by Paula Cox
“I . . . I can’t. I’m sorry, Brat.”
He starts the engine, and before I can say another word, screeches out of the parking lot.
I’m left here, angry, confused, annoyed. Annoyed with myself mostly for letting it slip at a time like that, but also annoyed with Slick for running away.
But there’s nothing I can do but pull up my panties and call a cab, which is what I do.
I know one thing for sure: there’s no way I’m telling Heather about any of this.
Chapter Nine
Slick
They kept us in a cold dark warehouse on the outskirts of the dock proper. When I pressed my ear to the wall of my cell, I could hear the sloshing of water and the shouting of men and the crunching of crates. But no matter how much we shouted—and we did shout, all forty of us—nobody ever came to check. Either the Flaming Skulls had sound-proofed the place or they’d paid the dock authorities to ignore the empty warehouse where nobody ever strayed. It didn’t matter to me; my world was the same either way. In the morning somebody pushed a plate of slop through the gap in my cell, I ate, and then I read. At lunchtime, it was the same, and it was the same at dinnertime, too. Over and over. Reading, eating, sleeping. The only time there was a break in the routine was when the Skulls wanted to have some fun.
It was about six months into my imprisonment when I first got my hands really dirty: when I was forced to get my hands dirty. A man wearing a mask—all those bastards wore masks—barged into my cell one day with a shotgun aimed at my face. He dragged me by the collar of my ragged shirt and brought me into the warehouse storage area, a huge empty cavern where all forty of us were gathered. We were enemies of the Skulls, or just playthings: bikers, like me, or personal enemies of the Skulls’ members, or just people picked up to have some fun with, programmers and cleaners and teachers, civilians. We were all forced to sit on the floor for a long time, perhaps around half a day, with nothing to eat, shivering ’cause it was the middle of winter and this place had no heating. Masked men surrounded us, each one holding a shotgun, each one willing to fire if anybody tried anything. They’d proved that before.
Finally, he came out. I had no clue which he he was, but it was the Masked Man. The normal masks the men wore were just balaclavas. The Masked Man wore a full-face tribal mask carved from wood with a deranged smile and two pointed horns. Only his eyes and lips were visible through the mask. This, with his voice, proved that the man changed. But it didn’t matter; each Masked Man was a fucking animal.
I was in agony as we sat there on the concrete. Just two weeks before, I’d been cut with a machete like butcher’s meat, and just a week before that, I’d been shot. I was fucked, sure I was gonna die, certain I was near the end. They wanted me to ride with ’em in exchange for the torture to stop, but I was holding out—for now. At first I was going to agree, until I learned riding with them would give me no chance of escape. They already had a traitor with them, and he was guarded twenty-four-seven from what I’d heard on the prisoner grapevine. Anyway, I couldn’t betray the club, not my father’s club, not Brat’s club. I was a brave goddamn bastard: a brave goddamn idiot.
The Masked Man stood in front of the shivering prisoners, raised his hands like a warped version of a preacher, and shouted over us:
“Listen to me, you fucking rats. I am getting sick and tired of listening to your weeping every goddamn night of my goddamn life. Seriously, do any of you have any self-respect left? Do any of you understand what it is to be a man, and not a goddamn joke? Half of you are babies, not men, and the other half are barely better than that. So, since your crying is the worst thing I’ve ever been forced to listen to, I’ve come up with a way to sort it out. See, we Skulls get shit done, not like you wasted rats, you pieces of shit. Here’s what we’re going to do: cut our numbers down.” When he said this, the prisoners started to grumble and panic. They shut up when the Masked Man fired a shot into the air. “Don’t worry,” he went on, waving his pistol. “I’m a fair man—we’re all fair men—so we’re going to allow you to fight for your lives. We’re not monsters, you know. Twenty versus twenty, one by one, and whichever team destroys the other team first, wins!” Before anyone could protest, he waved a hand at the guards. “Okay, get them up and split them into teams.”
