by Gabi Moore
I hadn’t been involved with the organization in months and yet it had followed me relentlessly anyway. It was only a matter of time before they found us again. Jack was right. We couldn’t keep running. We had to go back, I had to tell everyone what I knew, and we had to put it all behind us, once and for all. The thought of killing Joey felt outrageous, even to me …and yet it was the single point that all my thoughts kept converging on. His father had been shrewd. He had lived entirely on the wrong side of the law. But he wasn’t exactly evil. Joey? There was something wrong there. Something badly wrong, and I wasn’t the only one who saw it.
We had stumbled on this remote cabin two mornings ago. It was nothing but simple, rough-hewn boards pegged together and held up seemingly by moss and vines. It was amazingly well camouflaged, small, comfortable, and ideal for two. It was no bigger inside than a single bedroom, and had only a narrow wooden cot long since abandoned and a little counter where I imagined people once propped up a gas stove.
It was dark inside, and smelt like rotting leaves, but it was warm, and felt safe. Jack had fought to get me to stay here and lay low while he went off in search of food and water for us. It was an odd sensation, being so vulnerable. So dependent on him. But I agreed and the world didn’t end. In fact, it was kind of nice not having to be the one in charge for a change.
I spent the morning examining the cottage in painstaking detail and trying to find something to eat in the near vicinity. If we kept travelling West, we’d land up in town soon enough. Part of me fantasized about just staying out here though. I was getting bigger. My body felt plump and juicy, and I was horny all the time now. I just wanted to fuck him. That was all. Call it pregnancy brain, call it the honeymoon period, or blame it on that strange substance. But there was no denying it. I was different. I felt different.
I sat on the cabin steps cross-legged and did my hair up in a braid. I sang a quiet lullaby to my swollen belly, all alone. I picked a few skinny daisies and hung them inside over the “bed”. These little things felt earth-shattering to me. I no longer felt like Evelyn, the ex-mafia bitch with a bounty on her head. I wanted to just be Eve, the first woman, a fresh start, something that felt a little like forgiveness.
I wouldn’t have to kill Joey. Once I shared what I knew, there would no longer be any need to. I lay inside on the cot for a while, dozing in and out of sleep, listening to the birds. I missed him. When I heard his feet on the dried leaves outside, my heart nearly leapt out of my chest. I jumped to my feet and threw open the cabin door.
It was Joey.
Just standing there, like someone had cut and paste him from a dingy city street. He was like a black hole in front of me, like all the light around him was bent and trapped by his dark, heavy presence. I must have stood staring at him for a century. Then all at once, he sprang to action and bolted up the small path towards me. I responded, leapt back and slammed the door in front of me. But before I could swing the latch over its hook on the inside of the door, he had burst through it, sending it screaming on its hinges and thumping painfully into me. I staggered back, then stumbled for the gun I had stashed underneath the cot.
With one powerful leap, he came for me, clutched at my throat and pulled me towards him. I screamed and thrashed, but my muscles were weak. I hadn’t eaten properly in three days, and was faint and dehydrated. His arm around my neck, I could do nothing but kick backwards against him. With one solid, vicious blow he brought the ball of his fist hard down onto my back, smashing into my kidneys and leaving me to totter in pain for a moment.
I saw stars, then nothing.
When the pain dissipated somewhat I realized I was on the floor, my legs dragging across the splintered wood beneath me. I came to just as he started to loop a rough cord around my wrists and pin both my hands behind me. I was tossed into the corner like a bag of trash. Groaning, I lifted my head and tried to breathe through the scary pain now radiating out from the left side of my spine. Without the support of the cabin walls behind me, I was sure I would have blacked out and fallen over.
“Where is he? Where’s Jack,” he said at last. I looked up and saw him peering down at me, his breath coming in unhealthy sounding rasps.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. My only thought was the baby. That I had been too weak. That my body hadn’t been enough to protect it…
“Liar. Tell me where he is,” he said again. My vision cleared and I lifted my chin to him. His hair was disheveled and his skin had a waxy, sick look to it. His eyes were wide and crazy looking. He must have come at an incredible speed to have caught up to us.
