Around the Way Girls 10

by Ms. Michel Moore

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Sasha had to get used to driving all over again. Her SUV’s interior had definitely seen better days when she got inside and checked it out, but she overlooked it since she was on a mission. Although she wanted to see her parents, and even Regina’s evil ass, she had to touch base with Kat. If anyone could put her up on game and give her the true, raw 411 on what Mario had really been up to, it would be her best friend. Kat knew just about everybody and everything that went on in the city.

  Since Kat was bad with money and paying bills, Sasha had given up on contacting her at one of the multiple cell phone numbers she had for her. Instead, Sasha decided, just as she done to Mario, she’d pop up on her BFF. Minutes later she was turning into the apartment complex Kat lived in with her stepmother since childhood. After blowing the horn twice with no one coming to the window, Sasha got out and knocked on the door. Seconds later Kat flung the door open and had the biggest smile known to man plastered across her face.

  “Awww snap, you home! My girl is home like a motherfucker! Damn, sis, hug a bitch! Damn, I’m geeked as hell.”

  Sasha was happy at least one person was glad to see she’d made it home through the dark storm. Going inside the apartment, she shared with Kat a few things that had jumped off while she was locked up, but more importantly she told her she had come to get some much needed intel. “So dig this. I talked to Regina a few months back and she told me Mario was supposed to be messing around with some low-budget bitch who work at Walmart. Is that bullshit true? Tell me what you heard.”

  Relieved that her best friend didn’t know what took place between her and Mario, Kat had no problem ratting him out about Angela, where she stayed, and the fact that she found out the chick was supposed to be knocked up with Mario’s baby. Kat could easily tell that Sasha, with her new beastlike attitude, was pissed.

  “Where the fuck that bitch at? Ain’t no ho having a baby by my husband.” Sasha had brought all the courage and newfound prison mentality home with her and she was ready to do battle with anyone at anytime. “A baby. A fucking baby! Hell naw, not with my man!” Just like their old teenager days, Sasha and Kat jumped in the ride, ready to clown and tear some shit up.

  * * *

  “I’m telling you I was locked up all night. They took my phone, my money, everything. They even towed the damn SUV. That’s why I had to catch a cab.”

  Throughout all the time Mario was explaining, Angie V knew he was lying. First of all, he had on different clothes than when he left. Secondly, he had shaved. And, lastly, he smelled like fresh soap. She knew Mario thought he was slick sometimes in the things he’d say and do over the past few months since they had been dealing with one another exclusively, but this time took the cake. There was no way in hell she believed he was locked up, but where he’d left the SUV was a mystery in itself.

  As she let him go on and on making the lie more elaborate, there was a knock at the door. “We’ll finish this later.” She held her bulging stomach as she waddled toward the door. “That must be the maintenance man about the leak in the sink you keep saying you can fix.”

  Mario took that welcomed interruption as a way to go in the bedroom and gather his thoughts. Just as Angie V had been blowing up his cell when he was with Sasha the night before, now his wife was doing the same thing.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Standing shoulder to shoulder, Sasha and Kat both braced themselves, not readily knowing what or who they’d find behind the door. Being close to two degrees away from a hood detective, Kat had found out where Angie V laid her head at some time back after she and Mario had sex at the graveyard. She needed an insurance policy to get his ass stomped out just in case he snitched on them to her best friend. Thankfully he hadn’t. As they stood silently there, waiting, each could hear voices arguing in the house, then footsteps getting closer. When the door finally swung open, Kat smiled while Sasha was ready to kill seeing Angie V’s stomach.

  “Hey, what are you doing here?” Angie V asked, vaguely remembering Kat from back at the store.

  “We’re here for the baby shower,” Sasha snidely answered before Kat got a chance to reply.

  “Baby shower, huh? I’m confused. What are you talking about? Matter of fact, who are you?”

  Kat gladly intervened, responding to the million dollar question. “Oh, sorry, my bad for being so damn rude. This here is my best friend, Sasha.”

  “Sasha?” The pregnant mother of three paused when hearing that name.

  “Yeah, Sasha. Mario’s wife!”