Somehow, I managed to climb to my feet, my body wracked with agony, my back burning from the bullet hole and the machete cut only just starting to heal. I limped to the left of the cavern, joining a huddle of shaking and terrified men. Looking across to the right, I saw that I’d been put on the weaker side. My team was made up of what looked like accountants and office workers: pudgy, thin, weak men, men who have never had to fight a day in their life. On the other side of the room, the bikers gathered, already limbering up.
I wanted to give some speech, but what sort of damn speech can you give to the inhabitants of hell? Anyway, I was in too much pain for any kind of heroics, so I just waited for the guards to pick the first two fighters. The selection was made quickly and one of the bikers went up against the man who looked like a banker, with his wire-frame glasses and torn business shirt. I reckon he’d slept in that shirt for a few months at least.
The fight went the only way it could, with the biker pommeling the man into the concrete. When the victor had been declared, one of the guards fired a shot into the loser’s head for good measure, and then dragged his body away. I was lucky; I wasn’t chosen until the other team had been whittled down, mostly by luck, to around fifteen. Two bikers remained on their side. The rest were the same as my side, civilian types. A shotgun prodded me between the shoulder blades, pushing me toward the center of the room, and the Masked Man shouted out: “Ah, what a battle we have in store for us! Look here, a Road Rager will now face a Hanged Man! A fight for the ages!”
The man opposite me was wide, and burly, and looked like he knew how to handle himself. His nose was flat from where it had been broken in a dozen places, and his lips were cracked and creviced from lack of water. I wondered if I looked as fucked as him.
“Fight!”
He charged at me, and instinct kicked in. I don’t reckon I’ll ever know how the hell I fought this man so quickly, so efficiently. He was bigger than me and he didn’t have two wounds dragging him down, and yet as he came at me, I ducked the blow, spun around, and elbowed him in the back of the head. Survival urged me on, and I launched myself at his back as he staggered, gripping his neck and tackling him to the floor before smashing his face repeatedly into the concrete.
“Wow!” the Masked Man called. “What a hero!”
I stood up, panting. My back had started to bleed again. I began to limp toward my team’s side of the cavern, grateful for a rest. But then the Masked Man roared: “Get that one back in the fight! I want to see how long he can go before he falls!”
I had no choice but to return to the bloodshed, the violence. I had no choice but to fight the next man. It started as a joke for the Flaming Skulls and the Masked Man. They thought that I’d fight a couple of men and then my wounds would take me. I thought the same thing; I didn’t think I could go for as long as I did. But at some point, I switched off my mind and I ignored the pain and I let my body take over. I just fought: biting, punching, spitting, hissing, growling, bloody, dirty fighting. I fought and I killed. I lost myself in an ocean of blood. Each time I beat a man, more blood was added to my face, until I was completely covered in it, head to toe, slick with it. My mind distanced itself, and my wounds screamed in agony, and yet I fought on. At first, the Skulls laughed in the way a bully will laugh at his victim putting on a bit of a show. Then the laughter stopped and was replaced with eerie curiosity. Finally, grim fascination came over them.
Toward the end, after I had killed all but two of the other team, the men limping out were scared to face me, despite how I wobbled on the spot, despite how exhausted I was. They would say things like, “I have children.” But it was them or me. I knew that just by looking around. I knew that just from the bar
rels of the guns, staring me down.
And—and—
“No, no, no,” I mumble, bolting upright, the image of the poor fucker’s face still cemented in my mind. He was just some guy, just some normal goddamn guy from a normal goddamn life, and I beat his face into the ground and they shot him right in the head. “No.” I shake my head, climbing out of bed, and begin to pace up and down my bedroom.
This apartment is small, not much good for pacing, but I have to keep moving. If I stop, if I let the dreams catch up, they’ll haunt me for the rest of the life. The clock tells me that it’s three in the morning. I sit on the edge of the bed, foot tapping. A few apartments over, somebody is having sex. Out in the street, a cat screeches. My room is dark except for the light of the digital clock and a pale shadow of moonlight on my drawn blinds. The memory returns to me, of how I punched that man’s face into pulp. And then . . .
