by Naomi West
“Mom?” I called when I got into the house. “Mom, you here?”
“In the living room, honey.”
I went in and joined her in the front living room, the one that was reserved for when guests like the preacher or his wife came over to visit. She stood there like a vision. Tall, shapely, her long blonde hair flowing down the back of her sundress. She was peering out the blinds at the street.
“Mom, why is dad down the street like that?
She pulled her hand from the blinds, let them snap back into place. I could tell from her face she was troubled, but she put on a brave face anyways. “Lauren, honey, he's just, um, keeping an eye on the house, that's all.”
“He didn't come home again last night, did he?”
Pops had been doing that a lot, lately. Staying out at the new construction site he and Uncle Anderson were working on. And, whenever he actually was home, he and mother fought like cats and dogs. Always, it seemed, he started the argument over the smallest thing. She'd spent too much money, she'd been late coming back from the grocery store. Who was the man she'd been talking to?
“Oh,” mother chirped, “he's just working with your Anderson. You know that. A lot of people are depending on him.”
Since I'd been thirteen or so I'd had an idea of what they did for a living. He and mom said it was an import-export business, but people who ran companies like that didn't carry a gun on them all the time, or have envelopes full of cash in their briefcases. They also didn't know how to hot wire a car or pick locks, or any of the other nifty tricks he'd taught me. But my mother always wanted me to live a safe life, one full of delusion, where the world was a safe and happy place, and my father was just your run of the mill business man.
“Sure, mom,” I said. “But, doesn't that seem a little weird to you?”
She laughed, her voice like the tinkling of a bell. “Oh, honey, why would you think that was weird? He's just a man protecting his castle, that's all.”
“Fine. Well, I have some homework to get done. What time's supper at?”
“Just a couple hours, so six o'clock? How's meatloaf sound?”
“Sounds great,” I replied as I went to leave the room. “Call me when it's ready?”
“Of course, honey.”
I heard my mother moving in the living room behind me as I headed down the hallway. I'd made it all the way to my bedroom door when she called out to me. “Lauren?”
“Yeah?”
“I love you, honey. I just wanted you to know that.”
I gave her a lopsided smile and confused look. “Yeah, I know you do. I love you, too.”
She smiled again, the shadows of the hallway playing on her features. There was a certain pain in her eyes, a resignation that I wouldn't realize until weeks later. She'd known what was coming, or had at least been worried about it. I went into my room and pulled out my books, went to work. The time flew by as I buried myself in my math homework and reading assignments. Time that I could have spent with my mother, time that I could have savored, if I'd only known what was coming.
Pops didn't come in for supper. He just stayed out on the street, still keeping a watchful eye on the house.
“Think he's going to stay out there all night?” I asked finally, speaking the unspoken question she and I were both asking ourselves.
“I hope not,” she replied with that same wan smile as before. “I mean, he needs to rest. He's a busy man with a lot on his mind.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“How's school, honey?” my mother asked, changing the subject.
We didn't mention him after that. She kept everything focused on my education for the rest of the meal. After we finished eating, I cleared the table and did the dishes. She came up behind me and gave me a warm hug, pressing her body into mine and laying her cheek against the back of my shoulders. “You're a wonderful daughter,” she said. “I do love you.”
“Uh, thanks? Everything okay?”
“Just wanted to hug you, that's all. Any crime against that?”
I smiled and laughed. “No, of course not, mom.”
After the dishes were finished, I went back into my room and hit the books again. A couple hours later, after kissing my mother on the cheek goodnight, I was out like a light. Another long day of school work finished. Soon I’d graduate and I could get out of town on my own. Just a few months and I'd be off to NYU in the big city. No more Louisiana, no more country, no more just watching life on TV or reading about it in books. I'd be out of here for good.
The front door slamming shut woke me up instantly, wide-eyed and gasping for air. I looked around my bedroom, at its posters of girl and boy bands I still hadn't taken down from my teenybopper years, the moon light filtering in around the curtains covering my window. My parents were screaming at each other again in the living room, just like they had been for the last few months.
“You saw them again, didn't you, you double-crossing cunt?” he yelled, his voice piercing through the walls like the bass on a sound system.
“I don't even know what you're talking about!” she screamed back. “Who? Who am I supposed to be talking to?”
“You know who I mean! Them! The ones that have the lines wired, the ones that been following me!”
“No one's fucking following you, Dalton! No one!”
I rolled my eyes and tried in vain to go back to sleep. Things hadn't escalated before. He'd never laid a hand on her, not that I knew of it, just these screaming fights. Then I heard the glass shatter as it flung against the wall.
“What the fuck, Dalton? Are you fucking high?”
“Fuck you, cunt! Fuck you and your fucking friends that are out to get me!”
“I don't have any fucking friends, Dalton! All of them hate you!”
