What Lies Beneath The Flowerbed

by D. M. Thornton

  Through Andi’s laugh, she agrees. “My lips are sealed, no doubt.”

  I find the two-hour parking lot that Gray texted she was in. She’s pacing the length of her car as I pull up beside her. Shit, I know that face all too well. I swear, I’m gonna pummel that fucker. I don’t care what she says...she’s scared. You know, Gray is probably one of the best actresses I know. She really should be given a Golden Globe for how she plays things off. But she can’t fool me. Getting out of my car, I go straight for her and wrap her in a hug. She doesn’t push me away, but rather finds comfort in my embrace.

  “Sorry,” Gray apologizes. “I just...I have a bad feeling, and I didn’t want to do this by myself.”

  “Hey, all’s good. What are friends for if not to beat the crap out of brothers who worry their sisters?”

  Gray giggles. “Exactly.”

  Andi and I walk alongside Gray as she leads us through this shady neighborhood. Most of the houses on this block are condemned, but for every three ramshackle homes, there’s one that’s occupied by some suspicious tenants. We walk past those with our heads down, beating the sidewalk with quick feet. We stand out like three white sheep in a herd of black. The crack house Gray was hopeful Blue was in came up empty. Which is good. However, each house that we walk through gives us no hope of finding him. I guess we can look at it two ways. If he’s not here, amongst the junkies, then maybe he’s doing something worthwhile. Otherwise, he’s face down in a ditch somewhere. In which case, we have a whole other set of problems.

  Fucking Gray, she has the keen sense of a blood hound. She stands, staring, at the last house on the right. A two-story old Victorian with pillars that encase the front porch that looks as if you’ll fall through if you step on it. That doesn’t stop Gray. She bolts ahead, leaving Andi and I looking at each other, confused. We only hesitate for a second before we’re sprinting after her into some rundown house with a gaping hole in the boarded up front door. I begin to dry heave when my nose is assaulted with the rancid smell of piss and shit, mixed with BO and an array of assorted drugs.

  Andi’s the last to crawl through the splintered hole, and when she stands, her arm flies up to cover her face. “What the fuck!” She gags.

  I don’t wait for Andi, she’ll need to catch up. I run through the house, keeping up with Gray. Each door she comes to she kicks in until there are no more doors to knock off the hinges. She spins around when she hits the end of the hallway and jogs passed me, yelling over her shoulder, “He’s here. I know it!”

  How she knows is beyond me. I’ve learned not to ask questions, because if Gray says she knows something, more than likely, she does. I trust the girl’s instincts, that’s for damn sure. As I turn around, I bump into Andi, who’s right behind me. “Fuck! Go back,” I shout. “Go back that way!” I point straight ahead toward Gray, who’s now running up the stairs. Andi and I are hot on her heels, taking the steps two at a time. Gray bursts through each door, but this time, the last door on the left holds what we’re looking for.

  Andi and I stop just inside the threshold of the last room where Blue is unconscious on the floor. The memory of him from the last time I saw him flashes through my head. His lifeless body lays crumpled on the floor, eyes wide open, vomit spilling out of his mouth, down his neck, and dripping onto the termite-infested wood floor. Gray runs to him and drops to her knees, yanking the needle that’s still in his arm and tossing it across the room where it bounces off the wall.

  Gray begins screaming and smacking Blue in the face. Never does a name fit like it does right at this very moment, ‘cause Blue is, well, blue. The fucker is dead like Zed, but that doesn’t stop Gray from yanking his body up on his side where she proceeds to pry her fingers in his mouth to scoop out the rest of the vomit that’s blocking his airway. I hesitate to jump right in and help since I know it’s not going to do any damn good, and there’s no point in calling 911 since they can’t save an already dead guy, but I can’t not help Gray. If she believes she can save this asshat—again—she’ll do just about anything. So, I slide behind Blue and help prop him up so Gray can finish cleaning out his mouth. We flop him on his back where Gray jabs her fingers into his neck in search for a pulse.

