Havoc at Prescott High

by Stunich, C. M.

  “Middle of butt-fuck-nowhere,” Vic supplies finally, tapping tattooed knuckles against the window as he stares me down. I meet his gaze unflinching. I'm not afraid of you, I say with my eyes, but maybe that's a lie? “There's a turn-off just after McKenzie Bridge.”

  I bite my lower lip and turn toward the window. On either side of us, there's nothing but trees and pure, obliterating blackness. That night the boys dropped me off on the side of the road, I think it was out this way somewhere.

  A ripple of anxiety washes over me as I realize that I'm in a minivan full of strong, ruthless men. Out here, there'd quite literally be no one to hear me scream. They could do whatever they wanted with me.

  “What's the plan?” I hear myself asking instead, feeling like my voice is somehow detached from the rest of me. Numbness. I gather it around me like a blanket, and make sure to stay well away from Victor Channing.

  “Assuming Vaughn is there,” Vic begins, and Oscar interrupts.

  “He's there.” His words are absolute, like he truly believes he's never made a mistake in his entire life. “But the real question is if he's alone or not, if he brought the nurse, or if he's got a new girl.”

  “What about the nurse?” I ask, trying to remember her name. Whitney, was it? Whitney … something. The whole Prescott student body calls her the Nurse of Yes-Scott High, which, if you know that Principal Vaughn's first name is Scott, is actually a pretty clever saying. There's not a damn kid on campus who hasn't overheard yes, Scott, yes! coming from the nurse's office on occasion.

  “What about her?” Vic asks, still not looking at me. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's glaring at the back of Hael's head.

  “If she is there, then what?” I press. “Does she get hers, too?”

  “She wasn't on your list,” Oscar says matter-of-factly, “and we have too much on our plates to take on charity work. If the nurse is there, we'll knock her out and tie her to a tree until we're finished with Principal Vaughn.”

  I purse my lips, because they all know that Nurse Whtiney is just as culpable in all this shit as Vaughn is. She recruits girls, too, vulnerable girls who come to her to ask questions about birth control, or STDs, or finger-shaped bruises she should be reporting. Instead, she picks out the weak ones and coerces them into the cam business to make porn for her and her boss. She drives a Lexus, by the way. Should've had Hael blow that one up, too.

  “And if there's a girl?” I continue, turning to look at Oscar. Vic might be the boss, but Oscar's the logistics of the Havoc operation. He pushes his glasses up his nose with a tattooed middle finger and smirks at me.

  “We give her the keys to the Kia Sportage and send her on her way. You don't think we'd hurt an innocent girl, do you?” he taunts, and my hands curl into fists. “I mean, not unless we were hired to do it.”

  “Fuck you,” I growl back, and Oscar laughs, this genteel laugh that's so at odds with his tattoos. “Now what's the plan with Vaughn? Be direct, remember?”

  Oscar leans forward, his raven-black hair sliding across his forehead, gray eyes catching the light from the dash up front.

  “We're going to put him in his underwear and degrade his ancient ass on a live feed.” My brows go up, but I have to admit there's a certain sense of poetic justice in Vaughn's sentence. “After that, if he's lucky, we release him into the woods with no phone, no pants, and no shoes. We'll set the cabin on fire, and then send his signed confession to the cops.”

  “How are you going to get him to confess?” I ask, and Oscar doesn't hesitate before pulling his revolver out of his jacket. He smiles at me as he slides his thumb along the barrel, but it's not a very nice smile, not at all.

  “With this.” The matter-of-fact tone in his voice never changes.

  “Anything about the plan you don't like?” Vic asks me, and a shiver takes over me. The memories of him touching me aren't nearly as faded around the edges as I'd like. Instead, when he talks, they burn. His body pushing inside of mine, taking over me, his fingers dancing a dirty rhythm over my core.

  I grit my teeth.

  “I like it,” I say, glancing over at Callum. He's leaning against the window, watching me with those blue eyes. I remember in elementary school how we had to do square dancing lessons on Fridays. I hated it. I used to cry and sit in the corner with my hands over my ears. And then one day, I saw Callum dancing with another little girl from our class. He looked so happy doing it that I got up and hesitantly moved over to stand near him. He held out his hand and smiled at me, and I joined in. The dancing wasn't so bad as I'd thought, and for a while there, my life got a little less dark.

