I pushed against him as hard as I could. Pounding on his chest with my closed fists, kicking him with my legs. “Then you’re just like them!” I screamed. “You’re just like them!” I said, wailing against his chest.
He stilled.
Slowly, Preppy lifted his head and when his eyes met mine, it was as if whatever spell he was under had been broken. “I wouldn’t…” he said, and then he stopped like there was more to say, but he didn’t know how to say it.
Suddenly, he reared back, slamming his fist into the rock above my head with a roar tearing from his throat. The soft rock crumbled into tiny pieces, falling over us in a cloud of dust and debris. He released me and I dropped to the floor, pulling my knees up to my chest and sobbing out my relief.
Preppy moved back hesitantly, one slow step at a time. He watched me cry with confusion written all over his face. For someone who was so aggressive only seconds before, he now looked defeated. Vulnerable. He grabbed his jeans and quickly tugged them on.
“I’m not just like them,” he said, his jaw tight. His fists clenching over and over again. “Because they didn’t stop did they?”
I shook my head.
Preppy ran his hand through his hair and punched the rock for the second time. I yelped. His muscles across his cheek and neck tensed. He was breathing erratically. His look drilled me to the rock. “I’d kill him all over again if I could.” He grabbed his shirt and darted through the opening I wasn’t able to find, its location now ridiculously obvious.
It made sense that his body was built for sin, because the hold Samuel Clearwater had over me was something straight from the depths of hell.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
PREPPY
PRESENT
I was beginning to think I’d never again see the light of day.
Or light at all.
I didn’t even really know where I was being held. All I knew for sure was that the walls and floor were both made of dirt and were cold and damp to the touch on some days and dry and dusty on others. The ceiling felt low although I couldn’t see it.
My voice echoed all around me when I talked to myself. “There isn’t a damned thing a chick could wear that’s hotter than high heels. That’s a motherfucking fact,” I said, into the darkness. “You can hold on to them when you fuck, too, so they serve a practical purpose. It was I who coined the term ‘handlebars,’” I coughed up dust, choking on it when I breathed it back in.
Surprisingly, the darkness answered me back and a dim light walked toward me, growing brighter with each step. “Shut the fuck up, asshole,” Chop muttered, shining his flashlight into my eyes.
“You know, if you didn’t look like Bear’s older, uglier doppelgänger, I would never think that the two of you were even related. ’Cause even when Bear is PMSing and in a bitch-ass mood, he’s still all there upstairs.” I pointed at the gray-haired man, staring hatred down at me. “You sir…have a few pumpkins missing from your patch.” I swayed and my vision blurred, when it came back into focus a few seconds later, Chop’s hovering image shifted from one to three, then back to one.
One was still too fucking many.
I was lying over the threshold of death’s door, yet it was Chop whose eyes held no signs of life, void of anything other than his constant anger. If I didn’t want to shove a rock through his skull so badly, I might have pitied the motherfucker and his sad existence. Which was fucked up because I was the one bleeding all over the dirt at his feet.
“No more talking, boy! It’s time to SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Chop roared, slamming his hand against the wall beside my head.
I didn’t flinch. Not because I was being a badass, but because my reflexes were shot to shit. I could tell by the way his nostrils flared that my lack of reaction was taken as yet another act of defiance. He swallowed hard, like he was holding back. From where I was sitting, that was a fucking first for the sadistic bastard.
A few seconds passed where we just stared at one another. If the motherfucker wanted a contest of wills he was going to lose, because it wasn’t like I had anywhere else to be but hell, and from the looks of things I was pretty sure I was already there.
After a moment a smirk crept onto his face, deepening the wrinkles around his eyes. He seemed satisfied that I was going to do what I was told, which was basically shut up and bleed. He turned around and started walking away.
He was wrong.
“Just one more question, and it’s a serious one,” I managed to scratch out, my throat feeling as if someone with sharp nails was trying to claw their way out from the inside. Chop paused mid stride, and I could almost see the hairs on the back of his arms stand on end. I coughed. Warm, coppery fluid filled my mouth, coating my teeth. I was used to the taste at that point and knew exactly what it was before it poured past my lips and dribbled down my chin, falling onto what was left of my shirt. “Does this place have wifi?” I asked, spitting blood as I spoke. “Because if not, I’m seriously going to have to take that into consideration in my Yelp rating. I will say, though, that the torture is excellent.” I went to lift my arm and a wave of pain assaulted my ribs. I winced but kept talking, enjoying the look on Chop’s red face as he slowly turned around, cracking his knuckles and stomping his way back toward me. “However, the staff doesn’t give me that warm tingly feeling I’ve come to expect from such an establishment, not to mention they’re ugly as all fuck.”
Chop picked up the bat leaning against the wall and turned it over in his hands. He crouched down beside me and pointed at my head with the thick splintered end. “Are you done now?” he asked, white knuckling the handle.
“Nope,” I said, shaking my head, slowly, from side to side, ignoring the dizziness from earlier that again threatened to take hold. I slid my hand from my thigh to my crotch, grabbing my dick over my torn khakis. “You can also suck my cock, bitch.”
