by Sha Jones
“You’re lucky you came out of the crash with just a scratch,” he sighed.
“What happened?” I asked in raspy voice.
He looked at me and said, “Well you crashed your car into a ditch and ended up here. That’s all we know right now.”
My eyes started to get watery.
“Great, now I have some explaining to the car rental company.”
Darius shook his head and said, “Don’t worry about it sweetheart, I’ll pay for it. The only thing you need to do is take these pain pills.”
He handed me two small white pills. I flushed it down with two gulps of water. Darius then sat next to me on the bed and put his hand on my lap.
“Tiffany, what happened?” he whispered.
I put my head down because I was too ashamed to look him in the eyes and said, “I found Michael in the hotel with my best friend Carl. Carl is a man.”
I looked up at Darius and the look on his face was priceless. He looked just as surprised as I did when I first seen the shit.
“Wow,” is all he said.
He then wrapped his arms around me and held me. I was in physical pain, but it was nothing compared to the pain I was feeling emotionally. While Darius was holding me, Draya came running into the room.
“Oh my goodness Tiffany,”
Darius gave me a kiss on the forehead and left the room so that Draya and I could talk.
“Girl what the fuck happened?” she asked as she sat on the bed next to me.
“I don’t know. One minute, I was on the road driving and the next minute, I ended up here.”
She stared at me and her eyes began to water. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath.
“I found Michael in a hotel room with Carl. That’s who he’s been fucking and to make things worse, Carl was the one calling my phone private.”
It made my heart burn just talking about it; thinking about my husband sticking his dick in a man’s ass and then coming back and sticking his dick in my pussy made me want to gag. There was times when Michael would come home late and hop in the bed and fuck with me. Sometimes he wouldn’t even shower. I even gave him head sometimes. I could’ve been possible sucking the juice from Carl’s ass off Michael’s dick. Draya hugged me and said she was sorry that I had to go through this. I was mad at myself for not paying attention to my husband’s behavior. I was so busy trying to play the good wife. He’s the reason why I quit my fucking job. I was at home cleaning his nasty ass underwear and cooking for him. I was a good woman to him and he knows that. We sat there in silence. I mean, with all the crazy shit that happened, there was really no words that could make things better or take back what has already happened.
As broken up as I was about it, I couldn’t let this keep me down. The fact that I now knew what was going on, brought me some kind of closure. I was no longer afraid to leave Michael. I wondered if Tangy knew that her husband and father of her children were gay. I felt sorry for Tangy because she had kids with him. If I was complaining about Michael coming home late, I knew she wasn’t too pleased with Carl either. Darius came back into the room holding some papers.
“Well, it looks like you’re going to have to stay the night. You have a concussion and I want you to stay here so that you can be monitored. If you do alright, you’ll be discharged in the morning.”
I slowly nodded my head and said, “Okay.”
Draya stood up and grabbed her purse.
“I’m going to call and check on you okay. I’ll be here to pick you up in the morning.”
She gave me a kiss on the cheek, thanked Darius and left. After his shift was over, Darius went home, changed clothes and came back up to the hospital to sit with me.
“I brought you some food. I know you don’t want to eat the hospital food.”
I smiled and said, “Thanks.”
I sat the food on the dresser next to me. I was too fucked up to eat anything. Luckily the pain pills had already kicked in. All of a sudden, I felt a little woozy and everything went blank. When I opened my eyes, I looked around and the room was dim and Darius wasn’t in the chair. When I sat up, this pain shot through my back.
“Shit,” I mumbled as I planted my feet on the floor.
I sat on the edge of the bed for a minute and arched my back trying to ease the pain. I finally got the courage to stand up and limp out the door. I was a little surprised to see that the hospital was dark and empty; this creepy feeling started invade my mind. The halls looked wide and scary. I felt like I was in a Freddy Krueger movie. As I turned to walk back to my room and get my phone, I heard a voice yell, “Tiffany.”
I looked and saw someone in a wedding dress. As the image got closer, I noticed that it was Carl. He had a knife in his hand and blood around his mouth. It looks like he might’ve had mascara dripping from his eyes. He looked like a damn monster. I then took off in the other direction. ‘Did he slaughter everybody in the hospital?’ I thought to myself as I tried to find a place to hide.
“Oh Tiffany, I’m going to get you!” he sang out loud in a creepy perverted voice.
