Tainted Rose

by Abby Weeks

  II

  WHEN ROSE ENTERED THE BAR Murdoch was sitting at his desk, slouched back on his chair with a can of Budweiser resting on his bloated belly and a cigarette dangling from his mouth. He looked like he hadn’t slept or shaved in the past twenty-four hours but Rose knew he’d been home. She’d heard him come into the house during the night. Now he was here before her. He wasn’t usually such a good worker but he always got a bit more conscientious when he knew Serge was coming.

  “You’re late,” he said. “I need you to clean the toilets before you get changed.”

  Rose sighed. She hated that this was the man she shared a house with. She shared her entire life with him. It was just the two of them at the bar most of the week. In winter when the road was closed they could go days without seeing anyone else. During those times he’d get so frisky she’d have to stay awake at night and guard her bedroom door in case he tried anything.

  He had a TV on the desk in front of him and he was watching his soap operas in French and drinking beer while he managed the bar. It wasn’t a difficult job, at least not till the trucks started to roll in.

  “I cleaned the toilets last night before I left,” she said.

  “And why are you late?”

  “I had car trouble,” Rose said. He only cared because Serge was coming in. He usually didn’t wake up till well into the afternoon.

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “And no one ever does anything about it. I thought bikers were supposed to know something about engines.”

  She had a hard time even thinking of the DRMC as bikers. They were nothing like the men her father used to ride with before they’d all been killed.

  “Come over here and I’ll teach you something about engines,” Murdoch said, beckoning her.

  Rose ignored him and walked through to the changing room. Murdoch tried to slap her on the ass as she passed but she dodged his hand.

  “Oh,” he said, “and Serge just called. He’s not coming out till Thursday.”

  That was good news. She hated Serge a lot more than she hated Murdoch, but now she just prayed that there would be some customers, otherwise it would be just her and Murdoch. He’d already started drinking and by the time they called it a night and closed up he’d be good and drunk if he didn’t have any work to do. He’d also have been watching her strut around in her g-string and bra all night long and his dick would be as hard as an engine rod. If he didn’t fall asleep from all the beer he’d be in her room as soon as he got home and she’d have to put up with whatever sorry attempt he made at lovemaking. She supposed rape was the correct word for it but there was something about Murdoch that made what he did seem a bit too pathetic to constitute actual rape. Not like Serge. She just prayed there would be customers, then Murdoch would be busy all night, he wouldn’t have time to get drunk, and she could count on getting a safe night’s sleep when she got home.

  There was a small, circular window in the changing room door and she could see out to Murdoch in the office. He was about as repulsive a man as she could imagine. He was overweight, had a tobacco stained beard and gray stubble on his cheeks and his shirt had sweat stains around the armpits and beer stains down the front. Who’s idea had it been to put a window in the door of a dressing room, she wondered.

  *

  SHE THREW HER BAG ON the bench in front of her locker. Her wallet fell out and opened onto the last photograph she still had of her father. If Serge ever saw that he would destroy it. Seeing it made her think of everything that had happened to bring her to this hellish place. She’d been so foolish. It had been two years ago. She’d been short of cash at the time. She wasn’t desperate or anything but rent in Montreal wasn’t cheap and she was finding it difficult to get her tuition together for college.

  And then she’d met an old friend of her father’s, a man she recognized from the old days with the Sioux Rangers. She was amazed that he was still alive. She never should have trusted a man that looked like him but she’d seen her father with him in the clubhouse so many times that she just let all of her usual guards down. They started talking about old times and then he told her he could help her make some fast cash.

  She should have run as far and as fast away from that man as she could, and ordinarily she would have. Rex Savage was his name. She’d remember that name for as long as she lived. Like any girl who’d lost her father at a young age, Rose had a weak spot for anyone who had a connection to him. When Rex talked about riding with her father she’d been blinded to all the things that should have made her suspicious.

  He came into the restaurant she worked at in the old quarter, completely out of the blue, and asked if she was Jack Meadows’ daughter. From that moment on she would have believed anything he told her. She met up with him a few times for drinks and he seemed okay. He never tried anything, and he sure knew a lot about her father and his years riding with the Sioux Rangers. Looking back now, she should have seen the signs of drug addiction.

  He’d held it together pretty well but he was obviously a man on the edge. He was sickly thin and he always seemed to have a cold. His eyes darted around the room like he thought he was being watched. Sometimes he shivered and other times he would be sweating for no apparent reason. Looking back, Rose knew she should have recognized that something was wrong with him. At the time, she was just so happy to be able to talk about her father that she overlooked it all.

  One evening, he told her he knew a really easy way for her to get her tuition money together. She could earn four grand in a single night delivering one small package to a guy in Iroquois Falls. Rose had never heard of Iroquois Falls. It was a tiny village, deep in the northern forests over five-hundred miles from Montreal.

  It was pretty obvious that the package contained something illegal. Rose wasn’t that naive. She knew Rex was still involved with some MCs and she figured the package contained drugs. She weighed up the risk of being stopped by the police against the chance to earn four grand and get her tuition paid and she took the deal.

  Never in a million years would she have guessed that the real package wasn’t drugs at all, it was herself.

