by JJ DeCeglie
I didn’t think you were capable of stringing that many sentences together Rob.
A fucking wiseass to the end huh?
I made a sudden move, just to test him, and he shoved the gun forward with deliberate menace.
I got the gun Jack, remember that, no unexpected moves ok you son of bitch?
Spell unexpected for me.
He booted me for that. A real nice one. Evie hollered through the apple. Goddamn I coulda done some things to her in that precarious position. Rob spotted the map I’d dropped when he had started kicking my ass.
Maybe we don’t need you huh Jack?
I hadn’t put a mark on the thing on account of my ambiguous feelings of trust toward Evie.
Good luck finding it off of that dickhead.
Could be anywhere couldn’t it.
Goddamn right it could.
He threw the map on the floor and kicked me again. I was getting real sick of that.
Maybe I should just shoot you now then.
Evie kicked and struggled and popped the apple out her mouth somehow. If I’d rigged it up there’s no way that would have happened.
He’s crazy Jack, he’ll do it.
Even though he looks it, he can’t be that stupid Evie.
Kick. Stomp. Kick.
I’m the only one who knows where the money is Fonzi; shoot me at your peril you dimwitted fuck.
Kick. Kick. Stomp. It was getting real old I can tell you. He made another play then, moved over to Evie, captured her ruthlessly by the hair and jacked her up into a wide-eyed arch. One handed he had her whole body off the bed, balancing painfully on her knees, he pushed the gun hard into her right eye-socket. She made a noise like an animal would just before slaughter.
Whaddaya say Jack?
This guy was such a recreational criminal I almost laughed but instead I threw up a little. Blood and booze.
Shoot the bitch…then you don’t get her or the money.
He smiled at that. Maybe because I was so mean to Evie. Dropped her like a bad habit. She bounced on the mattress. Breath pressed from her lungs in forced exhalation.
Whaddaya want Jack?
He was starting to catch on. I thought quick, laid it on him.
Evie, half the money, and three days head start on you.
He smiled again. With all the consternation of an imbecile.
That ain’t gonna work Jack.
He moved over, right there almost atop me. He scratched his face with the muzzle screwed in firm to hush the gun. I could hear it grate against his stubble.
I’ve seen the way you’ve been looking at my ass Rob, if you’re gonna fuck me just get it over with huh, just make sure you oil the hell outta me first.
He chuckled to himself.
You’re about the biggest asshole I ever met in my life Jack.
Wasn’t the first person to tell me so.
Better than being an ass-bandit though ain’t it Rob.
If some sucker had taught me a lesson years ago I wouldn’t have this motherfucking mouth on me you know. He bent down and positioned the gun against my knee, my shoulder, my gut, my groin. I didn’t like this game. Every point the gun touched went afire with phantom pangs. I told him so.
When I get that gun off you I’m gonna shove it your ass and pull the trigger Roberto, what you think about that?
He thrust the gun against my throat. He didn’t have to say it, I knew what he thought. Rob took a minute then. He was running out of options. He couldn’t kill me, or really even threaten to, I held all the aces and he knew it. The asshole still musta thought I didn’t know it had been Evie who’d called him up and got his ass out here. Musta done it yesterday. The Chenko explanation held about as much water as a sieve would. How’d he know Larry’s name though? I made eyes with Evie and she widened hers in a mimed countenance of petition and artificially stricken fear. Rob saw it. I saw he saw it. He went and put the gun down on the bedside table, picked up the tape and then started to undress. When done he came and stood over me again. Nothing but his underwear on. Just perfect I thought, on top of everything fucking other thing, now I’m gonna get ass raped too. It was turning out to be one hell of a week. If I’d had anything but a thumping head and sickened stomach I woulda made for the gun.
As it was I had nothing, maybe less than that.
He slumped me up and onto a chair, positioned it so my back was to the bed and taped me to it. When he was done with that he laid into me some more. Going so far as to go back and get the gun and pistol-whip my ass until he saw suitable. I was hurting. Real bad I can tell you. To the point where I was losing consciousness at times, not fully, but in and out of hot speckled vortices and the flourishing din of struggle and clatter. I was taped down and hovering at once. A trampled spaceman bleeding into his helmet and about to suffocate on the blood. Lexy was there. Anti-gravity in her bathtub by me, sunlight filtered through her windswept blonde hair, saying kiss me there Jack through the crimson clogging my ears. I licked the freckles from her cheekbone and they tasted like cherry.
On the bed I could hear Evie resist. She was moving enough for me to think that Rob had untied her. Now he was planning on pretending to rape her in my presence and hope to hell it was enough to get me on side. I wasn’t sure if she was in on it, hell I hardly knew where I was. My face and ribs stung. Breathing hurt. Thinking hurt. And Lexy wouldn’t stop blowing kisses at me, blowing kisses and pulling faces, made me fucking smile.
