Of course, no one blamed Hunter. Hunter was dead, therefor Hunter was also an American War Hero and how dare you, Kyla Catherine Rose, try to put the blame on an American War Hero?
I hid at home for a few weeks, crying mostly. Crying over Sammy, crying over Hunter, crying over myself. I honestly thought everyone would get over what I did. They didn’t. A month later, I still couldn’t go outside without being scorned by every Nintipian who saw me. The town kept the flags at half-mast, as if just to remind me that I was an evil witch. It goes without saying that I was having the worst summer of my life.
I hoped things would get better as soon as I left for college. New town, new people—a place where no one knew my name. Well, that hope was short lived. A week before I was supposed to move, my college advisor called and told me my scholarships and my acceptance had been revoked. One of my old high-school teachers called and claimed I cheated on my S.A.T. So much for college. So much for my dream job working for NASA.
I wasn’t religious by any stretch of the imagination, but I was starting to think someone up there was trying to send me a sign. The night I lost my college ticket, my dad called and told me his friend needed a new bartender at the bar he owned. Within the span of a day, I went from hopeful astrophysicist in Houston to bartender in Nintipi.
Somehow, life continued going downhill from there. Winter came and I thought things were finally starting to get better. I thought wrong.
I was working the night shift at the bar. A tourist came in, visiting from Poland. She was a butch woman. She was a lesbian. I knew, because she told me about sixteen times. I asked her what she was doing in Nintipi, but she didn’t say. She just kept asking if I was a lesbian.
Three drinks in, she was up on stage singing karaoke. She wasn’t bad, either. I was surprised to hear her nail the Joni Mitchell high notes. After five drinks, she was searching the bar for a woman. Unfortunately, I was the only other woman in the bar. The liquor turned her into one horny Polish lesbian.
“Have you ever thought of being with another woman?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, I—I’m not—”
“No, no. Not me. Just in general with women.”
“Oh, no.” I laughed.
She lowered her eyebrows and scowled. “Why are you laughing?”
“I don’t know. I just… I just like men. I have nothing against women or lesbians or no one.”
She smiled. “You like what you like.
She was the first patron to chat with me since I started working at the bar. She was the first patron to leave a tip. And she was the first patron who had no idea I cheated on an American War Hero. But it was refreshing to have someone to talk to for the first time in what felt like years. We bonded. “You aren’t a pussy-eater, then?” she asked.
“I’m sorry—I just prefer men.”
“Fine! Then tonight, we find you a man to take you home.” Before I could respond, she was up on her feet, scanning the bar for my future partner.
My heart fluttered into my stomach. “No—that’s okay—really.” It was hopeless.
“Nonsense. Excuse my blunt, but you need to find a man.” She said it more like a demand than a suggestion. “You’ll go home with a man tonight.”
My stomach turned. It had been four months since Sammy died, but I still wasn’t ready. The town hadn’t gotten past it yet, so how could I? But maybe the vibrant Polish lesbian was right, maybe no one would get over what happened until I forced myself to move on. Would moving on make me a horrible person? Even more horrible than I already was? How long would I have to wait? How many months? Years? Would it ever be okay?
I opened my mouth to object again. “Wait—”
“—Shh!” She pointed her chubby index finger at me with an intensity that made me sink into my seat. So I let her wander off into the bar to find me a date. And it didn’t take her long. I’m not sure what she said, how she talked me up, but she managed to find a normal enough guy.
He was a few years older than me and seemed charming enough. He bought me a couple of drinks. I thought we hit it off pretty well. His name was Tony, and he was kind of cute. The moment he told me he worked as a plumber, I instantly recognized him. A year before, he fixed my leaky sink. I wondered if he recognized me. And if he did, was it because of the leaky sink or because of Sammy?
He didn’t seem to recognize me. The subject of Sammy never even came up.
Not until we were already underway in his pickup truck, anyway.
For the first time in months, I felt like things weren’t going to be so bad, that people were starting to forget that I was the Witch of Nintipi.
It was my first time with a man since that night at the party. Tony was nothing special—he was no Hunter. He was kind of sluggish and he struggled with getting his angles right in the back of that truck. He grunted a lot—way too much grunting, and way too much sweating. I had a tough time working around his bony knees and his hands were cold as ice. Otherwise, he was okay, and I was having an alright time.
Until he grunted, “I’m gonna come.”
“Don’t come in me.” I held up my tits for him and his eyes lit up, the same way Sammy’s would when I would make the same suggestion. I’ll never understand why men love coming on tits.
He pulled out and shimmied over top of me. He tugged his cock and held his breath. His face began to turn a shade of purple. I pressed my tits together for him. The face he made while coming was hard not to laugh at, but I held it together. It was all squished and pinched like an old Chinaman, looking into the sun.
Tony grabbed me by the hair and pulled my head forward, contorting my neck. Ouch. I tried to reach up and pry his grip loose, but he was too strong.
