They headed to the doorway and were halfway to the counter when Brad’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He looked at the caller’s number before profanities started spilling from his lips.
“Hammer here,” he said curtly before the phone was halfway to his ear.
Cooper’s voice came through the speaker. “Hammer, we have a problem at Division. I need you two to get back here ASAP!”
“What kind of fucking issue is more important than some crazy bitch killing everyone she screws?” Hammer’s question wasn’t born for an answer.
“Don’t start your shit, Hammer, I’m not in the mood. Reverend Benny Robert’s son has been probed. So your asses need to be back here now, unless you want to return to your suspension. Got it?” Cooper didn’t wait for an answer. The line was dead a second later.
“FUCK!” Brad dropped the phone in his pocket and turned to Grayson. “Sorry partner, no rest for us cowpokes. Division needs us in the office for a high profile probing.” Brad drawled in his best Texas accent, but it was clear that Grayson wasn’t amused.
Grayson stepped out of character and started whining. “But all I want is a shower.” She stared across the counter at the ancient attendant reading yesterday’s news. “I’ll pay cash,” she said. “How much to let me use a shower?”
The ancient man looked Grayson over from top to bottom, then returned his gaze to his paper and said, “Fifty cents a minute.”
Grayson laid two twenties on the counter and shot a thumb back toward Brad. “We’ll take two.”
Chapter Three – Brad Hammer
They arrived at Division, dropping their go-bags on their adjoining desks before heading directly to Cooper’s office. Noonan passed without so much as a nod.
Brad’s raised and curious eyebrow sent Grayson into a fit of hysterics. She shook her head with a you don’t want to know, sending Brad’s eyebrow even higher.
She shook her head again to answer his unspoken question, and Brad nodded approval as Grayson opened the door.
Reverend Benny was in full garb, sitting beside Cooper. He rose to greet the agents as they entered Cooper’s office, quickly explaining how his 19 year old boy, Isaiah, was caught having sex with a young man. The Reverend thought it was the Devil in his boy, but Isaiah said he’d been abducted by aliens a few months back and that the aliens had made him gay.
Reverend Benny looked at Brad, eyes pleading. “Can you listen to his story, and let me know if the aliens really did that to him?” He looked hopeful. “If they did it, they can undo it, right?”
Cooper rolled his eyes behind the Reverend. Brad said, “Well find out what we can, Reverend Benny.”
They called Isaiah inside the room, and sat him at the foot of the conference table. Brad and Grayson stood close to Cooper’s side of the room, listening as the young man in the small, round, silver rimmed glasses told the story of his alien encounter. Reverend Benny looked as if he wanted to crawl in a hole and pull the earth over the top of him.
As soon as he finished his story, Grayson turned to the Reverend. “Would you mind giving us a moment alone with your son?”
“Of course not,” The Reverend shook his head, giving the room his best front of the pulpit smile before slipping from the door. Cooper followed the Reverend out of the room, leaving the agents alone with Isaiah.
There were 30 seconds on the clock, and two nervous sips of water from the Reverend’s son before Grayson said, “You’ve always liked men, haven’t you, Isaiah?”
His eyes widened and he shook his head. “Of course, not,” he said.
Grayson started to pace. “Of course, not,” she pretended to agree. “You’re father would never allow that, right?”
He met her eyes, and held her gaze. “No, he wouldn’t, but that doesn’t make me a faggot.”
“Oh,” Grayson soured her nose. “I don’t like that word a bit. Seems like an awfully cruel thing to call someone seeing as how you can’t do anything to change the way the Good Lord made you.”
Brad smirked. He’d heard people say the words “good” and “Lord” together, but never the way Grayson had.
There was a flicker in Isaiah’s eyes, and like a cat, Grayson pounced.
“Was it hard?”
Grayson wasn’t really waiting for Isaiah to answer. He looked confused, and Grayson stepped into the confusion. “It had to be hard, growing up with feelings you couldn’t help, that everyone kept telling you were wrong. If the Good Lord hated homosexuals, well then, that meant he must hate you. And if he hated you, then you didn’t have a chance with your father, did you Isaiah?”