  Just as Kat finished making the impromptu introductions, the man of the hour emerged from the bedroom. “Oh, hell naw. What in the fuck is y’all doing here?”

  “Pump your brakes, nigga. I was about to ask you the same damn thing,” Sasha blurted out, revealing she had a pistol in her purse. As she backed Angie V and Mario all the way over to the couch, Kat followed her friend’s lead, standing guard at the front door.

  “Okay, Sasha, so you got a fucking gun, waving it around like you crazy or some shit. Now what?”

  “Mario, who are these people?” Angie V pleaded, terrified for not only herself but her three innocent children who were in their bedroom watching cartoons.

  “Yeah, Mario, boo-boo, tell your little pregnant jump-off who we are, especially me.”

  Mario turned up his lip as all three of the women stared at him, waiting for him to speak.

  “What’s wrong, you big liar? I know you ain’t forgot who I am. I mean, damn, baby, we only been married three years and together five.”

  Angie V couldn’t believe her ears. After all this time of her and Mario being together she had been sleeping with a complete stranger. Here she was thinking they had a chance at a real life as one and, in reality, she was pregnant by a married man. “I asked you who Sasha was and you said your mother!”

  “His mother?” Sasha giggled, shaking her head. “Nigga, you going straight to hell for lying on the dead. And, bitch, what makes you think you can have a baby by another woman’s husband and think it’s all good? It’s rules to this shit, sweetie!”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t know anything about you or that he was married until just now.” Angie kept nervously rubbing her stomach.

  Sasha laughed once more, gripping the handle of the pistol. “Well, just like his dead mama, you should’ve done your homework on me and him. So that’s on you!”

  Kat wanted to laugh too, yet the sheer mention of Mario’s deceased mother made her feel uneasy about their secret encounter on top of the woman’s grave. Instead she turned her head, just glad that Mario was finally getting his just due.

  Angie V rubbed her stomach as if she was comforting her unborn child for having such a shit bag for a daddy. Sasha, however, was growing madder by the moment seeing her husband and his pregnant ho sit next to each other as if they were a couple and she was the outsider. Mario noticed the look in her eye and tried to bring a peaceful resolution to this before someone got hurt.

  “Look, Angie, I didn’t really lie to you; you never asked. Plus, she was in jail all this time.”

  “Are you serious? You mean because I never thought to ask a man who sleeps in my bed each and every night, pays all of my bills, and takes care of my kids as if they’re his own is married, I’m wrong? A man who cries almost every day saying how happy he is I’m carrying his seed, I should ask is he married?”

  A loud sound suddenly rocked the inside of the living room and the entire house. It was quickly followed by two more. Kat jumped back and Mario defensively held his hands and arms up. With malice in her heart, Sasha grinned as Angie V slumped over on the couch holding her stomach, which now had a huge, gaping hole in it. Finding some weird sense of revenge upon the next female who thought it was okay to have a baby by her husband, she then aimed the gun at Mario, who was now begging for his life and asking Kat to get her girl.

  “So you two lovebirds just gonna argue in front of me like I’m not standing here with a gun, huh? Come on
now, Mario, you must think I’m the same dumb-ass bitch who went to jail for you! The same bitch who was pregnant with your baby and who you left for dead while you over here playing house, downgrading with this hood trash! Well, guess what, I’m not her anymore. Things change and so do people! So you can beg all you want to live while her and y’all precious baby bleed out! Then you can see how it feels to slowly suffer when someone you love leaves your black ass all alone.”

  Mario had tears streaming down his face. He wanted to jump up and try to bum-rush Sasha, but he didn’t want to take his hand off of the gunshot wound in Angie V’s stomach, which he was now holding in hopes of stopping the heavy flow of blood. When Sasha watched her husband’s pregnant jump-off take her last breath, she fired another round off into Mario’s skull. She had no remorse. Jail had made her cold to the world.

  Turning around, she saw one of Angie V’s three children standing in the hallway crying. “Get your little bastard ass back in that bedroom before you be next!” Hearing sirens in the distance, Sasha then turned to Kat, asking her what she wanted to do.

