He had made some changes to the place while Red was locked in the motel. He had all of the windows painted with dark paint so it was impossible to look out them. He also had iron bars installed and dead bolts put on all of the doors, basically transforming the place into a prison. There was no phone or any other mechanisms to contact the outside world. The place was virtually an isolation chamber . . .
• • •
Red looked around, taking in her new surroundings. The furnishings were nice, but not lavish. A nice leather sectional was positioned in front of a 52-inch plasma on the wall. A couple of end tables, a stocked bar and some generic pictures on the wall wrapped things up. Red spied a kitchen adjoining the living area, and her stomach grumbled.
“I gotta step out for a minute,” Bacon told her. “There’s food in the refrigerator and cabinets. You can make you something to eat. There’s some clothes for you in the bedroom.”
“Thank you,” Red said timidly.
“Oh, and just so you know, there is no phone, no Internet, no fax, no nothing,” Bacon continued. “Don’t even think about trying to contact anybody, and don’t even think about leaving.”
“Okay.” Red nodded in compliance.
Bacon held something up in his hand. “This is the key to the dead bolt.” He nodded toward the front door. “That’s your only way in and out and I control that. Understood?”
She nodded meekly.
He headed out the door.
“Good riddance, you bastard,” Red said when Bacon turned the lock behind him. She wanted to check it to make sure it was truly locked and he was gone but then thought about it. He might hear her fiddling with the doorknob and think that she was trying to escape. Red walked to the windows and examined them. Her eyebrows rose when she saw the burglar bars. Touching the darkness of the glass, she realized that they were painted over. She shook her head in disbelief. She was trapped inside but if push came to shove, she was certain that she could find a way to get out. But right now, there was no need to. There were other pressing matters at hand.
“Nigga, you think I’m broken but you got me fucked up. I’ma stay real close to yo’ ass and bring you down. Just watch, you ugly-ass nigga.”
Bacon thought she was broken, and she needed to remain close to him in order to bring him down and get her revenge. He was already trusting her enough to leave her alone. That was going to be his downfall. She smiled.
Red walked into the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. An unopened pack of sandwich meat was lying in the deli drawer. A jar of Miracle Whip, mustard and some individual cheese slices were also inside. On the counter next to the refrigerator was an unopened loaf of wheat bread. She quickly put the ingredients together and made a turkey sandwich, which she ate in four bites. Her mind told her she was still hungry, but by her not having had food in three days, that one sandwich filled her up.
Walking around the kitchen, a familiar pain struck her in between her legs. She remembered that Bacon had fucked her back at the hotel. She wanted to get his smell off of her, relax in a hot bath and take a long comfortable nap—something she hadn’t had in three days.
She made her way into the bathroom and found a Jacuzzi tub; surrounding it were many of the amenities that she was used to. Bubble baths, body salts, loofahs and expensive lotions. She grabbed two thick towels and put them on the towel rack by the tub, then poured some body salts into the tub while the water ran. The dark aqua blue water seemed to bring a serene sense to Red’s mind. She just wanted to get in and soak away.
Red climbed into the tub and let out a sigh of relief as she leaned back and turned on the water jets. The hot water felt good to her. It was totally relaxing. Soon, she found herself dozing off into a deep sleep.
When Red awoke, she found that the water had cooled significantly. She didn’t know how long she had been asleep, but judging by the temperature of the water, she knew that it had to have been for a while. Her hands and feet were pruned significantly but her body felt totally relaxed. She climbed out of the tub, wrapped a towel around her and headed out of the bathroom.
“Bacon!” she called out.
No answer.
“Bacon!” she said again, this time checking the door. It was still locked. Red walked throughout the apartment and found that she was still alone. She took that as an opportunity to search.
First she went to the kitchen and rifled through the drawers, finding nothing but a few old receipts. She then went to the bedroom, where she found nothing. Red continued to search, but then she came upon a locked door. She jiggled the doorknob again. Then she bent down to peer through the keyhole. Through her limited vision, she saw what could have been an office. Red thought momentarily, then walked to the bedroom. She looked through the closet and saw wire hangers on the rack with clothes hanging on them that Bacon had bought her. Taking one of the hangers, she carefully untwisted it then walked back to the door. Red had never met a lock that she couldn’t pick. Sticking the pointed end into the keyhole, she shook the wire around until the lock clicked. Red’s heart raced. What if he comes back while I’m in here? she thought. Just hurry up, she willed herself.
Stepping into the office, Red moved the few pictures that were on the wall, looking for a safe. There was none. She went to the desk and opened up drawers. The first two opened. She rummaged through them, but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Paper, computer disks, some porn magazines, but that was it. She tried to open the last drawer but it was locked. Again she took the hanger and stuck it into the lock. She continued to shake the pointed edge around, hoping it wouldn’t get stuck, then she pulled at the drawer. It opened. Red smiled.
Her eyes opened in curiosity when she saw what looked like important paperwork. She began to read.
