Breaking the Cycle

by Zane

  Hell, no! It was Tuesday, goddammit! It was her motherfucking day!

  For the first time in her life Paris felt pure hatred.

  Hatred that made her much stronger than her ever-present fear.

  Her mind began to turn. She stared at the white pearls of pre-cum dripping from the head of his gigantic penis and made herself a vow.

  This is gonna be the last motherfucker to ever stick a dick or a knife in my face! Bad enough I have to suck that sorry ass William, but suck this stinking idiot, too?

  The lines of distinction between this stranger and her husband grew fuzzy and William’s face seemed to float on the stranger’s body. Paris had to force herself not to jump on him and beat his ass for old and new. She knew she couldn’t whip the stranger in a fistfight, but she could hurt the bastard where it mattered most.

  Paris cleared her pounding head and wrapped both hands around the girth of the stranger’s penis, sliding them up and down his shaft. Her skin began to crawl but she willed herself to keep the rhythm going.

  “Oooh, yeah, thass right, Baby,” the stranger chanted. “Gone an git yours. Zoom it, lady… zoom it all da way in! C’mon, Baby, lemme see ya’ deep throat it!”

  Pumping his hips, the stranger relaxed his grip and propped his knife hand behind his head. Then he lay back and panted, enjoying the feel of her small hands as they pumped around the center of his world. “Yesss,” he moaned. “I done finally found me a bitch who want it jes’ as much as I do!” The stranger licked his lips. “See how nice you kin ack after you git summa the piss knocked outta ya?”

  You nasty motherfucker! Paris swallowed back bile but her hands moved up and down like she was churning butter. She forced herself to lower her right hand and slide her fingers under the soft sac of his scrotum. Immediately, she was repulsed by the texture of his skin and had to will herself not to shrink away. Thick keloid scars felt alien under her fingers, and the smell of his unwashed body was nearly enough to cause her to black out again.

  But Paris kept working.

  The stranger’s hips bucked up and down on the sofa as he pumped up and down with deep strokes. Feeling backward toward his asshole, Paris—her thumbs, nose and lips, and neck still throbbing with red-hot pain—rubbed near his prostrate gland, causing ripples of excitement to shoot through his body.

  “Ahhh, yesssss,” he groaned as his hips began moving in wide circles. “Take it in ya’ mouf, Lady! In ya’ fuckin’ mouf!”

  Deliberately, Paris grasped both of his testicles firmly in each of her hands and lowered her splayed lips toward his throbbing organ. Her teeth suddenly felt like vampire fangs, anxious for blood. As the stranger whimpered his way to an orgasm, Paris slid his huge dick partway into her mouth, and counting to three, simultaneously squeezed his nuts for all she was worth and bit down with all of her might.

  A roar tore from the stranger’s throat. His powerful muscles locked and froze; trapping him between intense pleasure and intense pain. The switchblade fell from his grasp and clanked heavily to the floor behind the couch.

  Balanced on her knees, Paris’s jaw trembled and her fists were clenched in a deadly vice grip. The stranger sucked in air and a low moan blew from him. Disgusted, Paris spit out his now deflated dick, which incredibly was at least seven inches long soft, and kept her grip on his balls.

  “Oooh, motherfuckah!” she cried. “The tables have turned! Now, who-the-fuck-is-zoomin’ who?”

  “Lady… please,” the stranger whined in a voice too tiny for such a big man. “Please, ya’ hurtin’ me, Lady.”

  The stranger quivered and tried to lower his hands, but Paris moved quickly, squeezing even harder, digging her manicured nails deeply into his flesh, piercing his tough scrotal skin and releasing dark red blood.

  Sharp grinding noises escaped the stranger’s throat.

  “If you bring your arms down one fuckin’ inch,” Paris warned, “just one fuckin’ inch, everything inside these two little sacks of shit is gonna spill out on the floor!” She twisted hard again for emphasis, satisfied when the stranger yelped like a little bitch.

  Paris rose to a crouched position before commanding him to stand. “Get up slow, motherfucker. Real slow and easy because if you so much as breathe too hard, I’ll tear your fucking nuts off and make your stink ass swallow them!”