I climbed out of bed when the second glass shattered. I thought that, maybe, just maybe, them seeing me there in the room would somehow calm the situation down. They'd realize they were screaming with their daughter in the house, and I could keep things from escalating any further. Wearing my oversized t-shirt and pajama bottoms, I padded out of my room and down the hallway.
“Fuck you, you two-timing whore!” he screamed just as I was about to enter the family room. “Fuck you!” Then the sound like a meat tenderizer slapping a steak, followed by a weak cry and the glass coffee table shattering.
That sound made me sick. He’d slapped her. I ran into the room, expecting the worst. I learned that night that my imagination couldn't predict the worst. I learned that blood is darker in real life than on television. It was everywhere. On the carpet, on the coffee table, on the hammer in my father's raised hand. My mother's blood. He stood over her, his feet planted on either side of her chest, the coffee table flipped over on its side, its glass top as shattered as Humpty Dumpty.
My eyes drifted down to my mother's face. I was numb all over, couldn't process what was happening. My mouth opened and closed like a fish as my brain tried to piece together what was right in front of my eyes. She lay there, her face turned to mine, blood from her head wound matting her beautiful blonde hair to her left cheek. The right side of her, from the cheek bone down, was caved in, along with the back of her head. Her eyes stared at nothing. Nothing.
My father, hammer reared back for another swing, stopped in his tracks and looked at me, his eyes blood shot, wild. Specks of my mother's blood covered his face like gruesome glitter, crimson on his skin.
“She was working against me!” he growled. “But, don't worry, honey, I took care of her!”
I took a step back, my breath caught in my throat. I watched as he went back to swinging. It sounded like a melon being smashed, the sickest most unimaginable thing I'd ever witnessed. I backed up through the living room, away from the atrocity in front of me, not stopping till I was pressed flat against the front door.
He kept smashing into her face. More blood covered him and had begun to form a congealed pool beneath her. “We're going to be safe, honey, you and me, now that th
ey can't spy on us no more! Safe forever!”
I opened my mouth to scream, but no sound ever came. I reached behind me, grabbed the door knob, twisted. He didn't stop as I ran out the front door. He just kept destroying the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen. I ran. I stole a car, hotwired it, then I ran some more. I couldn't go to the cops. They were all friends with the madman who was my father, and I knew it. That had been the last time I saw him for nearly six years. The nightmares began to go away finally or maybe I just got used to them.
Whatever the case. This was why I was here. This was why I'd come back with Asa. Dalton Saylor needed to die. This thought brought me back to the world from my panicked state, a single kernel of truth my mind could latch onto in the face of the horrors I'd seen, and was still seeing. I felt Asa's arm around my shoulders as I snapped back to reality, felt his hand squeeze, trying to reassure me.
I knew what I had to do, now. I had to make my pops drop his guard.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Asa
Lauren lurched forward in my arms, her body shaking and convulsing as she fell against my arm.
“Lauren!” I cried out, grabbing her, trying to hold her upright.
Her body thrashed loose of my grip and she flung herself to the concrete floor.
“What in blazes is happening to her?” Dalton asked. “What's wrong with my daughter?”
“She's having a fucking seizure or something!” I yelled, trying to flip her over onto her side. With my back blocking her face from view, she quickly opened one eye and winked at me.
Seemed like every time we got into a scrape, she had some wild plan to manipulate the situation. “Lauren!” I screamed again, shaking her shoulders as she continued to gurgle and convulse.
“Is she okay? What's happening?”
I looked back at him. “She's having a fucking seizure! Of course she's not okay!”
“Honey!” Dalton Saylor yelled as he jumped up from his throne, detonator still in hand as he ran to us. “Honey, you okay?” Her jaw locked together and foamy saliva came out from between her lips. “You get the fuck away from her!” he roared as he pulled a cruel knife from a sheath on his hip, began to wave it at me.
My martial arts instructor used to have a saying. In a gunfight, the loser dies on the street. In a knife fight, the winner dies in the ambulance. Knives are just as deadly as any other weapon, no matter who has one. I backed off from her, giving him room as I scrambled back on my haunches. “Do you have a doctor here?” I asked in a frantic voice. “Someone who can help her?”
“Back up further,” he said, waving the detonator menacingly.
I got up, backed away slowly as he approached her twitching form. Had to hand it to my woman. She was doing a pretty believable job. She would have been a shoe-in at the Oscars for Best Epileptic Fit in a Feature Film. I stopped when I was about eight feet away, my back against a bail of crushed crystal meth.
He crouched down next to her, knife still in hand. He glanced my direction before bending down to her still shaking body. “No,” he said, going to put away the knife. “But we can fly one in.” As he glanced back, the knife almost back in its sheath, she made her move, reaching for the detonator.
