Three Divisions: Crescentwood 1

by R. A. Smyth

  Most people would be scared to be caught alone with Ty and I. Hell, I’ve seen grown men piss themselves when left in a room with us, but this hot little package of contradictions just continued to stare me down as I closed in on her, and, fuck, if her defiance and strength didn’t turn me on, then the dilatation of her pupils and the lust in her eyes, as my hand circled her pretty little throat, nearly had me busting a nut in my jeans like a twelve-year-old.

  It’s more than just how hard she gets my dick though. I find myself thinking about her at odd moments during the day, wondering what she’s up to or how she is coping in that big empty house with her father. It makes no fucking sense since I don’t even know this girl. I’ve literally only met her twice, and I don’t get attached to girls. Ever.

  The only women I’ve known, including my own mother, are club whores, good for only one thing and definitely nothing worth losing your head over.

  No. I have no idea what the hell is happening to me, but it needs to fucking stop. I cannot let this girl compromise this job for us. I probably just need to sink my dick in some chick. I’ll talk to Ty tonight about heading to a bar a few towns over and letting loose.

  ◆◆◆

  Several hours later, we’re sitting in a shitty bar, with music too loud and girls, wearing practically nothing, hanging off us. Perfect. This is exactly what we needed to let off a little steam and forget about a certain defiant brunette. I’ve had a good few drinks and can feel a bit of a buzz going on.

  I pull some girl with huge tits into my lap. Her hair is a pale blond, almost white. The opposite of Sophie’s dark locks. She smells strongly of cheap perfume like she frickin’ bathed in it before she came out. It’s overwhelming, making me want to cough. Sophie didn’t smell anything like that. There was no perfume on her at all, just the sweet smell of coconut and lavender from her shampoo.

  Fuck. Why am I even thinking about her? I’ve got a half-naked, perfectly willing chick in my lap. Fuck Sophie.

  The girl in my lap is grinding shamelessly against my dick, which fucking frustratingly isn’t the slightest bit interested, when my phone starts ringing. Checking the caller ID, I see my father’s name. Great, whatever he wants can’t be good.

  “Yeah”, I say unenthusiastically, answering the phone before it can go to voicemail and piss my father off even more.

  “Boy,” my father, Trey Cullen, second in command and all-around general shithead, responds derisively, “Clean-up is needed out at the barn.”

  “Alright. We’ll get it sorted.”

  “Now.” He commands, hanging up before I can say anything else, not that I had anything more to say to that fucking asshole.

  If it wasn’t for the fact we are both Beasts, I wouldn’t have anything to do with the waste of space cretin that is my father.

  He’s a lifelong criminal, spending his youth in and out of juvie and prison for petty crimes before becoming involved with more hardcore criminals, which resulted in arrests for assault and coercion. It was during one of these stints in prison that he was recruited by Kirk.

  My father found his home in The Feral Beasts. From what I have heard, he wasn’t someone you wanted to cross paths with before he joined the club, but now, his hatred and violence knows no bounds. He lives for the bloodshed and torture that being a Beast requires. He doesn’t tolerate weakness or soft emotions, not even in his own kid. Trust me.

  When I was three I found a small bird with a damaged wing in our backyard. I took it to my father, hoping he could help me make it better. Instead, he crushed the bird in his huge hand and told me not to waste my time trying to help those weaker than myself. He said I should be focused on becoming who the Beasts need me to be. He locked me in the basement for three days without food or water as punishment for being such a wimp.

  By the time I was seven, my father had taught me how to hold a knife and shoot a gun. He made me kill all sorts of stray animals, and was starting to bring me along on his jobs for The Feral Beasts, showing me how to inflict maximum pain before the sweet release of death. He would go as far as to force that pain on me, if I dared to hesitate in imposing it on someone else.

  Thankfully, Ty turned up when I was eight. I don’t know what sort of person I would have turned into if he hadn’t been around. Even at that age, I knew I had lost a significant part of my soul, a part that made me human, like everyone else.

