by M. C. Cerny
“Then your nightmares, perhaps?” He smiled and checked his watch, cocking his head like he thought I was a funny, insignificant and unworthy of his time.
I shuddered, afraid more than ever in my life. I knew this man would ruin me. He’d kill me slowly, piece by piece, because it brought him a sick joy to surgically deconstruct me at his leisure. If I had pearls, I’d be clutching them. My chest would be panting for fancy smelling salts, but my fingers grasped at nothing. Another stark reminder that my gold confirmation cross had already been pawned to make rent last month when Dad hadn’t come back.
Shaking my head, I denied him the satisfaction of a response. I took off running, leaving him at the edge. I threw the door open to the roof entrance and looked back one last time. He gave me a one-handed salute like I had moments earlier to his henchmen. His head raised up to the sky as a hoarse laugh echoed between the buildings, scaring the piss out of me.
Bangs and curses drifted up through exposed walls and holes in the floor. His men searched for me. That was why the asshole checked his fancy watch. He was timing their chase. I took off, hustling and hobbling through filth and broken beams. The building looked like a war zone despite it being downtown in a major industrialized city. I found an open room with another broken window and squeezed through to the fire escape.
They were hunting me. With a renewed smile, I disappeared among the throng of busy streets and the masses of people. I took the bus that stopped on the corner two streets over. No one glanced at my barefoot state as I swiped my bus pass. Street signs blurred past my window, and I sunk down in my seat and exhaled a deep pain-laced breath. Newark had its perks, and this was one of them. I slipped into anonymity with ease and got away. However, that would be the only thing saving me from the man with jewel green eyes and a cunning smile that could turn you to stone.
2
Adam
I waited until my quarry slipped behind the door of the adjoining rooftop. The metal slammed hard and echoed against the cityscape of sirens and wails. Her departure was a disappointment. I wanted more time with her, and I didn’t know why that struck me as odd. I forced myself to be patient, exploring these unexpected feelings later when I had more information about the insolent girl who defied me so easily. Intrigued me with her mop of hair and eyes so blue they popped against her pale, dirty skin.
I killed men for lesser offenses.
For now, the sound of metal on metal vibrated in my chest with a pleasing hum. I fixed my suit cuffs, bored up here on the rooftop. The dark gray silk and Italian superfine wool sleeves caressed my body despite the need for a special tailor to alter it to my larger muscled frame. The texture of fabric was more calming rubbed between my fingers than slipping them between a hooker’s thighs and rutting until my mind went blank. My odd thoughts were pretty standard considering I spent this afternoon hanging out on rooftops chasing a teenage girl who banged up my Bentley.
Laughter I’d been holding back from meeting the cheeky underage brat bubbled up from my chest and burst forth in a maniacal wave. I couldn’t pin what had me feeling attracted to her despite everything that was wrong with the scenario. Her age for one. Her filth from a hygiene standpoint. The unknown pissed me off, but she fascinated me. Charmed me with her audacity. It was an odd day for anyone to defy me and get away with it. In fact, it never happened.
I jumped down from the ledge and casually strode to my men. Sunlight glared and shadows casted, making them appear larger than life. The breeze was stronger up here on the rooftop and carried the stench of my birth city like ribbon trails of frayed and broken dreams–just like the girl who got away. She piqued my interest which was unfortunate for her, and now I focused on finding her with an obsession that rivaled heroin in order to exact my punishment.
The girl in question was a dark thing. Fearful and a little feral as she tried to hide her limp with false bluster. Even I, jaded as I was, was forced to admire her fortitude. Injured, a weak bird attempting flight on broken wings stirred something forbidden within me. I hadn’t found this level of interest since my discovery of virgins, ass, and Jamison, though, not necessarily in that order. This was almost better than learning my mother procreated a second time.
As if I wasn’t enough?
As if fucking up one life didn’t amuse her the first time?
I hoped she enjoyed rotting in her unmarked plot next to the empty spot I saved for the other half of my DNA.