  Gagging and fighting back the urge to hurl, the stranger untangled his feet from his underwear and, with his arms outstretched to the heavens, he came to a shaky, hunch-backed stand.

  “Ladeeee, please,” he squealed. “Ya’ hurtin’ me bad, Lady… please, I feel lak I’ma faint—”

  “Shut the fuck up and move!” Paris backed toward the basement stairs, forcing the towering man to take one small step forward to each of her full strides backwards. They ascended the stairs in this manner, with Paris twisting his nuts and cursing all the way. At the top of the stairs she paused and touched her tongue to her teeth. At least two in the front felt loose, and fresh blood had begun to seep from her nose.

  “You low-down motherfucker!” she spat.

  “Please, I-I was jes gonna make you feel good,” the stranger stammered. His breath was constricted high in his chest and he’d broken into a cold sweat.

  Make me feel good? Paris looked sharply at the stranger and sudden realization hit her like a brick. This fool was retarded!

  “Asshole, if you think your donkey dick could ever make me feel good, not only are you a retard—your motherfuckin’ bread ain’t done!”

  She yanked him over to the window by her desk.

  “Lady, let me out,” he gasped. “Jes let me leave and I swear ’fore God, I’ll nevah do nuthin l-l-like dis again. D-d-dis-heah is my firs’ time. My onliest time. I ain’t nevah done nuttin’ so fool as dis befo’ an’ I swear on my dead mama, I’ll nevah do it again!”

  “You’s a goddamned liar!” Paris crushed his scrotum again. “You’ve done this shit before because somebody done already poured lye down your drawers!”

  “Aaaah! Aaagghhhhhh!” the stranger screamed. “Dammit, Lady! Please lemme go… jes’ let me leave outta heah alive!”

  “Go, then,” said Paris, suddenly calm. “You wanna leave? Then go.”

  She saw hope surging through his brain but didn’t loosen her grip.

  “How I’ma go?” he whimpered. “Ya’ gotta loose me! Loose me now, lady, fo’ the love of God, loose me! Else how I’ma git out?”

  “Break out, motherfucker! You broke in, didn’t you?”

  “Yo’ door was settin’ wide open, dammit! I din force mahsef in here on you!”

  “I didn’t invite you in, either,” Paris spat, yanking his nuts in opposite directions and wringing them left and right.

  “Then call the po-leece, Lady,” he whimpered and stomped his feet.

  “Let’s jes call the po-leece an’ I turn mahself in!”

  Paris thought for a moment. This motherfucker had made every woman’s greatest fear her painful reality. He had violated her home and her body. But he’d also done something else. He’d given her something that had been lacking in her life during the last ten years with William. He’d given her courage.

  “Okay,” she said. “But you’re gonna call them. If you can break in my house by yourself, and stick your nasty dick in my face all by yourself, you can call the police by yourself. Now,” Paris explained slowly and carefully as if he were a child. “If you think I won’t fuck,” she jerked his left testicle upward, “you,” she yanked the right nut downward, “up…” his balls split east and west, “then you need to call an ambulance before you call the cops!

  “Walk over to the telephone,” she commanded, pulling him over to the speakerphone on top of her desk. “Now press that red button that says, ‘speaker’ and dial 9-1-1.”

  Following her instructions, the stranger waited until a voice flooded the room from the small speaker.

  “9-1-1 emergency, Sergeant Glascow, how may I help you?”

  “Sh—sh—she got me by da’ ball
s, Man,” the stranger cried. “My name S-s-stanley and she got me by da’ balls!”

  “Yeah, Man,” the dispatcher replied, “that’s what happens when you marry ’em and give ’em your checkbook, but this number is for emergencies only.”

  “Nah, Man, nah, she really hurtin’ me bad, she hurtin’ my balls, really, really bad!”

  “Could you repeat that?” the dispatcher asked, his voice tinged with disbelief. “Is someone there hurting you, Sir?”

  “You’re goddamn right, I’m hurting him, and I’ll kill his black ass, too!” Paris yelled.

  Quickly she explained that she’d captured an intruder and gave the policeman her name and address. Then she made Stanley press the red button to end the call. Although her hands were sore and tired and her fingers were sticky with the stranger’s blood, Paris felt like she could have held on to him for at least another month.

