by Harvey, Red
Michael: {to Louise and young boy} Go! { Peter struggles in his arms. Young boy and wife do not move} GO!
(Gas supply in generator: Low. POWERING OFF)
* * * *
18
“You know what I love best about you?” Christopher nuzzled Juniper’s temple.
“No, what?” She lay next to him, numb in all the right places.
“Mmm, this.” Christopher kissed above Juniper’s right breast.
“Well, I already knew you loved those.”
He laughed. “That was supposed to be a kiss for your heart.”
Juniper laughed too. “Oh, uh-huh.”
“And I love this.” Another kiss at her temple. “And this is now my favorite.” Christopher picked up her hand to kiss her gold wedding band. “You’re all mine, forever.”
“According to state record, a woman named Violet Rampling is all yours forever.”
“You mean I can sleep with her and you, anytime I want?”
“According to state law, yeah.”
“Sweet.” He smiled lasciviously, and she didn’t like it.
An unspoken joke hung in the air about Juniper sleeping around, but Christopher would never have been so cruel as to say it aloud. You’re imagining things; he’s not even thinking like that, she told herself. All she could feel coming from him was love. Underneath, she didn't sense doubt.
Juniper snuggled closer to her husband, never dreaming that in three months she would be sleeping regularly at the Coach Inn.
****
“Oh God. Jesus. You’re so fucking tight!” Mr. Needy moaned.
Juniper was glad he had chosen to take her from behind, as it afforded her the luxury of rolling her eyes. She had heard lines like his dozens of times before. It was easy to go along with the script.
“Oh, it’s ‘cause you’re so big!” She tried to sound as enthused as possible.
Her faux encouragement helped him to finish up seconds later, making his total fucking time = five minutes. $300 for five minutes worth of work was well worth it to Juniper.
As Mr. Needy was getting dressed, he asked Juniper how old she was. She could tell her answer hinged on a lot, even without her ability. If she told him twenty-five, he would never be a repeat customer.
“Eighteen.” She giggled from the bed.
“Ohhh.” He breathed. “Really?”
Before they had gotten down to the serious business, Juniper had fashioned her hair into pigtails. She looked younger than eighteen.
“Really, mister.”
Though they had just finished, he was ready to go for a second time. The way he was lusting for her perceived youth repulsed Juniper.
Mr. Needy sat down on the bed. His intentions of leaving blew away in the wind. Goddamnit, she thought. I’m tired. She was too tired to fake it for the five minutes Mr. Needy required.
“Why aren’t you in school, young lady?”
“Duh, it’s nighttime! Plus, I graduated. Good thing too because most schools around here are cancelled.” You damn pervert.
There was no deterring Mr. Needy. “Did you ever fuck any of your teachers?”
Time to set things straight. “Okay, you wanna go again? No problem. But you have to pay me the other half of what you owe me, plus another $350 in advance.”
“Why $350?”
“$50 extra for the role-playing.”
Mr. Needy looked less than willing to comply. “How ‘bout zero?”
“I don’t ever fuck for free. Sorry.” Juniper’s mean laugh said she wasn’t sorry at all.
“I don’t pay whores who get me outta the mood.”
Mr. Needy pulled on his pants and gathered up his things.
“Whatever crazy ideas you have otherwise, you’re paying me.”
Juniper reached around the side of the bed to find what she needed taped the back of the headboard. Unfortunately, the duct tape was holding it a little too well. When she tugged at it, the gun stubbornly resisted.
“The hell you doin’?” Mr. Needy worked hard to get his shoes on.
A second tug and the tape felt slacker. “Getting what I need.”
“I told you, I don’t pay for sub-par service. You’d better--,”
One last tug and the gun wrenched free of the tape. Juniper pointed it at Mr. Needy’s face.
“I’d better what? Think you’re the first guy to try and not pay me?”
Mr. Needy was backing away with both hands up.
“I’m sorry. Let me go.” He kept looking from her to the door.