  Now look, Gray thinks that she has no feelings, no emotions. She thinks she’s not attached to anything, and talks a lot of smack, but I know deep down in that dark soul of hers, she’s full of shit. Unfortunately for Blue, his fate was written in the stars from birth. He had no hope...not even with Gray trying to do everything she could to protect him. The day she got the phone call saying Blue was picked up, she should have slammed that phone down and pretended she hadn’t a clue who he was. But, that’s not Gray’s style. Nope, because if you’re one of the lucky ones that are on the receiving end of her loyalty, you can count on her always being there. No matter what.

  My voice is dry and hoarse when I try to speak. When I say, “Gray,” it comes out like a croaking frog.

  “No!” she shouts. “No, I won’t allow it.” She wipes Blue’s mouth clean with the sleeve of her shirt and starts CPR. While she breathes air into his lungs, screaming profanities at him between each breath, I do chest compressions.

  “Breathe, motherfucker,” she cries.

  Three breaths.

  “Don’t you dare fucking die!”

  Three breaths.

  “Breathe, dammit! Breathe!”

  Three breaths.

  “I hate you! I fucking hate you!”

  Three breaths.

  “Please don’t leave me! Don’t leave me, Blue!”

  I tell myself it’s not for nothing, even though I know it is. At this point, it would be a fucking miracle to bring Blue back from the dead. For all we know, he could have been lying here dead for hours, but I won’t stop until Gray does. So, I continue to pump my fists into his chest after she blows into his mouth while Andi’s at his feet counting out loud.

  We’re all sweating and exhausted when Gray falls back on to her butt and sobs into her knees. We tried for a solid half hour, and to no surprise, with no luck of resuscitating Blue. I drag my hand over Blue’s face and close his eyes that have been staring up at us while we’ve attempted to put life back into them. Through gasping breaths, I crawl over to Gray and cradle her in my arms. Andi joins in from behind us, wrapping her arms around both of us as we all cry together.

  Chapter 25

  Gray

  Crying is something new to me. I remember crying when I was little, but that would result in me getting a belt across my backside, so I’ve learned to keep it bottled inside. That wall I have spent years building around me has kept me snug in my own little cocoon, safe from real emotions. And in the last few weeks, I have felt every single emotion up and down the chart. Seems holding it in all these years hasn’t done me much good. The tears spill out of me like the Hoover Dam popped a hole, and the water is coming straight out of my body. Every ounce of me shudders through the sobs. I know I’m engulfed in the arms of my friends, but that’s only a Band-Aid. It won’t bring Blue back, and not that my idea of revenge will, but whoever did this will pay.

  I’m not like most people...I think we’ve figured that out by now. How I process things isn’t typical for the average person. Where people move through the motions of the grieving process one step at a time, which could easily take up to a year or longer, my brain rushes through grieving like the Formula Rossa roller coaster. Maybe it’s my way of forcing myself to be numb to true feelings. If I don’t feel...it’s not real, right? Finding Blue in this shack of a crack house does not surprise me. Finding him dead on the floor is also not a surprise. But the actual thought of him not ever coming back...that’s harder to grasp. He’s gone...forever.

  The sadness that took over my body is pushed to the side, replaced with fuming anger. I shake Jaz and Andi off of me and push myself up to my feet, wiping my cheeks clean of the last bit of tears I’m willing to shed. Call me a heartless person, but there’s no use spilling tears when Blue won’t be co
ming back. Crying won’t put air into his lungs. So I say, keep moving forward. The longer you dwell in the past, the longer it takes to recover.

  If I have to search this whole neighborhood, going house to house and every alley in between, I will. I will find the asshole who gave my brother the poison that stopped his heart, and I will stop his. I will kill the person who ultimately played a hand in taking Blue’s life, and when that moment comes, there will be no forgiveness. There will be no mercy.

  I snatch my purse off the floor and storm out of the room, ready to start my mission. I don’t need to turn around to know that Jaz and Andi are right behind me, following my every move...curious to know what the fuck I’m about to do, no doubt. Quite honestly, I’m not sure what I’m going to do. Trying to get through this house is challenging enough, as every step I take leaves me with another memory of Blue. Even when he was walking, shooting up, breathing...we didn’t have much of a relationship. And even after I picked him up from the police station, I kept my guard up. Now, that doesn’t mean I stopped caring about Blue after all those years of separation, but I knew this day would come. That’s a lot of the reason why I pushed him away like I did. I didn’t want to be around when the inevitable happened. I just wish it hadn’t been after he came back into my life. Had this happened before I went and got him, I wouldn’t feel so empty. Which is a feat to say...I’m always empty. But now, I’m hollow.

