Hard Limits

by Pascal Scott

  When asked why she did it, Thompson reported that she snapped. She told officers she thought to herself, “They don’t deserve to live.”

  The Schmidts were named Foster Parents of the Year in 1961 by the Children’s Bureau of Los Angeles. Mr. Schmidt was a Deacon in Good Shepherd Lutheran Church. He was employed by Hughes Aircraft, where he worked on an assembly line. Mrs. Schmidt was a housewife and active member of Good Shepherd. Over the years they had opened their home to more than a dozen foster children.

  Neighbors in the modest suburb of West Los Angeles are shocked. “Something’s wrong with a child who could do this,” said one neighbor, who wished to remain anonymous.

  Kelly Thompson is being held in the youth detention center downtown awaiting trial. Because of her age, she will not face the death penalty. If convicted, Thompson could spend the rest of her life in prison.

  There was a black-and-white photo with the story, faded to yellow. In it a thin girl with haunted eyes stared defiantly at the camera. She was young. She was just a kid. She was Brett.

  Brett

  It was done. I had driven to Folly Beach as soon as I came down off the mountain. I thought it would be better to be out of town when the fire occurred. I knew that by the time I reached the Atlantic, my slave cabin would be nothing but ashes. I spent a week in a rented cottage across from a wind-swept shoreline, watching the sun rise over the waves, the sky golden at the horizon then lifting pink with wispy clouds lifting into a pure blue sky. So different from the Pacific sunsets I knew in what seemed like a lifetime ago.

  Sometimes it felt like death was following me. I thought I’d left death in Los Angeles, but now it felt like it had found me again.

  The first person I killed deserved to die. He put his penis in my mouth. I put my revolver in his. Like attracts like. It wasn’t really my revolver, the gun belonged to him. He kept it in the top right-hand drawer of the bedroom cabinet. In the closet he kept a hunting rifle. I would have used it. I lifted the rifle once, but it was too heavy.

  The revolver was light enough to hold with both hands. I slipped the barrel into his mouth while he was sleeping, letting it rest on his lower jaw. The weight of the gun woke him up. I liked the look in his eyes that I saw then. He had blue eyes, blue as the sky before a storm comes in. My eyes were like that, blue with a storm behind them. In his eyes, I saw everything in a moment: confusion, surprise, denial, terror. Finally, respect.

  I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. I cocked the hammer and pulled the trigger. I heard a sound that made my body jump then there was a ringing in my ears and then something muffled, like everything had gone into a far-off space and I was listening to the world from a great distance, as if I were floating on a cloud and the cloud was filling my ears so that I could barely hear.

  I blinked and when I opened my eyes I saw a wave of blood rolling toward my face. I closed my eyes again and when I opened them a second time, I saw that the back of his head had exploded against the oak headboard that he’d carved himself at his workbench with the electric saw. Some brain matter had blown out onto the white pillowcase. The colors were red, black and white. I set the gun down on the white bedspread and wiped the blood out of my eyes with the back of my hand. My hand had a burnt smell.

  He hunted deer and children. I was his foster child and from the age of two I had been his prey. I was twelve when I killed him. He’d delivered Mama Hedda to Good Shepherd Lutheran Church for Wednesday Night Bible Study and come home. She would get a ride back after ten o’clock with another church lady, he knew that. Plenty of time. Papa Schmidt liked his private time with me, even though Mamma Hedda knew all about the abuse, knew everything that went on, the rape and the porn and the black-and-white glossies for sale to private buyers.

  When he was done with me that evening, he’d fallen asleep, the way he always did. But this time it was different.

  He was my first kill. My second was easier. I waited until she walked into the bedroom, calling, “Schmidty? Kelly?” I shot her twice in the forehead, between the eyes.

  Wynonna

  The brochure was right on the kitchen table in Brett’s cabin: Girls-on-the-Go Christmas Caribbean Cruise, December 21-28, 2013. Ports: Fort Lauderdale, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, Key West.

  “You leaving the country?” I asked.

  Brett nodded. “Eight days, seven nights.”

  She poured another cup of coffee for each of us. We’d become almost friendly in this game of cat-and-mouse.

  “Hmm,” I said. “Planning on coming back?”

  “Of course,” she lied. “Where would I go?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. The Bahamas? Mexico? Parts unknown?”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, without conviction.

  I gave her a minute then I just said the words.

  “I know you did it,” I told her. “I don’t know how but I know you’re responsible for the disappearance of Lucy Lyon.”

  Her cheeks flushed. Her lips parted, the beginning of a confession? But then she caught herself and shut her mouth tight. I tried again.

  “You and I have something in common. We believe in justice. Justice is about balancing the scales. It’s about punishment that fits the crime.”

  She was holding my gaze. As always, her blue eyes were inscrutable.

  “I chose a career in law enforcement. But sometimes the law fails its citizens. It fails to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. There is court justice and then there is street justice.”

  I saw an almost imperceptible nod of her head.

  “The way I see it, sometimes you have to look the other way if you want to see the big picture.”

