Stay Vertical

by Layla Wolfe

  Well, well. This was definitely unexpected, but I could deal with it. I knew Lytton’s proclivities. They didn’t bother me one shred. What bothered me was the whole rack of collars. That was what got to me. That whole time, he’d had an entire collection of perfectly fine, work horse collars he could have given me. I told myself he was waiting to find something daintier, more expensive, more day-to-day wear, to give me. Or maybe he was going to get me a “Property Of” patch for my leather jacket, like the one Maddy had.

  “Well,” I muttered, “whatever.” I proceeded to rifle through stuff strewn about looking for my phone, as though the sadomasochistic furniture and devices didn’t ruffle my feathers one bit. Actually, having to slide aside Iso’s half-eaten plate of food and beer bottle bothered me more. I dreaded finding anything more personal. I knew I’d never find a toothbrush, that was for sure. Another pair of his pants lay on the floor, still partially in the shape of his body, and I was highly hesitant to go through the pockets. Maybe for some reason Lytton accidentally grabbed my phone when he left this morning?

  I must’ve jumped a foot in the air when Iso silently came up behind me. He’d gripped me by the upper arms, though, so I didn’t go anywhere.

  He growled in my ear, “You don’t want to take a joy ride? Guess I’ll have to go down the dirt road then.”

  What the fuck? Not only was he starting to scare me with his lewd suggestions, he was talking like a six year old. I managed to jam a rapid elbow into his chest and spin around. “Listen, Iso, I’m not about to lay any pipe with you! See this cuff?”

  Iso’s eyes flashed angrily. “Yeah. It’s a stupid fucking cuff.”

  “It means that I’m Lytton’s old lady now, so hands off!”

  I didn’t turn my back on him again, but I darted to the side to inspect a table littered with, ironically, cuffs, ball gags, and leashes. Some cuffs were even nicer than mine, and I remember sort of bristling that he couldn’t have even come downstairs to choose this rhinestone-encrusted one for his cuffing ceremony.

  I know—my survival instincts must have been asleep at the wheel or something. But I still wasn’t alarmed that Iso would get out of hand. I mean, I was Lytton’s old lady, and this was his house, right? They had a business partnership and Iso would ruin it for that?

  Apparently I have a gift for overestimating people. No sooner had I brushed aside a pair of Velcro cuffs—like the ones Lytton and I had used in the greenhouse—than Iso whipped them past my fingertips. He’d already fastened one around a wrist before I really comprehended what he was doing.

  He was snarling like a dog with rabies, and I cringed away from his foul breath as much as from his grime-encrusted being. “You think I give a shit whose old lady you are? I get what I want. And I fucking want you, you cunt.”

  I tried kneeing him in the balls, but for a fucked-up wasted guy, he was surprisingly adroit. He sashayed his hips aside time after time while hooking me to a strong D-ring bolted to the wall. I could still reach out with some awkward karate kicks, and Iso dodged all but one that finally connected with his groin. I was wearing the black leather cowboy boots I thought went along with my new image, and they had a firm, pointy toe.

  It was a full-on nut kick that had Iso doubled over, mouth gaping with pain. My free hand flew to unhook the cuff from the D-ring.

  Iso was faster. Rebounding from the widowmaker kick, Iso backhanded me across the face. I fell to my knees, completely stunned. Everything went black like they say in novels, and I briefly wondered if he’d severed my optic nerve or something. I was so overwhelmed with sudden fear that I didn’t protest when he took my free hand and encased it in a different kind of cuff.

  “Fucking cunt,” he muttered as he worked. “Think you’re hot shit because you’re an Illuminati whore. I told Zelov not to trust Driving Hawk. Fucking the sister-in-law of Ford Illuminati? That looks like a lowdown weasel who can’t be trusted, to me.”

  Apparently he was yanking on some rope or pulley. Now that my wrist was encased in the new leather cuff, he could pull it toward the ceiling. I was sitting on the floor with limbs splayed, my eyesight coming back. It returned like a reverse tunnel vision, clearing first in the center as though I looked through a long telescope.

  I thought of my phone, which I had seen on the table next to a ball gag. It was about six feet too far for me to grab. I was being manipulated like a marionette by some sick and dangerous psychopath.