  I'll never forget that.

  Doubt he remembers that moment though.

  “After this, can we get something to eat?” Cal asks, and Hael and Aaron both groan.

  “Seriously?” Aaron snaps, just before he reaches over to turn off the stereo. He turns onto a gravel road and shuts off the headlights, leaving us in total blackness. How he navigates that winding, mountain road is beyond me, but I'm on pins and needles the whole time, my fingernails digging into the sides of my seat.

  A good twenty minutes later, we make a slow, tight turn between two large trees, and I spot the white Kia Sportage under the dim glow of a porch light.

  “Bingo,” Hael murmurs, and the tension in the van seems to snap, a new energy taking over the group, just like the night we broke into Oak Valley Prep.

  “Time to kick some ass,” Cal says with a low, hoarse laugh as Vic throws open the sliding door, grabs a black duffel from the floor, and hops out. I follow after him, unsure of what my role here is, exactly.

  “Break the door down,” Vic says, slinging the duffel over his shoulder. “More impactful that way.”

  “Consider it done,” Hael says, and both he and Callum move forward and up the front steps of the porch. There's only one car here tonight, so I'm guessing Miss Yes-Scott isn't entertaining her boss tonight.

  Both boys put their boots up to the door and kick in unison, knocking the wood off its hinges and sending it crashing to the floor. A high-pitched scream follows, accompanied by Vaughn's distinct bellow.

  “What on earth—” he starts, followed by a grunt. I chase after Vic, Aaron, and Oscar, stepping on the broken door and finding a cozy cabin lit with a fire, Principal Vaughn bent over and already bleeding from the face, and Ivy freaking Hightower naked on a bed in the corner.

  She's covering her body with a blanket, her painted lips open in surprise as she gapes at us.

  “Clothes, keys, now get the fuck out,” Vic says, tossing a pile her way and snatching some keys off the counter of the kitchenette near the door. He chucks those in her direction, but she's so out of it that she doesn't catch them before they hit her in the face.

  “What's going on here?” Vaughn manages to grind out before Cal and Hael shove him into a chair next to the fireplace. He looks up, red running from his nostrils, one hand trying to cup the liquid as it drips from his chin.

  Vic tosses the duffel onto the floor and moves over to stand in front of our principal, bending low, and staring the older man straight in the face.

  “You've conned your last girl, Vaughn.” Vic smiles, and it's even less pretty than Oscar's. “And you've fucked with Havoc for the last time.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Scott Vaughn asks, beginning to shake. It doesn't escape my notice that his first thought is that he's going to die. That's the power of Havoc.

  “Probably not,” Vic says, standing up straight as Ivy yanks her dress over her head. There are handcuffs dangling from the headboard, a pink vibrator lying atop the white blankets, and a camera on a tripod near the end of the bed.

  The footage is streaming onto a laptop that's sitting on the counter. Oscar moves over to it right away and cuts the feed.

  “It's not live,” he calls out, and Vic grunts.

  “After we're done here,” Victor says, cocking his head to the side. “You might wish you were dead though. Boys.”

  �
��Alright, princess, are you deaf? The man said get out.” Hael grabs Ivy by the arm and yanks her from the blankets, dragging her toward the door.

  “Am I still getting paid for tonight's session?” she asks, and Hael laughs, shoving her outside and then glancing over at me with his signature smirk in place. Hard to believe I had his dick in my mouth just a few hours prior, huh?

  “And where's the reward in altruism, huh? Do you hear this bitch?”

  “She's an anomaly,” I say, moving over to the door to stare Ivy down as she fumbles with Vaughn's keys and unlocks the doors to the Kia.

  “Can I at least have my purse?” she snaps, turning around to face me. Maybe she thinks having me here makes her safer? It doesn't. I have no control over what the Havoc Boys do.

  I grab the pink purse from the floor near the umbrella holder and move down the steps, shoving it against her chest, and refusing to let go until she looks me in the eye.