Chop’s goal in life was to hurt me, little did he know that nothing he could do to my body could match the pain in my broken heart.
If only I would have listened to her when she told me no. When she told me to stop and stay away, then I wouldn’t have felt like the torture Chop doled out was a pain only secondary to the hurt in my heart, put there by a little junkie. A pain that hit a lot harder than Chop ever could.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DRE
Sleep didn’t come easy. Or at all. I was restless, my thoughts on what had happened in the clearing. Preppy had said that he was over what happened to him as a kid, and although I was sure he believed it was the truth there was no way it was reality.
I rolled over, tugging the blanket with me, when I suddenly felt an awareness as if I wasn’t alone. In the darkness, I caught a glimpse of the reflection in the full length mirror behind the closed door and, for a second, it looked as if someone was standing over me. At first, I thought it was just the haziness of sleep lingering over my eyes that caused the shadow.
Until it moved.
I sat up with a start, preparing to scream when a large hand covered my mouth, muffling my attempt to call for help. “How many times?” Preppy asked.
I couldn’t answer him if I wanted to because his hand was still covering my mouth. He lifted it off my lips slowly, like he was waiting to see if I’d scream or not. When he was sure I wouldn’t he stood up and wandered about the room, looking over the pictures on the dresser. “What are you doing?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
Preppy stepped up to the bed, turning around a picture of Mirna holding me as a baby. “I like this one,” he said, placing it on the nightstand next to the alarm clock. He sat down next to me on the bed. “How many times, Doc? How many times did they fuck you when you didn’t want them to?”
My chest tightened as the panic set in. I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about…”
“Just tell me!” He rubbed his temples and looked more tired than I’d ever seen him look. “Please,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“I don’t really know. It didn
’t start until the end, before that everything was about the H. I wasn’t awake for all of it,” I said, hating to hear the words come out of my mouth because it made it even more true.
Preppy nodded and in a move that surprised me, he reached out and took my hand linking his fingers in mine. I went to pull away, but changed my mind when he said, “Please.”
“I was just a kid when it started,” he said, in a very serious and solemn voice. “At first, I didn’t know what was happening or why, but I knew it was wrong. The fucked up part was that I began to think it was normal. That being made to suck cock was just like taking out the trash or doing your homework.”
I felt sick, wrapping my arms around my mid section.
“Tim?” I asked. Preppy gave me a small nod.
He swung his legs up on the bed, so he was sitting next to me with his back against the headboard, his hand still in mine. “By the time I was actually old enough for my dick to get hard, I began to like it.” He pinched his bottom lip and his shoulders shook in a small burst of sad laughter. “That’s the part that made me sick to my stomach. I’d throw up all the time, could barely hold anything down. I was like a walking skeleton. Told the nurse at school I had some weird disease that I looked up in an encyclopedia so she wouldn’t ask too many questions.”
I squeezed his hand and he squeezed back.
“I was nine when he first fucked me. Actual penetration. I hated him for it, but then when I was alone I couldn’t even get my dick hard without thinking about him, of all people.” He adjusted his bow tie. Something that I learned was pretty much his only nervous tick.
“Where was your mom?” I asked. “You said she was neglectful. Did she work a lot?”
“The bitch was right there. Right fucking there, under the same tin roof of the same piece of shit trailer. Tim, he was the guy who had his card punched the most in my mom’s ever revolving door of losers she needed to support her own habits.”
“Where is she now?”
Preppy shrugged. “She left me. With him. Just ran away and left me with Chester the Molester.”
“You don’t need to joke.”
“Doesn’t matter, it’s not fucking funny.” He ran a hand down his beard.
“Do you know where she is now?”
“Fucking rotting in the ground, hopefully. I don’t waste a lot of time thinking of someone who’s a waste of space on this earth.”
“After Tim…” he glanced over to me, “left?” I smirked and this time it was Preppy who squeezed my hand first. “I was a wild kid and I was free. King and I got our own place and things were great. I realized that what Tim did hadn’t changed who I was deep down inside.” He smiled. “I especially knew this the moment I saw April Trenton, from ninth grade, in a tiny blue bikini top. That was life changing.”
I laughed and nudged his shoulder.
“King’s the one who told me that living with regret and hatred would just give Tim the power he wanted over me. Said it was no kind of life to be living, so I decided to embrace the good along with the bad and I did, never looked back. Stop being alive and start living, he’d told me and it stuck. Never even felt a shred of guilt for a damn thing I did since that very day until…”
“Until when?”
“Until today.” He looked me in the eye. “I didn’t mean.” He blew out a breath and looked at the wall. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“It wasn’t just you. I freaked out. I saw,” I sucked in a breath. “It’s just all so fresh.”
He let go of my hand and rolled over onto his side, propping himself up on his elbow to face me. “I want us to be friends, Doc.”
“Friends? Why?” I said, unable to help my smile. “Because your other friends aren’t around?”
Preppy reached over and pushed some hair out of my face, his fingers lingering, tracing my cheekbone and then my lips. “I have no fucking idea. But what I do know is that I’ve never been friends with a girl before, so you’ll have to walk me through it.”
“I don’t know how much help I can be. I pretty much ran all my friends off,” I said.