  “There!” he chortled. “You’re not going anywhere now.”

  I knew the best reaction to dealing with instances like this was to placidly go along with things. I’d taken Peace Corps classes in diplomatic self-defense and the best course of action was to be submissive. Women who screamed and fussed and put up a fight were the first ones maimed or worse. I might not even be tasting my own blood on my tongue right now if I hadn’t tried to fight Iso.

  Playing along is sometimes the best method. I used to watch those survival shows that depicted people extricating themselves from certain death, interviews of women who’d almost been raped and killed. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, hands down, the woman who played along was the survivor. It went against every grain of my being, but I had to pretend to go along. I wasn’t exactly in any physical position to rebel.

  Of course, my spiritual conditioning had me making a few feeble attempts. “Iso. My sister Maddy is expecting me at noon. She knows I’m up here. She’ll come looking.”

  Oh dear Lord. He was unbuckling his belt. I’ll never forget—he had a hand-forged buckle with the crossed swords logo of The Cutlasses, the belt so worn the leather was practically disintegrating in spots. Displaying how long he’d been a Cutlass, I guess. “You think I care, cunt? I can just sit on the front porch and pick off anyone who drives up. You think that little girl is going to scare me?”

  As if on cue, my phone declared, “Call from Madison!” followed by the honkytonk jangling of the piano ringtone.

  Great. Just great. I knew for sure he’d toss the phone out the window or stomp on it, but he didn’t seem to care. He was too involved in taking his dick out of his jeans, and the stench was unbearable. I turned my head aside and took several deep breaths, knowing I’d have to hold it.

  “Driving Hawk thinks he can score all the fine, obedient bitches. He’s been lord of this fucking manor for years, showing off his slaves, his cunts riding up and down the mountain on his pussy pad. Then he has to go and be a woos, shoot me in the foot.”

  Iso went on and on in this manner, totally spilling scorn on Lytton. As though they hadn’t just done a job together, as though Lytton wasn’t working hand in hand with his club.

  So I dared to ask, “If you hate Lytton so badly, why do you work with him?”

  “Zelov tells us to. Hell, we’ve been trying to steal Driving Hawk’s pot for over five years now. Suddenly we’re supposed to believe he’s our friend? No, the only way that fucking blanket-ass Injun is our friend is by giving us nice tight cunt like you.”

  He grabbed a handful of my hair so tightly my eyes were forced open. Not only was I choking on the emanations of his stench, he was throttling this long twisted wiener in my direction.

  “Mungu moja,” I whispered. One God.

  “You’re gonna open wide for chunky, bitch.” I could hear Iso snarling filth as though from the end of a long tunnel. I think my survival instincts finally were kicking in, and my senses were shutting themselves down. “Suck my sugar stick, baby.”

  He rattled my head around for emphasis, and I felt as though my brains were sloshing around in my skull. He’d probably broken my nose with that fierce backhand, but it could definitely be a lot worse, if only I could open up my jaw and take—

  He rubbed the smegma-coated corona against my teeth. “That’s it, you fucking slut. You know you love it. I heard about you sucking Driving Hawk’s big dick out in the greenhouse for the whole fucking world to see. That’s all you want to do all day, give knob jobs to brothers. You’d make a perfect sweetbutt. That�
�s it, just open up and worship at the altar—Agh!”

  Maybe it was his horribly juvenile way of referring to sex acts—or in this case, acts of violence against women. I knew sex had nothing to do with forced brutality like this. My body knew it before my mind could mull it over, and automatically, my jaws clamped down around that disgusting appendage.

  It was as though I could hear or feel my teeth biting into the glans. There were definitely two or three senses at play simultaneously when my jaws did the Great White Shark around his skin flute. More liquid flooded my mouth as Iso let loose with an animalistic howl.

  Instinctively he pulled away, hollering so loud the very equipment around me vibrated. “What the fuck? What the fuck’s wrong with you, you fucking slut? Why’d you have to go and do that?”

  I spit out blood and whatever else onto the floor. I knew he wasn’t about to leave me alone. I had just enraged him.

  Every blow of his fist had me swinging about like a puppet on a string. Which, basically, I was.