Isaiah’s lip started to quiver, but he kept himself from crying. At least for the next few minutes. After another quarter hour with Grayson pacing, and around 17 sips of water to soften Isaiah’s parched lips, he broke down, shuddering with shame and sobbing that his father will disown him if he knew the truth.
With Isaiah’s head down, Grayson shot a look at Brad. He winked, leaning against the office wall. She pulled a chair from the table, sat beside Isaiah, and put a comforting palm on his back, then gently moved it up and down.
“You’re going to have to be honest with your father,” Grayson said. “It’s his job to love you, his job to understand you, his job to accept you as you are.”
Isaiah shook his head. “Daddy don’t work that way,” he said. “He’d rather believe that the aliens made me like boys.” It was hard to make heads or tails from Isaiah, the way he was sobbing into the crook of his elbow.
“You don’t worry about a thing,” Grayson assured him. “Agent Hammer and I are going to have a discussion with your father. We’re going to make everything okay.”
Isaiah continued to sob.
“Do you believe us?” Grayson asked.
Isaiah wanted to, Brad could see it on his face. But how could he? As convincing as Grayson could be, Reverend FuckFace had a lifetime of fear and bigotry on her.
Grayson took her hand from Isaiah’s shoulder and tilted his chin so that his eyes were meeting hers. “You have my word,” she said. “We’ll take care of this.” She leaned in closer. “You’ll have nothing to worry about, ever again. Okay?”
Isaiah choked through another final sob, then collected himself as Brad led him toward his office, where he could wait while they finished up speaking with The Reverend.
Brad was only gone for a minute, but when he returned to Cooper’s office, Reverend Benny was already an inflated pufferfish of full-blown denial.
“That boy’s mother and I raised him from the time he was no bigger than a tater tot. There is no way our influence could have soured so much as to start him down toward the crookedly laid cobblestones on the path to the Fiery Lake.”
“Your son has done nothing wrong,” Grayson said, just inches from the Reverend’s face. Cooper was standing a few feet behind her, arms folded.
“Well I have to disagree, Agent Grayson,” the Reverend said, his face red and puffy. “I believe that homosexuality is shown as a sin in the scripture.” He shook his head as though he truly regretted his words. “It’s a hard thing to say, since I am for every man. I’m not against anybody. I don‘t think anybody’s second class, but the bible is clear on the subject.”
The Reverend lowered his gaze, then raised it back to Grayson, suddenly bright. “I hate to be the one pointing a finger, but is it possible, seeing as how close you both are to alien investigation, that maybe they’ve gotten to you, too? I mean, if my good boy wasn’t gay before the aliens, and you’re buying his swill, then maybe the aliens have got to you, too, unless it was Satan himself.
Brad’s shit was officially lost.
He shot a look at Cooper, not asking for permission, but letting him know he was about to leave the leash. “Listen, Reverend, I’ve got real cases to solve and was pulled in here to help you, and while I certainly don’t mind, I’m not about to spend my afternoon placating your homophobia. Isaiah’s probably been taking it in the ass, and giving it all the same, ever sin
ce he started getting a fatty to Justin Timberlake instead of Brittany back when he was 15.”
The Reverend was shaking with rage, but Brad wouldn’t give him a chance to vent. “Sit down,” he ordered, “and I’ll tell you a story.”
Looking like he had no idea what else to do, the Reverend sat.
Cooper mopped his brow, and Grayson smiled. Brad pulled out a chair and sat beside the Reverend.
“Before I joined Division 69, I was about six inches away from marrying the woman of my dreams. Amanda was pregnant with my son, Tyler. We didn’t just have the name picked out, we had our entire life looking like Page 47 of the Pottery Barn catalogue, complete with a two-story house and a white picket fence. We had it all. Until one night, she vanished, along with everything else of my life.”
