by Voss, Deja
Didn’t much matter now, did it?
The mosquitos started biting, and that was my cue to get out of this place, get back to reality. Back to the life I loved. I wasn’t any closer to closure, I still carried this guilt with me every day, but I knew as I shuffled back to my bike, I knew I was at least giving it my best. That’s all I could do in this life. Give it my best to do right by the people I cared about. Couldn’t do that hanging around a field full of dead forgotten souls.
Chapter Three
Breaker:
Thirteen Years Ago:
It was only the third day of ninth grade, and I was already getting sent home with a detention slip for my mom to sign. Not like she’d give a fuck, but I didn’t know why they didn’t just hurry up and expel me already. I didn’t belong in that place. School was for kids who needed someone to tell them what to do all the time. I already knew how to get money. I had a closet full of fresh white Air Jordans I paid for with my summer extra-curricular activities. Hustling was the life for me. The only reason I went to school in the first place was to keep the cops off my ass.
I threw open the door to the apartment my mom and I lived in. It wasn’t much, but that was alright. When you’re carrying around the kind of cash I was, you couldn’t flashy, or you were setting yourself up for somebody breaking in, trying to take your shit.
“Mama, why the fuck did you leave the door unlocked?” I shouted into the living room. “How many times do I have to tell you? Somebody’s gonna break in here. You either keep the door locked or let me teach you how to shoot.”
I hated yelling at her, but I was just trying to keep her safe. Nobody else would. Old man was never part of the picture, and her condition was getting worse every day. She was skin and bones, could barely even make it through a shift at the diner anymore. She didn’t need to work anymore. I could take care of us. She did need to get out of the house, though. Kept her out of the smack for at least a few hours a week.
“Alex,” she groaned from her bedroom. “Is that you?”
“What are you doing in bed, mama?” I asked, turning on the light. It was only three in the afternoon. “And who else would it be? You expecting company or something?” Her room smelled like sickness. She was sprawled out on her mattress, head hanging off the side as she dry heaved into a garbage can.
I hated seeing her like this, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing I wanted to do at least.
“I’m sick, baby,” she said, her voice hoarse from all the puking. “You got anything?”
I sat down on the bed next to her, trying not to breathe too deep for fear I’d throw up, too. That smell of vomit, I couldn’t do it. I tried not to gag.
“You know I don’t fuck with that shit, mom,” I said. Weed, ecstasy, molly, I sold party favors to yuppies, not heavy shit to junkies. “You wanna smoke a joint?”
“Alex, I’m going to die. I need something. Please.” Her voice wavered as I brushed her sweat soaked hair from out of her face. She was hot and cold at the same time, shaking, her eyes empty. “Please. Get me through tonight, and I’ll go get help tomorrow. I’ll go to rehab. I’ll go to the hospital. Please. There’s thirty dollars in my purse. Don’t let your mother suffer like this.”
I didn’t want to do it, but I knew enough about smack that if I let her go on like this, she probably wouldn’t make it through the night. I wish she’d never started on that shit, but I was just a kid when she had. I didn’t have any say.
“You promise you’ll go in the morning?”
“Yes, sweetie, yes!” she insisted, her eyes lightning up.
“I will drop you off myself. You understand, mom?”
“Babe, you can’t drive. You’re not sixteen. You don’t have a license.”
All the sketchy shit she’s asking me to do and not having a driver's license was her concern? This woman, the only person I had in this world, was asking me, barely a teenager, to take some cash, go to the bad side of town, and get her whatever drugs I could. Wasn’t the first time. Hopefully, it’d be the last.
I laughed at the irony and kissed her clammy forehead. “I love you, mom. You better keep that door locked til I get back. I don’t want anyone coming around here and snatching you up.”
“You always know how to make a woman feel special,” she said, rolling over on her back. “You fix me up, and I’ll make whatever you want for dinner tonight. We’ll have a going away party.” She reached for her purse and I held out my hand to stop her. My treat. My treat in exchange for her promise.
I stood outside the apartment door, listening to make sure she chained both the deadbolts. I didn’t enjoy doing this one bit. Wasn’t the first time, though. Even though I had no reason to believe otherwise, even though we’d been through this a million times before, something about today made me feel like it would be the last. She was gonna get better; I was gonna stash away as much cash as possible while she was away and get us out of this dump ass town, get her away from the shit that makes her sick.
Maybe I’d even end up being a good boy after all. Cut my hair and go by my given name, Alexander. Run track and join the debate team and shit.
Yeah right, I laughed to myself. I was more likely to get abducted by horny alien women with big blue titties than any of that shit happening, but it was fun to fantasize, especially when everything around me was pointing to the fact that this kinda life we had now was my destiny. Our destiny. Bad times bad. Good times basically alright. All we could do was laugh at it all and try not to die too soon.
“Kid, where you at? I need something,” I said when my best friend picked up his phone. “Mom’s sick.”
“Fuck,” he muttered. “You know I’m not trying to condone that shit. I’m out of town, anyway. Take her to the fucking clinic for some Dollies.”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “Can’t get her out of the house right now. You think Brad’s around?”