Thinking of her reminded me of my endgame. Thinking of my endgame only pissed me off because I wasn’t ready to execute it yet, and time was ticking away.
Wind whipped at my face with a foul stench, lancing my senses like the whips of my childhood. Ever the masochist, I stuck out my tongue to taste it. Vulgar and coarse, the air was a savory mix of piss and musty desperation.
I hadn’t been home in a good while. There was a reason I avoided this part of town, except when I had deals to make and bodies to count. My life had been a fight upstream to escape all of this and yet, here I was doing back-alley deals and chasing underage girls on rooftops because my hired hands were incompetent fucks.
They had one fucking job to do—watch my pretty car.
One.
Fucking.
Job.
I glanced over my shoulder, assessing the incompetence. “Derrick?”
“Yes, sir?” Derrick clambered next to me as he watched her run off.
He was stupidly transparent, equally interested, but for reasons I wasn’t. He had adjusted his dick in his pants twice now, vexing me with his desire to defile her. I wanted to defile her because she took something from me. Ego, pride—it didn’t matter. Something stolen was still something stolen, and it stuck in my craw as intimate as a lover’s betrayal.
I was a stickler for details. I felt my eye twitch and adjusted the cuff links peeking out from my suit asking the obvious question.
“Is she the one who touched my car?” I nodded my head in the direction of where the tiny thing had bolted, her shadow popping in and out of broken windows as she fooled my men.
She looked filthy with disgusting short hair, nothing but skin and bones. I couldn’t fathom how she managed to escape my second-in-command. I was aggravated he couldn’t catch her, but I still needed him before I dealt with his stupidity.
My car, on the other hand…
The Bentley was my first purchase since starting my empire. It had a special place in my cold dead heart. A status symbol for crushing those below me on my way to the top. I might have been brought up in a series of dysfunctional group foster homes, but I operated like an only child. I had trouble sharing my shiny toys with others, and I didn’t deem her worthy. She certainly wasn’t the kind of person I wanted sullying the custom silver paint job and leather interior with her stained clothes and ripped jeans.
“Uh huh,” he grunted, licking his fat lips, and I waited for the nervous swallow that made his neck roll. If he pissed me off again, I’d send him to the butcher to slice those lips off like sausage links and feed them to my dogs. The hounds would enjoy a treat, and I made a mental note to have Nelson pick them up something special.
Clenching my teeth, I reached for him with lightning speed and squeezed his worthless neck, watching the color drain from his face before filling up with red and purple splotches. He knew better than to struggle. I put my lips next to his ear and pimple scarred cheek, hissing, “Find out who she is.”
“Y-yes, sir.” Derrick choked, sputtering.
I tossed him back, and he rolled in the grit and debris of the rooftop. He made sounds as the shit cut his skin, and I smirked. A little pain went a long way in fixing behavior. I knew that firsthand being a child of the system.
A system I now controlled.
I hated incompetency. I crushed it under my Ferragamo crocodile loafers, digging into the concrete and glass. I walked over to the door they busted wide open from her escape. A shard of sapphire blue glass was stained with blood, and I picked it up with my handkerchief and e
xamined it. Turning it in the cloth, the glass stained the white threads nearly black. It muddied the linen with the rusty pigment. I smelled the hint of copper and smiled, wrapping it up and putting it into my pocket. First blood had been drawn, but it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
I always needed more.
“And you.” I turned to his lackey, the other idiot incapable of catching one insignificant girl. He was a real thug, all brawn and not a single brain cell masturbating between his ears. He shook in my presence, which was cute but unnecessary. Do what I say, when I say it, and you live a nice life. Fuck up, and I replace you.
“Mr. Huntley?” he stuttered.
Good, he was obedient and equally moronic under his hooded eyes. I walked over to him, examining him up and down. I leaned in to tell him the one word that sealed his fate, “Disappointment.”
I bit back from saying more and pulled out my gun, shooting him in the foot without hesitation. I didn’t reach this level of success to be sucked back down by fools, let alone a girl from the street with too much sass and not enough sense. I’d fix that next, once I got my hands on her.