I didn’t know what was going on. At first, I thought it was some fetish. Then my heart skipped a beat. What if he’s trying to kill me? I wondered.
He stopped pumping his cock and he lined the tip of it up with my face. That’s when I realized what was happening.
The bastard came on my face and in my hair. In case that wasn’t bad enough, he managed to reach behind me to open the truck door. Once the final blast of his sticky load landed on my forehead, he kicked me out of the truck. I fell four feet and hit my head on the pavement. It hurt worse than the rock. At least the rock knocked me out.
“That was for Sergeant Samuel Patrick, you fucking cunt!” was the last thing I heard before the screeching of tires and the chirping of crickets.
My head was bleeding, I was covered in come, and I was butt naked, a mile from town. The term ‘walk of shame’ took on a whole new meaning that night. I thought about going to the police, but what good would that have done? They probably knew who I was, just like Tony, and would have laughed in my face. So I went home.
And I cried.
I wanted my friends back. Greg would know how to cheer me up. Hunter would make that Tony piece of shit regret so much as looking at me.
I decided to leave town for a while. I drove up to the cabin we used to go to when we were teenagers. It belonged to Greg’s uncle, who had been dead for over a decade. With Greg dead now too, it belonged to no one, and everyone who knew about it was dead. So I figured it was a good place to hide until things got back to normal. I stayed at that cabin, alone, with no electricity or internet or cell service, for a whole month.
Things never got back to normal, but they did quiet down. Thank God too, because I don’t think I could have suffered through too many more days spent cleaning raw egg off the side of my house. When I came home from the cabin, it seemed as though people had moved on to the next big gossip.
But they never forgot. Their judging glares never stopped.
Then, a year after Sammy died, I met Liam.
CHAPTER THREE
Every single person Nintipi was standing on that airstrip when our plane landed. Every single person from the next town over must have been there, too, all with their camera-phones out. The local TV crews were all there. Even a few of the major national news t
eams flew in to see me. Shit, I’d never seen a crowd so big in Nintipi—and to think they were all there for Greg and me.
Can’t blame them; I’d probably drive a few miles to see a dead guy step off a plane, too.
Everyone was shouting, but no one was clear over anyone else—though that might have been the hearing damage more than anything.
I recoiled the moment the cold air touched my skin. It’d been over two years since I’d last felt the cold, unless you count the air conditioning on the plane ride back from Congo. Five years of hot, humid, napalm-tinged air, day and night. Unlike the Kansas cold, you never get used to the Congo warmth. It always sucked.
I’d never been so happy to be freezing my balls off.
The crowd erupted when the General led me off the plane. I didn’t know who the general was—I’d never seen the guy in my life. He called himself General Anders. He was tall, skinny, and he didn’t look a day over twenty-on if he was even an adult at all. I asked him about my General, General Graves. Apparently, General Graves retired, along with Major Morley, Colonel Speck, and Captain Czervik. Everyone was retired, all replaced by a bunch of frail, pimply-faced kids.
“We’re happy to have you home,” General Anders said into my ear. Even with his lips next to my ear, I could barely hear him over the crowd.
I laughed. Happy to have me home? Who’s happy to have me home? No one gave a shit about me before I left. Why did they give a shit about me now? General Anders probably hadn’t even heard of me before I got a hold of the embassy from that little Congolese town’s radio, after I escaped the camp. He probably didn’t even know about any special ops in the Congo.
The crowd stormed towards me.
“Sergeant Sykes,” a male reporter shouted with her arm extended and a microphone in hand. “Francis Duncan, Global News. How were you able to survive in a P.O.W. camp for four and a half years?” The crowd became silent, eagerly awaiting my reply to the dumb question.
“Um,” I said. I wasn’t even trying to think of a response; I was busy scanning the faces in the crowd, trying to pinpoint people I recognized. So many of them were vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember anyone’s name. Apparently, four and a half years is enough time to forget everyone. Or maybe that had something to do with one of my many concussions.
“How were you able to escape?” a female reporter shouted. I scanned the crowd to locate her. She was younger—then again, everyone looked younger. It was as if the world paused while I kept living and aging for nearly five years.
“How’d I escape?”
“After five years, how were you finally able to escape?” she asked again. She had pretty eyes, pretty lips, pretty tits, and a pretty ass. Staring at her chest, it dawned on me that she was the first woman I’d seen in almost five years. In the Congo, the guards brought prostitutes into the camp from time to time. They were girls, too young to be called women. And they were quiet, making no noise while the guards fucked them. Probably sex slaves, just trying to survive like the rest of us.
But this reporter wasn’t a girl. She was a woman. A woman with pretty tits and a pretty ass. Hell, I’d almost forgotten what tits looked like.
“Sergeant Sykes?” the reporter said, bringing my eyes back up from her chest. Her cheeks were red.