  “If you tell a soul about what happened here tonight, you're next.” Ivy tries to take the purse from me, but I keep hold of it. “I mean it. I'll send Havoc after you, and you won't like what happens.”

  “Okay, okay, I got it,” she says, her expression mollifying as she cringes away from me. Despite what Hael thinks, I do feel sorry for Ivy. She's always cared far too much what the world thinks about her, and she's so desperate for attention that she was probably easy pickings for Vaughn. As far as the money, of course she wants to be paid. She lives in a double-wide with her dad and three sisters. This could be rent she's losing out on. “Wait,” I say, just before she climbs in. I pound back up the stairs as Hael stares at me like I've lost my damn mind, and I find Vaughn's wallet in his discarded pants.

  The boys have already started stripping him, but I don't look his way as I take the wallet and empty it of cash and credit cards, heading back outside and handing them over to Ivy. She stares at the wad of money for only half a second before she snatches it from me.

  “Thank you,” she murmurs, and then she climbs in the car and gets the fuck out of there, spraying gravel in her haste.

  “You are one, weird chick,” Hael murmurs, studying me as I come back up the steps and move across the broken door. He waits for me to pass, lifts it up, and sets it back in place as best he can.

  “We'd make you get naked, like you do your girls, but nobody wants to see that,” Vic says, turning to look at Aaron who's now manning the camera. “Can you work that thing, or do you want to use our phones to film?”

  “I've got it,” Aaron says, as Oscar moves over to stand in front of Principal Vaughn with a notebook and pen in his hand.

  “I want you to write out your bad deeds, and then I want you to sign it,” Oscar tells him, waiting until Vaughn takes the items from his hand before moving away. “Oh, and don't skimp on the details. We'll know if you did.” Oscar pulls his gun out and sets it on the counter, playing around with the laptop again before he presses play on a video. A girl that I vaguely recognize from our school starts to strip on camera, and I look away.

  “A confession signed under duress is useless in court, you know,” Vaughn says as the pen hovers over the page and his eyes dart around the room in fear, coming to land on mine. “What is your stepfather going to think of all this?”

  “He'll probably just be disappointed he doesn't get to watch anymore of your illegal, underage porn videos,” I say, completely deadpan. That numbness inside of me is burning at the edges with a righteous rage. “Start your note with I'm sorry. More people need to learn how to say those words without gagging.” I nod my chin at him, and Aaron flinches. The words weren’t directed at my ex, but hell, they sure are poetic, aren’t they? “Do it.”

  Callum stands beside our principal, one hand tight on the man's shoulder as he reads over the words. I take a seat on a small bench next to the closet and wait patiently, my mind racing with all the ways this could go horribly wrong and bite us in the ass.

  “Don't worry,” Aaron says, leaning against the wall next to me and lighting up a cigarette. “We've been at this long enough to know how to cover our bases, Bernie.” He doesn't look at me, his attention focused on Vaughn.

  After a good fifteen minutes, Callum makes a frustrated sound and yanks the notebook from the principal's hands.

  “He's not getting shit done,” he says, handing the note over to Oscar.

  Oscar reads it and then glances at Vic before picking up his gun and putting the barrel to Vaughn's head.

  “Here's what I want you to write: My name is Scott Anesso Vaughn, and I'm the Principal of Prescott High. For over ten years, I've been coercing young girls into the porn and prostitution industries for pay. I've also slept with many of these girls, the majority of whom were under eighteen. I can no longer handle the burden of this truth.”

  “Please don't,” Vaughn whimpers, hand shaking as he sits there in his underwear and struggles to follow Oscar's instructions. “I have kids. They go to the U of O, you know. Both amazing athletes, and—”

  Oscar hits him in the face with the gun, hard enough to send blood splattering across the log walls of the cabin, and then pulls the hammer back for emphasis. Vaughn quickly shuts up, finishing his note and signing it with a flourish. He passes it back to Oscar who re-reads it, the flames from the fireplace reflecting off the surface of his glasses. With a curt nod, he withdraws the weapon and Vaughn lets out a sharp exhale of breath.