Brad took a 20-second break to breathe through the story’s brief intermission, then started again managing not to cry. “When Amanda returned, a month later, our baby was gone. She insisted that she’d been abducted by aliens, but of course I didn’t believe her. I figured she changed her mind, got cold feet, didn’t want to be with a guy like me. I told myself that she got an abortion or something. I was devastated, but never accused her of lying, at least not out loud. She was a wreck, and I didn’t want to do anything to make her feel worse.”
Brad stood from his seat, as though it was too painful to tell the story without pacing. “Obviously something was wrong. Amanda almost seemed like a different person. So I decided to have her checked into a psychiatric hospital, convinced it was for her own good. She was scheduled to check in on April 1, easy to remember with it being April Fool’s Day and all. We went to bed the night before, just like always. I was seconds away from The Sandman when the room suddenly went white. All white. I watched, helpless, paralyzed as I was forced to watch her float from the window.”
Brad’s voice finally cracked. “And then, just like that, Amanda was gone. And she never came back.”
Brad sat back down. Reverend Benny’s eyes were wide, as were Grayson’s. Unlike Cooper, she was hearing this story for the first time. The narrative had painted her face in a fresh set of tears.
Brad whispered in a growl, his breath in Reverend Benny’s face. “So you’ll have to pardon me if I’m not too fucking patient with you coming in here with some bullshit story about aliens, because you’re too fucking close-minded to accept your son as he is! You’re lucky to still have a family. So drop the sanctimonious bullshit and be a little fucking grateful while you still have people who love you!”
Brad stormed from the room before the Reverend could respond. Grayson followed one beat behind.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me that story?” she said, wrapping her fingers around his arm and pulling him toward her.
Brad shrugged. “Not my favorite place to go,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to get through the day joking about your tits. Which, by the way, are looking mighty fine today.”
He smiled and Grayson laughed. She jerked her thumb back toward Cooper’s office. “So what do you think is going to happen back in there?”
“Exactly nothing,” Brad said.
XXX
Chapter Four – Willow Monroe
The string of flickering lights hanging from the rafters did nothing to make the atmosphere any more appealing. A half-dozen pool games were happening in back, all of them loud. Drunken laughter caromed through the crowded club, loudly echoing as Willow entered the crowded bar just outside Shreveport, Louisiana.
Willow was starving, craving new life to swallow. She’d felt the rush of taking a rapist’s life in a dark alley back in Texas – the most powerful feeling she’d ever felt, turning the tables on a man who had it in his head that it was okay to take what he wanted whether she liked it or not.
Willow wasn’t truly a killer, and if she had to become one to insure her own survival, she wanted to rid the world of some of its scum along the way.
She scanned the room, searching for targets, looking for men who were also on the hunt. Not just men looking for their next lay, men who saw pussy as prey. She threw her thoughts at two good looking guys playing a quiet game of pool in the corner, but they blushed and put their heads down; true country boys with the best of intentions and good wives waiting at home.
Willow kept scanning until she found the two pieces of shit she’d been looking for.
She sat beside them at the bar, throwing each of them thoughts of her sitting on their face. They started grinning, taunting one another to spark a conversation as Willow ordered a drink. She shuddered at what she saw in their minds. Memories of girls she reminded them of. Apparently she looked an awful lot like this blast from their past to their beer goggled eyes.
Their minds were both packed with plenty of unsavory shit, but one shared memory gave Willow the confidence to know for certain she was making the right call.
She helped them recall that particular night, scraping filth from their memory.
The girl was in a bathroom, drawn inside by the taller, stronger of the two – so drunk she was having trouble keeping her balance. The shitbag was practically holding her up by her waist when the smaller, nerdier guy with glasses came through the bathroom door, then locked it behind him.
He checked the three stalls to make certain they were alone before approaching her from behind. She squirmed and squinted, trying to see who was on the other side of her, head turning and eyes darting between the two faces.
“No!”
