by Marni Mann
Something told me I’d never be getting those answers.
“How do you feel, Arin?”
I thought about his question as I sat on the end of the bed and glanced down at my legs, which felt too weak for stairs but well enough to walk on a solid, level surface. “I’m better.”
“Then, I’ll give you that answer tomorrow. We’ll start…slow.”
When he began to close the door, I said, “You’re right. I do know more about you now.”
“Yeah? What’d you learn?”
What I’d learned had nothing to do with snakes and everything to do with the girls downstairs. If Huck were a monster who sold women, whether they were trafficked or not, he wouldn’t have given them a room to shower and bathe in, cosmetics to use, someone to do their hair and makeup. Their smiles definitely wouldn’t have been genuine, like they had been. He’d have given them a dungeon to change in and sent them straight out to the men.
Deep down, beneath his layers of scales and his sharp fangs, was a man worth knowing.
If circumstances were only different.
But they weren’t.
“That you’re not the guy I thought you were.”
The corner of his lip lifted, and he gave me a small smirk. It was the sexiest look I’d seen from him.
I squeezed the edge of the mattress to steady my body, as I was slipping off the edge.
“What were the snakes trying to tell me?” I asked.
“That they want to be fed.”
I wondered what they ate.
He shut the door before I had a chance to ask, so I looked at the picture of the snake on the wall. So, it was a special one. An animal he cared about enough to sound emotional when I’d asked about it.
Too bad it was gone.
The Kid
Before
I’m not good at math.
I struggle with it in school. I always ask my teachers if I can use a calculator, and none of them let me.
It’s so stupid.
Every year, I end up passing but just barely because I can’t figure out the equations they make me do. I don’t understand why they insist I learn them. It’s not like I’m going to use them in the real world anyway, and there’s never a time when I can’t whip out my phone and find the answer to anything I need.
I suppose that’s a bit harder for you, but I’m sure geometry isn’t needed where you live either.
I’m much better at reading, language—subjects like that.
I’m saying all of this because I didn’t do the math in your last letter or the one before that. You know, when you told me about you and Toy and me, my mom, and Beard. It looks like one giant equation with how long you and Toy were together, minus the time it took you to get my mom pregnant, minus the time I was in her belly, equals something that sounds like you cheated on Toy.
So, my question is, why did you do it?
Or maybe the more important one is, if you hated my mom so much, why did you knock her up?
Shank
Before
So, the kid wasn’t good at math. I didn’t see that as a problem because his old man wasn’t good at it either. At his age, the only things I’d cared about were how many milligrams of oxy I was transporting and how long of a prison sentence I would get if I got caught.
What the kid was really leading to was how I’d gotten his mother pregnant, especially since I’d been with Toy at the time.
I was sure he didn’t know the whole story, and the version he’d been told was toned down.
I had no problem with telling him the truth. I just didn’t know if he could handle it. Even Toy had had a hard time with it, and Toy had handled almost all of my shit. But, when everything with Tyler had gone down, Toy had started using more and mixing drugs to get a stronger high.
Eventually, he’d OD’d.
Regardless, if the kid wanted an answer, I’d give him one.
Not the basics. He’d get every goddamn detail.
Some of the inmates in here, the ones who had found God, would get on their knees right now and pray. With their fingers clasped and their eyes closed, they’d ask that their written confession be forgiven. For it not to ruin the relationship with their child.
I wasn’t like my fellow inmates.
I’d done nothing wrong.
Still, I couldn’t help but laugh as I looked down at my lap. The hand that had wrapped around his mother’s throat was the same one that was going to write him a letter, explaining how he had been conceived. Now, that was fucking irony.
To tell that story, kid, I would have to back up a bunch of years, so you could hear it all from the beginning.
You see, your mother was part of an organization called The Achurdy. The Achurdy found girls—hot ones, like Tyler—to target wealthy men with high limits on their credit cards. The girls would get these men all doped up and bring them to an underground auction where they’d get them to spend thousands. The girls would get a healthy cut, the men would be driven home, and The Achurdy would make bank. So, your mother was nothing more than a high-end con-artist whore.
For the girls, there was one crucial rule that they couldn’t break. Breaking it would cost them their lives.
There was no dating outside the organization.
Tyler, that cunt, didn’t listen, and she broke the rule with Beard.
They’d met while Beard was back home in San Diego. Fucking Beard couldn’t get enough of her, and he returned to the States every chance he got, so he could spend time with her. He didn’t know she was in The Achurdy, nor did he know the deer skull she had tattooed on her finger was the way they branded their girls.
But I knew.
My father had been selling drugs to The Achurdy for a long time. And, once we’d opened the prison, they’d hired us to get rid of the girls who were caught breaking their rules. Some had tried to run off, some had gotten pregnant, and some were just fucking weak and needed to die.