“That son of a bitch!” she yelled. She’d thought Bacon was lying about the quitclaim deed to her business but he wasn’t. It was in her hand, with her forged signature. Taking a deep breath, she looked at another, smaller, piece of paper. Red became warm when she saw it. It was a withdrawal receipt written against her bank account. “How in the fuck did he get this?” she said.
She held her head back when a face came to mind. “That bitch.” She recalled that Kera worked at the bank. Somehow she and Bacon were in cahoots with each other. If it wasn’t for Kera, Red wouldn’t be in the situation she was in now. She was also the one who sent the letter that she had written to Bacon.
Red threw the papers back into the drawer, slammed the drawer closed and jiggled the lock with the hanger to relock it. Quickly she left the room and was able to lock it back as if she had never been in there. Kera was number two to be dealt with, after Bacon. Red was going to ruin that bitch’s life for real and she had an idea just how to do it. Bacon, Terry, Kera and even Sasha had all been plotting against her while she was screwing them and Red didn’t like that.
Red heard keys at the front door. It was Bacon returning. She quickly hid the hanger in the back of the closet and awaited his appearance in the bedroom.
“You wanna play games?” Red said quietly. “Let’s play.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Kera paced the floor of her apartment in tears. She couldn’t believe what she had just seen. Mekel and Terry were living as if they had never been apart and didn’t have a care in the world.
She stomped into the bathroom and turned on the faucet so that she could wash her tear-stained face. Her last conversation with Mekel about the baby played in her head over and over. She could hear him say each word all over again, blaming her for Mekel Jr.’s condition when she went to the hospital to talk to him.
“I’m glad to see you,” she said as she walked to stand next to him. When she reached out to stroke his arm, Mekel looked at her and twisted his lips. He walked over to the crib, placed his son in it and began to walk out of the door. “Wait, Mekel. Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“You already said enough,” she remembered him telling her.
“Look, just hear me out.
I was wrong for blaming you for all of this. We can’t let Terry’s actions come between us.”
Mekel looked at her then shook his head in disgust. “It goes back to Terry, huh?”
“Well, yeah.”
“You’re blaming Terry, but what about you?”
“What about me?”
“The first three months of your pregnancy. Is there something you need to tell me?”
Kera remembered that her mouth flew open but no words came out.
Mekel knew by her reaction she was busted. “This didn’t have to be, Kera, but you elected not to take care of yourself. Is this payback because I wasn’t by your side during the pregnancy?”
The memory was too hard for Kera to take. She slumped on the floor and began to cry heavily as she put her hand over her heart. She thought back to what Mekel told her.
“No matter how you felt about me and my actions, your first priority as a mother should have been protecting the baby growing inside of you.”
She remembered he tried to leave the hospital room, but she ran up to him and grabbed him by the shoulder.
“Mekel!” she remembered herself pleading. “Baby, forgive me! Please, forgive me,” she cried. She reached inside her oversize bag, pulling out her NIV Bible, and began thumbing through pages. She mouthed the scripture she found, which she memorized, and read to him. “First John, chapter one, verse nine, says, ‘If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’ Baby, let’s pray on this. Let’s pray that the Lord will deliver and release us from the grasp of the devil.” Then she quickly reached in her purse and pulled out a vial. She quickly opened it, and began sprinkling the oil around the room, saying, “Father God, please bless this safe haven and everyone in it with the strength to pull through this crisis.” She walked over to the crib and put her finger on the vial and moistened lil’ Mekel’s forehead. “Bless this child, Father God. He is Your disciple. He’s here to serve You.”
The loathing look that Mekel gave her spoke volumes. He couldn’t take it any longer. He couldn’t stand to be near Kera once he learned of her prenatal neglect. “You really need to stop with your holier-than-thou attitude. If you were so holy you wouldn’t have abused your body, oh, I’m sorry, you wouldn’t have abused the temple that the Lord gave you.” Kera’s eyes widened at his condescending tone. “You talking all that stuff about forgiveness. Yeah, I forgave.”
Kera remembered that her heart thumped happily and her eyes shone with a glimmer of hope at his words.
“I forgave Terry and she’s coming home.” Before Kera’s bottom lip could drop any further than it had, Mekel added, “Don’t worry, I’ma take care of what’s mine, but you need to go on with your life and get outta my house.” Just as he opened the door to leave, she remembered that he took one last look at her. “Don’t think I don’t know that you’ve been coming here when I’m gone. Stay away from my son, Kera,” she remembered him threatening. “Otherwise, I’ll be forced to get a restraining order against you. You can get monitored court-ordered visits when he gets out the hospital.”
Kera got up off the floor. She felt sick at the mere memory of how Mekel spoke to her. She was hurt and wanted the pain to go away. Without thinking she reached into her medicine cabinet.
“How could you do this to me, Mekel?” she cried. “If you didn’t want a baby, you should have used protection in the first place, you bitch nigga. You’re the one that got me pregnant.” She spied a razor and grabbed it. “You know he was okay until that bitch tried to kidnap him, so it’s not my fault!” she fumed. “Why can’t you see that? Why? Why!” she screamed repeatedly.