Behind me the feigned fight was on, or maybe Rob was really gonna rape her, I didn’t care anymore. Lexy was pushing her bee-stung breasts at me, arching her back so as her ribs and flesh gave as much drive as they could. She pouted her lips and looked about as serious as her teenage wantonness would allow. I told her to stand up and she said but I’ll get cold outta the water Jack.
The way Rob had taped me I couldn’t really get a look back over my shoulder. I tried but all I caught was feet. Lexy stood up and did that same slinging arch, got me every time, chest out, ass out, slight turn so as to display those underwrought hips and the place where thigh becomes fleshy, that beautiful youthful face saying if you don’t fuck me all night I just won’t ever forgive you Jack, you know I won’t, then bursting into a laughter that rang out like bubbly machine gun fire and exploded in my senses like springtime can do out off winter. Her features igniting the way the sun would through the down on the back of her thighs, that spot she somehow always missed shaving, sparks raining divided through the darkness of restlessness and existence, how she would sometimes ask me evocative questions and really and truly listen to my inconsequential answers.
Two shots rang out.
Bang and bang.
Like slaps to my consciousness. Smelling salts of sorts. My eyes snap open. My mouth is stuffed with gauze. Evie is cutting me loose with a breadknife. I stand. There is a certain amount of dizzy. Brace myself with her, the chair. Over my shoulder. Rob is face down, half on the bed, half off. Not moving. Dead?
Did she shoot him?
The fuck’s going on?
He won’t ever hurt me again, fucking insane son of a bitch.
She shot him.
Twice.
Nice work baby.
Jack let’s go. Give me the car keys.
You killed him?
He was gonna rape me.
I thought you like it rough baby?
Give me the fucking keys Jack.
Rush to the car in a blurred smudge of pain and confusion. Got in. Evie spun the tires in the gravel and we ripped outta there. She drove with the wheel in one hand and the gun in the other. The old man watched us from the doorway of reception as large and ominous as a plague. I looked in the side mirror. I was beat to shit. I smiled at myself, there was blood all over my teeth. I’d felt worse, I just couldn’t remember when.
Jack…we gotta get the money.
Did you bring the map?
Huh?
The map.
No…can’t you remember where the place is?<
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Probably, but we gotta walk twenty-five clicks through the bush to get it.
What? Jack? Can you find it now?
Yeah, but what the hell are we gonna do after that Evie?
Who the fuck knows what in fuck I was talking about. The beating had scrambled my brains like a breakfast cook does eggs.
We were at the spot in what seemed like minutes. I’d just slouched down and hated the ride. Gave maybe three directions. Evie must have cannoned the thing there. I fell out the car and vomited all over the scarlet earth.
Where is it Jack?
She looked impatient, edgy, and still good enough to comply with.
I staggered over to the burial site. Removed the wreckage I’d placed atop. As I started digging the first bag out I heard the second car roll up.
Cops?
No such luck. It was Rob, and I’d been played like a fucking ukulele.
I looked up at Evie and she gave me her greatest smile yet. A stop you in your tracks apex that shot immediately and with unparalleled force to my groin. She even threw in a wink. What a girl! Pure fucking joy. I could say I was bewildered, disoriented, all the similar such states of puzzlement and baffle, but I wasn’t, if anything I was relieved.
Looks like we won’t be going away together huh Jack.
Then the whore shot me. Like all the internal bleeding wasn’t enough already. I saw it coming and kinda leapt away and into the scrub but she hit me in the right shoulder just under the clavicle. It hurt like holy fucking hell. I could hear Rob laughing at me. Pleased with the pain they were dishing. I got up to get away. When I looked back they were dusting the dirt from the bags and grinning like starved hyenas right at me, ready for the kill and then perhaps to tear me limb from bloody limb for dinner.
You’d better end him Evie.
She didn’t speak. Only aimed and shot. I’d turned to face them by the time she’d squeezed the trigger. It was a gut shot. To the right again. About two inches aside of my naval. I had two holes there now. If the first hurt, I’m not sure what this one did. There isn’t really a word for it. Maybe devastation goes closest. I could feel the warmth of the blood bloom in placid spouts onto and through my gripping fingers. It hurt so much you couldn’t really feel it. Like than moment when you burn your skin and it hasn’t started to be excruciating yet but you know it’s coming.
Rob was amused, I could hear him living it. Meanwhile I was thrashing about on the dirt and dying. Evie spoke in the distance. The blood was already getting sticky. Lexy was there again. Sitting cross-legged with a short skirt and no knickers on, a brace of her long blonde hair in her teeth. She did that when she was thinking. Evie spoke. I watched them from my curled crux of anguish and distress thinking well this is just about as big a jackpot as any man had ever known. Lexy spat out her hair and laughed so much she fell on her side and kicked her feet in a glee ridden fit.
You like that baby?