“Fuck that asshole,” he said. I knew Brad was Kid’s direct competition, but I had no other options. If I could just make this an in and out deal instead of wandering the streets, it would make my life a lot easier. “Probably.”
“Thanks, man. Be good. I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Next time you call me it better be about wanting to go snowboarding or some shit. I miss hanging out.”
“For real,” I said. I hung up the phone and walked across the street to Brad’s apartment complex, hopefully for the last time. Three months from now, mom would be clean and Kid and I would be shredding the gnar in West Virginia.
Time to suck it up and get it done. It wouldn’t be the first time. For real now, this better be the last time.
Chapter Four
Hannah:
Present Day:
Uncanny.
That was the only word I could use to describe the scene at my parents’ dinner table. I wasn’t sure where I’d even heard it, but the fact that my three sisters, two brothers, mother and father, were acting like I hadn’t just spent the last nine months locked up in a cellar was almost more painful than the incidents themselves.
“You haven’t even touched your broccoli,” my mother said in a tone so offended, you would’ve thought I took her firstborn child away from her. Never mind the fact that the church had taken so much more from me. “It was a bad growing season. Not enough help in the gardens. That broccoli is a delicacy.”
Of course it was my fault that there wasn’t enough help in the gardens. She was acting like I went on some luxury vacation. In this moment, I almost wished I was back in the basement again instead of listening to the sounds of my brothers chewing loudly, sucking their teeth after every bite of food. I’d forgotten how jarring that was. I had to keep it together, though. Being allowed back around the family dinner table brought me one step closer to my escape, no matter how hard it was to bite my tongue.
“She doesn’t look like she needs to clean her plate,” my father muttered. “She’s probably trying to trim up for Jacob.” I shoved a whole stalk of broccoli
in my mouth in one giant bite, hoping that I choked, because otherwise, I would scream.
“Oh father,” Racheal said, sneering at me the entire time, “Obviously Jacob must like his women sturdy. If not, he’d surely have given up on her nonsense a long time ago. You know I have been willing since I have been able.”
“That’s not God’s plan,” my mother said curtly. “Though it would’ve made things a lot easier, wouldn’t you say?”
Their laughter hit me over the head with a wave of nausea. I was, and would always be the butt of everyone’s jokes. Nothing had changed. I was still the black sheep. The problem child. Even though they all wanted something from me, all needed something from me, they weren’t afraid to express their outward disgust for me.
“May I be excused?” I asked. “I need to work on my Nightlies. I have some catching up to do.” What I really needed to do was evacuate the contents of my stomach immediately. This wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t strong enough. I was about to break, and back to the basement I would go, and some small part inside of me wanted that. Living out the rest of my days down there was better than pretending like everything was just fine up here.
“You know the rules, Hannah,” my father said. “You are not to be unsupervised at any time. You will sit here until we are all finished.”
“It’s okay, mother,” my brother Jeb said, standing up from the table and pushing his plate away. “I will go with her. I have had enough. Thank you for this blessed meal.”
“Yes, thank you, mother,” I muttered, clearing my plate into the compost bucket next to the sink and putting it in the bin of soapy water. “It’s just been overwhelming today. For months I had nothing to do but sit in silence and pray. Transitioning back into the real world is difficult.”
My sister rolled her eyes so hard, all you could see was white.
“That’s my girl,” my father said. “Awareness of the gift you were given. And soon you will be blessed with a loving husband and children of your own. Healthy children. Children of God.”
Now I had to try to control my eye rolls. We all knew the real truth. If I married Jacob, the most powerful man of the Chosen Faithful, the only son of the original lineage, they would be blessed. My stupid brothers would be promoted to his assistants. My father would become a church elder. My mother and sister would never have to work another day in their lives, as I suffered through the rest of mine in misery.
The sun was setting, and I dipped my candle into the flaming sconce, illuminating the stairwell as I walked up these steps I had known my whole life. They still squeaked and groaned just as I remembered, but nothing about this place felt like home to me anymore. I had no idea where my home was anymore.
When I reached the bedroom I shared with Racheal, I set my candle in the holder on my simple desk, reaching into the drawer for my prayer book, “Nightlies” as we called them. Jeb hovered over me, breathing hard, as if he wanted to say something, but had nothing to say, so he just made noise instead. I flipped open to the last page I had done since the last time I was in this place, my skin crawling at the verse, “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” Church text followed it about the dangers of the outside world, the only true prophets within our congregation, how we are only to obey men of the Chosen Faithful.
“I’m worried about you, Hannah,” Jeb finally spoke, his deep voice nearly a whisper. I mouthed the words of the scripture silently as I read them over. It still took me awhile because my reading skills weren’t exactly the best, especially after such a long hiatus from practicing.
“Please,” I said. “I can’t concentrate with you talking over me.”
“I know you’re up to something. I am begging you, if you care about your life, you need to stop whatever it is you’re doing.”