  *

  AND SO, ROSE ENDED UP delivering herself into the cruel and treacherous hands of Rex Savage and the DRMC without making them even lift a finger.

  She had a bike of her own back then. It was the 1982 Harley FXR her father had left her. It had been in storage for a few years until she was old enough to ride it. She wasn’t sure where it was now. Serge had taken it. Most likely it was in some boarded up garage in Val-d’Or. It certainly wasn’t the bike he rode out to the Cat on every week. She’d have recognized it if it was. If she ever got the chance she swore she’d make him pay for taking that bike from her.

  She knew she could have avoided what had happened to her. If she hadn’t been so careless, if she hadn’t been so rash, she could have made it harder for the DRMC to capture her. But she also knew that once Rex Savage had found her, her life never would have been the same again. She wished she’d told someone where she was going before leaving Montreal. As things were, no one back in the city would even be missing her. She’d kept to herself when she lived in the city. Her boss at the restaurant would have assumed she’d quit. She wouldn’t have been the first waitress to leave that place without picking up her final check. The few friends she’d had weren’t close enough to worry about her. She wasn’t in touch with any family. Her foster parents had moved out west a long time ago and she hadn’t stayed in contact. Whenever she thought about it, the only person who might really have noticed she’d disappeared was her landlady. She was an old French woman, in her eighties, and she was beginning to have trouble with names and faces. It was unlikely she’d have had the presence of mind to notify the police.

  Anyway, it was too late now to do anything about it. There was no phone at the bar, none at the house, and Murdoch kept his cell locked in a safe. She’d gone over it all a million times in her mind. No one was looking for her, no one
was missing her, and she had no way of getting word to the outside world that she needed help.

  If only she hadn’t been so stupid. Even on the ride north from Montreal she knew she was making a bad decision. She knew she was getting herself into trouble. Her desperation to get that money kept her from listening to her instincts and now she was paying the price for her stupidity.

  When she left Montreal she took Autoroute 15 out through Saint-Jérôme and Mont-Tremblant. The weather had been perfect for riding. The bike glided along the highway. She felt alive and free, out on the open road, nothing to worry about but the breeze in her hair and the package on the back of her bike.

  But as she got farther and farther from the city she began to get uneasy. The towns grew fewer and farther between. There was Riviére-Rouge, Mont-Laurier, a few scattered villages, and then nothing, nothing at all. The sun went down while she was in the La Vérendrye. She could feel the vastness of the forests and the coldness and desolation of the wilderness all around her. At the edge of the national park there was a gas station and she filled up. It was about nine at night and she’d been riding all day. She asked the owner if there was a motel nearby and she was shocked when he told her the next hotel wasn’t until Val-d’Or. That was still hours away.

  She got back on the highway and rode on, telling herself that everything would be okay once she reached Val-d’Or. It wasn’t an easy ride. Out there, that far from civilization, her mind started playing tricks on her. She began to picture the strange creatures that were rumored to live in the forest, great bears, packs of roaming wolves, wild hunting cats that could spring out from the tree line and knock her from her bike.

  It was well after midnight when she finally got to Val-d’Or and she was having a hard time keeping her bike on the road. She’d forgotten how physical a job it could be to ride a motorcycle that sort of distance. It wasn’t like driving a car, where the only danger on a long drive like that was falling asleep at the wheel. Riding a bike took its toll physically. When she finally got to Val-d’Or, Rose was exhausted.

  She wasn’t cold. She’d been wearing a full-body, leather racing suit and it kept the wind out. But she couldn’t sit on the bike for another minute without feeling like her back was about to give out. The men who’d sent her on this errand would have known that. They’d have counted on it.

  The motel in Val-d’Or was called The Owl’s Nest. Rose didn’t know it at the time but it was owned by the DRMC. If she’d known that she wouldn’t have gone anywhere near it. When she stumbled into the lobby, as they’d known she would have to do, they were waiting for her.

  *

  HER MEMORY OF WHAT HAPPENED next would forever be hazy. She’d checked in and had a beer in the motel bar. There was no one there but her and the bartender. It was after hours but he’d said he could make an exception and serve her since she was a guest. Looking back, she realized now that the bartender must have drugged her beer.

  She could remember entering the bar but everything afterwards was a blur. She didn’t know what had happened to her, whether she’d collapsed to the ground from her stool or had tried to walk out and hadn’t made it. All she knew was that when she came to, she was lying in a motel bed, still in her leathers, and her wrists were handcuffed to the bedposts.

  That was the beginning of the nightmare that had since become the entirety of her life. When Rex Savage came into that motel room, his eyes red and bloodshot, his skin pasty and slick with sweat, she realized in an instant that he’d betrayed her.

  “How could you do this?” she’d screamed at him. “You were my father’s friend. You two rode together. You were brothers. How could you do this to me?”

  Rex had said nothing. She could tell he was too ashamed to speak. Even in his drugged state, his mind addled by opiates and the disease of addiction, she could tell that he was aware of the shame he’d brought on himself. He’d done the last thing in the world that one biker, a true biker, should ever do. He’d betrayed his brother. He’d betrayed his own flesh and blood. He’d sold his brother’s daughter into a life of prostitution and sexual slavery.