“Good. Then we can learn together. Especially, since we’re kind of stuck with each other since I’m blackmailing you.”
“That you are.”
“And since we are going to be working together.”
“Working together on what?” I asked.
“Tomorrow, bright and early. I’ll show you what I mean.”
Preppy stood up and I thought he was going to leave, but he kicked off his shoes and took off his shirt, folding it neatly on the nightstand. He tugged off his jeans revealing black boxers underneath. “What are you doing?”
“We’re friends now, right?” Preppy asked, with an excited look in his eyes.
“Yeaaaaaaahhhhh,” I drawled, suspicious of why he needed to be undressed for us to be friends. “But we’re not THOSE kinds of friends.”
“The kind that have sleepovers?” he asked.
“Are we twelve?” I wasn’t able to hide my laugh as Preppy maneuvered his body into the twin bed. I had no choice but to either scoot over or be crushed. The only way for him to fit was for both of us to lay on our sides. He laid his head on the pillow facing me, his thighs pressed up against mine. Our noses only inches from one another as our knees and thighs tangled together.
“I don’t sleep much,” he admitted.
“I don’t either,” I admitted. “Too much on your mind?”
“That and the blow.” Preppy’s arms moved under the covers and suddenly a large warm hand was covering my breast. “Good night,” he said, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. I grabbed his wrist and pushed it back. “Friends don’t fondle one another.”
“Bullshit, sure they do,” Preppy argued, his eyes popping back open.
“Do you fondle Bear and King?”
Preppy yawned, closed his eyes again, and settled into the pillow. “Ummm. Sure. Every day and twice on Sunday’s.”
“You make me laugh, Preppy,” I said.
“You make me confused as fuck, Doc, but I realized something today.”
“What’s that?”
Preppy’s voice was a distant whisper as his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm. “That we’re the same.”
Oscar chose that moment to grunt his way into the room. He nudged Preppy with his snout. “Preppy?” I whispered.
“Yeah, Doc?”
“Will you please tell me what’s up with the fucking pig?”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
DRE
Oscar was a service pig.
This is not a joke.
Apparently, a pigs sense of smell is better than that of a dogs and they’re smarter too, but since they aren’t as convenient as a dog they’d been passed over for that position and instead used for other things.
Like bacon.
“So you bought Mirna a pig?” I asked. We’d spent the morning in the grow-room and Preppy was showing me the ropes. And by ropes, I mean hoses. There were a million yards of different hose that needed to be installed in each of the rooms. The ventilation aspect of the operation was of Preppy’s own design and very impressive. It was disguised as a window air conditioning unit and it kept the smell of the plants not only from the inside of the house so the Granny’s wouldn’t be bothered by it, but it also kept passers by from smelling what was going on inside the house. He showed me how to install a basic system, while explaining to me how the recruitment process worked.
“I did buy her a pig,” he said, laughing like the notion was ridiculous even to him. “I read an article online about service dogs for people suffering from dementia but those motherfuckers are expensive and the waiting list is years long. So I looked up alternatives to service dogs and BOOM. Now Mirna has Oscar.”
“What exactly does he do?” I said, and as if he knew we were talking about him, the cow-colored pig came traipsing into the room as if he was supervising and checking on our progress.
Preppy patted him on the h
ead. “In a nutshell, he’ll alert us when the shit’s about to hit the fan.” He unraveled yet another plastic hose and opened a small tool box.
“Where did you learn all this?” I asked.
“From a fucking ten-year-old on Youtube,” Preppy said, unloading equipment from a box marked as dog food.
“Shut the fuck up!” I said, covering my mouth. “There’s no way.”
“It’s the truth. We’ve been having issues with our source, guys a real douche. When King was sentenced I wanted to come up with a plan B, so I set this in motion. I first thought about buying a house and setting up our operation in there, but growhouses are kind of obvious. Usually, a guy that looks like a thug coming and going is kind of a tip off. The smell is harder to handle on a mass scale, as well. So I wound up on Youtube, watching videos of how these young kids were growing it in their closets and using these intricate filtration systems they set up with tubing from hamster cages and science projects. Figured we could do the same thing. Smaller scale of growing scattered around the town.”
“Ahhhhh, so that’s when it all started.”
“Yes, it is. So we look for older women. Someone who lives alone. Not a lot of family to ask too many questions. Someone needing to supplement their social security check. It was actually a lot easier than I thought to get people to agree.”
“Why women? Why not an older man?” I asked, dropping the drill I was holding when Oscar ran into me like a bull from behind, taking out my knees and knocking me to the floor. “Thanks, buddy,” I mumbled.
Preppy helped me off the floor, and I rubbed the spot on my tailbone I’d landed on. “Want me to get that for you?” he asked, eyes gleaming with mischief.
“I think I can handle it.”
“Report back if that situation changes.” Preppy went back to his tools, and I drilled another hook into the wall.
“There are a few types of people my charm and wit doesn’t work on. Old men being one of those kinds of people. Besides, old ladies make the best cookies. We have four now, but in order to stop getting supply from the asshole we get it from now we’re gonna need more. A lot more. That’s where you come in.”
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