by Sam Crescent
“That it involves handcuffs, whips, and blindfolds. You want to get down and dirty with me, Dwayne?”
He didn’t say a word, simply spun her around and placed the blindfold over her eyes. “Most people are surprised when they’re attacked. They cannot and will not be able to defend themselves.”
“Ah, I understand the blindfold, got it.”
“I want to see how you react, and then we’ll work from there.”
Once he tied the blindfold at the back he spun her around a few times. She lost her footing, and he didn’t help her. This was to knock her off balance.
Taking away her sight was the first step.
She turned in a circle, her hands coming out to steady herself as if she was unsure.
“I don’t like this,” she said.
He kept his footsteps light so she couldn’t hear him. It was strange seeing her blindfolded. It made him think of her completely naked, at his mercy, begging for him. Pushing aside the desire that suddenly hit him, he focused on her.
“This is really weird. Are you, like, making faces?” she asked.
She took a deep breath, and her nerves were so clear to see. Her hands clenched into fists, and she held herself quite tight now. She needed to relax, to keep her hands loose so that no one could go up behind her, and simply grab her.
Like he did, banding his arms around her, lifting her up with ease.
She struggled, but he won, drawing her down to the ground and having her hands locked.
“I’ve taken you now. There’s nowhere you can go.” He pressed his face against her ear. “You could be dead by now.”
With that, he pulled up, getting her to her feet. “Again.”
****
Charity lost count of the number of times he won. The ways he came at her. She didn’t even feel it until he either surrounded her, yanked, pulled, tugged, whichever seemed to take his fancy. Not that she’d ever admit it but she rather liked it when he held her hair. It wasn’t painful, but it made her think of a great deal of naughty things.
The blindfold started it all.
Just because she was eighteen didn’t for a second mean she wasn’t aware of men and sex.
Being with Dwayne, it seemed to enhance it all. He was always so quiet, holding himself back, being aloof, and she liked that.
By the end of the day, she was exhausted, and even though he hadn’t grabbed her hard she knew there would be bruises. His touch was always firm. He didn’t give her the chance to think that her attackers would be weak.
“That was tiring,” she said.
“You did good.”
“I did? You killed me each and every single time.”
He smiled. “Believe me, if I did that, you’d know about it.”
“My body feels it. Isn’t that enough?” She collapsed onto the mat. It was a little after four, and she didn’t want to go home. Not yet. Her parents constantly asked questions, and that was more exhausting than Dwayne’s attacks.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, standing over her.
“Nothing. Just family stuff. You know, parents.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Only if you turned up eighteen and were a potential boyfriend or a girl for me to hang out with, we’d be fine.”
His arms were folded, and he tilted his head to the side. It was like he was always assessing her, and he wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. Did it make her different from everyone else he knew? Special?
“What’s going on?” Dwayne asked.
“You want me to talk about my drama?”
“Why not? Clearly you don’t want to leave.”
“Is that wrong?”
“No. Believe it or not, there was a time when women liked spending time with me.”
“And now?”
“Oh, they still love spending time with me. I just don’t care to spend it with them unless I’m getting what I want.”
Jealousy sparked inside her, and she didn’t like it.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked.
“No.”
“Just someone you have casual sex with.”
“Now, Charity, that looks and sounds a little like jealousy to me.”
“It’s not.” She completely lied. “I’m not jealous of anyone.” That was partially true. She’d never been jealous until today, and it was all because of Dwayne. He didn’t even belong to her, and yet, she felt like he was.
Get over yourself.
“Let’s move away from your denial. Tell me your troubles, honey,” he said, taking a seat.
“Don’t call me honey.”
Her dad called her that, and she didn’t like that word coming from Dwayne’s lips, especially as she didn’t think about him in any way that would ever be considered fatherly.
He held his hands up. “You’re the boss.”
“There’s no troubles, really. It’s my parents. They’re worried, like, all the time.” She tucked some of her stray hair behind her ear.
“They don’t want your kidnapping to take over your whole life. They do have a point.”
“And I get that, but being here with you, I have to make up lies, and I hate that. They’re talking about college, and prom, and how I’m going to be moving out soon. It’s all just too much. Now I have to tell them about my day at the mall with either a friend or they want to know what guy is interested in me.”
“Do you have a guy interested in you?”
“No. At least, I don’t know. No one has approached me at school, and it sucks. It all just sucks, and I like spending time with you. I know you’re, like, an old man now, but I do. You’re a lot of fun.”
“You didn’t insult me at all.”
“My parents said you were old. I kept asking about you. How they contacted you in the beginning. They wouldn’t tell me a thing and told me I needed to stop thinking about you. You have your own life and don’t need a teenage girl bugging you. Am I bugging you?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“Do I strike you as the kind of man that would lie?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed. “I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t lie about this.”
