Bad to the Bones

by Layla Wolfe

  Oh God, no. I should have known that anything I could say at that point would be misinterpreted by him. I could see the handcuff key on the nightstand, that was the ultimate frustration. He had just placed it there like I posed no threat to him, but it was my only way out of this mess.

  I knew from past experience if I could get him to successfully bond with me and ejaculate, he’d turn into a puddle of goo and might be easily manipulated. I wasn’t so far removed from my Bihari life that I was above doing that now to save my hide, but he was just a limp rag. His tiny penis was coiled up like a mouse in its nest. That must’ve been why he had started tying a kielbasa to his leg.

  He fell upon me now with that damned wand. Forcing my legs apart with his knees, he beat me with the thicker end of the wand as though it was a pestle and my head a mortar. Instinctively I thrashed my head from side to side, avoiding about half the blows, but he soon wised up. He began anticipating my sidesteps, bashing me with the wand like I was a whack-a-mole. All the time he yelled bizarre, idiotic stuff, like,

  “Women need to be dominated. Women have been crying out for it since the middle ages. You will gain enlightenment through domination, just as your boyfriend wanted to be fucked in the ass!”

  I kicked and twisted, but he seemed immune to my blows. I got my foot up against his chest and shoved with all my might. He was like a marble statue all of a sudden—through all of his holiness, he had suddenly become as solid as the earth. My most violent kick only sent him sprawling back a couple feet on the mattress, and then he was on me again. This time he chased me with the small, pointed end of the quartz wand.

  It wasn’t that difficult for him to stab me with it, to penetrate me. I didn’t see the victorious look in his face, but rather heard it in his stupid voice. As he plunged that thing in and out of me, he trilled,

  “You must be grateful to me for all I’ve done for you, Asanga. You must love me, not feel responsible toward me. Responsibility is created by sleazy priests and politicians who want to control you in the name of god and country. They are against love because they can’t control it! A man who loves won’t be a solider because there are no nations, no countries, so why fight? A true soldier just wants to be fucked in the ass like a real man.”

  I heard myself suddenly shout. I guess I couldn’t take it any longer without a fight, because I shrieked, “You are godless! You know nothing about enlightenment! You will need to live ten thousand more lives as a pauper in poverty just so you can feel how everyone else lives!”

  Then an enormous crash shattered my world.

  At first I thought something like, Did my words really have that impact on him? Were my words really that powerful?

  It took a few moments for everything to sink in. The window behind Shakti had shattered. Something big had been thrown through it, something about three feet long that now bounced and rolled until it hit the nightstand by my head.

  Immediately the assault on me stopped. I realized that whatever had broken through the picture window was something outside of Shakti and I, a third party, an outside force.

  And damn, what a force.

  The silhouette of a soldier—that’s all I could think about, being the last thing screamed into my head—clambered over the window sash, smashing smithereens of glass with booted feet.

  I’ll never forget the sight of Shakti kneeling there clutching that fucking wand, his mouth hanging wide open. The soldier coming in the window was a superhero. I remember feeling all misty-eyed, even, watching the scene unfold in a very detached way, like I was watching a movie.

  The soldier crunched glass under his boots, coming right for Shakti. He was a puffed up monster of a man, just a hulking silhouette as he picked up Shakti in one arm. He held the squirming, kicking master under one arm in a headlock as though about to give him a noogie, like a school bully.

  “Where is…the fucking cuff key,” growled the soldier.

  It sounds incredibly dense, but it took me that long to realize it was fucking Knoxie. The reality of him throwing a thirty gallon drum through a plate glass window was so remote to me, it took me that long to figure it out. The sun lit up the buttes behind the picture window, turning him into a black cardboard cutout, but now my eyes adjusted, and it all sank in.

  It was Knoxie. Come to save me. So it was like a movie.

  I took this opportunity to bash Shakti in the femur with my foot. “Rot in hell, you fucker! It’s on the nightstand!”

  Knoxie released the panting Shakti. In a flash he shot to the nightstand, grabbed the key, undid one of my cuffs, and pressed the key into my free palm. I shot to a sitting position, panting too, from terror and the effort of screaming. When I looked back to the scene, Knoxie had the Chosen One in a headlock again, down on the floor this time. I kneeled on the edge of the bed, rubbing my wrists, watching. Just watching.