“Gimme your wallet.” Juniper wasn’t going to let him leave without paying her double, no, triple.
“C’mon, lady.”
“Give me your wallet, asshole.”
He reached in his back pocket to pull out a black leather bill-fold.
“Toss it to me.” Juniper said.
He did. It landed next to her leg. With her empty hand, Juniper picked up the wallet and flipped it open. Instead of a license, a work ID was the first card in the clear casing. “Hillcrest High School: Staff member”, it read, right underneath a smiling Mr. Needy. Only his name was Jedadiah Monroe.
“Mr. Monroe, you’re a goddamn teacher?”
“No, a book keeper in the library.” His eyes were on the ground, as if he were ashamed.
“Still close to the students. Close to dream, and one day to touch?”
“I would never--”.
His guilt hit her hard. It was difficult to separate her feelings from the tangled web of lies and the lust merging in his gut. Sometimes, when feelings were strong, she got not just feelings, but images. Mr. Needy was projecting the image of a young girl, probably fourteen or so years old. She was carrying a stack of books, and as she got closer, Mr. Needy’s feelings strengthened. The girl left her pink fuzzy sweater in the library, and he took it home. He laid it on the bed, imagining all sorts of bad things.
Juniper let go of the images. She didn’t need to know anything else.
“You would never, huh?” She sneered. “Get the fuck out of here. You’re disgusting.”
“Can I have my wallet back?”
“Are you kidding me?” She cocked the gun. “Goodbye, douchbag.”
“Okay, okay.”
When Monroe got to the door, he fumbled with the lock. He moaned and looked behind him, sure he would be shot any second. Juniper sighed. Finally, he unlocked the door, and the moment it opened, he ran. His fear lingered in the air. It tasted like pennies on Juniper’s tongue. She spit into the wastebasket next to the bed.
Her telephone rang. “Hello?”
“Hey, babe.” It was Larry the hotel manager on the line. “That last john ran past here threatening to call the cops. You better make like a tree.”
“Thanks for the tip.” And the corny reference, she thought.
“Who the fuck you callin’ ‘babe’?” Juniper heard Jolie scream in the background.
“Nobody!” Larry screamed back.
“Is that your nine-year-old whore again?”
“She wasn’t nine-years-old!”
“So eleven is the premium age you prefer for fuckin’?”
“Catch ya later, June.” Larry hung up.
Juniper found it hard to hold in her laughter during the phone call. Then, she remembered Monroe’s threat. Time to move on.
****
October 8th
We’re out.
We’re free.
I would have never imagined it happening, and not the way it happened, either.
Nor would I have imagined I’d be eating peaches again. Canned, but still delicious fruit.
Last night was insane. Louise beat The Man to a bloody pulp, and we all thought He was dead. Then, a monster with four arms (not two or three, but FOUR!) busted through the window, bars and all. If it hadn’t been for that, we might not have escaped. I feel bad admitting that, because it brought on the deaths of Marc and Gabriella, but in this world, we all don’t have long.
Anyway, Lo
uise and I watched The Man stab the red demon over and over, like he thought he’d find a prize inside of it. I was glad He killed it, ‘til I remembered we had just traded one evil thing for an even worse one. He stabbed Michael while trying to get out of the window. Still, Michael was okay. Both of them struggled on the ground, rolling around and cursing.
Michael got The Man in a hold and told me and Louise to GO! We were stupefied and stood there like morons. When he yelled at us to go again, we did. I went out the window first, and Louise came after. We waited for Michael, but when we heard a scream, Louise wanted to leave. It was obvious she didn’t want Him to come out of the window next. I was crying, told her we had to wait. She dragged me away until I was aware enough to run.
My first impulse upon feeling real ground underneath my feet was to bend down and kiss it, and I did. It was stupid, and a waste of time, but I did it anyway. I was free! So many people I loved had died, and I barely had anything to live for. At the moment of my emancipation, I was only thinking of the sweet night air and how long it had been since I’d breathed it in. For too long, stale breath and shit-smeared corners had polluted my nose-way. No more.
