Sweet Queen

by Luna Maye

  “Oh, that’s a long story,” Isabel sheepishly rubbed the back of her neck, looking even more embarrassed than she had admitting her favorite movie was a princess flick.

  “Oh, we’ve got time.” Reina and Shelli said in unison, unexpectedly parroting each other and they all laughed as they settled in for a semi-sleepless night.

  24

  Cal

  “Mina sent me here.” The words spat out his mouth like a dragon breathing fire and his entire body seethed with rage. Cal couldn’t remember a time he’d ever been so angry, his muscles all felt stretched taut, his body a size too small for the righteous anger pressing against his seams.

  “I can guess what she sent you for with that attitude.” Reina paused from the car she stood behind with the hood up, wiping her grease-stained hands on a rag and pushing off the hood to examine something on the ground, close to the side of the building. “I want to be clear that I’ve never read what I’m about to give you. It’s between Mina and Shelli, but you can bring it back here to the safe when you’re done with it if you want. It’s fireproof and should protect it in case anything goes down out here at the club.” She popped open a steel trap door in the floor at her feet, leaning over to twist a combination into the locking mechanism and pulling out a giant notebook encased in a plastic bag. Little slips of paper littered the bottom of the bag and he held in a groan thinking about how much work it would be to put them all in order. Shelli had been with the Heathens for right at six years so that was about… 2,190 days? Wow, Mina hadn’t been kidding when she said he’d be here all night.

  Reina flipped the safe closed and held the bag gently in her hands, bringing it over to where he was standing and setting it on a tall, long worktable running down the center length of the shop.

  “You can look at this in here and lay it out on the table.” She made eye contact with him, her soft cheeks and bright blue eyes belying the stern words about to come out of her mouth. “Now, I haven’t read this journal but the club I was with in Reno traded with the Hades’ Heathens, and I know what you’re about to read is going to be hard. Those men were fucked up, you hear me? More animals than actual men. That’s why I’m here.” She paused searching his eyes. “If you can’t take this, if you can’t own it and love Shelli through it, then walk away right now because we don’t need you here if you can’t handle it.”

  Cal met her gaze, hoping his sincerity, his intent shown through in his eyes. He was a man of his word, and he knew he would see this through to the end.

  “I can handle it.”

  Reina nodded, peeling her coveralls off and hanging them on a hook by the door. Her light pink t-shirt and jean shorts alongside her bright blond braided pigtails were completely opposite her strong demeanor with him. She was an enigma for another time.

  “You’re going to need to hit something. You’re already too keyed up and I know this is going to set you off.” He was a little skeptical of that logic, he was tense, sure, but he’d never been the kind of man to lose himself in bouts of temper. He never hit things and he was always in control of his emotions. He let her talk though, curious what she would say next.

  “Do not, and I repeat, do not touch any of my babies in here.” Reina looked pointedly at the pristine early 1970s Camaro on the lift, the long row of restored bikes lining the center strip of the shop. She was a magnificent craftsman and at another time he would have been like a kid in a candy store taking it all in. She drew his attention, pointing to a thick, black vinyl boxing bag hung by a thick steel chain in the far corner of the room. “You need to let it out, you use that, you got me?”

  “Yeah I got you.”

  “Good. I’ll leave you to it then.” She rushed around the room, packing up tools and getting things ready. She put a pot of coffee on near the sink in the far corner and scooted a tall trashcan closer to the table where he was sitting, placing a box of tissues, a bottle of water and a container of Midol next to him. When his eyes quirked up she shrugged. “I don’t have any plain acetaminophen, plus this has caffeine if you need it.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need the trash can or the tissues either, I don’t plan on throwing anything away.”

  “That’s not what it’s for,” she said cryptically as she finished up and walked out of the shop. “Get ready for her, Cal, we’ll take care of her for you until the morning.”

  “Thanks, Reina. I appreciate this.” He said, watching as she walked toward the door, her shoulders hunched and tired, her eyes older than her years as she turned partially to face him.

  “Don’t thank me, never thank me for this.”

  He watched as she stepped out into the dark night, heading toward a huddled pair of women in front of Shelli’s little adobe house across the courtyard.

  He pulled a tall stool up the table, and settled his body down on top of it. Leaning his forearms on top of the table, he could see the scrapes and scratches Shelli had inflicted in her panic to get away and they served as a good reminder for why he was going through this process, why the journal needed to be brought back to life.

  Opening the grocery sack, he carefully took out the loose pages and set them aside. Shelli was in the habit of writing the date in the upper right-hand corner of her pages and that would make it easier to sift through and get everything in order. He pulled the large leather wrap out of the bag and unwound the cord holding it together. Inside lay thousands of little slips of paper, grocery store receipts, beer bottle labels, pieces of cardboard, toilet paper and napkins, each one with a date in the right hand corner.

  He took a deep breath and steeled himself for what he was about to read. If Shelli could live it for six years, he could do what it took to read it, to help bring her memories back so she could be whole again, so she could feel comfortable and complete as they raised their family together.