  Don’t mistake me being naive for being stupid. I’m far from dumb. But I truly thought that those few weeks with me was the start of Blue getting on the right track. He seemed...okay. Let this be a lesson to me. I should have ignored the call. I should have never picked him up. Along with the pain I have in my chest, I should have made the night I left him in front of the hospital be the last night I allowed this toxic energy to consume my life. Yes, I know that sounds selfish, but the truth is, there’s a reason I can’t deal, or rather don’t want to deal, with the emotions. It’s simple really. It’s just too painful. And I don’t want to feel pain. I’ve had my fair share, and I’m done.

  ln the bigger picture, Jaz and Andi have filled any hole that has remained in me, taking over as my honorary family members. You don’t have to be blood related to be family. At least in my world. How I see it is, most families are fucking dysfunctional twits who can’t get along. They want to use each other and compete amongst one another in the sole purpose of making themselves outshine the next guy. Of course, there’s love and support, but it’s almost mandatory...isn’t it? It’s not heartfelt or genuine. You hear people say all the time, “Well, we may not like him, but we’re family and we love and support our family. No matter what.” Dude, guess what? Related or not, if the idiot’s a douche, there’s no law that says you have to love and support them just because you share the same blood. Now, family to me means people who stand beside you, don’t judge you, and support every aspect of your life, wholeheartedly. They want the best for you and will do everything in their power to help you succeed, and they do it genuinely and unselfishly because they truly want to see you happy. And those people for me are Andi and Jaz. My idea of what a family should be might be a bit misconstrued, but if there have been two people who have stood beside me, who have supported me beyond belief, and who have never passed judgment on me...those would be my girls. Even if what one of us is doing is completely insane.

  Yes, that would be me. Always doing something over the top crazy, like what I’m doing now. In my fit of rage, I ransack the house, in search of what, I don’t know. There’s no one else here. It doesn’t stop me, though, going from room to room, tearing up whatever I can get my hands on. Not that there’s much to destroy, but even if it’s a simple piece of wood sticking up from the floor, I rip the floorboard off with my bare hands before snapping the wood in half over my knee.

  I make no sound as I travel through the house, and neither do Andi or Jaz. They continue to follow me around, more or less, making sure I don’t hurt myself or go completely apeshit, though I’m pretty sure I’m almost there.

  I kick holes in the walls and knock things over, yank dust-coated drapes from their cheap metal holders, and throw torn books through windows. Something about the sound of breaking glass ignites a flame inside me. The way the glass pings before it bursts into shards. It’s as calming as my classical piano. So, I break every single window I come across, closing my eyes in anticipation of the popping cry of the glass.

  It’s time to call the crazy farm when I stand in the center of the last room, spinning in circles as I laugh hysterically. My arms are out at my sides and my head is flopped back, like I’m expecting rain to pour down on me at any moment and wash me away. There’s no good explanation as to why I’m acting as if I’m about to break out in song, but it doesn’t stop me from giggling and twirling.

  But then I hear a faint thud and I stop. My arms stay out at my sides as my insides catch up with my standing position. When the room stops spinning, I cock my head to the side and listen carefully. When I hear the thud again, I look over my shoulder at Jaz and Andi. “Did you hear that?” I ask in a whisper. They both nod, and when the noise echoes from below us once more, I run through Andi and Jaz and head for the basement.

  Motherfucker.

  I open the door to the bottom floor and get blasted with heavy metal head-banging music. I cringe and tip-toe down the stairs where there’s a soft green light illuminating the basement. But I don’t need to see, I can smell the meth lab before it comes into sight. You’d think I’d be used to this smell, but it’s not a smell that your nose can adapt to. The moment the stench hits the tiny hairs that filter the inside of my nostrils, the vapor of the drug burns the back of my throat. A sweet, rancid smell that leaves a bitter tang coating the esophagus. By the time my feet hit the concrete floor of the basement, I feel woozy. I glance up to see Andi and Jaz a few steps above me, both with the necks of their shirts covering their noses.