  “Now get up,” Vic commands, nodding over to the bed. “We're going to make a little video.”

  “Please no,” Vaughn whimpers, his body limp when Cal hauls him to his feet. “Please, I'm begging you!”

  Aaron moves back over to the camera as Vaughn crawls onto the bed, a grossly pathetic sight in his underwear and nothing else.

  “I want you to think of all the girls you've brought to this cabin,” Vic says as Vaughn begins to weep softly. But I have little sympathy for a pedophile and a pervert, so I stay numb as I watch him cry. Is he really weeping or is it just an act? Probably an act. There's not even a sense of satisfaction in me, watching these evil men like Don and Scott burn, just that same, easy numbness. “Think about all of them, desperate for money to pay rent or buy food for younger siblings or earn a ticket out of poverty.” Vic pauses and turns to point at me. “And then I want you to look Bernadette in the eye and say you're sorry for what you've done.”

  “I'm sorry,” Vaughn sobs, shaking. “I'm so sorry.”

  “We're going live in thirty seconds,” Oscar says, and Vic nods, turning back to Vaughn.

  “You're going to perform the same way you make the girls do. Whatever the psychos watching this video ask for, you're going to do. Do you understand?”

  Vaughn is openly bawling now, but nobody in that cabin cares.

  “We're going to live stream him?” I ask, and Cal nods.

  “During live cam feeds, those watching can ask the girl to do certain things and pay in tips for the privilege to see her do it. So Vaughn's going to spend an hour learning what it's like.” Cal's mouth curves into a smile. “It's nice, isn't it? Hand-delivering karma.”

  I don't know how to respond to that, so I turn back to watch the drama unfold in front of me.

  As promised, for an entire hour, Vaughn does what the crazy fucks online demand of him. I can't watch most of it, so I let myself outside into the cool, night air. Cal joins me, and we sit on the rocking chairs on the porch in silence.

  “Aaron said the taste of vengeance wasn't so sweet as I thought it'd be, that it'd leave the taste of ash in my mouth,” I say finally, and Cal glances my way, his hood firmly fixed in place, legs folded on the chair in front of him. “But I don't taste ash. I don't taste anything at all, to be honest with you.”

  “Mm.” Callum glances my way, studying me in the dark. “I felt that way, too, at first. Once you surrender to the dark, it gets easier.” He stands up suddenly, his body unfolding from that chair in such a graceful way that I find myself envious again. I've never been clumsy per se, but I've also ne
ver been particularly graceful either. Callum makes every movement he makes look like dance.

  The front door opens and Aaron appears, limned in light from inside.

  “We're done here,” he says, and only then do I notice the blood on his knuckles. He sees me looking and swipes them on his jeans like he's ashamed. Violence. It's what Havoc does, I'm not surprised at all. “If there's anything in the cabin you want, come get it.”

  Cal heads inside, but I stay where I am. There's nothing in there I want; it's all tainted.

  “You beat him up?” I ask, and Aaron shrugs.

  “Not as bad as Don,” is the only response I get before Oscar appears, carrying the laptop and camera, probably to sell later. Principal Vaughn comes stumbling out next, naked, shaking, and spattered with blood. Hael shoves him in the back and he falls down the front steps.

  “Go on, get the fuck out of here,” he says as the principal struggles to get to his feet. “Start running, and don't stop.” Hael glances my way and a strange expression crosses his face. “You don't want to know what'll happen if we find you.”

  My entire body ripples with disgust, and I turn away.

  “Let's light this baby up,” Hael continues, and I hear Vic grunt his agreement. The smell of gasoline stings my nostrils as Callum hooks a hose up to a water pump and turns it on, soaking the ground around the cabin. I guess they're looking to keep the fire contained?

  “Come on,” Aaron says, and when I don't respond, he reaches out and grabs my hand.

  A violent shiver overtakes me, and I tear my hand away from him, moving down the steps of my own accord and standing back while the rest of the boys douse the place.

  “Burn it fucking down,” Vic commands as we gather near the minivan, and Cal steps forward with an old-fashioned lighter in his hand, flicking it on and then tossing it onto the front steps.