by Marni Mann
Huck had said I didn’t have to worry, that it wouldn’t hurt me. There was no way for him to know that. Yellow might have been a part of him, but the snake acted on its own.
A fucking snake.
One that meant everything to Huck.
Enough that he’d made his skin look like one.
I shifted the top of the cage several inches to give myself enough room to slip my hand inside. My heart was beating out of my chest. My fingers started to tingle as I dipped them in. I felt Huck’s eyes boring through me. I couldn’t wait another second. I had to do this. So, I gently brushed my fingers down the side of Yellow.
I held my breath, trying to slow my heart.
Yellow looked at me as I gave him a second stroke. His texture was coarse and ridged, not smooth like I had thought. He almost got rougher, the more I touched him, and his body began shifting forward a few inches. The sound of him gliding over the woodchips sent goose bumps to my flesh. With him now a little further down, I focused on his tail. It got thinner toward the end.
It curled around my pointer finger.
Huck growled.
I exhaled very slowly. When I felt my heart rate slow even more, I took my hand out of the cage and closed the lid. I walked over to the foot of the mattress and looked him straight in the eyes. I was already naked, so there was nothing to strip. But there were plenty of things I could do to my body to show him how much I wanted him.
Using the same hand I’d touched Yellow with, I started at the lower part of my navel. My fingers rubbed circles over the bare skin, teasing their way lower until I felt the soft scratches of my nails on the top of my clit.
“Yellow turned you on,” he said, his eyes never leaving mine.
Yellow looked like the one in the picture that hung in my room and the one I’d blown to pieces.
The one I had loved killing.
I gasped from the sensation, at how good it felt, even though my own touch wasn’t a surprise. “Yes.”
My fingers continued to slide until they found my entrance and did quick, shallow plunges inside of it.
“How wet are you?”
I pulled them out and dragged the pads of my fingertips over to my clit. “Dripping.”
I heard his gentle moan as I did a hard, fast sweep across it, my other hand working toward one of my breasts.
“Pinch it,” he said, referring to my nipple.
I tugged it. Hard. “That felt amazing.” Keeping my palm on my clit, I inserted into my wetness, stretching to my furthest knuckle. “Huck…” I groaned.
“Harder,” he roared.
I drove in with more speed, grinding against my clit at the same time, squeezing my nipple to the point where I screamed.
“Harder,” he barked.
Wetness now covered my whole hand and the inside of my thighs. “Oh God.”
He stood from the bed and came up behind me. He didn’t touch me. He just leaned his face into my neck, so I could feel each of his exhales. “Are you going to come?”
He circled around me once as I said, “Please. I want to.”
And then he walked around me a second time and stopped when he was behind me. “Let me hear you,” he demanded in my ear.
I rested my cheek against his chest. My lips pressed into his shirt. I gave him every sound that came through me, every breath, every feeling that entered my body.
“Huck,” I groaned as the orgasm began to build.
“Tell me.”
The warmth from his mouth made me shiver.
I was seconds away from losing control, and I reached behind me and pressed my hand on his cock. He didn’t need to give it to me to make me come. I just wanted to hold on to it, feel its hardness beneath my skin.
“I’m going—”
“Arin,” he said, interrupting me.
The intensity was almost at the peak. “Yes?”
“Tell me about your daddy.”
“My daddy?” I said, sounding surprised, slowing the movement of my hand because of Huck’s question, the feeling dissolving so fast.
He turned my face, our eyes fixed.
His reminded me of Yellow’s.
Of the one I’d killed.
“Yes, Arin. I want to know all about your daddy.”
Anonymous
Before
Do you know what it’s like to have someone you love get taken away from you?
I do.
You will, too.
Shank
Before
After I finished my shower, one where some soap and water had actually touched my skin, I returned to my cell. There was an envelope sitting on my bed of blankets. I didn’t have to open it to know whom it’d come from. I could tell from the handwriting.
Fucking Anonymous.
I stared at it for a while. There was no reason to tear into it right away. Nothing written would change anything. I was in here. The threat was coming from somewhere outside these bars.
I was helpless.
But, so far, I was still alive, and the last letter had been a bunch of bullshit.
Half a day later was when I finally read it.
You will, too.
I smiled as I read the last word.
Lies.
All of it.
I was alone, inside this fucking prison, and I had no one on the outside.
You couldn’t take something from nothing. All this sorry-ass fool had was some paper, an address, and empty goddamn threats.
I wasn’t scared.
Mind games didn’t work on me.
But then a thought came to me. What if Anonymous is talking about the kid? That shit passed as quickly as it had come because there was no way they could trace the kid back to me. We didn’t have the same last name. I wasn’t on his birth certificate. We hadn’t been in touch for all that long.
Fuck them.
I tore the letter up, stuck it in the toilet, and flushed.
I didn’t give it my piss this time.
Anonymous didn’t even deserve that.