“Huh? Um, it’s a long story,” I said.
“The world would love to hear it.” She was sexy, or maybe four and half years in a P.O.W. camp just lowered my standards.
Four and a half years—Jesus. That’s how long it’d been since I’d fucked. That’s how long it’d been since I held a woman’s tits in my hands or felt the inside of a pussy with my cock. “Really?” I said. I tried to picture the woman naked.
“Absolutely,” she said.
“Okay.” I thought for a moment. “They put one of their new guards on night duty. He was just a kid—probably fourteen or fifteen years old. Kid was trigger happy, liked to shoot his gun at our feet to remind us he was in control.” The crowd was silent while I spoke. “We waited for the kid to run out of ammo. He did, so we jumped him. I held him, Greg grabbed the kid’s knife and stabbed him.”
The crowd gasped like I figured they might. I don’t know what they expected to hear when they asked me how I escaped a goddamned P.O.W. camp in a war-torn, third-world country.
“We reloaded his gun, took out the two guards at the back gate—they were just kids, too.”
General Anders grabbed my arm harder than I thought his childish hands would be able to. He leaned his lips over to my ear. “That’s enough, Hunter.” He turned around to his military entourage. “Matt…” he said to a man in a sleek black suit.
All of the faces in the crowd were pale, except for the few that were green.
Matthew Bremkin, the military’s lawyer, stepped in front of me and held his hand up to draw the crowd’s attention. He was the only guy in the little military entourage that was older than me, but even he wasn’t that much older. “There will be a press conference later tomorrow afternoon. Sergeant Sykes will be happy to answer your questions then. Now, as you can imagine, he’s very tired and is looking forward to getting some rest and reconnecting with friends and family. I’d like to ask that the press gives Sergeant Sykes some much needed privacy over the next few weeks.” Matthew began walking away, motioning for us to follow him.
Of course, the crowd of reporters didn’t listen to him. Everyone swarmed us on our way to the escort vehicle. It wasn’t until Matthew was holding the car door open for me that I realized Greg wasn’t with us; he was still on the plane.
“Why isn’t Greg coming?” I asked.
“Greg’s going straight to medical. We don’t think it’s a great idea he’s around crowds just yet,” General Anders said.
“Why?” I asked.
“Come on, Hunter,” he said, motioning for me to get in the car. “Let’s get you home. We’ll worry about all that later.” He nudged me towards the car.
Then, I saw her standing far back from the crowd.
Kyla Rose.
I recognized her face instantly. Like the rest of them, she didn’t look a day older than she looked the night before I left, the night we fucked. I was starting to think that the world did pause while I was gone. She even had that same broken expression as when we boarded the plane that next morning, as if she never even left the airstrip.
But damn, she was sexy. She made that little reporter with the perky tits look like a goddamn emu. She just stood there, looking pretty without even trying, her long hair flowing with the cool breeze.
I wondered if she knew about Sammy, or if she came down hoping he would step off the plane with Greg and me. General Anders told me that everyone thought we were all dead. It wasn’t until the night before we left the Congo that they made it public, that there were survivors.
Kyla shook her head and turned to leave. Was she mad at me? What did I do?
“Hunter, let’s go,” General Anders said, nudging me again.
As I stepped into the escort vehicle, I caught one last glimpse of the tight, young reporter. I was trying to remember if I’d ever fucked her before.
CHAPTER FOUR
I don’t know why I went down to that airstrip. I don’t know what I was hoping to see. I guess I just had to see him with my own eyes—see that it was true, that he really was still alive.
I didn’t think seeing him would make me so angry. So many people were down at that airstrip, friends and family of those poor, dead soldiers, all just looking for a little bit of closure. And what did Hunter do, the moment he stepped off that plane? He starts drooling over the first skimpy hoe he sees.
Even more aggravating, there wasn’t a single pitchfork in that crowd—not one lynching rope. No one cared that Hunter slept with Sammy’s girlfriend.
It took five years to shed my status as the Witch of Nintipi, and I was still dealing with the consequences of what I did.
What we did—I didn’t do it alone.
I’m
not saying I wasn’t guilty, but why did Hunter get a pass? Sammy was Hunter’s best friend. Sammy looked up to Hunter, worshipped the ground Hunter walked on. Still, Hunter stepped off that plane with a grin on his face. I guess spending a year in a P.O.W. camp gives you a pass on sleeping with your best friend’s girlfriend—
As soon as I got home, I splashed some water on my face. I wasn’t mad at him. If I’d been mad at him, I wouldn’t have gone down to that airstrip in the first place. I was mad at them. I was mad at the town. They didn’t know me. They didn’t know Hunter. And they sure didn’t know Sammy. No one knew Sammy—no one but Hunter and me. I splashed some more water on my face. Apparently, putting on a military uniform is all it takes to become an American War Hero.
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