  Have you ever felt so angry before that you wanted to charge at someone? You’re the bull and they’re the matador...who has no idea that you’re coming from behind. For the most part, I can contain my anger well. It lays dormant, along with my tears, back in my sturdy wall that keeps me safe. But I can go from hysterically laughing to deadly mad with a simple flip of a switch. A snap of two fingers. It’s almost not fair. It’s almost too easy.

  A man twice my height, and my weight, has his back toward us and is hunched over a work bench. He can’t hear a damn thing with this Godawful music that makes my ears want to bleed, and the hue of green keeps our shadows hidden. To my right is a long table that runs along the wall. It’s home to a stash of syringes that are lined up like they’re ready to be dispensed into some track-laced arms. I crouch in the dark and set my purse down, but before I walk away from my bag, I reach my hand inside and feel around for my pocket knife and my own syringe of sleepy time medicine.

  Thank the good Lord for reminding me to replenish my stash.

  Yes, I prefer my scalpel, but I’m pretty sure that having a scalpel in your purse is frowned upon. Or at least highly questioned.

  I’m about to lunge forward, but there’s a crashing noise from behind me that alarms the cook.

  Fucking Andi kicked something.

  When he spins around, I’m the first thing he sees. Look, I’m not a pansy ass. I’ve had bigger assholes come at me, so I don’t hesitate when he lurches at me. I’m not afraid.

  Hellz bellz. I’m not typically the one on the floor. Um, yeah, so I don’t know what just happened, but apparently, as we charged at each other, I ducked—as I would because I’m shorter, and big guys like him like to attack from the outside in—but this fool swung down then up with an upper cut. And he had something in his hand. Whatever it was, it nailed me right above the eye. The crack against the skull echoed throughout my head, which has settled into a ringing in my ears.

  Motherfucker.

  My hands are empty now. I’m left without a weapon to protect myself. But as quickly as I slid onto the floor,
I scramble to my feet as the cook charges at me again. In a split second, I grab for whatever is in front of me, swiping a metal tray off the workbench. I swing it with a forceful backhand, grunting as if the power of the air deep within my lungs will expel out my arms and push power into my punch. It does help put a nice snap in my swing, and I smack that fucker right upside the head. But whaddaya know? He barely even stumbles to the side. With a chuckle, he gains his footing, and just as he’s about to spring at me again, he halts and falls face down at my feet.

  Stunned, I look down then smile. The needle that was knocked from my hand is now hanging out of the back of his neck, and Jaz is standing triumphantly at his feet.

  “Thought you could use some help,” Jaz teases.

  “Ha.” I laugh. “Perfect timing.”

  There’s a chair at the end of the metal table, so I step over the cook and swing the chair around beside him, then turn off the music that has my insides vibrating. My plan is to somehow get him up in this chair and fasten him to it. Then I’m going to question him about giving Blue a lethal dose of drugs. Even if he isn’t the one who gave it to him, he’s going to die anyway, because the world of drugs wouldn’t get very far without the people cooking the batches.

  It’s my lucky day when I see a bag of zip ties at the other end of the table.

  Perfect.

  I slip the bag into my back pocket, slap the syringe out of the guy’s neck, and wave at Jaz to take his top half. I position myself to help her with his feet, but this fucker’s pretty big. After I try to assist, I step back. I’m more of a nuisance than anything. This is where she really comes in useful, because she’s the only one who has the strength of fucking Hercules. It’s just best if Andi and I step back and let her do her thing.

  Jaz almost has him in the chair, with me keeping the chair still, when there’s a loud, splintering crunch above us followed by thumping feet. Multiple feet. Jaz’s head snaps up, causing the cook to slump and slide off the chair. Jaz and I stare down at the guy’s limp body and both shrug. He’s fine down on the floor for the time being. Right now, we need to stay hidden. “The door!” I whisper loudly. Andi runs up the stairs as quick and quietly as she can. Jaz and I glance at one another and wait for her to come back.