  Every blow made my world darker. When he bashed my ear, I thankfully stopped being able to hear from that side. One of the last things I felt was Iso tearing my mesh tank top from my torso. He must have grabbed some implement from the wall because he was just lashing and lashing my face and torso with something that had a thousand stingers while seething angrily what mostly sounded like “Shit…fuck…cunt…”

  “Call from Madison!” my phone kept insisting cheerfully.

  I wished to hell he had smashed that phone.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LYTTON

  “Ugh.” Did I actually just say “ugh”?

  Lytton rolled onto his side and tried to pry his eyes open. They seemed to have been glued shut. Unfamiliar furniture greeted him. Tacky, eighties stuff in pastel shades that made him want to vomit. Again.

  Again? Had he already puked?

  Raising himself on an elbow, Lytton speared his fingers through his mop of hair. Where the fuck am I? And did I just really say that too? No, I think I’m just thinking it.

  Another flowered fabric-covered couch held his partner, Toby Weingarten. Lytton was amazed that Toby’s chainsaw snoring hadn’t woken him yet. I must’ve been really out. How much did we drink last night? He had known for a decade that, as at least a part Native American, he couldn’t hold his liquor. That knowledge led to his next question.

  What the fuck did we do last night?

  Lytton shoved aside the leather jacket he’d been using as a blanket and sat up dizzily. Everything must be okay if Toby was peacefully snoring away, so Lytton went back to the beginning, reconstructing events in his mind. An enormous glass carburetor bong on the coffee table gave him a clue as to their fate last night. He couldn’t take much pot, ironically. Mixing pot and booze was a surefire recipe for a blackout disaster with him.

  Okay, the back alley blowjob he’d witnessed. He’d deposited the bottles of poison in the trash bin all right. He’d met up with Toby where he’d parked his bike by The Bum Steer. They had decided to go over to the house of a good associate of theirs, Michael Bartlett, who of course everyone called Buttlick. Buttlick was a fun-loving guy, some kind of racecar driver who always had lots of women pass-arounds.

  “Why did I come here?” Lytton had an old lady. Right. June had gone back to Madison’s in P & E yesterday morning, leaving the house right after him. He had an old lady now. A pleasant feeling threatened to break through his virulent, noxious hangover when he realized I’ve got an old lady. I’d better go buy her a better collar. P & E wasn’t jam-packed with bondage stores, but he could rustle up something. Maybe a giant pink rhinestone-studded Newfoundland dog collar.

  I hope I didn’t do anything with any woman. He usually did when he partied at Buttlick’s. Boy, he hadn’t gotten that hammered in awhile, not since his foray into the world of Jack Daniels when he’d found out who his real father was. Lytton reconstructed the night before. Jack Daniels had definitely been there, and skinny dipping, and oh, someone had puked onto a keyboard. Lytton hoped it wasn’t him. He was pretty sure it hadn’t been him.

  “Hey,” croaked Lytton. “Toby McSmokesalot. Yes, you.”

  “Ugh,” Toby moaned from underneath the arm he’d flung over his face. “Is my head still attached to my body?”

  “Unfortunately, yes. Tell me something, Toby. Tell me whether I messed around with any women.”

  Toby sat up. His sleek bowl haircut was in disarray like he’d just been through the spin cycle. He looked at Lytton blearily. “Hell, I can’t even remember if I messed with any women. Now that’s sad, because that’s something I’d want to remember. The last thing I remember was trying to barbecue a watermelon. Buttlick kept insisting it was a new trend. Oh, so someone else threw some kale on the grill. Said they were inventing a new grilled salad. Where is everyone? Isn’t some Dotard bringing the weed truck up from Phoenix to A Joint Effort?”

  “Right.” It was all coming back to Lytton now, and he stood and stretched. He was wearing pants, so that much was good. “Saul should be there at three for his surprise inspection.” Suddenly he couldn’t even feel gleeful about taking down The Bare Bones. It must’ve been the hangover blues, but suddenly he didn’t want to be there to witness the whole takedown. It was enough that he’d helped in the whole scheme, but now he wanted to focus on making The Buddy System the premier dispensary in P & E. He was done with retribution. It was out of his system.