“But you would lie about everything else?”
“Of course. I’m not a saint. I never claimed to be one either. So, you’re tired of all the lies?”
“Yes.”
“You can either keep on lying, tell them your day was fun, but you’re tired, or stop coming here.”
“I’ll keep on lying. I don’t want to stop coming here.” She hated how desperate she sounded. “I find this fun. You know.”
“I wouldn’t describe this as fun.”
“Oh.”
“Not that it’s a bad thing thinking about it either. You’re a little sensitive today.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just stressed.” She smiled at him.
“I enjoy coming here. It relaxes me.”
“Do you work out often?”
“Yes. A lot. I need to. I need to keep in shape.”
“Do you rescue other girls like me?” she asked.
“No.”
“How come?”
“Your parents paid a lot of money to make sure you returned home safely. You do realize that the chances of finding you alive were slim.”
“Yes. Thank you for not giving up.”
“I had no intention of giving up. I got paid to do a job.”
He glanced down at his watch, and she knew it was now time to leave. “I better start heading back.”
“All right.”
As she grabbed her bag, they made their way out of the building. He typed in whatever the code was, and then he walked her to her car. She didn’t want to leave and would have happily stayed with him, talking.
“Next week?”
“Yes. Drive safely.”
“I will.”
She smiled at him and climbed behind the wheel. This time she didn’t linger. She didn’t watch him get into his car.
“You need to put some distance on this.”
Tapping her fingers against the steering wheel, she drove home. All the time she kept thinking about the past day. When he’d not turned up on time she’d been worried. What if he was late? What if he forgot?
The thought of not seeing him for another week filled her with a great deal of sadness that she didn’t want to talk about.
Arriving home, she pulled up into the large driveway. Her parents’ cars were already there, and she took a deep breath before heading inside. Keeping her bag on her shoulder, she entered her home.
Seeing no one around, she was about to make a run up to her room when her mother caught her.
“Hey, honey,” she said.
“Hey, Mom.” She turned to see her mother in the doorway.
“How was your trip?”
“It was good.”
“Buy anything special?”
“Nah. I had a milkshake and a burger, walked a little.”
“Who was there?” she asked.
“A couple of friends from school. I kind of broke away from the crowd though. Needed time to think.”
“Makes sense. Dad ordered Chinese food.”
“I’ll take my bag upstairs.”
“All right.”
This was how every single Saturday evening went. Her father loved Chinese food, and it was his night where he got to order whatever he wanted. Otherwise it was always healthy stuff or something her mother liked.
Putting her bag on the floor, she moved toward her window and looked out over her yard. Since she’d been back nothing had changed. Everything was always in the same position. The swing she used to spend hours on as a little kid in the back yard. The half-built tree house that her father promised her but never finished. All of it used to mean something to her, and now she saw how fragile it all was.
She wasn’t the same person that had come back after being taken.
There were times she felt guilty though. She’d not been taken for a long time or been raped. They’d toyed with her, beaten her, pissed on her, and she’d gotten away. The men who dared to take her were dead, rotting somewhere right now, whereas she was alive. Should she be allowed to be different? To feel it? To look at something and see the ugly not just the pretty?
It didn’t really matter though anymore.
She couldn’t go back to the way things once were.
Even if her parents kept trying to change her, they couldn’t take away what had happened to her. She wasn’t their little girl anymore.
Chapter Five
Two weeks later
“You ever had anyone shoot you?” Charity asked.
Dwayne finished loading the gun and looked toward her. Her posture was exactly the way he’d left her to start her first shooting lesson. After two weeks of attack and defense he’d believed she was ready for that next step. Like in school, Charity was a fast learner, and it was in fact a privilege to see her constantly achieving, always working to improve.
“What do you think?”
“I don’t know. I wonder if you give people the time to realize you’re there or if you just go shooting people like crazy.” She started to make gun noises with her hands clasped together, one finger pointing forward as she did it.
“I’m not that good.”
“You’re great though, right? You wouldn’t be where you are now without that skill?”
She was always prying into elements of his life, which he didn’t mind. He enjoyed listening to her talk. Charity had one of those voices what would make a good storytelling voice. She was the first woman in his life that he actually enjoyed being around. Most women he found irritating. Not this woman though.
“Fine. Fine. Don’t tell me.” She held her hands up in surrender, swinging from side to side, looking all cute.
He moved toward her and held out the small handgun, which she turned in her hand, pointing the muzzle up at her head.
Quickly grabbing her, he positioned the gun away from her.
“Are you crazy?”
“What? Doesn’t it have a safety or anything?”
“What exactly do you know about guns?”
“They go bang.”