  Kat hadn’t signed on to be an accessory to two murders, but since she was desperately in love with her best friend and had been since childhood, she’d ride with Sasha all the way to hell if need be. Mario was gone and out of the picture for good. So, in her eyes, even though Sasha was not gay, there was no one standing in their way to be a couple.

  As they rushed out the front door and to the SUV, a police car spotted them both. Kat unfortunately fell on the curb and twisted her ankle trying to run, ending her Thelma & Louise fantasy. Sasha, however, kept it moving. Throwing the SUV in drive, she recklessly sped off with the cop trailing close behind.

  Getting up to speeds of more than a hundred miles an hour through residential streets, Mario’s wife wiped the tears from her eyes, thinking of what her once perfect, calm life had become. Sasha Eubanks, inmate 998797, had been home, released no more than forty-eight hours on parole before killing two people; and she was now going to be apprehended and returned to prison, sadly never seeing her elderly parents or sister while free, all because of a no-good man!

  THE END

  THE ULTIMATE REVENGE

  by Marlon P.S. White

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Oh, hell naw, you little ungrateful bitch. You got a lot of damn nerve after I took you in off the streets. Now guess what? Get all that shit you came here with together now. You and that garbage bag full of raggedy clothes that barely cover your ass need to get the fuck out my house. And hurry up before I really get mad. I swear to God, you just like your good-for-nothing, dead-ass mama.” Rissa’s aunt stood in her personal space, nose to nose, yelling. “She wasn’t about nothing, and neither is you!”

  Rissa felt like she was having an awful nightmare and couldn’t wake up. She was depressed how her life was going. At the same time, she was hurt that her own flesh and blood wouldn’t believe her. For the last three weeks Rissa was being stalked inside of the house and she’d had enough of the awful situation. That’s when all hell broke loose. Rissa told her aunt that Mackey, her husband who always behaved weird, was forcing himself on her every morning after her aunt went to work. Knowing it was wrong, she thought she was doing the right thing by snitching. Instead, here she stood with her aunt throwing her out and hawking in her face.

  Rissa turned her head away from her aunt and wiped the spit off with the palm of her hand. “Auntie, why you doing this to me? He’s the one who’s sick and messed up in the mind. I didn’t do nothing.”

  “You young, hot-in-the-pants whores are all the same. See a good, married man and wanna try to steal him for yourself.”

  “Are you serious right now? Please, Auntie, you can’t be. What you doing and saying is so wrong.” Sick to her inner core, Rissa had flashbacks of Mackey forcing himself inside of her as she tried relentlessly to no avail to fight him off. Only 125 pounds fully clothed up against a grown man weighing in at an easy 245 pounds, if not more, it was easy to guess who would come out on top of the battle. Rissa had no chance whatsoever and no easy win in sight. She was no match for Mackey to defend herself against him, and the sad part about it was he knew it.

  Sinisterly, he would roughly smash his hand over her mouth, warning her that if she dared told her aunt, she wouldn’t believe her and what was taking place right now would happen. She would be kicked out with no place to go because no one else wanted to be bothered with her or cared about her.

  “Yeah, Rissa, as long as you give me this sweet, tight little pussy you will always have a place to stay. You’ll have food to eat and a roof over your head. See, your aunt loves me. She believes I can do no wrong. Whatever I tell her to do, you see it. You’re not blind. She obeys me. Truth be told, she the best bitch I ever had in my life.” He constantly taunted his niece by marriage until she could take no more.

  That’s when Rissa gathered enough courage to prove him wrong about what he was saying about her mother’s sister. Rissa was dumbfounded and confused at her aunt’s reaction to this unthinkable situation. The naïve niece just knew her aunt would have her back and she would either kill Mackey with her bare hands or at least call the police immediately to protect her from him.

  But the wife, in denial, hadn’t done anything like that. In fact, she’d done the complete opposite. Rissa was almost hysterical, pleading with her kin to believe what she’d exposed about Mackey. The more Rissa revealed details to prove she was telling the truth, the more her claims of sexual abuse fell upon deaf ears. “Auntie, I’m not lying. I swear to God I’m not. He told me if I said anything you wouldn’t believe me, but I told him you would. I told him you would believe me because I was telling the truth. Why would I make something like this up, Auntie? Why?” Rissa sobbed with a face full of tears streaming down her cheeks.