I had no choice but to ride with them. It was ride with them, or die. They called me the Beast, and they said they wouldn’t put the Beast back in a cage, but neither would they allow the Beast to go free. So I rode with them, and I did the fucking Skulls’ bidding, and I wore their patch. I clench my fists, hating myself, hating the memories. And when Grizzly came up, they’d put me back in the cage, all for show, all for goddamn show.
I was powerless. Powerless. Weak. Alone. Afraid. Before the imprisonment, the pain, the death, I thought I was invincible. It’s a violent reckoning for a man to find out just how wrong he is about that.
“I will never be powerless again,” I mutter, lying back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. “I will never be a pawn again, for the rest of my fuckin’ life. I will become VP. I will climb the fuckin’ ranks.”
I often do this after I wake from the nightmares: reassure myself by repeating what I will do, repeating it just as I did every night when I was under the Skulls’ watch. I was allowed to sleep in a bed, eat food, build myself up, but at all times there were three men guarding me, and I was never allowed to hold a gun.
“No,” I mutter bitterly, wishing that I could wipe my memory of all the awful shit I did, and knowing that I’ll never find forgiveness for it, not even with Brat, despite what she might say. “No, they wanted the Beast to use his hands, didn’t they? Like a fuckin’ animal.”
I take my cell from the nightstand. Bri still hasn’t returned any of my calls or texts. Guess she’s pissed.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” I whisper, sitting up and staring down at my hands.
I know it’s the darkness, but for a moment I’m sure they’re dripping with blood.
Chapter Ten
Slick
I try and go back to sleep for a while, but I know it’s no good. The memories are too much to handle alone at night; when I’m just lying there, it’s hard to think of anything else. So I go into the kitchen—through the bare apartment, without even a TV or a couch—and make myself some coffee. I try not to think about Seattle, and so instinctively my mind turns to Brat, as it always does. It’s been a week since the parking lot, a week in which she’s avoided me at every turn. I guess she’s angry, I reflect as I sit on the one stool I own, drinking my coffee, thinking. Angry at the way I left . . . But she doesn’t know what having a kid means for a man like me. How can I, the Beast, the blood-covered animal, have a kid? How can somethin’ as precious as a child belong to me?
The coffee swirls around my head, waking me up, as I wonder what the hell Bri was thinking not telling me the kid was mine right away. I had my suspicions, sure, but why wouldn’t she just come out with it? Why would she let it linger like that for so long? How can she be so damn pissed with me when she sprung it on me like that, out of the fuckin’ blue? I know one thing for certain: if she says the kid is mine, the kid is mine. Brat would never lie about a thing like that.
After my coffee, I start working out with my free weights. Bench-press, dumbbell-press, bicep-curl, sit-ups, triceps-extensions, pull-ups, over and over, until it’s six in the morning and the sun is beginning to rise, people in the apartments around me stirring into action, opening and closing doors, whistling kettles, turning on radios and TVs. I take a shower, focusing on Bri, just Bri, and thrusting aside any thoughts of blood and the Beast, the Masked Man and the Flaming Skulls’ leather I was forced to wear.
I need to speak with Bri, ’cause she’s the only one, when you get right down to it, who I can count on. There’s Spike, and a couple of the fellas Grizzly gave to me, but Brat has been with me for decades, my friend, and then my admirer, and then my lover. I need her. Without her, I reckon these nightmares will take me over; I reckon that, if I had to go on without Brat, I might be nothin’ more than the Beast they made me.
