."
Leatha didn't go.
She launched into me.
Like her body was an octopus arm and her thighs, hips, belly, and breasts adhered to me as she shoved her tongue down my throat. For long moments it was teenagers in the backseat kissing. She broke off.
"I'm so scared. These fucking bastard Sons of Ged. I've seen the shit they do. I but I don't want to be slaved, and I don't know what I have to do to get in good."
"You saved my ass. You're already in good. I have your six no matter what."
"Frame."
"Yeah."
"I'm your girl."
I already had a girl, and I was about to go into another's cutting trailer of blood.
"I'll see you tomorrow, anyone fucks with you tonight, tell them Frame will kill you , and I will."
Leatha kissed me and bee-lined back for the Barney barracks.
I arrived for my big date.
Dez had a beauty of a vintage, Keith Braun is getting a hard-on, Cold War, nuclear bomber-looking Gulfstream trailer. A generator in the bed of the GMC Grand Canyon pick-up pulling the rig putted away and kept the lights on.
Dez saw me coming and opened the door. "Where's your girlfriend?"
"I'm not sharing you with anybody."
She smirked and I knew I'd made the right decision. It wasn't entirely altruistic or about keeping Leatha pure for the brothers. I intended to get some pillow talk out of Dez and I knew that would be a non-starter with another girl in the bed.
"Come on in."
I'd kind of expected Bobby's Colon of Solitude except all black and chrome instead of pink with telltale bloodstains here and there. For the rolling lair of a bloodstained Valkyrie straight from the edge of Ragnarök it was remarkably homey. There were pink curtains over the little kitchenette window and a little cactus on the sill. A little black cat made a serious attempt to look as dopey as Face as she looked up at me with huge green eyes.
I pulled a super-dick maneuver.
I slowly dropped to my haunches, held out my finger and spoke in my native tongue. "Hey stupid. Get your ass over here and make me look good."
Little Black Cat pattered over and sniffed my finger.
I chucked Little Black Cat under the chin and the next thing you know it was purring and jowl scraping against my fist.
"I am so getting over on your mom."
I looked up.
Dez was as hard a woman as I'd ever met, but guys? Just in case you missed the meeting? If their pets love you?
"You know I'd heard you and Horse were throwing hand sign."
"Yeah." Little Black Cat started snaking around my ankles. I smiled up at Dez. "You tribal? You look it."
I think she would have blushed if she were capable of it. "Momma was from Idaho. She said we're Couer d'Alene."
I nodded. "The Discovered People."
"Of course momma was crazy. She said she was half and so was my real daddy. My stepfather said we were just a bunch of Mexican fucking fakers."
I nodded. "I had one of those."
"So, Del and I, we were going to take that ancestry spit test and find out. Our big joke was that we would take the test and get different results." Dez suddenly shook. Her voice shook. "Del, and I . . ."
I rose to my feet and said the shittiest fucking lie of my life.
"I am so sorry about your sister."
Bastard doesn't even cover it.
Even she didn't deserve this.
Dez fell into my arms. She shook so hard I thought she might be having a seizure. Dez was physically battling herself. She was trying not to cry.
She lost.
Dez sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.
She'd lost her sister.
She'd lost her twin.
The bastard who had blown her twin sister's head off with a grenade launcher stroked her hair and made soothing noises. She smelled like Bay Rum. The bastard had never smelled it on a woman and it kind of turned the bastard on.
You could hear the gigantic, torn wooden pawls and ancient stone ratchets of the Wheel of Karma cranking and clacking and winding up for the beat down. The Great Spirit was not pleased, Santa Muerte was not pleased and that angry, Old Testament, Charlton Heston looking guy in the clouds was grim in his disapproval.
I was going to get fucked in the ass for this one.
Hard.
Dez cried for a long time. "You can't ever tell anyone about this."
"You just lost your sister, and your cat purred at some mook who saved your life. You're allowed to get a little misty." I shrugged all cavalier. "And snitches get stitches."
I got my first real smile out of her.
"You want something to drink?"
"Sure."
"You hungry?"
"I could eat."
"Want to watch a movie?"
"Cool."
"You're awfully damn easy."
"Lady, these are the best offers I've had in a while." I leered. "And they just keep coming."
Dez poured two drinking glasses full of Two-Buck Chuck Shiraz. She reached into her little fridge and there it was. A half-eaten, glass baking dish of what I could smell from here was Velveeta and Tater Tot casserole. She cut two big squares and nuked them in her tiny microwave, and then took the extra step to liberally shake that green tube of Parmesan all over the top and put it under her tiny broiler.
She squatted on her heels and watched like a hawk as the powdered cheese browned. "You want ketchup?"
Yup.
Dez was trailer trash.
So was I.
"Oh, yeah."