  Although we have both continued to live a life of bloodshed, torture, and violence, we have somehow managed to pull each other through it all and prevent either of us from losing any more pieces of ourselves. This is no easy feat when you live the life of a Beast.

  This job might be cleaner than our usual jobs, but while Kirk is playing make-believe billionaire, the rest of us have to pick up the slack, maintaining our normal deals, trades, and jobs. Our club has its fingers in a lot of pies - legal and otherwise - and we can’t afford to piss off any of our associates by letting things slip through the cracks.

  When Kirk first told us that we were coming up here, we had to put a lot of time and effort into finding accommodation for everyone, and somewhere suitable to conduct our less than legal activities. We found a run-down motel thirty minutes from Crescentwood, where those Kirk chose to bring with him, plus anyone that needed to travel back and forth between here and our home compound could crash and chill, when they weren’t on the job.

  We also found a disused barn that had long since been abandoned, in the middle of nowhere, an hour away. It required a lot of work, installing soundproofing into the floors and roof, along with a top of the line security system to ensure no unexpected visitors stumbled across the place by accident.

  Thank Christ for the month we had to prepare before Kirk became Robert and the whole charade began.

  With a sigh and a head nod to Ty, indicating we had to go, I push the girl off my lap and head towards the exit.

  “What’s up?” Ty asks as we step outside and head towards the beat-up heap of junk we procured on our initial journey up to Crescentwood. We can’t have anything happening here trace back to the rest of the club back in Oregon. Unfortunately, we were expressly told we couldn’t steal anything flashy and fun, although looking at all the over-priced sports cars in this town, I think we would have blended in much easier if we had nicked an Aston Martin or a Bugatti, rather than the shitty Ford we ended up with.

  “Clean up.” I state simply, climbing in behind the wheel, as Ty circles round to get in the passenger seat. Starting the engine, I head towards the barn, where most of our dirty work is done. Time to put our game faces on and get down to business.

  Fifty minutes later, when we finally pull up at the barn and climb out of the car, I take a deep breath of the fresh Californian air before stepping into the warehouse, knowing the stench of death and decay await.

  Closing the large steel door behind us, Ty flicks on the light as I stride across the room, not at all bothered by the dead man hanging off the ground, shackled between two posts. His arms and legs are spread wide, steel cuffs clamped around his wrists and ankles and attached to long steel chains which are tied around the posts on either side of him. The deliberate nature of his positioning ensures all of his body weight is pushed onto his shoulders, causing an excruciating amount of pressure. I wouldn’t be surprised if he has dislocated both shoulders.

  The guy is topless, with a deep wound running up the middle of his abdomen from just above his pubic bone to his xiphisternum. His intestines are literally hanging out of his body, dropping down to the floor, with blood still dripping onto the ground below.

  Just in case he miraculously survived being gutted like a fish, he has a bullet wound going straight through the center of his head, right between his eyes. I know from experience that the final bullet wound won’t have been delivered until he was near dead, if not dead already. Done as a final act of assurance.

  This is The Feral Beast's signature kill. The equivalent of a calling card, telling everyone who this man wronged and who killed
him.

  It doesn’t matter though, nobody will ever find this guy’s body, or learn what happened to him. My guess is, this display of symbolism was for the victim. To let him know exactly who he crossed, so he could piss himself at the realization of how agonizingly slowly and painfully he would die.

  Getting closer to the body, I recognize his face, but I can’t place where I know him from. Shoving that thought aside, I start to unshackle the chains attached to one of the posts, while Ty does the same on the other side.

  It doesn’t take long until his body drops to the ground. Thankfully, whoever killed him had the forethought to place a plastic sheet on the ground, underneath his body, catching his blood so Ty and I don’t have to spend the rest of the night here bleaching the floor to remove any bloodstains.