  Finding his phone in his discarded shirt pocket, he checked his voicemails. About eight from the same phone number he didn’t recognize. Iso’s name was on one incoming call from eight that morning, so he hit redial on that. “Iso. What’s up? Everything going smoothly?”

  “Sure thing, brother.” He sounded sloshed. Lytton didn’t know how that guy got around on his scoot, but he seemed to. Maybe he was a maintenance drinker. Those people drank round the clock and never seemed drunk because they had such a high tolerance for it. “We just wanted to know what time your man was showing up at A Joint Effort. I plan to be sitting out front at the coffee shop next door laughing my ass off, kicking back and watching the drama unfold.”

  Lytton chuckled without enthusiasm. He’d been planning on doing that, too. The Bare Bones had probably already noticed the abandoned Staples truck with the skeletons inside, but suddenly it seemed more juvenile than hilarious. He’d been looking forward to rubbing their faces in the fact that The Cutlasses—and him—had jacked the truck full of medical marijuana, but suddenly Lytton wanted to distance himself from it.

  June had said Ford had a good reason for killing Cropper. Maybe Cropper had murdered Ford’s mother, who knew? Lytton wanted to back off until he found out more. He didn’t regret planting the bottles of poison in the dumpster. It was still a brilliant plan. The Prospect August had eagerly taken Toby’s Assassin’s Creed flash drive from him. From what Toby said, the nerdy biker was heading right into the back room to insert a stream of nasty viruses into his accounting and security system. Everything was going off according to plan.

  “Saul’s going to be there at three,” Lytton told Iso. “I’ll probably join you for coffee and yuks, but I’m going home first. I never made it back there yesterday.”

  “Yeah, the place was silent as a grave when I left,” said Iso. “You don’t have guys working Saturday, do you?”

  “Just me, Helium Head, and Toby, usually.”

  “And no workers on Sunday?”

  “No one. Why, was anything suspicious going on? You closed the gate behind you, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. I’m not an airhead. I just saw a suspicious-looking van heading up the mountain while I was heading down. Must be nothing. You’ve got your security cameras working, anyway. Nothing to worry about.”

  Iso’s strange talk actually made Lytton worry more. He had no deliveries scheduled for yesterday. He listened to his voicemails, discovering it was Madison Illuminati behind the slew of unfamiliar phone calls. She answered on the first ring.

&nbs
p; “Hey, Madison, what’s—”

  “Lytton! Where the fuck is June?”

  “Isn’t she with you? She left my house yesterday morning, same time I did.”

  “No. She was supposed to be at my house yesterday at noon and never made it. Not answering a single call or text, either. I would’ve driven up to your house but didn’t know where it is. Are you there now?”

  The cold, panic-stricken tentacles of fear were starting to work into Lytton’s heart. He put on his plaid shirt with one arm while holding the phone between shoulder and ear. A disheveled Toby seemed to realize something was up, too. He started snapping his cuffs closed and looking for his boat shoes.

  “No. I’m at a friend’s in P & E. Listen, now you’re starting to make me wonder too. Let me text you the address and I’ll head up there right now.”

  Lytton’s brain went over every possible scenario as he rode back home with Toby on the back. He saw June as a reliable, stable person, part of her allure for him. He didn’t see her as anyone who would bail on babysitting chores for her own niece. She might’ve crashed that stupid rental car on her way down the mountain, just gone over the edge and nobody noticed. He should’ve bought her a new car. She shouldn’t be paying so much coin for such a dumpy cage. If she didn’t want a Harley, she could at least drive something more stylish, although it would have to be American made, of course.

  Lytton narrowly avoided getting a Fast Riding Award. Luckily Toby banged on his lid like a bubble gum machine to alert him there was a motorcycle cop hiding behind a ponderosa pine, so he slowed down in time.

  The front gate of Leaves of Grass was wide the fuck open. “This is not fucking good,” he yelled before he even cut his engine. Toby’s cage was there, but Helium Head’s Prius was gone. The doom and dread grew even stronger as Lytton realized Helium Head would never leave the gate open. He was only called Helium Head due to his blond ‘fro, not his forgetfulness.