“You’re a pain in the ass.” He shook his head. “Right, keep the gun pointed away from you at all times.” He moved to stand behind her, positioning her hands and placing her body exactly how he wanted it. He’d already lined up the empty cans he’d found. Her targets.
“How good were you the first time you got a gun?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“I want to know if it’s as easy as it looks, or if it’s hard.”
“It is hard. I couldn’t shoot the beer cans for a long time. It felt like a whole year. I trained constantly to be as good as I am now.”
He felt her take a deep breath as he placed her hands into position, and then she started to shoot. She fired three times and laughed. The cans were all in position and hadn’t been touched.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I fired my first gun. I think that’s pretty awesome, don’t you?”
Instead of joining her in her mini-victory, he spent the remainder of the day showing her. He didn’t stay pressed against her back and stepped away for her to try on her own. As the day wore on and the sun began to set, he saw her frustration start to build. The cans were still in place and hadn’t moved once. The bullets, though; she’d used quite a few.
“You know what, this is faulty.”
“The gun’s not faulty.” He stepped forward, taking it from her, aiming and firing. All five cans landed on the floor.
Perfect.
Precision.
His training.
This was his life.
Taking lives was what he was good at. In fact, he would go so far as to call himself a master in the art.
“Fine. It’s not faulty.”
She wrapped her arms around herself.
“Are you feeling cold?”
“Just a little bit. I’ll be fine.”
He removed his jacket and draped it across her shoulders.
“You know for a badass, you don’t show it.”
“How do I not show it?”
“Well, for one, you don’t kill me.”
He chuckled. “You want me to kill you? It would be very useless training.”
“You think I could take you now. I know all your tricks.”
“You’re not even close to being that good.” He put away the gun and cleaned up the mess while Charity watched.
“Really? You’re not training me to take you out.”
“Charity, I hate to break this to you, but I’m not training you to kill anyone. I’m teaching you how to survive and to have a better chance of making it out alive. This stuff that I teach you will only get you so far. It’ll be up to you to figure out the rest.”
“Oh.”
She was silent for a few seconds, but it was like he could feel her mind working, preparing, getting ready for more questions.
“Why don’t you want me to kill anyone?” she asked.
He finished locking up his equipment and turned toward her. Her hands were by her sides, open. He always noticed a person’s stance. It had kept him alive this long. Knowing if you were going to be attacked at any moment was important. At least to him it was.
Reading people came with the territory of being a killer.
“It changes who you are, taking a life. You’ve got to be prepared to live with the guilt.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, you do.”
“Do you feel guilt?” she asked.
He thought about it and nodded. “Yeah, I get guilt. The first man I killed was a rapist.” He deserved to die, but still Dwayne felt the change inside him.
“He was a monster.”
“Yeah. I saw him in the act. To be honest, I can’t even remember if he was my first kill or not. They all kind of mingle together right now. I don’t know who was first.”
He shrugged. “I certainly should tell little girls about this.”
“I don’t feel like a little girl.”
She looked away.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s nothing.”
“I don’t bullshit you, Charity. Don’t start with me.”
“Fine. Everyone wants me to forget. They want me to move on and be my happy self.”
“You can’t.”
“Could you?”
“I had a lifetime of pain and suffering even before I took my first life, Charity. You’re not like me. You’re a woman, and you’re not a killer.”
“But I think about it.”
“You think about killing?”
“Yes. Those men. They took something from me, and now, all I can think about is hurting them.”
“They’re dead.”
“But men like them are still out there. Murderers, rapists, child abusers, people who don’t deserve to live.”
“I don’t play God in my line of work. I do a job. They were hurting you, and it was my job to kill them.”
“How many people have you killed in total?” she asked.
“I don’t keep count.”
He’d stopped counting years ago. When he was at the height of his training with Caleb, he’d gone out hunting for men who he could work and train on. Being a Carson, he had to know when to sniff out the weak, the evil, and the vulnerable. He’d never hurt a man, woman, or child that hadn’t deserved it. He’d killed a few women that were evil to the core, protected children, and driven his blade through men’s hearts time and time again.
What he didn’t realize when he was younger was how valuable the Carson name was. They commanded respect through sheer force and will. No one took a shit without them knowing about it.
Rats, snitches, betrayers, enemies, they were all part of the people he’d taken out. No one was safe as far as he was concerned.
“I think it’s time I went home,” she said.
He nodded and moved toward the passenger door. Climbing behind the wheel, he started his car and drove them back to his warehouse. Today he’d made her come with him to begin this training.
“Taking a life, it’s not easy?”
“No.”
“You live with it though.”
“It’s my job to live with it.”
“Thank you for today,” she said.
He watched as she left his car and made her way to her own. When she pulled out of his parking lot, he followed her, not wanting to risk her being alone or someone waiting.