I return to my bedroom, get dressed, and then look down at my Road Rage leather. I was a damn fool to leave it at the bar, but Spike’s a good kid. He brought it to me the next day, and Clint and Grizzly were none the wiser. Still, as I stare down at it, laid on my bed ready for me to put on, I get the sense that I shouldn’t even be allowed to wear it anymore. I’ve thought this a few times since I returned. Whereas when I was a kid I never doubted that I’d one day join the MC, now, after everything I’ve done, I feel dirty as I pull the jacket on. I tell myself I was forced to do those things, tell myself there were three guns to my head when I rode with the Skulls, tell myself there were dozens of guns on me when I bathed in blood. But petty self-told words ain’t much use when you’ve got an aching in your chest like your heart is trying to kill you.
Pushing all my feelings down—’cause in the end, that’s all a man like me can really do—I pull on the jacket, and then pull on my boots. I need to see Brat; I need to talk with her. I shouldn’t have left her like that, just up and rode away like I’m some sort of monster . . . but that’s the point, I reflect with a bitter laugh. Brat is precious, beautiful, funny, untouched by the bad shit that lurks in the dark. How can a man like me, a Beast, ever truly be with a woman like that—
“Stop it,” I growl, making for the door. “Just fuckin’ stop it.”
By the time I leave, it’s around seven in the morning. I go to a diner and eat a small breakfast with a side of black coffee, tossing it back, letting the caffeine do its work. Drinkin’ too much coffee, lately, but it’s all I can do to fight off the tiredness, the never-ending tiredness because those damn nightmares never leave me be. When I leave the diner, the sun has fully risen, bathing Denver in light, and as I ride toward the clubhouse, I begin to feel a little less dark. The nights are always the worst; the nights drag me back into the past. The days, I can deal with.
I haven’t checked for Bri at the clubhouse this past week, though it’s obviously the best place to check for her. Clint still has it out for me, and I prefer the Irishman to handle my business. But I can’t go another week, hell, another day, without seeing Brat. We need to hash this shit out. I need to let her know that, if she’ll have me, I’ll try and do right by her and the kid. I don’t know how good I’ll be at it, but I’ll give it a go. Maybe I won’t be the hands-on type, but I can provide for the kid, at least, make sure she never wants for anything. That’s gotta count for something, hasn’t it? And when I’m VP, I’ll be able to provide for her all the more. I’m going over all of this, trying to get it straight in my head, when I pull into the clubhouse parking lot. The lot is almost empty except for the bikes of the men who stay in the dormitory. I step off my bike, nicely sore from my workout, and make my way across the lot to the garage.
When I see Brat, my breath catches. I’m not really the breath-catching sort of guy, and anyway I thought all that sentimental stuff was taken from me in Seattle, but when I see her, back turned to me, hair all mussy around her head, I can’t help it. It’s still a shock to see her like this, a proper woman, with her long hair and her curvy body. But that’s not the only thing that shocks me; she has her back to me, hunched over, cradling something which is either a tool or a baby. And the last I checked, tools don’t make cooing noises. I take a step forward, quietly
, not wanting to disturb the scene. For a while, I just watch.
“Who’s my little angel?” Bri says, giggling.
The little angel in her arms giggles right back.
“Who’s my little angel?” Bri brings her face close to the baby’s, and the baby giggles even louder. It’s a sweet sound—and a terrifying one. Sweet ’cause I know that the angel making it is mine, came from me, and terrifying for the exact same reason. She can’t be giggling so sweetly, not something that came from me. Something that came from has to be bad, surely, has to be fucked just like I’m fucked.
“Brat,” I whisper.
Bri starts, and then turns with the child in her arms. The girl is wearing a pink onesie and a cape of some kind made out of soft-looking fabric. Her hair is thin, and the same coppery-ginger colors as Brat’s, but her eyes are what capture me the most. They are wide, and blue: sky-blue, just like mine. I stare at those eyes for what feels like minutes, but is truly only seconds, and the girl stares right back. There is something tragic about the way the child stares at me, as though she can almost comprehend who I am, as though somewhere in there is an instinct calling out to me. Or maybe that’s only my imagination. Maybe that’s only wishful thinking.