“If you’re going to kill me, just do it already.” I was too weak to fight. Too tired. I was done with violence, done with the blood and the hurt and the killing.
“Oh, I plan to,” he said casually, and took a step towards me.
“But what’s the rush? You always were so keen to end our little chats, to run off. Why?”
I said nothing. Jack could be a few minutes from the cabin. Or he could be miles away.
“I thought you were dead, actually. But I’m glad you’re not,” he said, crouching down onto his haunches and looking at me, struggling to breath, bound in the corner.
“Why?”
“Because we have unfinished business, don’t we?”
His smile revolted me. It looked like it even revolted him. The thought of having this man touch me again sent a deep wave of nausea through me. I should have killed him when I had the chance. Should have spared everyone. He looked around at the interior of the cabin with interest, then back at me, ogling the soft swell of my abdomen. My muscles felt like they had been wrung out dry.
“You and I were always meant to be, that’s what I think, Evie. You understand life. You understand death. You’re a woman, but you know how to think…” he said in a quiet voice.
I did nothing to conceal my grimace. He reached into his pocket and I winced, but he only pulled out a small cigarette tin, one with a small, faded picture on the front. Delicately, like he was dealing with something unspeakably precious, he opened the tin, dipped in his pinky finger and lifted the brown powder to his nostril and snorted hard. He repeated this process on the other side.
“What’s that?” I asked, although I had a strong suspicion I already knew. He smiled, closed the lid and gently tucked it away in his jacket again. He thought carefully for a moment, his gaze to the floor before he looked at me again. It wasn’t just my imagination. The change in him was almost instant. I couldn’t say why or how, but he had become a demon. I felt a tear roll down my cheek as I watched something like a dark cloud move over his expression.
His eyebrows kinked and furrowed as he looked at me, and watched another tear roll down my face. I was no stranger to the darker side of humanity. I wasn’t afraid of death or violence. But what I saw in his face was truly the most frightening thing I had ever witnessed.
“You came here with him, didn’t you? With that guy?” he said. I just wanted it all to end. “But what’s wrong with me, Evelyn? Why not me?” his voice was so low I wasn’t sure I hadn’t just imagined the words. I squirmed to try and look away, but he leant in closer.
“What did I do wrong? What did I have to do? You were always so cold, always so cruel.”
He had finally found me, he was standing a few inches from my face and could have killed me there and then, and this is what he wanted to say to me?
“There’s nothing wrong with you Joey. But you’re sick,” I said. I could tell he was listening intently to every word.
“I’m sick,” he said, as though trying the words on for size.
“I’m pregnant, Joey. Please don’t kill me.”
He gave me a bizarre look.
“You think I’m the bad guy, don’t you?” he said.
I said nothing.
“Am I really that bad?”
For a moment, I felt overwhelmed with pity for him. I suddenly saw him as he was when he was a kid – intense, fearful, a little strange. I fe
lt so bad for him. I couldn’t help more tears from falling.
“I’m sorry, Joey. I don’t know how we got here. I just know I don’t want to do this again. No more killing…”
Slowly, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a pistol, then looked down at it like he had never seen it before in his life. He was mad. Anybody could see that, psychic mind-reading powers or not. He lifted the barrel of the gun and carefully pressed it to my sternum. I couldn’t slow my breathing as I looked down at it, pressing straight between my breasts.
“Do you love him?” he asked, voice husky, like he was drunk.
Jack. My sweet, beautiful Jack. The man who had loved me enough to blast through my walls of self-defense.
“More than anything,” I whispered. The words seemed to sting him. He leant even closer still, and reached out his hand to grab my chin. He began examining me, like an alien trying to find out where exactly this “love” was stored and how. He turned my face over this way and that, a look of violent perplexity in his eyes as he inspected my every feature.