  I was fascinated. I’d never seen such violence, just the violence in our own rooms that passed for therapy. It took a while for it to sink in. Knoxie was choking Shakti to death with just the power of one arm.

  “You fucking… godforsaken… pervert,” he spat, just pumped full of rage. “You fucking whacko with your fucking dashiki and pacifier. You think you’re so…fucking…holy. I’m going to fix it so you never…never…practice your warped fucking ‘healing’ on anyone else ever…ever…again. I’m going to bring this whole fucking diseased, corrupted empire down around your head.”

  As he said “head,” I realized Shakti’s one good eye was bulging from its socket and his swollen tongue was sticking out like a dead deer’s. I barely paid attention as, outside, what sounded like a big rig truck sped up the driveway, followed by at least three Harleys.

  The gunshot, followed by shouting men, didn’t even budge me. Knoxie suddenly released Shakti, but it wasn’t to set him free. No, he flung the limp master onto his back on the carpet and yanked the surgical tubing from his thigh. Planting his knees on either side of Shakti, he expertly wrapped the tubing around the swami’s neck and pulled it tight in his whitened knuckles.

  “If you’ve got anything else to say,” Knoxie snarled, “now’s the fucking time.”

  Shakti clutched at the tubing, but he already had one foot in the grave. It sounded like he rasped, “Love is…eternal.”

  I’ll never know for sure, because I sprang from the bed, grabbing Maddy’s skirt from a chair. I walked through glass as I stepped into the skirt, eager to see what the fuck was going on outside. There weren’t any other Harleys on Bihari property, and I knew the sound of their tailpipes.

  As Shakti offered up his death rattle, the long, low hiss of a rattlesnake as the air was expressed from his lungs, I saw a guy leap out of a tractor-trailer truck and go around the front of it. He disappeared around the passenger side of the truck. Turk, Tuzigoot, and Lytton joined Ziggy in the driveway. Ziggy had been smoking a cigarette, but when he saw the thuggish guy leap out of the truck, he tossed his cigarette and jogged over to back up the other members.

  They all seemed to be pausing to see what the dirty-looking guy was planning on doing. The passenger door slammed shut and the thug came tear-assing around the driver’s side. That’s when Ford became extremely agitated. He even leaped off his bike without bothering with the kickstand, letting it drop to the pavement, simply to get a better shot at the dirty guy.

  “Riker!” bellowed Ford. “I’m sending you to a low, dark place!”

  Riker looked surprised, his mouth forming a little O just as he leaped up into the driver’s seat, just in time. Ford’s bullet shattered the driver’s window a split second before Riker leaned out and took a random shot.

  “Take this dead beaner snitch as a warning!” Riker yelled. He jolted off in the truck down an access road that I knew led to the main gate.

  “Fuck!” Men shouted, and more than one of them took a shot at the departing truck. But no one went after Riker, maybe because Ziggy had been hit. He had fallen to the road like a bird shot out of the sky.

  “K
noxie!” I shrieked, and stepped over the jagged windowsill. “Ziggy’s hit!”

  “Step aside!” Knoxie barked, gently yanking me. I was still standing in a pool of glass shards, but I was outside Wang Cho House now and could see the entire drama.

  It was biblical, each man posed as though participating in a religious tableau. Ziggy was sprawled on his back, his hand still gripping his pistol laying gently across his stomach. Tuzigoot and Lytton crouched to each side of Ziggy as though afraid to touch him. Tuzigoot’s pistol hand gripped his own skull, as though asking, “Why? Why?”

  Ford had squeezed off a couple shots at the departing truck, but even he had given up. He stood with arms dangling at his sides, jaw hanging open. Turk stood posed as though about to sprint after the truck, but I saw he was really weighing in his mind whether to check out another body that Riker had dumped from his truck into the middle of the road.

  As Knoxie barreled his way down the sandy hill, a couple of daimyo emerged into the open, but they weren’t about to shoot. They had probably never seen action like that in their lives. I leaped like a goat following Knoxie’s path, zigzagging from rock to rock with my bleeding feet.