  *

  ROSE NEVER MADE IT TO Iroquois Falls. She had no doubt that they’d expected her to check in to the motel at Val-d’Or but even if she’d rode through the night and made it to Iroquois Falls, she knew it wouldn’t have made any difference. They’d have been waiting for her there too. The DRMC owned these parts. The police had no say up here. Sure there was a station in Val-d’Or but it didn’t take much to silence two lowly provincial cops, a couple hundred a month backed up by some strong threats. The Indian Reserves had their own police but Rose doubted they’d be any match for the DRMC either.

  She was pretty much screwed from the moment she left the city. Everything up here belonged to the DRMC. There was nothing she could have done to avoid capture, and now that they had her, there was nothing she could do to get away.

  All she could do was pray that things wouldn’t go too badly for her. She knew she had to bide her time. If she waited, and watched, she knew that eventually something would happen, something always did. Whether it was good or bad remained to be seen.

  *

  SHE SHOOK HER HEAD. She couldn’t allow herself to get lost in her thoughts like that. She couldn’t allow herself to live in the past, to imagine what might have been if things had gone differently for her. She couldn’t get caught up in the rage and hatred that she felt for the men who had brought her here and reduced her life to this existence.

  She told herself that one day she would get her revenge against Rex Savage, Serge Gauthier and the vile group of men they rode with. One day she would get herself away from this place, but until that day came she had to put those thoughts in a box and lock it. She had to focus on the present. If she was to survive, she would have to do so one day at a time.

  “Is there any coffee?” she called out to Murdoch.

  “What do I look like, a waitress?”

  She sighed. It was beyond Murdoch’s abilities to offer her even the slightest courtesy. He had no trouble treating her like a maid, he had no trouble slipping into her bedroom when he’d had too much to drink and having his way with her, but he couldn’t do her even the smallest kindest. She hung her jacket in her locker and went back out to the office.

  “Shouldn’t you be dressed?” Murdoch said, seeing that she was still in her jeans and sweater.

  “Relax. No one will be here for hours.”

  “You aint paid to strut around in your jeans,” Murdoch said.

  “I aint paid at all,” Rose said.

  That wasn’t strictly true. She did get tipped, usually pretty generously, from her customers. The problem was that Murdoch had a habit of coming after her for her tips at the end of the night. If she didn’t manage to hide away a little money before he came looking, she’d lose it all. Once a month or so he’d take her into Val-d’Or, or worse, Serge would take her, and she’d get to buy some necessities. They usually comprised toothpaste, soap, makeup and whatever other essential items she could pick up at the drug mart before they took her back to the Cat.

  Rose put on some coffee and went back into the changing room. She only had a couple of costumes she could wear while she danced. They really weren’t anything more than a bra and thong. She wondered what real strippers in the city wore. She imagined that they had all sorts of fancy costumes they could wear to put on a show, bras and panties covered with tassels and sequins and all sorts of glitter. All she had was the underwear she’d been wearing when they’d captured her and a couple of other bras and panties she’d managed to pick up at the drug mart. It wasn’t much to work with but it was the best she could do. She also had a pair of red, patent leather pumps that she wore night after night.

  They’d belonged to another girl, whoever had worked the Cat before her, and Rose tried not to think of what might have happened to her. Somehow, she got the feeling that her employment for the DRMC hadn’t ended amicably. She’d tried to bring it up a few times
with Murdoch but he refused to speak about her. All Rose knew was that the previous girl’s name had been Cindy. Her name was written in black marker on the inside of the left shoe.

  “Cindy,” Rose said to herself quietly as she looked at the shoe. She prayed silently that she wouldn’t someday end up the same way Cindy had.

  III

  ROSE TOOK OFF HER SWEATER and jeans and hung them in her locker and slipped off her shoes. Then she took off her underwear. She unclasped her bra and let it fall to the floor, then slid her panties down to her ankles and stepped out of them. There was a full-length mirror next to the shower and she went and stood in front of it.

  She had always been a harsh judge of her appearance, especially when naked. She couldn’t help but be critical. She had a great figure, a body that a lot of men would die to caress, especially the type of men who came into the Cat on a regular basis. She was in her early twenties and had long, rich, flowing hair that came down past her shoulders. Her breasts were pert and full. Her ass was toned. Her pussy was shaved smooth. She pretty much looked exactly like she had in high school. But all she could see were the flaws. Her skin was dry. Living in that cold, filthy house with Murdoch made it hard to take care of herself. It was taking its toll. The hard water dried out her skin, her hair felt flat and she couldn’t get the kind of shampoo and conditioner she needed. She also couldn’t ever afford any hair dye so it wasn’t the right shade of blonde at all. There was far too much brown in it for her liking. If she could have spent a little money on things like moisturizer and good soap, she would have felt a lot better. She didn’t even have any nail polish.

  What kind of a stripper had to make do without nail polish? She’d have to bring it up with Serge next time she saw him. He was a tough guy, unpredictable with a mean temper but if she could make the point that it was necessary for business he might let her get a few extra things next time she was in town.