You know I did Evie.
Yeah.
Yeah, you had that asshole wrapped around your little…
Rob didn’t finish that schmuck of a sentence. A man is generally lost for words when there’s gun aimed at his still beating heart. I could tell she didn’t really want to shoot him 'cause Rob got all the way over to her, talking and sneaking in steps whilst doing it. He even got his hand gripped onto the barrel of the gun. But she blew him away anyhow.
Problem for that little bitch was that the gun went with him. I couldn’t see Rob from where I lay but I heard the muffled ting of another shot and saw Evie drop to her knees. She screamed then, in a howl all horrible. A wailing torment. She got back up. Held her gut and went over to where Rob musta been.
She disappeared a second and then came back up with the gun again. Rob had to be as good as deceased on the ground and Evie went one better and shot him dead.
A single tap.
I was guessing in the skull.
Lexy was showing me how she could turn cartwheels and again, she still wasn’t wearing any knickers. The sunshine lit up her cunt hairs incandescent like it would the petals of a summertime flower.
Evie reeled back toward the money. She fell over half-way and really had to make an effort to get back up. I could see the blood spit out in a torrent with her every amplified cardiac rhythm. She had it in the gut too but it was higher up and right in her core. The pressure one hand was putting on it was nowhere near enough to staunch the vital losses she was having. When she tried to pick up one of the canvas bags full of cash she crashed to the ground and could do nothing but squirm and moan and bleed.
Lexy was trying to put her toes in my mouth and I bit at them and she raced away shrieking in delight. I left her there hopping up and down, that skirt revealing everything and her making silly noises like a goddamned puppy. She did that sometimes.
It was my go now, and I got up as best I could. It was concentrated hard work and pained me like all of fuck and then some.
I took off my shirt and folded it up in a compact rectangle and then undid my belt and tightened it over the folded material to hold it in place and try to stop the blood. It held fast. I took off my socks and tied them together at one end and then wrapped them round my shoulder in the hope to cut off some of the supply to the area and add to the clotting with some pressure. It held, but not well and it hardly covered the wound.
I made it over to Evie in a heavy step by step lurch, the first thing she did was wring off a desperate few rounds in whatever direction she had the gun aimed. It was in the opposite direction to me and I just let her finish. She was semi-conscious. Dying like a run-over dog in the dirt. I kicked the gun out her hand. Took a peek at Rob and saw the crown of his head was in a ruddy blackened mess spattered thick by the rest of his cranium.
Evie stirred. Raised enough strength to turn over in heaving flip and then clutch onto my leg. I leant down and took one case in each hand and then with a concerned exhausted effort pulled them over and away from her. The pressure of the strain made me bleed. I could feel it leave me in a forced warm whoosh. She was climbing up my leg like cancer would a bone. Clinging to me in vile harassment, disgorging words and more and more blood.
Jack, Jack, help me. Help me please. I’m bleeding to death Jack. Help me Jack…please…I don’t wanna die!
I just looked at her, with cold, dead eyes. It was the first time I’d fully believed anything she’d said. She saw what was coming, and for the first time she saw no way out. I tried to make it over to where I’d shifted the bags. It was only a few steps. She held on white knuckled, emitted a guttural swinish rasping, an equally appalling snort, suddenly she was didn’t have a beautiful component to her, maybe she never had.
You can’t leave me here to die Jack! You can’t, you’re not that kind of person, you’re not…don’t leave me here. Jack, don’t do it, don’t, please don’t…I’m gonna bleed out in the dirt Jack…Jack I’m gonna fucking die here.
I’d had enough. Of this. Of her. Of everything.
Evie….you’re bleeding on my leg.
What?
I said you’re bleeding all over my goddamned leg.
I took my free leg, the right one, placed it just on the spot where her elegant shoulder became her fragile neck and shoved her off with everything I had left. She went off to the side crashing limp and sprawled onto her back bringing up a mouthful of blood and coughing and spluttering it all over herself. I moved over and picked up the bags. The one in my right hand burnt like shit to haul with but I did it anyhow. Bled some more. Evie kept on screaming and moaning and gurgling on her blood. She tried to stand up a few times and failed but she crawled about two metres toward me at one stage, blood dripping from her gut wound in thick drips and then she collapsed into a wilted package of weighted misery. Moving the bags had me done and I thanked God himself when I didn’t have to go looking for the car keys. Good old Evie had left them in the ignition.
Bless her unforgettable ass.
When I wheeled away she’d stopped her screeching a
nd was passed out or dead face down in a spread-out spoor of sundried black looking blood. There was nothing to say, apart from the goddamned obvious, if I may…
I loved you Evie.
And now you’re fucking dead.
Don’t mind me.
You brazen harlot.
If I dance an indolent salsa.
Just for a moment.
Here upon your copacetic carcass.
And then once more.
On the fresh crammed earth.