  Knoxie tore the giant Tuzigoot out of his way so savagely, the huge man tumbled on his ass. Maybe Knoxie had some medical training as a SEAL, because he did all sorts of things like put the side of his face to Ziggy’s mouth and place his fingertips in the pit of his throat to feel for a pulse. Knoxie did CPR and thumped Ziggy’s chest with nested hands as he performed for the audience of bleak, defeated faces. I meandered sort of pointlessly now, a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  “Ah, no, God, no!” wailed Turk, setting his ass directly on the street.

  I dropped to my knees next to Knoxie. He was on his ass, too, gathering Ziggy’s torso into his lap. Ziggy looked innocent and boyish, as though death had made him age backward. The only sign of anything wrong was a scarlet splash on his white T-shirt, right over the heart.

  Knoxie sat like this for a long time. Ford cursed and yelled and strutted over to the other corpse on the road. I wondered if maybe he was going to shoot the corpse again, after Riker obviously had. Half that poor Mexican’s face was shot clear away. But I think Ford paced to blow off steam, for lack of anything else to do.

  The two daimyo retreated back out of sight, but now a weird thing happened. A few of my former housemates came out.

  These were girls I had eaten and slept with for years. There was Sunyade, Gia, and Rhetta. They all came quietly, sort of shuffling in their loose purple clothing. It was a terrible yet thrilling scene. They shambled like zombies, but their faces were alive and curious. I could tell they wanted to help in some way. I had liked each of these women in my former life, and now I lifted my hand to them.

  Knoxie cradled his dead brother. He nuzzled his neck like you would a baby, or a dog you loved. “Run free, Ziggy,” I heard him say hoarsely. Turk had taken Ziggy’s hand and was squeezing the hell out of it, just wringing the dead, stiff fingers.

  I took a step toward the women and grabbed Rhetta’s hand.

  “Asanga,” Rhetta said. “Can we come back with you?”

  I looked down at Knoxie, not sure if he had heard her. I knew I’d always have to look to Knoxie for answers. He was so worldly, so experienced in every emotion known to man. I was like a two-dimensional cardboard cutout compared to him. I’d experienced almost nothing. What experiences I’d had, I’d distanced myself from. I wasn’t even sure how to feel any more.

  But Knoxie was teaching me how.

  “Sure,” he whispered. “Anyone can come with us.”

  “Oh thank God,” Gia exhaled all at once, as though she’d been holding her breath.

  I knew I could finally stop holding my breath. I kneeled next to my old man and rubbed my nose against the back of his neck. Now I was home.

  Home at last.

  EPILOGUE

  KNOXIE

  Six Months Later

  When someone loses something important there’s a tendency to draw the others closer around them.

  The Bare Bones closed ranks after Ziggy’s murder. They practically went on lockdown, sending a few soldiers into the desert to track down Riker. Knoxie usually went on these runs, now armed with an AR-15. Ziggy might not remember Knoxie from when they were coming up, that was Ford’s reasoning. Knoxie might be incognito. Knoxie was happy to do these runs, although he never turned up the pinche guey former sergeant-at-arms himself, Riker, the epitome of all that was rank, crass, low, and filthy.

  That fucker just had nine lives with his ability to elude his enemies. Riker had somehow figured out that Rafael was working with the DEA, so he’d breezed right past the truck stop where the undercover agents were waiting. He had probably intended to make the delivery and collect his percentage at Bihari, but the arrival of The Bare Bones had put a damper on that. He had made off with the dope to live another day.

  Pissed about how Riker had just popped Rafael in the head, execution style, while commandeering the horse truck through Merry-go-round Canyon, Knoxie took out a few of the Presención dealers himself. The Bare Bones worked with the Ochoa cartel, so it was no big deal to hit a few low-level Presención runners, spitters who sold dinky little dime bags, swallowing them if the heat was on. Knoxie didn’t want to think about what had happened to Rafael’s sister, held hostage in Sonora without a pinkie finger.

  As predicted, the club started calling Knoxie Rex Havox instead of Flip, much to his relief, even before he was fully patched. He had definitely wreaked a lot of havoc during his time as a Prospect. He was finally utilizing his old SEAL skills and putting them to good use. He even joined Ford in plotting the bombing of a few grow houses, a few stash houses of the Presencións. There had been an epidemic of indoor pot growers since the housing bust, and they were eating into the profit of legitimate farms like Lytton’s Leaves of Grass.