  At least.

  “I gotta wee,” the stranger moaned.

  “What?”

  “I gotta take a piss, lady. Real bad.”

  “Well, hold it till the cops get here, and then you can christen your new jail cell.”

  “I cain’t hol’ it, Lady! I swear fo’ God, it’s comin’ out!”

  “Dammit! Walk over to that front door and don’t try nothing cute because it’s your dick and your balls.” She yanked him over to the door and instructed Stanley to open the door a small crack and aim his dick toward the porch. For a split second the stranger’s body obscured Paris’s view. For just an instant her attention wavered.

  And that was all it took.

  Stanley swung the door toward her with all of his might, catching Paris off balance and off guard. The edge of the door slammed into her face, whipping her around, and Paris howled and grabbed at her broken nose. Stanley moved like white on rice. Leaping onto her front porch he hurled himself over the side rail and, barefooted and bare-assed, took off bounding toward Jerome Avenue.

  Paris wanted to rush down the steps and chase him, but she could barely open her left eye, and her right eye was flooded with blood. It would take more than a few stitches to close the gash her teeth had made when the stranger split her lip, and her broken nose made breathing terribly painful.

  Instead she slammed the door closed. This time she locked it. Once again she’d been beaten and brutalized and no doubt she looked like a bat out of hell, but this time she felt damned good. She’d finally stood up for herself and somehow she felt stronger. She felt brand-new.

  Shit, she told herself. If I can jack that giant motherfucker up, then William better watch his ass. The next somebody to pass a goddamn lick up in here will be me! For years she’d been sexually degraded and physically abused, but now emotionally and mentally, Paris was free. There would be no more rape or torment in the house where she paid the mortgage. Never again would William put his hands around her neck, his knife to her throat, or his dick in her face!

  Or anywhere else on her body, for that matter.

  There are gonna be some changes around here, she vowed. Some big-time changes! For one thing, she was moving her art studio back upstairs to the spare room. Today. And if William didn’t like it he could let the doorknob hit him in the ass on the way out. And as for dinner tonight, his mama could wait on that nana puddin’ until the cows came home.

  Paris commanded her body to move and limped into the bathroom. She scrubbed the stranger’s blood from her hands using some Clorox she found under the sink. In the medicine cabinet she saw the makeup kit she used to camouflage the black eyes, busted lips, and the random assortment of bruises that were always impossible to explain to her friends. Concealer, pressed powder, foundation, rouge, all of it got flung into the trashcan. She was too pretty for makeup anyway. Or at least she used to be. Paris raised her eyes to meet her battered reflection in the mirror but she did not flinch. Blood continued to trickle from her right nostril, and there was a dry film coating her swollen lips. A shudder of revulsion ran down the small of her back.

  He stuck his dirty dick in my mouth!

  Without hesitation she diluted a half a cap of bleach with a cup of warm water and sloshed it around in her mouth, then rinsed with cold water. She splashed a final handful of water over her face and neck, and dabbed at her wound with a soft pink towel.

  Every muscle in her body screamed as Paris crept into her kitchen and opened the freezer. She stood there silently; fighting her emotions as the cold air washed over her. Reaching inside, Paris grabbed a frozen bag of vegetables. Her tears melted the ice crystals as she pressed the frozen peas gingerly to her broken nose. What the hell am I crying about? She admonished herself. For once, I fought back! I even came out on top!

  Yeah. There were gonna be some real changes around here.

  Paris flung the frozen vegetables back into the freezer and bent down to retrieve the kitchen knives from their hiding place under the sink. Discarding the plastic bags, she tore the tape from the shoebox and, one by one, she stuck the knives into the wooden holder, then slid it over next to the toaster. That done, she shoved her husband’s high-backed armchair out of its position and replaced it with her smaller low-backed version, and then she sat down at the head of her kitchen table and smoked one of William’s cigarettes as she waited for the police to arrive.