  He spread everything out on the table and sorted through, putting each scrap in the proper order until he had them all neatly in a stack. It didn’t take as long as he’d expected, most of the pages were already close to their right spot, with the few that had escaped their binds being the ones most in need of being set to rights. He didn’t read a single one as he placed them, wanting to wait and read the whole thing one day at a time exactly as she’d experienced it. When he was completely done, he pushed back from the table and walked around it in a circle, preparing himself and calming his nerves before he began. As he sat back down he picked up day one, written on a scrap of plain white paper.

  The first day included a description of Shelli’s abduction from a deserted Dallas parking garage after she met a client considering a high-rise condo in an older neighborhood of town. It was dark and the lights in the garage weren’t working properly. She didn’t see anything until arms suddenly grabbed her from behind. She fought back, hard and her abductors pistol-whipped her into unconsciousness. When she woke, she was in a cartel holding facility in a bunker south of the city. Her writing was methodical and precise, the writing of a realtor who reviewed a lot of legal documents. He could tell through her words she was trying to write down as many details as possible for the police. Snippets of men’s names, car colors and directions were all included in the report. She documented the time, the place and who she’d met with, the condition of her car and purse when they took her. It was the writing of a woman with purpose, with a plan.

  On days one through five, Shelli stayed with the cartel. They weren’t incredibly cruel, just detached and intent on keeping the merchandise ready for sale. She was kept bound and only allowed up to use the rest room. On day five, they allowed her to shower and dressed her for auction. Men came into the room where her and ten other women were held and a pair of bikers in black leather purchased her for $10,000.

  She was greatly offended by the price. As a woman making six figures at the time, she tried to convince them it would be more worth their while to let her work and pay them off than it would to take her. That was his Shelli, logical to a fault and brokering with her captors
. It would have worked too, if the people who took her had some business sense, but nothing about their methods was logical as Cal was quickly realizing.

  The bikers were enterprising and with one look at Shelli’s manicured nails and pristine face and body, they figured she must be worth more to someone else and they decided to try to hold her for ransom. She rode with them on the back of a bike for the grueling trip to Albuquerque. They kept her locked in a room in the clubhouse of the Hades’ Heathens MC with just a bed and a bathroom, more like a prison cell than a bedroom.

  On day 10, the club got into contact with Shelli’s father and while the man was noticeably wealthy, he bickered with the club over price. The club’s officers couldn’t decide whether a million was enough or not enough and so negotiations continued. While the club was in the process of a deal, they kept her in good condition. Shelli was given a change of clothes or two and allowed to shower occasionally. She was fed sparingly but enough so that she didn’t go hungry often. Her entries over the next days were thick with boredom and sarcasm as she tried to internally work her way through her precarious position among such dangerous men. She tried to kick a guard once and was struck down, but otherwise remained unharmed. Her slips of paper were sticky notes and scraps of white paper she asked her guards for, and her journal was mostly musings about the outside, her clients, why her dad wouldn’t deal with the MC. It was lighter and gave him a glimpse of the Shelli who’d awoken just after the accident, the slightly surly, bratty Shelli that he loved as much as the sassy sweet one he knew now.

  On day 183, the wheels came off and Shelli’s tenuous position in the club broke loose. Her dad, after months of negotiations and threats to go to the authorities had died of an apparent heart attack. Shelli was noticeably worried about her fate, the lines in the letters at the end of the note were a little squiggly as if her hands shook as she wrote and there were little spirally doodles along the side as if she kept getting nervous and swirling her pen around.

  Cal stood up then, taking a moment to push down the anger he could feel building inside him. Other than the initial abduction and a few harsh words and rough treatment, Shelli’s story hadn’t been terrible in the first few months. He could feel the tides changing with her father’s death. Pouring himself a cup of coffee from the pot Reina produced, Cal sat back down at the desk. The major problem he had with Shelli’s story was it could have ended so quickly, so painlessly if her father had cared more about her than he did about getting a bargain on her ransom. He was disgusted by her father’s treatment of her and he was belatedly happy to hear he wasn’t around for them to deal with anymore. He cracked the stack back open, drinking a sip of his coffee and bracing himself for day 184.

  When he read the page, he immediately set his coffee back down. It felt wrong to be calmly sitting at a table drinking coffee while reading about the love of his life being raped for the first time. He knew non-consensual sex would be part of the journal, it was the one thing he’d been certain of. But Shelli’s cold clinical account of the act, of how she felt afterward, made his stomach queasy and his heart ache. She was so strong, so fierce. She fought like hell and when it was over, she detached herself from it, doing whatever she could to survive. He was oddly proud of her, of her bravery in writing about it, in documenting it for later evidence despite the pain and the hurt. She was a warrior and he felt so honored that she was bringing a little life into the world that would be half him, half her. It was a miracle.

  Over the next 180 days, the sex continued each and every day. After ten days, she stopped fighting and submitted to the club’s desires, hoping to have it over more quickly. Her accounts got less and less detailed as time went on, sometimes only documenting the names of the men she took that day in initials or road names.

  On day 300 when she got an opportunity to leave her room to attend a club party, she attempted to escape. Cal read the text ravenously, hoping for a small win for her even though he knew the final outcome. She made it into the club’s garage and got the keys to a bike before one of the prospects found her and ratted her out. She was beaten and didn’t try to escape again, at least during that year.