  It was this exciting work that kept Knoxie on his toes constantly. It got him out of the clubhouse during the lockdown phase, that winter when it seemed to never stop raining, and people were going stir crazy. But after a while, it seemed that there would be no retaliation from the Presencións, things returned to normal, and plans for the annual fish fry resumed. Knoxie reasoned the Presencións must’ve still thought Knoxie was a member of The Cutlasses.

  The fish fry used to be monthly, but they quit holding it last October when everything had gone tits up. It was a huge event held at the airfield where The Citadel was located. The P&E Bare Bones charter was the dominant charter, but brothers came from Phoenix, Flagstaff, and Prescott. Knoxie had never taken part before, and they assigned him the role of emptying trash cans and recycling. He was still a Prospect, like it or not. He was only glad that his loathed brother, Kneecap, was assigned the port-a-pottie detail. That guy seemed to be getting all the shit jobs lately.

  Knoxie only needed to make the trash can rounds once an hour or so. He was free to mingle and enjoy the country rock stylings of Clint Cherry, as well as the dark glam rock chords of P&E’s local stars, Bad to The Bones. The maximum metal swagger of Queensrÿche, appearing that summer at the Sturgis rally, would arrive tomorrow. Gangs of tasty fender fluff roamed the tents and runways near The Citadel. Knoxie meandered with Speed, who was taking a smoke break from his nonstop mechanic’s duties, caring for a sudden parking lot full of rides in various stages of disrepair. Speed’s old lady Tess was used to him working events such as this, and she was off with other old ladies enjoying the band, so Speed was free to ogle the lovely merchandise.

  “You’d tell me, now, wouldn’t you,” said Knoxie, “if our brothers were planning some initiation ceremony for me?”

  “I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you,” said Speed, “but I hope they don’t have anything in store for you like they did for me. That was brutal.”

  Speed never mentioned his ordeal by fire. All Knoxie knew about it was that he’d eaten some magical mushrooms while alone on a vision quest out in the desert, and he’d run i
nto some Furries having a team cream in their little fun fur costumes. That part alone would’ve been hilarious, but the mythological story went on to involve that hit in the Coronado National Forest where Ford and Lytton’s pop Cropper had been shredded.

  So no, Knoxie had never asked about it. Until now. “Really? What happened?”

  They had just passed behind a huge speaker stack, walking through a cloud of pot smoke. Knoxie hadn’t been smoking it the past several months. It was a demotivating factor. He could detect the skunky scent of Dr. Driving Hawk’s Eminence Front strain. Living in Lytton’s spare cottage on his Mormon Mountain property, Knoxie whiffed that scent often. Speed had to shout to be heard over the twanging of the band, and he looked around furtively.

  “It was the event that started everything on a downhill trajectory for Maddy,” Speed said mysteriously. He didn’t seem to want to add anything, but finally the urge to blurt got the better of him. “Everything went balls up when I freaked out and wound up laying down my ride over by Last Chance Canyon.”

  Knoxie took a stab in the dark. “That’s the scene of some pretty intense vortices. According to the herbal essences, anyway.”

  “Exactly. I thought I was being sucked into a vortex. Sort of understandable with a couple guys who look like H.R. Pufnstuf following you in a cage. Anyway, the moral of the story is basically, the club’s not going to pull any more stunts like that on Prospects. They’ll probably just make you pass a raw egg back and forth from your mouth to Bobo Segrist’s, or eat an omelet made out of vomit.”

  Knoxie’s stomach clenched reflexively. He had to tell himself he’d seen much worse. But Speed went on.

  “Or give you the extreme piercing, the ‘Chainus.’ Or make you perform fellatio on a baboon.”

  “I’ll take the egg,” said Knoxie. “Sounds less time-consuming.”

  “The point of the story is, we’ve dialed back the crazy, especially since Cropper was—since Cropper died. In fact…” Speed looked from side to side like a cartoon spy. His voice was almost inaudible over the booming bass that vibrated the ground beneath Knoxie’s boots. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they’d just give you your full colors and be done with it. You’ve done so much for the club.”