I lunged forward, tried to make a grab for the hand with the knife. Dalton Saylor was fast for a geriatric psycho. He pulled the detonator from out of her reach, his knife hand flailing wildly as I tried to grab hold of him. Three slashes later and I had blood running down my right arm and leg, and a slash down my ribs.
“Asa!” Lauren screamed as I reeled back from the blade, falling on my ass as the blood started to gush from my wounds. My eyes stayed on Dalton Saylor as he grabbed Lauren by the ankle and yanked her behind him and he took off down a hall that split off from the main chamber, dragging her across the concrete floor.
“Asa! Help!” Lauren screamed again, her voice echoing weirdly as her daddy lurched down the hall, cackling like a mad man.
I heaved myself to my feet, my right leg almost going out from under me. I could feel the blood flowing down my leg like a waterfall, pooling in my boot as I stumbled after him in a fog of pain. I was in more pain than I'd ever felt, and each step felt like I was jamming a red-hot poker in my thigh. He had to pay for what he'd done to Richie, and he still had that detonator in his hand that he could set off at any moment.
More importantly, he had Lauren. He had the woman I loved.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Lauren
“Bunch of fucking assholes,” my father jabbered, his voice going high, then low, as he dragged me down the passageway. “Trying to make me look like a fucking fool, they are!”
I struggled against his grip my ankle, kicking and screaming as he dragged me down the passageway, but it was no use. When that didn't work, I tried to slow him down by grabbing hold of the edges of the tunnel, the floor, anything. But they'd done too good of a job on the concrete work down here, and I didn't have anything to latch onto.
“Bunch of assholes and snitches! Snitches get stitches though, Ora! Snitches get stitches!”
We zigzagged down the halls, the concrete floor pulling my shirt up as he dragged me. Every so often we'd hit a rough patch, and the surface would tear over my skin like fire. Already my back was slick with blood. I kicked at his hand, but it was no use. He just seemed to ignore the pain.
“Snitches. Get. Stitches! Even Anderson knew that! Anderson got what he deserved!”
“Lauren!” Asa called from down the hall. “I'm coming, babe!”
He was still alive – a faint glimmer of hope returned to my brain. He was coming for me. “Asa!” I shouted back. “Hurry!”
“Not much longer, baby,” the old man sneered as he looked back at me. “You smell that? That's my boat, baby! We'll be out there before long, Ora, and then we'll find a new life, a place where they can't get to us. And, when Lauren gets home to us from New York, it'll be just like it was before. You'll see!”
His madness felt viral, like if I was around him any longer I’d succumb to it too. I sniffed the air, trying to understand what he was talking about, and then I realized I could smell it. The river! We were close to the river. He must have had an exit to a private dock.
“We'll be down at the Gulf before you know it, honey! Down at the Gulf and on our way to freedom!”
I realized I was going about this the wrong way. Maybe I didn't need to stop him physically at all. “Pops? Pops, I'm your daughter Lauren, not your wife. Ora's still inside. You left her in her chair, remember?”
He stopped and cocked his head to the side, confused. “Lauren? That's you?”
“Yes, I came back from school. Do I really look that much like Mom? Do you not recognize me?”
He grinned, his lips spreading back in that horrible mockery of a smile. “Lauren! You're back! Your mother's been looking forward to seeing you again, she can barely stop talking about it!” He dropped my ankle and tried to help me to my feet.
“I know,” I said loudly, my voice echoing back down the way we'd just come from. “I know. I can't stop thinking about her, either.”
“Now, listen, honey,” he said, his knife gleaming wetly in the dim light as he stepped towards me. “I need you to go down to the dock. My boat is down this hall here, and I want you to get ready.”
“What about you?” I asked as I glanced away from him and tried to catch sight of Asa.
“I'll take care of them,” he said, bringing the knife up so it was just inches from my chest. He wasn’t after me, but it was a cruel reminded of what he could do to me while I was unarmed. “You, now, honey, you get that boat ready so we can leave together.”
I began to back slowly away from him. “Okay,” I said carefully. “You do that. I'll get the boat ready, like you need me to. I promise.”
Pops nodded his head fervently as I headed off down the tunnel, out towards the docks. When I rounded the corner to my right I pressed my back against the passageway and gasped. Asa would be on his way soon. Hopeful
ly, between me and him, we could take down the monster together.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Asa
I'd lost a lot of blood already, I could tell – my reflexes were slower, my muscles felt like sandbags. I'd taken my belt off, used it as a tourniquet on my leg, then pulled off a strip of cloth from my shirt and bandaged my arm, but I was still losing too much blood from the wound on my side.
With Anderson's pistol in hand, I headed down the hall after them. Lauren's cries for help had ended, but I could still hear her speaking loudly to her daddy. I hoped she was somehow convincing him to turn over the detonator, or better yet, magically convincing him to lay down his weapons and let us kill him. That was crazy talk, though. I knew there was no way he was going to do that. This wasn't going to end without more blood being spilled.