Moments later, in a calm fit, she looked down. Her eyebrows rose in shock. Blood stained the sink basin. She looked at her arm and noticed multiple razor slashes. Still grasping the razor in her hand, she slit her arm once again, bringing more blood to the surface. The cut felt good to her. It felt like she was relieving herself, opening up her body and allowing her sins to bleed out.
“Please take away my sins, oh Lord.”
She closed her red-rimmed, tear-filled eyes and exhaled deeply. The sting from the razor made her feel alive again. Kera imagined that her blood loss was purifying her and making her holy, that the sacrifice she was giving would help heal her child. Kera was determined that she was going to lay hands on her son and heal him in the name of the Lord.
“You’ll redeem me, and I will bring my child into Your bosom, Lord. I will lay hands on him in the name of sweet Jesus!” she shouted.
“I’m going to fix everything. Watch. My baby will be healed. Mekel, you won’t be mad and you will come back to me,” she said. “I know you’re only with that bitch Terry just to get back at me, but I know once things are better, you’ll come back home.”
An eerie calmness crept over Kera and quietly, she put the razor back into her medicine cabinet. She ran cold water over her wounds until they stopped bleeding, then she cleaned up the mess she had made.
Kera walked out of the bathroom and into the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of wine that she had been saving. She had turned away from alcohol since becoming deeply involved in church; but after one sermon when the preacher talked about Jesus turning water into wine, she decided that it was okay to buy a bottle from the local liquor store for special occasions. This was a special occasion. She knew that she had experienced a breakthrough epiphany from above.
Kera found her corkscrew and pulled the cork out of the bottle. Then she went into the cabinet and grabbed a wineglass and filled it. She took the glass and the bottle back into the living room with her and began to drink.
“Bless this wine, oh Lord. Let it fill me with Your blood and forgive me my sins against You.”
Kera quickly gulped her glass of wine and immediately poured herself another glass . . . and another. Soon she found herself feeling flushed and growing warm, so she began to take off her clothing. Off came her top, then her skirt, leaving only her bra and panties. She poured another glass and the warmth running through her body became almost unbearable.
Kera slid from her couch onto the floor and seated herself with her back against the sofa. She reflected on her life, her meeting with Mekel in Vegas, her pregnancy and the birth of her child. She wanted to get up but she was drunk now. “Fuck it,” she said when she tried to pour herself another glass. Her hand wasn’t steady enough, so she put the bottle up to her lips and took it to the head.
She became quite dizzy and her eyes went from left to right, watching things twirl in the room.
“I’m sorry,” she slurred.
She got up. Steady as a drunk on her feet, Kera stumbled, tried to walk, then fell. “You’ll come back to me,” she mumbled as she crawled to the bathroom. “Watch. You’ll come back.” At the sink she pulled herself up. The face that looked at her in the mirror on the medicine cabinet was not one that Kera recognized. But she didn’t care. She was in pain. Her man was gone. Her child was gone. What else did she have to lose? She opened the cabinet and grabbed the razor blade once again.
“Thank you, Lord!” she slurred loudly.
This time she took the sharp blade and slashed herself across her wrist.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mrs. Carter and Chass sat quietly by Q’s bedside. When the doctor came to alert them that Q’s surgery was over and he was in recovery, Chass had thought they had lost him. The doctor assured them that he was alive, but barely, as he clung to life in the ICU. The surgery was touchy—he had coded on the table—but the doctor was able to bring him back. The rest was now up to Q.
The machines beeped and hummed. Then a faint sound resonated through the air.
“Ummm . . .”
Chass stirred from the uneasy nap she had drifted off into.
“Ummm . . .”
Her eyes grew as big as saucers. “Quentin?” She looked at Mrs. Carter, who was asleep in the chair next to her, and shook her. She pointed tow
ard Q. “He’s trying to say something.”
His mother quickly shot up and stood by his bedside. “Quentin, baby, Quentin.” She touched his face. “Can you hear me, baby? It’s Mama. Open your eyes.”
Both women watched as Q struggled to follow the command he was given. “Quentin,” Chass said softly as his eyes fluttered open briefly. Tears hung in her eyes as she watched him look between her and his mother.
“Wha . . . wha happened?” he asked softly. “Where am I?” His throat was still sore and itchy from being intubated. He tried to move and grimaced in pain.
“Don’t exert yourself, son,” his mother told him. “Lie back down.”
The women sat on either side of him. One held his hand, while the other caressed his face, marveling at the fact that he was so close to death but hadn’t left them.
“You don’t remember?” Chass said gently.
He looked at the two of them, hoping they would tell him.
“You were shot, Quentin,” Chass told him.
“Where . . .”
“In your home, baby,” his mother added somberly.
He closed his eyes and tried to block out the faint memory that flooded his mind. The machines started beeping rapidly when he thought of Red. He remembered seeing her in the loft, but what happened afterward was a blur.
He raised his shaking hand and pointed a finger toward a pitcher of water resting on a nearby table.
Chass’s eyes followed Q’s finger. She got up and walked to the table. Pouring him some water, she brought it back to him and held his head while she put the Styrofoam cup up to his lips. Q sipped the water as best he could.
The Dirty Red Series Page 48