Louise pulled at me to keep going. Somehow, Michael’s instructions had stayed with us, and we ran to the front of the Man’s house, heading north. We hadn’t cleared the front lawn before comin’ upon The Man’s garden. It wasn’t a real garden. It was a trophy space, or like a display case, like for weirdos who collect butterflies on pins, but these weren’t butterflies. Each monster was stuck through the middle on a giant skewer.
We passed by two demons that had more in common with slugs. Huge slugs. The kind of toy slug that came out of the package one inch long, but when you put it in a bottle of water, it grew to fill up the bottle, straining at the sides. However, these were nine feet, maybe ten. Giant slugs with teeth all along their bellies. They must of smelled us, ‘cause when we walked by, they started squirming and mewling.
“Holy shit!”
Louise didn’t seem to care I had cursed aloud and neither did I. Those ugly suckers and the moment of our lives they’d inhabited deserved a “holy shit”, if not more.
Despite the brick of fear in my stomach, I went on running with Louise. Staying Outside wasn’t an option. It was like a nightmare come true. The moon was out, but obscured, a lunar eclipse with a red film as its cover. The sky was overcast with black clouds. No flowers or trees were in bloom, and there were no animals. Well, plenty of dead ones, sure, along with human carcasses lined up on the roadside. Not as many as there might’ve been elsewhere. I could only imagine what the streets in the big city look like. Walking along the road, I mentally ran over Michael’s detailed instructions. I was sure Louise was doing the same thing:
“After you clear the front yard, keep heading north, or straight. For about a mile, there’s nothing but field after field. Follow the fence next to the road and eventually you’ll see trees. That means you’re close. As the trees become denser, you’ll come to a mailbox. There’s a brick road beside that. Follow the road and there’ll be a gray stone wall. Beyond the iron gates, there’s a house. The people inside may be alive. If the house is empty, that’s even better because it’s hidden. We can camp out there for a few days until we figure out something more permanent.”
The walls Michael mentioned were high. Without the maintenance shed near it, we would have never gotten inside. We used an extendable ladder to climb over the stone wall, retrieving it once we figured out how to open the wrought-iron gates.
From inside the wall, the house was still a quarter of a mile away. It sat on a hill, really more of an estate than a house. Big blue shutters gave the house a New England feel. Flower beds lined the walkway leading to the front door, but they were all withered to hell. Overall, it was a beautiful house. Yet, in the red-hued night we came upon it, the house appeared sinister. My imagination was going overtime, and I could see people watching us from the shadows of the windows as we approached.
Getting inside was tricky, because we didn’t know if the house was empty or not. There were no lights on, and it looked deserted. We knocked to be sure. After waiting five minutes and getting no response, we decided it was time to find a way in.
Louise and I tried the front door and windows, but they were locked. We would have broken a window to get inside, but then our safe haven wouldn’t have been as safe, would it? Nothing came up when we looked under the mat for a spare key.
“Let’s try the back door.” I suggested.
By then, the chill of Outside was getting to us. Our clothes were thin and full of holes, not ready to withstand nightly adventures. The Man had fed us (barely), but He had kept us in the same clothes we had arrived in.
Around back, there was a deck that opened up to the second story, with a pool on the ground level. As we suspected, the French doors by the pool were also locked. We climbed the stairs.
The second deck was our last chance for an open door, but it was locked too. Whoever the owners were, they had locked the house up good and tight. I was shivering, running my hands up and down my arms.
“What are we going to do?”
But Louise didn’t answer me. She was staring out over the balcony, or, I thought that’s what she was doing.
“Those flowers, they’re in bloom.”
“What flowers?” And why does that matter, I wanted to add.
“Right there.” Louise pointed at a pot of daisies perched on a corner post of the deck.