  Mackey was cold as ice. Arms folded, he stood behind his wife, smirking at his young victim who was going through it. Picking at his dirty fingernails, he was confident things would go just as he said if Rissa exposed him for the pedophile monster he truly was. The more Rissa spewed out what they both knew to be the truth, the more his wife defended him, just as he predicted. “Come on now, baby. That little nappy-headed bitch lying. What the hell I look like dealing with her when I got you here with me?” Mackey grinned, grabbing his dick, licking his lips at Rissa.

  Tears flowed even harder down Rissa’s otherwise innocent face as she watched Mackey over her aunt’s shoulder antagonizing her as if the entire thing was a joke. Fed up, she couldn’t take it anymore. She put her hands over her mouth to muffle the scream she could no longer hold in. Turning away, she ran to the bathroom. Of course her auntie was dead on her heels. Rissa quickly slammed the door in her face, feeling as if she wanted to throw up her breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Not knowing what she was going to do next, Rissa panicked, walking around in circles as her aunt’s balled-up fist could be heard pounding on the bathroom door.

  “You gotta go, you fast-ass little ho. You’re not gonna fuck my happy home up. That’s what’s wrong with y’all young bitches nowadays. Always in a grown man’s face thinking they want that fresh perch smelly cat between y’all legs. You gonna learn today. You been acting twice your age smelling your own pussy since you turned a damn teenager.” Auntie was livid and meant every word she was saying as Mackey backed her up rant. “So guess what, wannabe grown ass. You got ten minutes to be the fuck out of my house. You hear me, bitch? Ten minutes!”

  Rissa slowed down her pacing. With her head hurting, she took several deep breaths trying to regain her composure. With both palms covering her ears she sat on the side of the bathtub. As she rocked back and forth her mind was racing trying to figure out her next move.

  She knew staying under her aunt’s roof with that monster Mackey was totally out of the question. One, because her aunt was throwing her out; and, two, Rissa knew it was no longer safe. Where will I go? Who can I call? Should I go to the police and turn him in? Will I end up in a foster home, lost in the system
’til my eighteenth birthday? As the questions shot through her brain like skyrockets, she had no other choice but to boss up as her aunt was now back banging on the locked door.

  Knowing good and well becoming a part of the system was not in her future, Rissa decided to take her chances on the streets of Detroit rather than be a ward of the state. Having felt alone in the world since her mother died, she stood. Going over to the mirror, the anguished teen placed her hands on each side of the bathroom sink, taking a good look at herself. Reaching for her washrag, she wiped the tears off her face, knowing she was done crying over bullshit she couldn’t change. Rissa took a long, deep breath. Eyes bloodshot, she calmly looked around the bathroom until she found her hairbrush. Blocking out the awful world behind the door, she slowly brushed her long black hair to the back as she always wore it. Rissa kept staring at herself in the mirror, remembering being posted at her mother’s hospital bedside the day before she died of kidney failure.

  “Baby, I’m not afraid of dying. My God has sent for me and I know I won’t suffer anymore. I just pray and ask Him to look after my only child. Lord knows there’s a lot of wolves in this world masking themselves in sheep’s clothing.”

  La Rissa Ford didn’t understand what her mother’s words meant in that dire moment in time. But today she fully understood what her mama meant. Mackey was that big, bad wolf in sheep’s clothing. Rissa started to hate her aunt, and Mackey most of all, because the two of them stood at her dying mother’s bedside and promised to take care of her. Now Rissa realized why Mackey was so gung ho with taking her into his household. His shady motives were now all too clear. He had been plotting on taking advantage of her from jump.

  “No dude gonna ever touch me or do what the fuck he wanna do with me ever again unless I let him. I’ll die first. I swear on my dead mama’s cremated ashes,” Rissa angrily vowed as she unlocked the bathroom door ready to face whatever. Mad at the world and anyone against her well-being, Rissa swung the door open with so much force that the knob hit the wall, causing plaster to fall from the ceiling.