  I paused.

  “Lucy Lyon is gone. Maybe she got what was coming to her, maybe she didn’t. But I think we can let her rest in peace.”

  She said nothing.

  “Am I getting through to you, Brett?”

  “You are,” she said, finally.

  “Well, then. I think I’m finished here. Unless there’s something you want to tell me?”

  Her expression didn’t change a bit.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought. You always did keep your own counsel. Well. You enjoy your trip. I hear those lesbian cruises can get a little wild. You be good now, Brett Wolfe.”

  That afternoon I got a text from Tanika. I hadn’t spoken to her in months. Karen had moved out and was out of her life, Tanika wrote. They were finished. And she wanted me back, if I would still have her. She was so sorry about everything, she wrote, and she wanted to tell me in person. She shouldn’t have, but she even tried to tempt me down with news about The Resistance. The Feds were about to move in on a big drug bust. Please come to Atlanta, she wrote.

  I told her I’d think about it but I knew I wouldn’t. Sometimes you’ve just got to let that water keep flowing, that water under the bridge.

  On Christmas Day, I drove down Metcalf Creek Road and saw the sign: For Sale, 42 Acres. I was thinking she probably put her cabin home on the market, too, the one up high on Savage Mountain. Between the two sales, she should get at least a million. Plenty enough to start a new life.

  I figured that right about then, Brett’s cruise ship was sailing into the Caymans. I had checked her itinerary. Passengers had a free day in George Town, known to shady investors for its banks and offshore accounts. It was all legal. Nothing she was doing was against the law. With her money, she could disappear and live like royalty somewhere south of the border.

  There was still no sign of Lucy. Lucy Lyon was in the wind. Or maybe in the cellar of some farmhouse owned by The White Resistance. Or maybe she was floating face down in the French Broad River. Then again, she might be in the ground, up there somewhere on Savage Mountain.

  The only one who knew for certain was Brett. And Brett, of course wasn’t talking. Brett was gone.

  Or so I thought. Life is funny that way. I used to think I lived in a quiet little town where nothing much happened, but that was before Brett Wolfe shaved my pussy. />
  She didn’t run off to the Bahamas. She came back. When I saw her at the January shoot of Girls with Guns I just about dropped my uterus.

  “What the fuck,” I said.

  She smiled. I had missed that smile.

  “Nice to see you, too,” Brett said.

  “I thought you were gone. You sold your land. Your cabin—”

  “I didn’t sell the cabin,” she corrected. “Just the acreage.”

  “But I thought—”

  Those blues eyes penetrated me to my core. Something inside me melted.

  “Never mind,” I said. “You’re back.”

  “I’m back.”

  “For good?”

  “I don’t know if I’m ever for good,” she said. “Justice maybe more than goodness.”

  We were standing at the counter, buying paper targets. She got the torso silhouette. I got the bull’s eye.

  “Still the philosopher,” I said. “Well, it’s a new year. Twenty fourteen. Maybe a new start?”

  “Sounds fair.”

  We moved to the prep table to put on our safety glasses and earplugs.

  “Where’s your friend? Brigitte?” I asked.

  “She went back to Germany. She decided America was too prudish for her sexual proclivities.”

  “Oh? Lots of changes going on in your life. And you look like you haven’t been eating.”

  “Yeah, not much,” Brett said.

  “I’m guessing you could use a home-cooked meal.”

  We were both holding our earmuffs until we finished our conversation.

  “You’re right. And that would be very nice of you.”

  “Oh, I’m not being nice,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “Really. What is it my Granddad told me?”

  “Never forget, never forgive?” Brett asked.

  “Nah, that’s what the rednecks say. He taught me, ‘Everybody deserves a second chance.’”

  “He sounds like he was a wise man,” she said.

  “He was.”

  “A second chance,” she repeated. “New year, new start. The past is the past?”

  “The past is in the past,” Brett said

  She nodded. “Sounds good,” she said.

  “All right, Daddy,” I said, teasing her, testing her.

  She waited for a moment, deciding. “I prefer Sir,” she said.

  “Yes, Sir,” I said.

  I donned my eyes and ears, effectively blocking out the outside world.

  Brett Wolfe. My very own not-gone girl.

  Yes, Sir.

  Epilogue

  Although this is a work of fiction, it was inspired by actual events. In real life, the perpetrators were found guilty of murder and aggravated kidnapping. All were given the maximum sentences for their crimes. The man responsible for beating the slave to death received life plus twenty-five years.

  The End

  Pascal Scott

  Pascal Scott writes lesbian fiction exploring the passion of the power exchange dynamic. Her work has appeared in Thunder of War, Lightning of Desire: Lesbian Historical Military Erotica; Through the Hourglass: Lesbian Historical Romance; Order Up: A Menu of Lesbian Romance and Erotica; Unspeakably Erotica: Lesbian Kink; and Best Lesbian Erotica 2018. In another life she was a reporter for the gay and alternative press in San Francisco. She is retired now, living happily in the Atlanta area.

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  Hard Limits

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