by L. A. Fiore
And yet he’d stayed quiet for two years when legally there wasn’t much Mace could do to keep the bastard from me. It showed the differences in their characters because my dad had the law on his side and still he did nothing; Mace didn’t and yet he never backed down, going so far as to threaten my dad’s life. That was the only reason I was here now. My dad was a vindictive little prick and it obviously wasn’t sitting well with him that Mace had threatened him in his own house, hell while he had been in his own bed. What worried me though, was the bastard had set this meeting up—sending his friend to my school. He would only have the guts to gloat and taunt me if he actually had something up his sleeve, a way to mess with Mace and Mia. The idea of him causing them any trouble, after everything they had done for me, I couldn’t allow that.
“You think I’ve been sitting over here licking my wounds, you’re wrong boy. Mace and his stupid kid are going to learn a lesson the hard way and I’m all too happy to be the teacher.”
“What are you up to?”
“Tit for tat. Hell, I don’t even have to leave my house. Whispered words in the right ears about Mace and his real interest in you, being true don’t matter, an allegation like that would have to be investigated; I imagine the state would take Mia away, can’t be sure that Aunt ain’t involved in it, put that little pretty in foster care. She won’t stay so innocent then.”
Staring at him I realized the man needed conflict, didn’t really matter in what form, but he craved it. If I let him beat on me, maybe that would appease him enough to back off of Mace and Mia. Widening my stance, I braced myself for the first blow.
“You’re a fucking loser. Mace should have wiped the floor with you.”
“What the fuck did you say?’
“You heard me. And don’t kid yourself that you still got what it takes to get it up. You can barely get hard when you’ve got your cock in some woman’s mouth. The walls are thin, I’ve heard the complaints.”
He charged, his eyes bugging out of their sockets. The first punch was to the side of my face, the force throwing me into the door. Fueled with adrenaline, I shook off the pain and laughed, the sound growing louder as I watched both his confusion and fury. “You’re getting old. You hit like a fucking girl.”
The next to my stomach knocked the wind from me for a minute and he used his advantage to rain punches until I fell to the floor. And then the kicking started. Curling myself into a ball, wrapping my arms around my head to protect it, I took the hits knowing with each one he was wearing himself out.
Breathing heavy, he spat. “I know what you’re doing and it ain’t going to work. That bastard fucked with me, so I’m going to return the favor and hit him where it’ll hurt most. His fucking kid.”
What happened next was more an instinctual response rather than a conscious one. One minute I was curled up in a ball and the next I stood over my dad’s bloody and broken body. When I saw the blood on my hands, I dropped to my knees. I didn’t realize the anguished screaming was coming from me.
Walking from the courtroom was nearly impossible with the shaking my body was doing. Mace was there, right behind me.
“You’re going to be okay, don’t give up. Promise me, you won’t give up.”
“I don’t want to go. I’m scared.”
He cried. I had never seen Mace cry, but he was now as a tear welled up and over his lid. “We’ll visit, for every visitation we’ll be there.”
“No! Don’t bring Mia.” He objected, his mouth working to form his protest, but I stopped him. “Please, I don’t want her to see me in there.”
“Okay, but if you change your mind.”
“I didn’t want him to hurt you or Mia. I didn’t mean….”
“I know Cole.”
“Three years, that’s a really long time.”
“You’ll be out before you know it and I’ll have a job waiting for you at my garage when you do.”
I wanted to cry, felt the tears burning the back of my eyes, but I had to be strong because if I started crying, I might not be able to stop. “You’ll come to visit?”
“Yes.”
The bailiff interrupted us. “It’s time to go.”
He started pulling me from Mace, my body twisting so I could see him. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Showing me what it’s like to be part of a real family.”
The image that stayed with me as I was carted off to juvenile detention was Mace wiping at his eyes before he called to me. “See you next week, son.”
After being processed, I was shown to my cell—a small space with a single bed, a desk, a sink and a toilet. Lying on the bed, my focus on the ceiling, I thought about what I had done. I had killed him; beat him so savagely that he died from his injuries. I waited for the remorse I knew I was supposed to feel, the guilt at taking a life, the horror that it had been by my hands that he finally met his maker, but it never came. I didn’t have guilt or remorse, what I felt was quite the opposite: relief.
Due to the years of beatings and my emotional state, I had been charged with involuntary manslaughter in juvenile court. Had anyone involved in the case been feeling differently, I could have been charged as an adult, even being only fifteen, and instead of three years I could have received a much longer sentence.
I wanted to believe my actions were all in the name of protecting those I thought of as family, but the truth was I had had the urge to hit him even before he started talking. Just the sight of him had set me off in much the way the sight of me had always set him off. I tried to push that uncomfortable truth from my head, but it latched on. The whispering in my brain growing louder and louder, demanding to be heard. I was no different than my old man.