Every room that I tried to hide in was locked. I jiggled the doors so hard hoping that it would break the knobs but it was pointless. Carl’s voice was getting louder with each step he took. He was laughing hysterically. Crazy wasn’t even the word to describe him. I started screaming and beating on the walls hoping that someone would hear me and come rescue me. I no longer heard Carl’s voice anymore so I stopped in my tracks. I looked around trying to see if he was gone and as I turned around, he was standing in front of me. His eyes were huge and around them were so black that he looked like a raccoon. His wedding dress had blood all over it. He grabbed the knife and put it up to his mouth and licked the blood off of it. I gasped and stepped back. He took a step forward and grabbed me by the throat almost breaking my neck.
“Michael is my man!”
With all of the force I had in my body, I put my leg under his dress and kicked him in the balls. He released me dropping me on the floor. He let out this roar and said, “Now I’m really going to kill you bitch!”
I managed to get on my feet and run down the hall. I ran until I could no longer here or see Carl. I finally made it back to my room and hid under the bed. Lord please don’t let this man find me, I prayed. I must’ve been under that bed for hours when I heard footsteps. I covered my mouth so I wouldn’t scream. I could see Carl’s dress train slithering down the hall. He then stopped in front of my room. He stood there for a second and walked in. The tears started running down my face. I’ve never been this terrified in my life. The bed then flipped over my head and before I could crawl away, he kicked me in the face. The blood ran from my nose like a faucet. He got down on his knees and began licking my blood off the floor like a dog.
“Please don’t do this. We are best friends.”
He laughed and put the knife up to my throat and everything went black. I opened my eyes and saw a bunch of doctors and Darius on top of me. I was screaming and kicking.
“Tiffany calm down!” Darius yelled.
I was gasping, trying to catch my breath. After five minutes of struggling with the doctors, they finally got me to calm down. My hair was soaked with nothing but sweat. Darius wrapped his arms around me and held me tight.
“It’s okay sweetheart. You were just having a nightmare.”
I felt like I couldn’t escape this feeling. Fear was going to kill me if nothing else did.
Chapter 27
I struggled to eat the food that Darius brought me. My throat was burning and I didn’t even have enough energy to lift my fork.
“You have to eat something,” Darius said as he pushed my hair out of my face.
“Please don’t leave me tonight,” I begged.
He looked at me and replied, “I will never leave you. This will be the last time you will ever hurt again.”
He leaned forward and kissed me. I wanted him to just take me in his arms and get me away from this place. I no longer wante
d to live in Houston. Darius didn’t leave my side the whole time. He lay in the bed with me and we talked. He comforted me and kept reassuring me that everything was going to be fine. I knew I wasn’t going to be living in that house anymore so he suggested that I stay with him. He even told me, he would buy me new clothes, shoes and anything else that I needed. He didn’t even want Michael’s scent in his house. I understood because I felt the same way. He asked me about a divorce, but I needed to take everything one day at a time. One of the first things I was going to do when I left the hospital was go down to the police station and tell them about the watch that I found in Michael’s car.
Darius had finally fallen asleep. I refused to go to sleep because I was scared that I was going to see Carl again. I just laid there and stared at Darius the whole time. When the sun came up, Darius opened his eyes and stared at me.
“Are you okay?”
I didn’t say anything. Instead, I nodded my head. About an hour after Draya arrived, the nurse came in and gave me my discharge papers. Darius had already left and told me he would be picking me up from Draya’s place after he was done taking care of business.
“Are you ready to go?”
I sighed and said, “Yes.”
The hallway wasn’t as scary as it was in my dream and I was happy to see another day of light.
While on the freeway, it dawned on me that I left my gun at home. “
Hey, I have to go by my house really quick. I have to grab something.”
Draya got off the next exit and headed straight to my house. I didn’t want to go back there, but I needed some type of protection. The look in Michael’s eyes as he was beating on my window trying to get in led me to believe that he wanted to hurt me. He would kill me before his dirty laundry was aired. It would be nothing for him to hire a private investigator to hunt me down and before I put myself or Darius in any danger, I would shoot his ass right between the eyes. I was a little nervous about moving in with Darius because I barely knew him and I didn’t want to stress him out with my fucked up life. I had no job and I didn’t want to be a burden to him, but at the same time, he made me feel safe. He had security systems all around his house and I knew that he would make sure I was alright until I was able to get back on my feet.
When we pulled up to the front of my house, I realized that I didn’t have my key or my purse.
“Where the hell is my purse?” I asked as I looked at Draya.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know. Did you leave it at the hospital?”
I thought long and hard and replied, “I don’t think so.”
I didn’t even remember how I ended up at the hospital, so I damn sure didn’t know what the hell happened to my pure.
“The paramedics probably left it in the car when they pulled you out of it.”
I then remembered that the patio door was still open. I jumped out the car and as soon as my feet touched the ground, all I heard was, “Get down now!”