Willow heard their memory scream her refusal and felt a chill through her body. She sipped her double shot of Patron, then winced as the memory continued to stream. The two men were laughing and poking one another, saying “hey remember” and reliving their triumph just two feet away. The alcohol on Willow’s empty stomach and the bastards sitting beside her drew acid from her stomach up and into her throat. She swallowed hard, shoving the acid down, then took another sip of smooth alcohol.
“No!” the blonde screamed again.
They laughed, pulling the back of her shirt over her head, then wrapping it around her mouth to smother objection. The super sized guy held the girl’s arms behind her back, both to hold her up and to restrain her as the smaller man lifted the front of her shirt and popped her B-cup tits from the top of her bra. Pressure squished her tits together and turned them a darker shade of pink.
Both shitbags laughed, making jokes as tears slid down the girl’s cheek. The small fry took a hard bite of her nipple, forcing her body into involuntary reaction. She moaned beneath her shirt, and the smaller man made a comment about the “bitch” liking pain as he slapped her tits, making them bounce.
The stronger one laughed, then told the smaller one to pull up her skirt to see if she was wet. He did. Then the stronger man pulled the woman’s black silk panties down past her ankles and put a hand between her legs, though she tried to squeeze them together tight enough to stop him. He twisted the tender skin of her inner thigh causing her legs to pop open from the sudden pain.
Another round of laughter bounced against the bathroom walls. The weaker one held her legs open by placing his arm in between them like a bar, then shoved two fingers inside her pussy before pulling them out and wiping the wet of her inner walls onto the stronger one’s arm.
“See, cunt’s all soaked. She wants it bad,” the smaller one said reaching down to unbuckle his belt.
“Man, your wife would shit a brick if she knew,” the stronger one chuckled, shaking his head.
“Yeah, but our sweet loving wives are at home, in the kitchen where they should be, drinking wine and wishing us well on our fishing trip.” The smaller one laughed, pants off his body, fishing for a condom from his pocket. He popped his cock from his boxers, rolled the condom to the base, then looked at the girl and said, “You can fight if you want. Only makes it more fun. My wife does it sometimes when I’m feeling like I need a little extra, but she never fights hard enough.”
The stronger man released the girl and she ran for the door, maki
ng it two steps before tripping over the panties that were a prison at her feet, slapping the floor with a thud.
Willow jumped in her seat as the loud crash echoed through the memory, causing them to look over at her. She smiled, hating them. They turned back and continued their reminiscing, laughing about how she squirmed on the floor as the small one pulled her head from the floor.
She squirmed, trying to free herself from his grip. He fell on top of her, slamming his dick inside and severing her squirm. He pounded her hard, her hip bones scraping the floor as he pushed himself in her over and over still holding onto her hair.
Tears slid from her cheeks as he fucked her.
He finished and the stronger one lifted her to her feet, then spit in her face. “Next time, you shouldn’t resist. We like teaching whores like you not to be a dick tease.”
She pleaded through the shirt still in her mouth but he grabbed her hair and dragged her to the sink, then shoved her onto the porcelain, as she screamed.
He plucked his dick from his pants and put on a condom as she tried to catch the breath being forced from her body. He shoved himself inside her. Between the pain of his larger cock driving into her already swollen, sore pussy and his massive weight crushing her small hips against the porcelain, the girl surrendered to blackness.
Not that it stopped him. He kept pounding her until he was finished and spent, then left her laying in a heap in the corner, exposed. The two men left laughing, congratulating one another on teaching another whore a lesson as they left the bar and climbed into their trucks.
Willow had had enough.
Rage flooded her veins as she dressed herself in a smile, downed the rest of the double shot, then waited for its effects to swim through her body. She stumbled intentionally while standing from the stool, then fell into Small Fry.
“Oh hi… sorry about that,” she said, slightly slurring her ‘s’.
“No problem doll,” Small Fry smiled at his friend as he touched her arm. Willow had to fight her instinct to pull away.
The XXX Files Season One (Episodes 1-4) Page 11