Beard didn’t like killing women, so when The Achurdy girls came in, I was the one who got to play, relentlessly torturing them, listening to them scream until I couldn’t take another second, and I ripped out their tongues.
Beard never saw the girls come in, never laid his hands on them, so he didn’t make the connection with Tyler’s tattoo. But Beard knew she was into some shit. Hell, she wasn’t able to see him that often. She couldn’t spend the night at his place, and he wasn’t allowed at hers. You’d think he would have pushed your mother to find out what she was into. He didn’t.
Dumb motherfucker.
But that was my boy, always leading with his heart. Always letting pussy determine his next move. Always letting women turn him weak.
When I found out your mother was part of The Achurdy, I didn’t tell Beard. There was no use. Nothing would have changed had he known. A girl like her, involved in something that deep, couldn’t maintain a double life for too long. So, I listened to Beard talk about her non-fucking-stop, and I waited for it all to crash.
It happened quicker than I’d thought.
One night, after a short trip home, Beard returned to the prison, completely strung out. His clothes were covered in blood. He was crying, and he wouldn’t stop shouting. I’d never seen him that way. He hadn’t even been that emotional when his mother was missing for months.
Diego and I made him talk, and it took hours for him to get it all out. We eventually learned that he’d found your mother dead. She’d slit her wrists inside his apartment. She’d left a note and arranged for some dude to pick her up and everything.
It all sounded far too orchestrated.
With running my father’s drugs, I’d been around shady my whole life. I knew how people schemed and fucking weaseled their way out of things, and most of the time, I caught them.
Tyler’s suicide felt so fake to me. Why the hell would she want the man who loved her to find her dead? She could have just sent Beard a text and killed herself at home. But, at his place, even scheduling someone to pick up
her body? Now, that felt staged.
My theory was that she needed Beard to see her dead, so he wouldn’t go looking for her. And, until I was shown proof, she was still very alive in my mind.
I didn’t tell Beard that.
Instead, I hired a guy my father used back at home when he needed to find someone who had disappeared off the radar. It only took a few weeks before the PI located her. She had moved to the East Coast in a place that she paid for in cash. That part didn’t interest me as much as the tiny belly she had.
That cunt was pregnant with Beard’s kid.
But, if The Achurdy had found that out, they would have sent her to my prison. She didn’t know that. She just knew some of her coworkers had gone missing, and she never heard from them again. So, your mother was faced with a decision—have an abortion or fake her own death.
Too bad I was smarter than her.
Smarter than Beard, too.
That fucker really thought she was gone. He cried about her cold body and her dead eyes and how she had been silent when he tried to shake her back alive.
He’d always been weak.
Your mother made him weaker.
And she made him soft.
He was hurting so fucking badly because of her.
I was going to make sure that cunt never got near him again.
Then, some way, I’d crawl into the drug hole that Beard had fallen into, and I’d drag his ass out.
“Prisoner,” someone barked into my cell.
I looked up from the letter, and there was a guard standing in front of me on the other side of the bars. He was the one with the good-tasting cum.
“What?”
“It’s time for your shower.”
“I had one this—”
“Is that back talk, I hear?” His mouth moved between the iron rods, and the yelling caused his skin to turn red. “Showers are a privilege that I can easily take away. Is that what you want? To rot in this fucking cell with the smelliest balls in this prison?”
He wanted his cock sucked.
I understood the message.
And that was what this prison life was all about—working for privileges, ones that made life in here a little more bearable. Still, all this asshole had had to do was ask, and I would have put his perfect dick in my mouth, swiveling my tongue around the tip until his cum burst through the tiny hole.
His theatrics weren’t needed.
“Let me put my things away,” I told him. “I just need a minute.”
“That’s a better answer.”
I turned my back to him and quickly finished the letter.
All I had to do was kidnap your mother before anyone else found her.
It wasn’t hard.
At that time, I was the only one looking for her.
I got her, kid.
And I gave her a gift.
You.
I tossed the letter into an envelope, swiping my tongue over the glue to seal it just in case someone came into my cell while I was gone. Whenever I got back from the shower, I’d put his address on the front and stick it in the morning mail.
I’d barely touched on the story.
And I hadn’t even gotten to the good part.
“Let’s fucking go!” the guard screamed.
I’d have to continue it another time.
I turned around and stuck my hands through the opening, so the guard could put me in cuffs.
Then, he yanked my back against the bars and whispered, “My cock is tired of waiting for you.”
I smiled to myself. I loved it when I was right.
Anonymous
Before
You captured me.
Tortured me.
Killed me.
Now, it’s your turn to die.
Shank
Before
I held the letter in my hand, staring at the written words, reciting them in my head.
You captured me. Tortured me. Killed me. Now, it’s your turn to die.
What the fuck?
Some asshole has seriously large balls to send me that threat.
I didn’t take threats. I didn’t have to. I’d just find the person who was pissed off at me, and I’d kill them.