We sat at the tiny kitchen table and ate. There was ground venison and real bacon in that casserole and that was genuine hillbilly haute cuisine. Oh, I know, I was already full of steamed pug and leeks, but like I told you, I come from hunger. I'm fully capable of gorging because we don't know where the next meal is coming from behaviors. Plus, remember what I said and about women and their pets? Same with their food. I stopped short of snapping my head back and gulping like an alligator. I cleaned my plate under Dez's approving gaze.
"You want to get high?"
"Maybe later."
"Movie?"
"You got popcorn?"
"I do."
My cutting fears were confirmed when I saw the blaze orange ground cloth on the bed. I kept it off my face. Dez made popcorn, opened another bottle of wine and put in Mad Max: Fury Road. "I love this movie."
The tarp crackled as we settled in.
She pointed her wine glass at the shaved-head, post-apocalyptic heroine. "I love her."
I stroked Dez's hair.
Dez started stroking me.
I started to roll over to kiss Dez and a bear claw jabbed me.
Dez was a founding member. I needed her.
I'd made my decision.
Dez watched with big eyes as I took off the necklace and hung it from the little lamp by the bed. She turned the sound up on the movie and turned on the lights. We pulled each other's clothes off.
She had the exact same tattoos a
s her sister. Same fake pointy tits. Same broken world of Ged branded on her right arm. Where they differed, other than that Dez still had a head, was the cutting on her left upper arm. She wore a string of precise cuts like wound armlets from the shoulder down. They disrupted her sleeve of tattoos, probably permanently. She was running out of real estate and was going to have to switch limbs soon.
That was how she'd been sublimating her pain for her sister Del.
Dez looked up at me, daring me to despise her. "One for every year of our life together. One for every day since she's been gone."
I kissed her.
She smelled like Bay Rum and leather and tasted like popcorn salt.
It was on.
I won't got into the details.
But she said "Fuck me hard."
I did.
She said, "Choke me,"
I did.
She said, "Hit me."
Not a big fan of that.
But I did.
Open hand, not leaving permanent marks.
I beat the shit out of her.
Then Dez looked up with big, dark, crazy eyes. "Cut me."
That was why she turned the lights on.
Cutters need to see the blood, not just feel the pain and taste it.
There was no knife within reach.
I knew what she wanted.
I grabbed my necklace.
Her breath hissed in.
I took three bear claws between my fingers and made a paw hand with Santa Muerte in my palm. The rest of the necklace fell clicking against her chest.
Dez shuddered.
I pushed the claws into the skin just below her collarbone and pulled down.
Dez made sound of satisfaction I can't even describe as I cut lines down her chest. Strangely enough things got pretty vanilla sex after that. Except that she cut me and I cut her, and there was a lot of blood sucking, smearing and licking as well as blood being used for lubrication and an oral sex condiment.
It wasn't safe sex.
We finally lay back, both spent and a quart low and watched the DVD player ask us what our next menu choice was.
"You want to get high?"
I'd seen her ashtray. "I'd rather smoke."
Of course she smoked American Spirit.
I'd been on both sides of interrogations. I'd come here to work Dez, but I knew she wanted to work me. We drank cheap ass red wine, smoked cigarettes and listened to our lacerations scab over. I was pretty sure a couple of mine needed stitches.
She lay against me but her voice went hard. "You had your fun?"
Now there are a lot of asshole answers to a question like that.
But I am the dick who the God's say, "Strike him down."
I went dick.
I went back to the well.
"I saved your monkey ass, but then my dick was in the dirt. You came back. Then Chop came back. Leatha came back. That made Marrs come back. History is full of not-remembered assholes that went back and got butt-drilled and killed. I went back for you. You came back for me. I owe you forever."
"And when you make member?"
I actually told the truth. "If we were in the same trailer park? You and me would be together. If we were on the rez, we'd be together. If we were in the same club, we'd be together, and we're in the same club. I just haven't made member yet."
"And when you make member?"
I paraphrased the immortal Stevie Ray Vaughn. "You're still my guardian angel, and I'm your little lover boy."
Dez, the hardest bitch I'd ever met walking this earth made a happy little noise.
Pet the cat, eat the food, beat them decisively and cut them when they ask for it.
Then go directly to hell. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200.
"I don't want to be a bitch, and everyone in camp knows you're here, but I don't want us to walk out together in the morning."
"You want me to do the morning slut march?"
"For now."
"Okay, I'm your stud-puppet, but when I make member? This arrangement is fuck, fight or wrestle."
"Fuck me now."
I did.
I looked up from her gasping and exploding and there it was. I mean, it had to be from the camper rocking, but the Santa Muerte medal was slowly turning back and forth.
She was shaking her head at me.
I rolled off.
We spooned. Light was starting to come through the blinds. "Do me a favor."
She tensed as I ran my hand down the rings of cuts on her left arm. "What?"
"No more of that. Anyone who sees it besides me will take it as a sign of weakness." I breathed into her hair. "No ones cut you but me, and you have to ask me nice."
She grinned. "Get out."