He howled and fell, rolling in the debris as he reached for the bloody foot. I flicked lint from my suit and spit my distaste to the ground. Why was it so hard to find good help these days?
“Now you should be even with the girl next time you have to catch her.” I was nothing if not fair with my employees.
“Sir,” he whimpered.
Idiot was lucky I didn’t finish him off right then with his mewling. I had a deal to arrange and no time for this bullshit.
“Call a fucking Uber. I don’t want blood in my car.” I holstered my gun and walked past them, already thinking about my deal with the Perez gang in the lower ward. Derrick scrambled to help his nameless friend. He knew the consequences for bringing messes along. I was going to have to call in Petre, promote him, and get this shit squared away.
“Of course. I’ll make him ride with the twins.”
I sighed and gazed back at these useless chumps. At least the twins were there for backup if these two failed. The incompetency drove nails into my burning stomach. I jiggled the bottle of pills in my pocket, reminding myself we were all on borrowed time before the Earth took us back. From the ether we came, and to the ether we would all return. Anger and adrenaline overrode my pain, and I let the pills go.
“Derrick, find her. She’s probably in the system; I’m sure a social worker would know more. Her wounds will probably need medical intervention.” He would find her if he valued his life. Rest assured no stone would go unturned looking for her.
“Of course, Mr. Huntley,” Derrick said as he reached for the gun in the back of his waistband like the amateur fool. Idiot would kill her if he wasn’t more discerning.
I held up my hand to stop him.
“Not a hair out of place; do you understand?” I watched the space she recently occupied. My chest constricted, and for a moment I couldn’t place the odd feeling that circulated through my body. Something about this girl, not yet a woman, stirred things within me. I didn’t like it, and things I didn’t like were generally crushed under my foot.
Both echoed like eager puppies shaking their heads up and down, waiting to be kicked. I left them on the rooftop and strode quickly for the exit, taking in one last punishing inhale of the grit and filth around me. The memory of my humble beginnings plagued me, and I pushed it back into the recesses of my mind. I had guns to sell to a handful of low level thugs who would be my eyes and ears in the ward.
I didn’t have time for this.
I didn’t want to dedicate time to it.
I walked out of the building and turned to look at the brick and steel façade. Graffiti marked one side of the building, a partial quote covered up, but I knew it well. I stepped toward it and traced the paint soaked brick. Dante’s Inferno was a favorite of mine, and I patted the wall as if to say, me too. I moved to slide into my car and revved the engine. It wasn’t my Bentley, and I’d break the legs of the reckless kids who lifted it earlier. I’d let them live, though, because they brought me to her and, that deserved some sort of reward.
It pissed me off that my head was unable to block out her existence as I fixated solely on her. Penance wouldn’t be a one-time deal with her. She owed me much more. I found myself reaching into my jacket for my phone and turning the silver screen in my palm as an idea began to form. Using my thumbprint, I unlocked the screen and dialed a number I hadn’t used in a year.
“Kildare.” The deep voice resonated in my ear, and calm descended. I hated that he’d conditioned me that way.
“Doctor. It’s good to hear your voice,” I replied. My gaze narrowed on the traffic ahead of me. My frustration increased, and I practiced a breathing technique the good doctor himself taught me.
“Your scripts are on auto renewal, Adam. I’ve told you repeatedly—I’m not seeing you anymore.”
“Yes, well, those referrals didn’t work out. So here we are, once again.” I tapped my fingers against the steering wheel, thinking about the pretty psychiatrist in Soho. Easily seduced after two sessions, she sucked my dick like a Hoover vacuum. She’d never speak a word of it if she wanted to continue practicing. The other one, fresh on his PhD, had an ego the size of Texas and unfortunately met an unlucky end crossing Madison Avenue with his lover. I hated hypocrites, but I hated charlatan doctors even more. At least Kildare and I had a shared history; besides, the child fucker owed me.