It was that simple.
But, in here, I didn’t have that kind of power, and I was sure they knew that.
Anonymous.
Fucking pussy.
I looked at the envelope. It was stamped; however, the markings were too faint to show where it had been processed. My prison number had even been put on the front. The only thing missing was a return address.
Who the hell could it be?
I’d tortured hundreds of prisoners, and I always made sure they were dead when I was done.
Could I have missed one?
Goddamn it, it could be anyone.
I checked out the note again, hoping it would give me a hint. The handwriting was simple, thin capital letters that could have been written by a male or female.
Whoever it was knew all the things I loved.
The only thing they’d left out was blood.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Fuck this. If they wanted me, they knew where to find me.
I tore the letter into pieces and dropped it into my toilet. I did the same with the envelope and pissed on the floating paper.
After I flushed, I walked over to the bars and yelled, “Hey,” to catch the guard’s attention.
As he turned around, his hand went down to adjust his balls. “What the fuck do you want, inmate?”
It was the same guard as yesterday, the one who’d taken me to the shower and rammed my mouth like it was an asshole.
The one whose balls I wanted underneath my tongue.
“I need a shower.”
He looked at his watch. “It’s not time.”
I waited for him to glance up, and then I tore off my shirt and dropped it onto the bed of blankets. With his eyes on me, I dipped my face between the narrow space of the bars and began to lick the fucking rod. When I got about a foot down, I rotated to the other side and dragged my tongue back up.
I needed something in my mouth even if it was metal.
And I knew he wanted something around his cock because I watched it harden inside his pants, pressing into the zipper like it was trying to blow its way out.
“I think I can make an exception,” he said.
I tucked my soap underneath my arm and gave him my hands to cuff. Once they were locked around my wrists, he took me into the dark hallway, and we passed the prisoners who were housed in my wing. There were only cells on one side of the walkway, a concrete wall on the other, so we weren’t able to see the other inmates unless we were being escorted somewhere. That didn’t stop us from hearing what went on.
The fucking.
The torture.
The screams.
It felt just like home.
At the end of the hall was a normal-sized bathroom, except inside was only a shower. No tub or curtain, just a head that came out of the wall and a drain in the middle of the floor. It was clogged with short black hairs. I wondered how many ball sacks those pubes had fallen from.
When we showered, a guard normally stood at the door with it ajar, so he could keep an eye on us and the hallway. But, when this guard wanted his cock sucked, he would lock us both inside.
As I heard the click of the metal bolt, I turned around for him to uncuff me. He put the shower on, and then he twisted the key in between my hands and freed them.
I dropped the soap and got onto my knees.
Fuck, I enjoyed this part. My heart pounded at the anticipation of his cock sliding out of his pants.
“You want this dick?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes.”
He kept his belt on, the one that held his baton and gun, and just unzipped his pants. Through the opening, I saw white briefs. And, through that hole, there was a flash of dark hair before his cock sprang out.
Mmm.
He didn’t have the biggest dick. But, where it lacked in length, it made up for in width.
He gripped the base, leading the crown until it pressed against my cheek. He rubbed it over one, and as he passed my mouth, I licked the pre-cum off the tip.
“Tease me…just like that,” he ordered. “Make me want that fucking mouth of yours.” He circled my other cheek, followed by another quick lick from my tongue. “Stick it out nice and long for me.” With my tongue hanging out of my mouth, he wagged his tip over the center of it, dripping more of his salty pre-cum, until he hissed, “Suck.”
With pleasure, I surrounded his head. The whiff of musk I got told me he was near the end of his shift. I’d tasted him in various stages. Since I usually didn’t have a choice, I had no preference. I liked his dick any way he gave it to me.
As I took my first bob down to his base, I watched him lift the gun out of its holster. He unlatched the safety and pressed the muzzle to the side of my forehead. “You do anything stupid, and I’ll pull the fucking trigger.”
This wasn’t the first time he’d pointed his gun at me.
Each time, I liked it even more.
And, each time, it made me harder for him.
I flattened my tongue, dipping it down into his hair, circling his shaft a few times before lifting toward his crown. Needing more access, I reached inside his pants and cupped his balls, rolling them in my palm.
“Yes,” he moaned. “Take it deep.”
My cock was stabbing into the cheap fucking pants they made us wear, and the fabric scratched at my tip every time my hips shifted. I was losing my shit. All I could think about was making his dick come and how I was going to beat off to the memory of it when I got back to my cell.
I dived down again, and my spit flowed like a goddamn river toward the hand that cupped his balls. I used it to keep my fingers juiced up, so they could slide around his sack. And, now, I had a rhythm, so I sucked as hard as I could. He liked it because he was bleating like a fucking goat.
My free hand went to the bottom of his cock and jerked off that section while I kept my lips focused on the top. With the combination of just enough suction and flicking, he hardened even more.