  Ty snaps on a pair of gloves and starts to check in the guy's pockets, searching for any signs of ID, or anything else that could be used to identify him. Meanwhile, I fill a bucket with bleach and water and start cleaning all the tools on the bench that may have been involved in his torture and death.

  “Hey man, look at this,” Ty chimes, holding up what looks like a business card.

  Walking back across the warehouse until I’m standing beside him, I reach out with my gloved hands and take the card from him, reading what it says.

  Mr. Daniel Collenston.

  Senator for the State of California.

  A senator? What the fuck? What the hell is Kirk thinking? Someone is bound to ask questions if a bloody senator goes missing.

  That explains why I recognize his face. I saw it plastered on banners and advertisements throughout our drive down here from Oregon.

  I continue to mull over what this means and how this factors into Kirk’s plans, while Ty and I resume the process of disposing of his body.

  The great thing about living in the mountains is the mountain lions. Our namesake. They are the perfect way to dispose of dead bodies. It’s rare for mountain lions to attack and kill people, but when that human has been chopped up into small, bite-size pieces, it’s suddenly not so difficult to comprehend.

  Once we have the man, David Collenston I guess, chopped up and securely wrapped in plastic, we transport him to the trunk of our car. Our plan is to drive him deeper into the wilderness, well away from Crescentwood, the motel, and this barn, and spread out his body pieces in the middle of the forest, far away from any possible walking or hiking trails.

  It’s an exhausting job, and one that takes forever to complete, but, finally, we have dumped the last body piece. Returning to the car, we start the three-hour car journey home.

  “A senator? What the hell are they thinking?” Ty questions, mirroring my own thoughts

  Shaking my head, both physically and mentally exhausted.

  “I don’t know, but it can’t be good.”

  Chapter 19

  SOPHIE

  All too soon, Monday morning rolls around and I’m climbing out of the car, making my way towards the school building. It never gets any easier, coming through those doors into a school where no-one will talk to me. While I’m used to being alone, I’m not used to people not talking to me just because they have been told not to. In the past, I’ve been the one to turn down invitations and friendships because I didn’t have the time, and I didn’t need to see the pity in people’s eyes or hear their sympathies when I would, inevitably, have to cancel plans.

  From what I have gathered, though, from silently observing the student body here, most of them are lemmings, sheep, willing to do whatever is asked of them in the hopes of gaining favour with the one-percenters.

  It amazes me how so many people can be okay with following the whims and orders of others just because they have more money or a higher social standing. Can none of these people think for themselves? Are they that desperate for attention that they will do anything to anybody, regardless of the impact it might have? I can’t get over their lack of a moral code.

  What concerns me is that I don’t know how far these followers would go in obeying the one-percenters. Doing as they are told, not talking to me, is one thing, but what if the one-percenters told them to do something worse, something that could hurt me or cause me physical harm? The thought alone fills me with unease. Let’s hope Preston doesn’t feel the need to take things that far and I never have to find out.

  As I’m striding across the car park, lost in my own dark thoughts, I hear someone calling out to me. Since I wasn’t expecting anyone to talk to me at all, I’m immediately stunned at someone saying my name.

  Looking around, I see a girl just up ahead of me heading into the school building. “Fun party this weekend! We should hang out sometime,” she says before going into the school, letting the door close behind her. What the hell was that?

  Similar introductions occur as soon as I step into the hallway and head towards my locker. It’s like I’ve entered opposite land, and I am immediately suspicious. I try to paint a smile on my face and return hellos to the nameless people I pass, keeping my confusion and wariness to myself.

  Stepping into my English classroom, I take my usual seat. The seat beside me has been unoccupied since I first showed up here, but today a girl with long blonde hair tied back in a complicated looking braid sits down in the chair beside me.

  Looking at her from the corner of my eye I can see she’s about my height, but she’s wearing heels to my Converse which gives her an extra few inches. She’s beautiful, in a natural way, and has managed to blend her make-up to enhance her delicate features.