“Adam.” Doctor Kildare’s patient tone held an edge to it. Good. He should be on edge considering he left me high and dry in a manic episode with shit referrals. I had abandonment issues up the ass, literally. He knew better than to let me go unfettered into the wild. If I was into the blame game, then he owed me much more than a life for a life. His penance was to serve me, and I would make sure he did it to my satisfaction.
“I’ve found her.” I spoke the words as the car picked up again, weaving through traffic.
“Found who, Adam? Who did you find?”
“The perfect means for exacting my retribution. She’s lovely. Spirited,” I mused, pausing to think about her. Of course she’d need cleaning up and some refinement. Nothing a good school couldn’t take care of along with my money. She’d have to grow out her boyish hair, though. I might have been somewhere in the middle of the Kinsey scale, but I wasn’t into that Peter Pan sort of shit.
“Adam, you can’t just take someone and mold them to do what you want.”
“You did,” I reminded him of the events that brought us here. The precarious point A to point B filled with years of unspeakable things. There was a reason I was a fucked-up mess. I had the sort of tragic life story that bred serial killers and later gave them wet dreams.
“That’s different.”
“Is it really? You managed a home for wayward boys and introduced us to terrible things.” I gripped the phone hard and then released it swiftly, placing it in the cup holder. I had a tendency to break things, making my life more difficult waiting on replacements.
“I didn’t know what was happening on those trips, and when I did, I shut it down.”
Ignoring his excuses, I said, “You’ll never guess where I found her standing so proud among the trash and putrid waste.”
“No,” Kildare murmured, and I imagined him sitting down, perhaps sweating a bit at his temples, and realize how I would fixate on this new problem.
My next obsession.
“Oh yes. My mother’s favorite crack haunt. It’s much different now. Nearly condemned, but the bones are good, still standing. I’m almost tempted to buy it, fix it up, maybe gentrify the neighborhood and sell the units for ten times the cost.”
“Who is this girl you’ve found?” He pressed for more, but this was a game to me. A cat and mouse I enjoyed seeing through.
“I’ll tell you about her at our next session. Thursday sound good? We can revisit all my daddy issues. I’ll be free at four.” I hung up my phone knowing Kildare
would be a fool to not see me.
3
Elizabeth
A gunshot pinged in the distance, scaring the piss out of me. Sharp things jabbed my bare foot as I hurried. Forced to duck down looking for cover, I seriously wondered if I would get home intact. At this rate, I’d be dehydrated, starved, and full of Swiss cheese holes before I made it home. I wasn’t stupid enough to look back or stick around for details. Our neighborhood was rife with gang activity.
I dodged my own shadow and limped up three flights of stairs nearly two hours after the incident on the roof. Pretty sure the elevator in here never worked. For public housing, it was shit and the first one built in the lower ward. I was glad the third floor was the farthest I had to go. My foot radiated with pain. I panted heavily, grasping the wall to keep me upright. I fished out the door key from a chain around my neck and slipped it over my head in a dizzy spin. The door opened as my shaky hands got snatched on the way in.
“Where the hell have you been?” a voice yelled, grabbing me by the scruff of my neck and tossing me inside. The door slammed shut. The key chain bit into my palm as my shirt tore again, and my body ached from the assault by my older sibling.
“Ow, quit it, Eddie. Jesus!” I slapped his hands away with the last vestiges of my strength.
“Answer me.” His hold was tight, but protective.
It had only ever been the two of us, and I’d scared the shit out of him more times than I could count. I deserved every bit of his censure, even if I didn’t like it.
“Out! I was out, alright?” I tried shaking him off, but he slammed my ass down in one of the two chairs we owned at the kitchen table.
“Does being out mean you come home without shoes, looking like the fucking train ran you over?” We both looked down at my bloody sock sticking to the cracked linoleum. The blood was probably cleaner than the floor.
The smart-ass in me shrugged and ignored his direct stare. “I had a little trouble getting a ride back,” I grumbled.