  Tracy Price-Thompson is the Essence bestselling author ofBlack Coffee (Random House, 2002), Chocolate Sangria (Random House, 2003), A Woman’s Worth (Random House, 2004), and Knockin’ Boots (Random House, 2005). A Brooklyn, New York native, Tracy holds undergraduate degrees in business administration and social work, and a masters degree in social work. In addition to her novels, Tracy is also the co-editor of the major anthology, Proverbs for the People (Kensington, 2003). She can be reached at tracythomp@aol.com.

  THE LONELY ECHOES OF MY YOUTH

  D.V. BERNARD

  It wasn’t until about two days after the murder that the police finally found the body—and then, only after a pack of stray dogs was seen outside the building, fighting over the left arm and gorging themselves on the entrails. In the basement of the abandoned building the police found the corpse still tied to the chair—half-eaten, disemboweled and rotting in the late summer heat. Given the fact that the corpse was found in a crack house, the murder was presumed to be a drug killing. Some dazed, hapless crackheads they found on the second floor were rounded up and questioned, but only we kids had known how the body had come to be there.

  … We had all been children back then. Even our parents had been childish—in their inability to see and in their determination to remain blind. Now that I think about it, even the wisdom of our old ones had been nothing but a finely tuned acceptance of pain and disappointment. It was only many years later, when I held my newborn daughter in my arms, that the reality of the crime we had committed—and of the crime that had been committed against us—finally began to register in my mind. New life, with all its potential for accomplishment and disappointment, had suddenly terrified me. Having a child compels you to consider all the things you hated about your childhood: all the things you swore you’d do differently when you became a parent. At the same time, this is not a story about the horrors of the ghetto: about a lamentable underclass, with which we all empathize, but for whom we’ve come to believe that nothing can be done. This is not a story for tears and recriminations—nor is it one of those “feel good” stories about “the triumph of the human will.” This is simply the story of our youth—of a time that has passed, but which is always with us, regardless of if we loved it or hated it: regardless of whether we triumphed over it or became its silent victims…

  It’s strange how a child’s mind works. I took the vacant lot a few blocks from our slum for a park. I made an obstacle course out of broken bottles and piles of garbage. I constructed mounds of rubble into pirate forts and jungle gyms. Also, the abandoned buildings beside the lot, within which crackheads bought drugs (and sometimes sold their bodies and souls to low-level drug dealers) became for me Aztec temples to be
explored. Drug dealers forging fiefdoms out of America’s social blight became for me knights in shining armor—not because I idealized them, but because they were subsumed within my world of fantasy, co-opted by my imagination. Besides, as I was only six, they all left me alone. I would wander through rooms where people were having sex, and where people had guns held to their heads. I passed overdosed crackheads frothing at the mouth; I came upon drug dealers haggling with corrupt police officers, and white crackheads that had come all the way from the suburbs to share in the black man’s misery. All this and more I saw during my daily explorations of the neighborhood.

  One of the earliest memories I have is of my mother kissing me goodbye—not forever, but so that she could start her job as a live-in nanny for a family out on Long Island. My mother tried her best, but she was one of those people who grew enraged when she was sad; she lashed out at those around her when her inability to make headway in life—and to make herself happy—crushed her spirit. I must have been crying at her leaving, because she yelled at me for “being a baby.” Then, with a look in her eyes full of bewilderment and shame, she kissed me quickly on the cheek and left. I was six; my mother was 23; my father (who I learned later was one of those unfortunate drug dealers that began to abuse his own product) would have been 25 if he had still been alive.

  My mother’s little sister was staying with us. Both sisters had been castoffs from their family—disowned by their religious parents. My aunt had a six-month-old daughter whose constant crying seemed to provide the soundtrack of our lives. After my mother closed the door behind her, I joined my aunt in the living room—where she was watching TV. She was in an old bathrobe, breastfeeding her child. The weight she had gained during pregnancy had drooped disconcertingly on her small frame. She hadn’t combed her hair for the day; and as she sat there, staring meditatively at the convoluted soap opera, it was as though the child suckling at her breast were draining the life out of her. Her face always seemed drawn. Her movements were slow and deliberate; and because of all this, I was always on my best behavior around her—the way a child was on his best behavior when visiting a sick relative. On some level, I thought that I would break her if I accidentally bumped into her. I found myself whispering when I talked to her, as if fearful that I would shatter her if I spoke too loudly.