“Jeb,” I said again, this time more sternly. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m reformed. I will marry Jacob. You will get your promotion. Please let me pray in silence.”
“Do you know what happened to Doctor Leeman?”
“He passed on,” I said. When I first heard the news I thought Jacob was lying, manipulating me into submission with the news. Doctor Leeman, our community’s veterinarian, was a good man, a good friend, though I’d never say that out loud. He was helping me study to become a veterinary technician before all this started. “He’s with the Lord. Now please let me finish, Jeb.” Just thinking about Doctor Leeman filled me with a sadness that I struggled to hide. He took a risk trying to help me. He wanted more for me than anyone had ever wanted before.
“The rumor is, he took a lethal dose of horse tranquilizers. Did you know that? That’s what the people in town are saying. He took his own life.”
“No,” I whispered, standing up from my chair to look him in the eye. “I thought he had a heart attack. Doctor Leeman would never…”
“Don’t think that I don’t agree with you, Hannah. That’s why I’m trying to tell you, if you care about your life, or anyone in this world, you need to learn your place. You could get us all killed.”
I was so shocked, I couldn’t even form words. Could barely breathe. Did Doctor Leeman’s death have something to do with me? I had already been punished once. Knowing my selfishness went far beyond my own personal suffering felt like knives pounding into my back repeatedly and knowing that there was literally no one I could go to with this new information paralyzed me. I sunk down to the floor, gasping for air.
“It will be all right, Hannah,” Jeb said, his confidence unsettling. “Nobody else has to get hurt. Just stick to the plan.”
I cupped my face in my hands, my mind racing a million miles a minute. I had only been ‘free’ one day, and I had already veered off the plan with two simple words carved in a loaf of bread. Two selfish words that potentially put another kind soul into Jacob’s crosshairs. My mouth filled with the bitter taste of broccoli as I sprinted towards the basin.
Chapter Five
Breaker:
I heard the music blaring from the clubhouse before I even hit the first gate. I hopped off my bike to unlock the padlock. Something about coming home to this place always put a smile on my face, and not just the high-pitched laughter coming from the bitches inside, waiting for me.
My brotherhood was everything to me. Not just my chosen family, but my home base. They were all I had in this world. Kept me out of trouble, gave me a decent job, a purpose, not just living to die on the streets, fighting and slinging drugs.
We lived under a code of silence when it came to the outside world, that’s why we were the most respected ‘clean-up crew’ in the state. We were the guys you called when you needed a mess cleaned up. We were the guys you called when you needed somebody to disappear. We were stoic. Quiet. Ominous. Respected. Everybody’s skeletons were safe with us.
Code of silence went out the window when we got back to the house, though. It didn’t matter if there were four or four hundred people inside the clubhouse, ninety percent of the time I came home to loud music and louder laughter. I never had that before. It was always just my mom and I against the world, and she was quiet most days. Quiet or sick.
“Just the man we needed right now,” Colt, our president said as I walked through the door. He sat on his barstool, a beer in one hand, and his girlfriend Tressica balanced on his lap. She jumped up and hugged me before scurrying behind the bar to grab me a bottle of beer. Colt side eyed me so hard I could nearly feel it, but it wasn’t my fault. I just had that effect on bitches. I didn’t ask to be everybody’s favorite hood rat teddy bear, it was just my natural vibe.
“What’s the occasion?” I asked, taking a long sip from the ice cold beer. Looked like everyone in the MC was half buzzed without a single fuck to give. Did I forget some club holiday?
“Sharky’s birthday,” he said, nodding over at our newest prospect, who was sitting next time him at the bar, his head rested on his hand.
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“Oh shit,” I muttered. “Hope you didn’t expect nothing, cuz all I got is a loaf of bread that’s been baking in my bag all day.”
“Nobody wants your creepy Amish bread,” Rosey said, patting me on the shoulder. “What we need right now, is to get Sharky laid.”
Sharky rolled his eyes and took a sip from his rocks glass, shaking his head as the liquor burned his mouth. “That ain’t me,” he said.
“Guy like you should be rolling in pussy. You’re young. You’re smart. We let you hang around us,” I said with a laugh. “What’s your malfunction, prospect? You ain’t into bitches?”
“He’s picky,” Colt said dramatically. “He has standards.”
“Well shit,” I said, looking around, “if none of these broads meets your standards, I don’t know what the hell you’re looking for.” The clubhouse was jammed packed with broads of every shape and size, every hair color, barely legal to cougar status, every aesthetic you could ask for from club slut to librarian with a wild side. I loved them all, personally. To me, this place was an all you could eat buffet. There wasn’t a woman in this world I didn’t find attractive, unless the broad was downright evil or a nark or some shit, so I really didn’t get where he was coming from.
“I don’t want a one-night stand,” he said. “I want a soulmate.”
Rosey, Colt, Tressica, and I all cracked up. Tressica laughed a little longer than the rest of us and slapped her hand over her mouth when Colt shot her his best ‘I’m not amused’ glance. She ran her fingers through her wild blonde hair, biting at her lip.