“I can see you,” he said quietly.
He was high. So high. He appeared as a man in the middle of a violent religious experience. He seemed utterly overcome with what he could “see” in me.
“I know what you think of me,” he said plainly.
I thought of Jack. Of how even though he was technically a hitman, he had taught me more about mercy than anyone else. Without thinking, I leaned forward and pressed my chest wall against the barrel of the gun. I opened to him, shoulders back.
“I know you’ve been hurt, Joey, we all have, you’re not the bad guy, and things between us never worked for a reason, you need to believe me, all of this can be saved, you don’t have to do any of this.” But before I could say more he pulled the pistol back, turned it towards himself and popped it cleanly into his mouth.
When the shot rang out, the disturbed forest outside rustled and released a flock of birds. He flopped backwards. I could only see a gooey spray of his red blood strewn on the petals of the daisies I had hung over the bed.
I sat frozen for a moment, trying to wake up to the events that were unfolding around me.
Of course he killed himself.
Of course he did.
Who hated Little Joey Valenti more than he himself did? Pink Kisses unlocked deep, raw chambers of empathy and emotion inside people. What else would such a drug do to a man who was fundamentally incapable of empathy?
When I was sure that I was only imagining the sound of Jack’s footsteps running up the path towards me, I dug deep and found the energy to lift myself up. As I did, a sharp, angry pain stabbed right through my stomach, winding me instantly. I doubled over in pain. The baby. Something was wrong. I heaved myself upright again and tried to breathe. The worst was over now. From here on out, there was only life. If I could just hold onto it.
Tightening my jaw, I found my footing and leaned to grab him underneath each of his armpits, then lowered down onto my haunches to drag him out of the cabin. He was heavy. As I stepped, dragged, stepped again, I left a jagged trail of blood behind him. His face looked empty now. Almost sad.
With waves of pain pulsing through me now, I pulled and pulled till his body came clunking down the front steps, then I dragged him out into the trees, his feet hanging limps and carving damp lines in the dirt beneath. An echo of the blow he’d given me just moments earlier pumped through me again. I dropped him as I involuntarily clutched at my side. I felt myself moving internally. I just knew the baby was in danger. The little one was afraid, I could tell. I had to calm down. With him still propped against my shins, I closed my eyes and tried to gather myself until the pain subsided. I would not miscarry. I would not lose the baby, not after all we’d been through together.
When I had found the right spot, I let him fall to the ground. He looked much like he did when he was alive: a shell. But something about the forgiving, mossy ground underneath him and the way the forest sounds carried on regardless made me snap to attention again. I ran to where I had found a crude shovel a few hours before, and came back to start digging. I wasn’t going to bury him because I was ashamed. It wasn’t because I needed to hide his body. It was that he was dirt in my life, and this was the way to clean him. In him went it all – the brutal past, the running, the bloodshed. I hoped he took it all with him once I pressed him deep down into the earth.
I dug for what felt like hours. The pain inside stopped and I began to feel invigorated. I was tearing up the skin on my palms with each thrust of the shovel, but I didn’t care. The hole grew in size and the soil gave way easily. When it was deep enough I knelt down to roll him inside, and he flopped down into his grave, face first. I threw the shovel down onto his back and proceeded to kick the huge pile of sand over him.
When this was done, I tamped it down firmly with my feet; not quite dancing on his grave but I forgave myself that interpretation. I threw some moss and twigs down over the bald patch and sat for a moment, directly on top of him, feeling how absolutely still everything was. How he would never be coming up from there again. Then something caught my eye. Yellow and red in the bushes. I walked over to see the cigarette tin – it must have fallen from his pocket when I dragged him over.
I stroked my fingers over its rusted surface for a second, but then opened it and scattered the fine brown powder all around me. It hung weightless in the air for a moment before the soft forest air carried it away. I put the case back in my pocket, put my hand on my belly and waddled back to the cabin.
Chapter 18 - Jack
“I’m huge!” she wailed.