“Yeah, they’re pretty but----”. Her raised eyebrows helped me see her point. “---but, they shouldn’t be blooming. Everything else is dead!”
She reached out to feel the flower petals. “They’re fake.”
When she picked up the vase, there was still no key. Our hopes dashed again, we sighed together. As an afterthought, she glanced under the pot, and bam! There was a key taped to the bottom of it.
“Oh thank God.” Louise breathed out.
We had found our way in.
* * * *
19
Cabs weren’t running anymore; too risky. No one from the Coach Inn was willing to give Juniper a ride into the city either. It wasn’t as if she wanted to go back, but the city offered the only other hotel that was still open: the Four Seasons. The Four Seasons meant pricey. Monroe’s wallet would take care of her money problems for awhile. His billfold held over three-thousand dollars. What a school accountant was doing with so much cash was not for Juniper to understand. He could have emptied out his savings in anticipation of getting hookers and escaping the city.
Juniper was going to use the money to remain in the city.
She didn’t have the same itch Ashley did. Juniper knew the city, knew its ugliness. Hell, she was part of the ugliness, and guess what? Looking into the mirror never felt better. Of course, there were days when the underbelly of the city dragged and sagged and stunk to high heaven, but those days weren’t as often as one might suspect. The city was her friend, even while things were falling into real darkness. And after what had happened with Christopher, Juniper had little hope for a future beyond the dingy walls of her urban home.
Let’s just hope I make it back home alive, she thought. Walking back into the city at night was never smart. To avoid trouble, Juniper took shortcuts through the suburbs. The shortcuts took her past the entrance of Christopher’s subdivision. She hurried onward, not wanting to be seen. Nearby, she felt tranquility. Everyone in the neighborhood was asleep.
A few blocks from the hotel, she picked up an idle presence. It was a calm persona, but not the calm of sleep. The calm changed to excitement when whoever it was heard Juniper’s footsteps. Most people felt trepidation when a stranger was around, not excitement.
Juniper put her hand on the gun inside of her coat. Whoever it was, she wouldn’t be unprepared. Around the corner, she came face to face with a young man. He was handsome and appeared non-threatening, until he smiled. It was a predatory smile, one Juniper had seen before.
She walked past the boy without acknowledgment. Instead of his excitement fading, it increased. The boy’s excitement was pungent. It wasn’t a sexual excitement, though there was some of that mixed in too. Mostly, he was broadcasting delight at what he perceived to be a scared girl, alone at night on the big bad streets.
“Hi.”
Juniper kept walking.
“It’s polite to say ‘hi’ back.”
The boy was following behind her. If he touched her, he would get a response.
“Hey.” His hand clamped down on her shoulder. “You’ve been rude, and now I have to hurt you and take your money.”
She cocked the gun without taking it out of her jacket. The boy recognized the sound, lifting his hand from her shoulder.
“I thought you looked like a fighter.” He said.
“Oh, I am.” Juniper spun around with the gun out. It was pointed at his groin.
The boy looked amused. “That’s cute, but I bet you’ve never shot anyone before in your life.”
“Yeah, you’re right.” Juniper aimed lower, and squeezed the trigger. The bullet tore into the boy’s left thigh. “But now I have.”
The boy’s excitement flared into anger. It wasn’t red like with most people; it was black, with blinding white at the edges.
“You bitch.” He groaned, only it wasn’t his voice anymore.
Juniper had to look away. The glare of his white-hot anger was too intense, a small mushroom cloud in the distance bringing heat, light, and horror. An instant later, the glare subsided. She looked again, but the boy was gone. There wasn’t time to figure out how he had run off with an injured leg. Staying on the streets meant an increased chance of meeting more assholes. And Juniper only had so many bullets left for assholes. She planned on saving one for herself if need be.
****
As she dried yet another dish, Juniper resisted the urge to look at the clock. He’s just a little late, she told herself. Four hours isn’t a “little late”, her pride shot back.