  Once she has unpacked her things and organised them on the desk, she turns to look at me. “I’ve wanted to talk to you since you first arrived, but the one-percenters put a ban on anyone interacting with you, and while I’m not one to always follow the rules, you just don’t mess with the one-percenters if they decree something,” she states bluntly, without apology, “but, thankfully, they have seen reason and lifted the stupid ban,” she finishes with a huge smile.

  “They have?” I reply dumbly, hardly believing what she is saying. “Why would they do that?” I question, more to myself than her.

  Does this have anything to do with what happened with Barrett the other night? Perhaps they both understand now that I’m not in league with my father? This turn of events only raises more questions, but it gives me hope that Preston and Barrett might finally see that I’m not associated with Robert.

  Shrugging her shoulders, she replies anyway, “I wouldn’t worry about the why of it, the point is they have.”

  Before I can ask her anything further, the teacher walks in.

  “Quiet down class and pull out your books. Sarah, start reading the first chapter out to the class,” Mr. Davis, our English teacher, orders.

  The class collectively sighs, and while Sarah attempts to find where we last left off in the book, the girl beside me leans over to whisper, “I’m Alexis, by the way. You should sit with me and my friends at lunch.”

  With a friendly smile, she turns back to the front of the class, leaning back in her chair to start reading her book.

  I have no idea what to make of this turn of events, but I know I don’t want to turn away anyone who is interested in being friends with me at this point.

  Lunch comes around all too quickly. I haven’t been in any more of Alexis’s classes and I don’t know who else she is friendly with, or if any of them would even want to be friends with me. I still haven’t made up my mind about what to do, when I step into the lunchroom. For all I know Alexis could have changed her mind from this morning. Hell, perhaps it was all just a joke, yet another game to try and get to me. Flip me, social politicking is exhausting.

  As I grab my tray of food and head towards my usual table, I hear someone calling my name across the lunchroom.

  “Sophie! Hey, we’re over here!” Alexis shouts, completely unfazed by the attention she draws as she waves me over to a table on the opposite of the lunchroom. Alexis’s table is closer to the one-percenters table, meaning
I have to walk right past them to reach her.

  Feeling eyes on me, I don’t have any other choice but to go over there. Thankfully, as I pass the one-percenter table, none of them pay me any attention. Preston and Barrett are deep in conversation and I can’t help but notice there are no girls sitting in their laps today. Not that I’ve been paying any attention to who they sit with. Those dickweeds can do whatever the fuck they want.

  As I approach Alexis’ table, I plaster on a fake smile and give a small wave to the other girls. There are four of them, all with perfectly styled hair and beautifully done make-up, the same as every other girl in this town. I wonder if they all have professionals come in each morning to do all that for them. I’m surprised my father hasn’t organised a stylist for me, not that I’m going to mention anything to him. The last thing I need is people swatting around me first thing in the morning before I’ve even had coffee. No thanks.

  Besides, all that make-up and coifing of hair just isn’t me. Yeah, it was fun for the party. It was nice for a night not to feel like the poor girl way out of her league, but to spend so much time every day worrying about how you look? No, that’s not me at all, and it never will be.

  “Hey Sophie, I was worried you weren’t going to take me up on my offer to sit with us,” Alexis says to me, giving me yet another one of her friendly smiles.

  “Oh no, I just couldn’t see you in the crowd,” I lie, not wanting them to know I was chickening out.

  “No worries, have a seat,” she says, gesturing to the empty chair beside her. “This is Vicki, Beth, and Olivia.” Alexis introduces each girl around the table starting first with the girl opposite me, Vicki, then the girl beside her, then finally the girl on the other side of Alexis.

  Smiling shyly at them, “Hi, it's nice to meet you all, I’m Sophie.”

  Laughing, Beth replies, “We know who you are, not many people incur the wrath of the one-percenters so quickly. What did you do to piss them off so bad anyway?”