“You’re gorgeous.”
She stood side on to look at herself in the mirror, arching her back to make her pregnant belly look even more pronounced. In truth, Evie was the tiniest pregnant woman I’d ever met …but she wasn’t exactly used to carrying around passengers.
I lay back on the bed, propped on my elbows, and admired her new figure. She was short, with a fierce little build and long, strong hair. It’s true, she looked like she fit in a Charlie’s Angels film and not on the cover of a baby magazine, but I admired her all the same.
“I’m going to put something else on,” she said and walked back to the closet to rummage through a few items. I was sick of the hotel rooms. Sick of the hideaways and fake names and extreme caution. But it was necessary. Until we left, there was no point in taking on any extra risk. Not with Evie due in just a month.
She came back to standing in front of the mirror and looked at her reflection again. Most of what she owned was black and form-fitting, so I couldn’t really tell the difference. But she fretted some more, twisting around and trying to pull the fabric flat down over her middle.
“What about this?”
“Yup, still gorgeous,” I said. She frowned at me, grabbed the hem of her black dress and pulled it high over her head. I couldn’t help myself. I jumped off the bed and ran over to her, looped my arms around her waist and started kissing her soft, bare cleavage just above her bra.
She tried to swat me off but then relaxed and let me kiss her, tossing the dress through the air so it landed in our almost fully backed bags.
“This bra really has its work cut out for it, doesn’t it? I swear your boobs have grown a whole size since this morning,” I said and flashed her a naughty grin. She smiled back, her arms resting on my shoulders.
“Oh, they definitely have. But like I said, you can take your elephant of a girlfriend on a lingerie shopping spree or we can get me onto that plane before I pop, there’s no time to do both.”
I lowered my head onto her warm, sweet chest and tried to hear her heartbeat. She still had that soft, freshly-showered smell in her hair. Her skin felt like satin under my rough hands. I don’t know how she did it. How she managed to be so soft and yet so tough at the same time.
“Do you even have to wear clothes, though? I hate clothes. Let’s just forget about clothes forever,” I mumbled and let my hands play over her smooth body
.
“What a great idea! You can go first though. Let’s see what she thinks when she comes to pick us up,” she said and kissed my head. I buried my head in her pillowy breasts again and groaned. It had only been two weeks since I had found her alone in the cabin, scrubbing blood from the sleeve of her shirt and smiling strangely. Yet it felt like we had spent forever like this, in temporary rooms, flitting from one motel to the next, living out of bags...
I was scared, I admit it.
The weird truth was that Evie and I barely knew one another at all. We had never been on a single date. I didn’t know her family and she didn’t know mine. She was five years my senior and so far our shared activities leaned strongly towards the murderous and illegal. We had been brought together by strange, traumatic experiences and part of me was afraid that the moment we stopped to rest in a quiet, normal life, we’d both realize we’d made a mistake.
And yet, here we were. Our final motel stint and in a few months, another little being that I barely knew was going to push itself into my life, and everything would change again. I had tried to talk to her the night before. Tried to ask her about that day in the cabin, about what happened between her and Joey …but she wasn’t ready to talk yet. Part of me agreed – hadn’t he taken up too much space in our lives already?
“Seriously, though, are you all packed up?” I asked, and held her at arm’s length so I could look at her face again. Hugging her meant hugging the baby at the same time. If fatherhood came to me as easy as loving her came to me, then there’d be no problem, I guess.
“I’m ready. Got the most important thing with me,” she said and tapped her belly.
There was nothing to do now except wait for our lift to arrive. Nothing except…
I pulled her back in towards me and embraced her again, but this time differently. This time with a suggestion in my hands, with an invitation. Her hands slowly went to my body and stroked my flanks. We hadn’t made love since that night in the forest. There had been so much going on. She had felt faint. Fatigued all the time. I didn’t want to push anything. But here she was, and her hands seemed to flitter over my skin and respond to my caresses.