  When she admitted she was grateful for the beating because it kept the club members off her for a week, he stood up and went to Reina’s bag for the first time. He hit the bag 300 times, once for each of the days he’d read so far. When he finished, his knuckles were bruised and sore but he felt absolved somehow, like he’d washed away some of Shelli’s hurt and anger over those days with violence.

  He took a drink of water and sat back down at the table, settling in again to read, wiping the sweat off his brow with one of the tissues Reina left.

  Five hundred and ten days after Shelli’s abduction, the Hades’ Heathens took a turn for the worse. Her accounts of her interactions with the men had been getting more and more rough. They were less satisfied with her services, several of them were anxious and on edge when she saw them. Some of them promised to treat her with more violence because change was coming. She couldn’t figure out whether they were playing a psychological game or if it was the truth.

  On day 515, the shit hit the fan inside the Hades’ Heathens. One of the younger, more violent members overthrew the previous president. The result was a bloodbath at the clubhouse. Many of the older men who’d brought Shelli extra food and toiletries as gifts over the time she served the club in her single room were killed in the altercation. When the fighting was over, Shelli was removed from the small private room she’d occupied for her entire stay with the Heathens and into a long, dormitory style room with ten other women the club had been holding.

  Initially, the women were excited to see each other and they stayed up half the night introducing themselves and coming up with escape plans together. None of them knew what was coming on day 516.

  The next day, the women were brought before the club and branded in an elaborate ceremony that could only be imagined in some sadistic son of a bitch’s head. Shelli’s writing on that day was dotted with wet spots and not just because of the pain of the brand. The new president of the MC, a man appropriately called Demon, let the men who helped him in the upheaval each select one of the club girls to serve them for a week in any way they chose. Shelly, unfortunately, was the selection Demon made for himself.

  During days 517 through 524, Cal had to stop reading four times. Three times he stopped and hit the punching bag, pretending it was the fucker’s face and once he stopped and took some of Reina’s Midol for his hands and head. He learned that Demon was the source of most of the burn scars on Shelli’s arms. The man majorly got off on her pain. She was tied up, hung upside down and beaten so thoroughly that she remained unconscious for two days straight toward the end of her time with him.

  On day 554, Shelli started to worry she might be pregnant. Signs were showing up and she felt desperately alone. She was worried that if Demon found out, he would use her pregnancy against her and force her to cooperate with him. She kept her feelings a secret from everyone, at least until day 570.

  On day 570, Shelli got invited out to another party. The term invited was used loosely in this case, since she was bound and gagged. She promised to behave, she begged not to be sedated or drugged, but the men didn’t listen. When Demon dragged her by her hair into a private room, pumped her full of heroin and beat her to unconsciousness, Cal felt his heart turn to stone in his chest.

  On day 571 when Shelli realized she’d indeed been pregnant and miscarried thanks to Demon’s rough treatment, Cal wept with her, picturing their own current child in the same situation and feeling every aspect of her grief through the thin slippery beer bottle label that held the words. He let the tears fall freely down his face. He didn’t try to wipe them away or be macho about his pain. He felt like the child Shelli lost should be as much his as the current little life inside her and he wanted desperately to honor that life lost.

  From day 571 on, Demon’s treatment of her only worsened. On days 1,020, 1,515 and 2,020
, Shelli, his sweet, happy, hopeful Shelli, considered committing suicide. On days 1,021, 1,516 and 2,021, she was proud she’d survived to live another day.

  On days 910, 1,610 and 2,050, she attempted escape, unsuccessfully.

  On day 911, Demon doled out retribution for her failed attempt to flee the club by tying her down on the club’s long meeting table, having two of the club members hold her head and legs still while he brutally sodomized her, before giving every other man their own turn. That’s when Cal discovered what Reina left the trashcan for, as he threw up everything he’d eaten over the last few days, his stomach painfully purging again and again as he tried to rid himself of the mental image of her account of the events. His hands gripped the sides of the tall plastic bin so hard he heard it crack and even after his stomach was empty, he couldn’t shake the rage, revulsion or regret that flooded his system. He cleaned himself up and stepped outside the bay doors for a breath of fresh air, trying to force himself back inside to finish.

  How could one woman face so much depravity? How could she do it and live with any sense of normalcy, much less while being the kind, giving and sweet woman his Shelli had become. He felt his heart swell with love for her, all over again. He promised himself he would treasure her every moment of every day to make up for time lost, and he was going to implement some new sexual rules for them. Like, at least an hour’s worth of foreplay before he made slow, sweet love to her body every time. Yeah, that was more like it.

  He moved back inside, resisting the urge to skip through the pages until he found Mina’s name. Instead he suffered through every moment of it with her. He felt every slap and punch, knew her relief when they started giving her drugs more often, even if it only dulled the pain for a while. He saw the way Demon made her his own personal punching bag, the man was a sadist in every sense of the word, and once he realized Shelli had aborted his child, even though it was his own fault, he just used it as free license to torment her more frequently and more fully than any of the other women.