There were a million cops all over me and my face was being scorched from the hot ass concrete. I felt like I was being cooked alive. I began screaming and kicking and trying to break free and suddenly, I felt this shock that made my eyes roll in the back of my head. Moments later, I could see Draya trying to run over to me, but was immediately stopped by a cop wearing a bullet proof vest.
“She didn’t do anything!” Draya yelled.
“Ma’am, if you don’t leave, you will be arrested too,” the cop said to her as he pointed towards her car.
She looked at me and got in her car and sped off. The cop then jerked me up off the ground. The shock from the Taser took all the energy from. My body was so limp that I could barely hold myself up. As I was being escorted to the cop car, my garage doors lifted up and I could see Michael and Carl just standing there. Carl had a smile on his face and he just waved. Michael gave me the most evil stare that I had to turn away. I didn’t even know who he was anymore. All of the years we spent together, the trips we took together and the love we made didn’t seem to matter to him. It was like there were no feelings there at all. I’ve heard so many stories about how men or no good. I’ve handled so many cases of domestic abuse and men killing their wives by gun shots, poisoning, strangulation, and a lot of other horrible things you could think of but in my mind, I felt like nothing could beat what Michael has done to me. At the end of the day, I was still his wife. We took Vows and he broke all of the promises he made to me. Although Michael hurt me, it was nothing compared to the hurt that Carl caused. I’ve known this man since we were children. I knew all of his girlfriends and we shared so many secrets. Of all the gay men in the world, he had to lay up with my man.
Chapter 28
The cuffs were so tight around my wrist that they started to burn.
“Sir, these cuffs are really tight.”
The cop didn’t say anything. He just continued to drive. I was so confused that I didn’t even know why I was being arrested. I sat in the backseat and cried the whole car ride. When we arrived at the police station, I seen the same clerk from when I was there trying to file a complaint about my car and when the cops brought me in for questioning about Melanie. She looked at me as if I was disgusting. This was my third time here so I knew this couldn’t be good. They immediately put me in a holding tank. I still didn’t know what the fuck was going on. They had me in a tank with six other women and they all looked crazy. The worst thing you could do was throw a prosecutor in jail with a bunch of criminals. If it got out that I had anything to do with the law, I could be in serious trouble. The holding tank smelled like raw fish and shit. I looked up at the ceiling and noticed that there was wet toilet paper on it. My fear was that it was going to eventually fall and land right in my hair. I glanced at the toilet and almost threw up. It had stains all on the seat and I didn’t even want to know what was inside.
One lady walked over to it and began drinking from the top part of the toilet and that’s when I realized that the toilet was also a water fountain. It was the craziest shit that I had ever seen. There was another woman that was lying on the floor barefoot. She had on a small skirt that you could damn near see most of her ass. She was only wearing a bra and one of the straps was missing. She looked like a straight up prostitute. I felt like I didn’t belong and this whole thing was one big mistake. Luckily, there was a phone. I walked over to it and tried to dial Draya’s number since that was the only number I knew by heart, but there was three buttons missing. Great I sighed to myself. I didn’t understand the point of having a phone in there if it didn’t work. One lady walked over to me and asked, “What did you do?”
She had bruises all over her face and he knuckles were bleeding. She had a bald spot in her head and the rest of her hair looked matted to her head. The closer she stood to me, the louder the fish smell started to fill the room. I then realized that she was the one that smelled like that. I held my breath as long as I could and every time I inhaled, I felt like I was taking in some kind of toxic poisoning. I just looked at the woman and said, “I don’t know yet,” and walked to the other side of the small tank.
She looked at me like I offended her and rolled her eyes at me. I looked down and tried to avoid her. If she had a bald spot and bloody knuckles then that mean her ass was psycho. I felt like a small kitten that was tossed out into the jungle. I didn’t belong in here at all. I wanted to cry so badly, but I didn’t want them to see me break down because I knew that they would probably think I’m a weak bitch and they would try to take advantage of that. I tried to keep a straight tough and look as crazy as possible but I wasn’t sure if it was working. I didn’t exactly look like a criminal. I was wearing a pair of Louis Vuitton slipper and some Gucci stretch pants with a tank top on that Draya brought me while I was at the hospital. I refused to sit down because I was terrified that I was going to sit on some piss or ever worse, shit. The least they could’ve done was clean out the tanks because this shit was not sanitary. That’s how people get sick.
While I was there, I thought about Darius. I felt like I was never going to see him again. Thirty minutes later, I saw the one of the detectives that was at my house come in and sit across from me. He looked and me and said, “I’m detective Steve Wallace. Remember me?”
I looked him dead in the face and asked, “Why am I here?”