The Kid
Before
Every time I think I know you, one of your letters arrives, and I learn I really know nothing at all.
Every time I think I know myself, I find out there’s a part of me I never expected.
A part I’m not sure I want to understand.
A part that hurts to think about.
The part I got from you.
But, when I look at myself in the mirror, I see me.
Normal old me.
Student. Skateboarder. Beach lover.
But I come from you, so does it mean I have another side, too?
Does it mean I’m capable of the things you’ve done?
Does it mean I’ll never really have normal?
I know my start was different than most. I know I lived in a prison. I know I was surrounded by death and blood and violence.
I know I loved a stuffed rat because of you.
I know all the things I inherited from my mother.
Now, I know what I inherited from you.
And it terrifies me.
You didn’t love my mother.
You really despised her.
I don’t have a problem with that.
My problem is what you did to her. How ugly you were with her.
What you took without her consent.
God, I hope that isn’t how she got pregnant.
I worry it is, that I was conceived during her fucking screaming.
I feel sick.
I don’t want to be you.
I won’t ever be you.
And I know I should probably stop writing you.
But I can’t.
At least not until I hear the rest.
Shank
Before
It had been a month since I got the letter from Anonymous. They were full of shit, just as I had suspected. If their threat were serious, they would have already killed the kid by now. A month was way too long to wait, especially when you
were dealing with an expert like me. Four weeks gave me time to plan and set things in motion and protect the kid if I were worried about his safety. I wasn’t. I knew that motherfucker had no idea the kid was my child.
Anonymous could suck my cock.
That wasn’t even the issue.
It was the kid and the fucking response he’d sent me. He was feeling all sorry for himself and weepy over what I’d done to his mother.
What the hell had he expected? For me to tell him that I’d fucked her on a bed of roses? That I’d taken my time and made sure she had gotten off?
Shit, that made me laugh.
Beard had needed screams, so I had given him some.
I had needed to come, so I had.
There was nothing wrong with what I had done.
And I didn’t give a fuck if I’d upset the kid.
He’d asked for the truth, and he couldn’t handle it.
That wasn’t my problem.
But, now, he wanted to hear more.
I picked up the small stack of paper and a pen, and I started writing.
Like I’d said in my last letter, Beard was back. The morning after he’d heard your mother’s screams, he was like a whole new fucking person. He tossed all the pills. He started sleeping. He showered regularly. He was alive again. And he never wanted to leave the prison. He wanted to work every single fucking day without any time off.
Now that he wasn’t burying himself in drugs, a hate boiled inside him. I got excited, just thinking about how fucking angry he had been back then. It was so bad, there were times the inmates would be lucky if they landed in my OR and not Beard’s. That said a lot, coming from me.
He’d always liked working at the prison.
But, now, he had a place to play.
Having Beard back meant Tyler couldn’t stay in her cell. And, because he’d returned to us so fast and he wanted to get straight to work, I had to get her the hell out of there.
I didn’t even have enough time to kill her first.
So, while Diego distracted him, Toy and I carried her out. Then, once she was away from the building and in a car Toy had rented, Diego fixed the feed on the monitor, so it showed all the cells. The audio and video that had been recorded of her was deleted off the separate server and saved to a thumb drive.
I kept that thing in my fucking pocket.
Once Toy and I got her out, I took a few days off. I told the guys Toy and I needed some time away, and we were headed to Caracas. Really, we were looking for a place to put Tyler.
After a few stops, we finally found something. It was a small shack a couple of miles from the prison. It had a bedroom and a bathroom and a kitchen. That was it. We didn’t need big. We just needed a place to store her until I could figure out what the fuck to do with her.
You see, I didn’t kill in Venezuela unless it was at the prison.
I couldn’t kill her in the States. That was far too risky.
I’d have to transport her to somewhere in South America.
But, over time, that proved to be tricky. Beard was involved with the flight plans and the scheduling. He knew who was in the plane at all times, and he was friends with the pilots. I could have come up with a lie and had everyone on board without them knowing whom they were lying about. But I’d learned over the years that people were terrible fucking liars.
So, until I could come up with a plan, Toy and Tyler were going to live at the shack, and Toy would make sure she didn’t escape. I hated having him there. Hated not having access to him whenever I wanted, hated I’d had to hire another sweeper to replace him.
I’d had no other choice. He was the only person I could trust to do this.
Every day, I visited. I brought them food and clothes, whatever they needed.
We didn’t let Tyler roam around freely. We put her in a cage, just like a fucking animal. It gave her enough room to sit and switch positions. Fuck, it wasn’t all that smaller than the cell I lived in now.
For a while, things were perfect.
But that didn’t last.
Tyler woke up one morning and puked. She was sick the whole day, and by the fourth morning, it hadn’t gotten any better. Toy thought she was pregnant. I thought he was fucking crazy. She’d already been pregnant and lost Beard’s baby. I’d seen the paperwork from the hospital to confirm it. And, since she’d miscarried, I doubted if she’d fucked anyone. She’d barely even left her apartment.