I put the necklace back on. It didn't poke me. It didn't feel buzzy.
It felt dead.
I got dressed.
She spoke without turning her head on the pillow. "When you make prospect they're going to take you to the Fuck Tent. I'm going to pretend I don't care."
"Okay."
"Nothing more than a blow job or I'll cut it off."
"I'll demand two girls. I'll demand they call each other Dez, and I'll whack off while I watch. Then I'll come home and tell you all about it."
Dez grinned. "Get out."
I undid the knot in the back of the necklace. I breathed in Dez's ear. "Desiree?"
"Yes?"
"In my language the word for desire is uduladi." I kissed her ear. I put a bear claw in her hand. "See you around, Udu."
Dez contracted into a little happy ball clutching her prize to her chest.
James Bond worthy seduction.
She smiled from ear to ear. "Get the fuck out!"
I got dressed. I re-knotted the necklace. I gave Little Black Cat a few parting skritches and got the fuck out.
I took a deep breath and watched the dawn sky show for a few moments.
Dawn is the time of guilt and misgivings.
Dez was a founding member and could bring me ASAP onto Ged.
I'd betrayed Lalli to save her.
My immortal soul wasn't buying it.
I felt heartsick and the lopsided necklace against my chest felt wrong. A-Camp had a line of porta-johns but those were for members and prospects. Though, like Dez, a lot of the members had trailers with amenities. I was about to go to the line of porta-johns. I figured I could get away with it.
Then I saw something over at the latrine trench that made the whole, broken world a better place.
Provisionals and slaves put their feet on boards and squatted over open trenches without benefit of any kind of privacy screen. They had separate trenches. The SOG didn't want provisionals messing with the slaves.
Latrine duty went to provisionals rather than slaves, probably as some kind of hazing ritual. I'd managed to cut in line and avoid that one, but I'd already dug plenty of latrines in my life so I didn't feel guilty.
The SOG had use for human fertilizer.
Some of the boys and girls in Barney purple wore plastic garbage bags on their legs for gaiters as they shoveled shit and filled buckets. I sauntered on up with a big grin on my face. Two bored prospect overseers had seen where I'd emerged from and grinned at me. I winked back at them and snarled at a provisional knee deep in the muck. "Hey, you! Barney!"
To his credit? Barney didn't flinch. He stabbed his shovel into the slurry and turned around stoically for whatever new abuse was about to befall him. Cold, pale-eyed son of a bitch that he was, Barney's jaw dropped. Every last drop of blood drained from his face at the sight of me.
Marshal Roman Miles saw a ghost.
I hit him.
A right hand lead.
Swift and sure.
The Marshal's eyes fluttered like a slot machine paying out on TKO. His knees buckled and he toppled back into the slop. The two prospects whooped. The other provisionals looked on in mild terror.
I gave Marshal Roman Miles a break.
I didn't shit on his
head.
I took a shit about a foot away. He blinked up at me in dazed horror.
I spoke low just for him. "I own you."
I rose, leered, and tossed his shovel onto his chest. I pointed at my defecation and spoke loud enough for everyone to hear. "Yo, Barney. Pick that shit up."
The guards nearly shit themselves laughing.
Got a fist bump from the prospect brother with the shotgun. "Motherfucking Frame!"
The fame of Frame was growing.
As for you, Marshal Miles?
Eat shit.
Chew on the ramifications.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Gedfellas
I LOOMED UP OVER MILES while he wrenched under the hood of a SOG-painted Toyota pick-up. It appeared the Marshal knew how to work on cars and had graduated from shit detail. I noted his lumped jaw with approval. He saw me out of the corner of his eye. I waggled my fingers.
"Hi."
He didn't look up. "Hitting me was a mistake."
Really?
"You know the definition of insanity?" I cracked my knuckles. "Making the same mistake over and over again."
"No, the definition of insanity is making the same mistake over and over again and expecting different results."
Asshole.
"Oh, I expect the results to be the same." I waggled my eyebrows. "Every time."
He finally straightened up and deigned to look at me. If he was wondering what my game was or why I hadn't killed him yet it didn't show on his face.
Marshal Miles was back to looking at me like I was a bug.
I leaned against the truck casually. "So, what's your under-cover alias, Marshal?"
Miles just stared.
"You know, I have ways to find out."
"Ron."
"Ron what?"
The Marshal's poker face was impressive but reading people's tells was my stock and trade.
He was all torqued up inside.
He had reason.
"Justin."
"Ron Justin? Well, kinda white-bread dork, but easy enough to remember. What's the story behind that?"
"They're my middle names."
"Roman Ronald Justin Miles?" I leered. "What a pretentious dick!"
Miles demeanor changed ever so slightly. I knew he was making super-marshal speed and distance calculations and how he might violate the evil villain with a 15" automotive sliding wrench while he monologued.
I sighed. "I'm sorry, Marshal. You go ahead."
"Go ahead and what?"