To please his ass, I bought a pregnancy test. When I got to the shack, I ripped the top off the box and stuck both sticks through the bars. “Pee on these,” I growled.
She looked like shit. The whole place smelled of vomit. Toy had torn off half of his T-shirt. He’d wrapped it over his nose and mouth and tied it behind his head. I didn’t blame the guy. I wouldn’t be able to sit here and smell her all day and night either.
“Can you get me the bucket?” She pointed at the white plastic trash bin that was by the kitchen sink.
That must be what Toy gave her to piss in. I’d never been around to see that.
I had to open the latch and the small door of the cage to get the bucket inside.
She didn’t even try to get out before I locked it.
She was such a good inmate.
She uncapped both sticks. Then, she dropped her pajama pants and squatted over the bucket. The tests were side by side in her hand, and she put them underneath her.
“That’s it,” I told her, watching the yellow spread over the stick. “Get all the pee out of your dirty cunt.” When she was done, I said, “Give them to me.”
She handed them to me through the bars.
The box said the results would take five minutes, so I told Toy to follow me to the bathroom, and I locked us in.
He lowered the T-shirt from his mouth and said, “I’m telling you, man, she’s pregnant. I know it deep down.”
“Toy, stop with this fucking bullshit.” I set the tests on the sink and turned toward him. “She kept her lunch down. She’s fine.”
He shook his head, his hands moving to his waist, as he stared me down. “No, she didn’t. I forgot to tell you, she puked that up, too.”
“Maybe she’s making herself gag, hoping we’ll feel pity for her and let her out.”
“I’ve watched her, Shank. She turns white before she gets sick. Making yourself gag doesn’t cause your skin to change color.”
I hated the tone of his voice.
I’d hurt him, and I hated that even more.
I paced to the stall shower, the toilet, and back. “She caught a bug or something.”
“How?” he asked. “She doesn’t leave the cage. She even takes a shit inside that fucking thing. And, if she caught something, she would have gotten it from you or me, and neither of us is sick.”
He was snapping at me.
I didn’t deserve that.
I wasn’t the idiot in this shack. That was all her.
I faced him, my teeth clenched so hard, I thought one of them would crush into dust. “There’s no way, Toy. No fucking way, so get it out of your head.”
He moved over to the sink and lifted both tests into the air.
The small windows at the top gave us the answer.
Pregnant.
“There must have been a way,” he said. “Because she’s fucking pregnant, just like I told you she was.”
I punched the mirror above the sink, and the glass shattered all over the room. “I fucked her once, Toy. Once.”
He put his hand over my mouth to silence me. “Stop. I don’t want to hear it.” When he realized blood was dripping from each of my knuckles, he placed a washcloth over my hand and wiped the cuts.
“Toy,” I mumbled, pulling his fingers off my lips, “we have to talk about this.”
“No, we don’t. You already know how I feel about what you did. That’s enough.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you.”
“Hurt me?” His tone changed again, now mimicking the word he’d just bar
ked. “Don’t you see what you’ve done?” He shook his head while a few tears dripped off his chin. “I know you don’t, and you never will. It’s just who you are, and that fucking kills me.”
He was upset.
That bothered me.
But, beyond those tears, he knew I’d had no choice. I’d had to get Beard back, and fucking Tyler had been the only way. It wasn’t like I’d wanted to fuck the cunt.
“You’re going to be a father,” he said. “And it didn’t happen the way I wanted it to.”
His tears were starting to do something to me.
Something I didn’t like.
They were making me feel.
And, the feeling in my chest, I just wanted to get rid of it.
But, every second I stared at him, I was reminded of what he wanted.
A child.
He’d made that desire very clear during a phone conversation before he moved to Venezuela, and I’d made my dislike toward children just as clear. It was the only disagreement we’d ever had. The fight had ended with me on a plane, headed to San Diego, and lots of booze and makeup sex once I arrived. We hadn’t spoken about it since.
We weren’t going to talk about it now either.
I snatched both tests away from him. I went to the cage and yelled, “You’re pregnant!”
“I know.”
She was in a ball in the corner, rocking on her ass.
“You know? How the hell do you know?”
“I felt the same way when I was pregnant with Beard’s child.” She turned white. Then, she leaned over the trash bucket and puked. “I didn’t get morning sickness.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I got all-the-time sickness.”
“Whose is it?”
She moved the bucket away and wrapped her arms around her knees. “Yours.” Hair covered the top of her face. She looked at me through the strands. “I was so worried The Achurdy would somehow find me and send me somewhere, and my baby and I would die.” The ball she was in seemed to tighten, and she stopped rocking. “Funny, all of that happened anyway, all because of you. Congratulations, Shank. You raped me, and now, you’re going to be a father.”