Sitting on the couch in the community room, my stomach twisted into a knot because instead of relaxing and watching the movie, I instead watched out of the corner of my eye for the attack. They’d been threatening me now for weeks. After learning why I had been sentenced, the two kids that ran the place like kings, Snake and Mick, were eager to prove to themselves, and everyone else, that they were still the toughest. I didn’t want to fight, even as my body hummed with anticipation, but I wanted to be better than my dad, needed to prove to myself that I was nothing like him.
The movie ended and we walked back to our rooms. I had just reached mine when my head jerked back hard as someone yanked my hair from behind. As I struggled to get my balance, the first punch landed in my stomach, knocking the wind from me. Another punch in the kidney sent me to my knees. Snake pulled my head back to tilt my face to his, which was twisted with sick glee, right before the punch that knocked me unconscious for a few seconds. I staggered into my room, reaching my bed before my legs gave out. Everywhere hurt, the pain nearly as bad as when my dad had his way with me. Sleep wouldn’t come for me that night, but instead of fear keeping me awake, it was vengeance.
A week went by, the bruises had mostly faded and just in time for our weekly visitation. Mace waited for me at the small table in the room designated the Visitor Room. As soon as he saw me, his face went hard.
“What the hell happened?”
“Just some kids asserting their authority.”
“What did your detention officer do? Did he segregate the ones responsible?”
“No one witnessed it.”
“What!”
“There are a lot of kids, it’s a lot to monitor. I’m okay.”
“The hell you are. You’re supposed to be safe in here, you’re not supposed to look like you’ve gone a few rounds with your father.”
“It’s only three years.”
“I’m going to file a complaint.”
“Don’t.” That came out harsher than I intended.
“Why?”
If he filed a complaint then there would be a paper trail. I didn’t want a paper trail because I had three years here and I’d taken enough beatings to last me several lifetimes. Mick and Snake either moved on or I’d fight back and make it so they did
n’t bother me again. I couldn’t tell that to Mace though, didn’t want to see the look in his eyes that would likely mirror the one he had given my dad that first day, so instead I said, “It’s just not how it’s done.“
He was livid and there was a part of me that let myself appreciate that a good man like Mace was concerned for my welfare. Turning the conversation away from me I asked, “How’s Mia?”
“She misses you. Doesn’t understand why you won’t let her visit.”
I felt that, like a knife to the heart. I had wanted to be someone she could count on and instead I was more like her mom because I had disappeared on her too.
“She’ll get over it.” Really I meant that she’d get over me, she was young. I’d just be a foggy memory when I was finally released from here and that was probably for the best.
Mace had a thought on that but he didn’t pry and instead asked, “Are you sure I can’t file a formal complaint?”
“Yeah.”
He said nothing for a few minutes, and I had the sense he knew my intentions, before he asked, “How’s school?”
Eventually this too would just be a foggy memory. And so in keeping with that, I filled Mace in on my life in juvie.
The second attack came while I showered. I should have suspected something was up when the other boys vacated the community shower as if the Grim Reaper had suddenly appeared. Two against one and they had gained the advantage because they’d gotten me when I was literally holding my dick in my hand. It didn’t last long, a detention officer’s routine walk about cut the festivities short, but blood had spilled on both sides; a fact not lost on my attackers. Standing in the shower, watching as my blood blended with the water—swirling around before circling the drain—was my line in the sand. That was the last of my blood to be spilled.
Instead of being on the defensive, I went on the offensive, studying my attackers to learn their routines; both Snake and Mick were like my dad, predictable. A week after the shower incident, on my way back to my room after dinner, they came at me again but this time I was ready for them. Bleeding must not have sat well with Snake because he brought a shiv to a fistfight, one worked from the large plastic serving spoons used in the dining hall. Even though he came up behind me, the coward that he was, every part of me was tuned into his every move. I braced and when he lunged, I pivoted and using his own momentum, I threw him into the wall, his back slamming up against it as I charged. His eyes widened in surprise before turning into fear when I wrapped my hands around the one that held the shiv and, staring him right in the eyes, I plunged it deep in his gut. Pain replaced fear as he slid down the wall. Mick sought the advantage by attacking while my focus was on Snake. Instead of getting the upper hand, I unleashed it; the rage that had lived in me since the first time my dad had taken his fists to me. I broke several of Mick’s ribs but unlike their attacks on me, this one couldn’t be ignored because Snake had landed in the hospital for a few weeks. I had expected to be charged with something because I could have disarmed Snake, I chose to drive his own weapon into his stomach. Witnesses, though, stepped forward to claim it was self-defense, though I suspected only because I was a lesser of two evils. Snake and Mick rained down a shitload of legal grief on themselves. For my part, I got thrown into segregation for a month.
Looking down at my hands that were cut and bruised from the pounding I had inflicted, hands that looked a lot like my father’s, I knew as much as I had wanted to be better than where I had come from, had wanted to be better for Mace and Mia, I never would be. During the month I was in solitary, I used the time to come to terms with who I was. Unlike Mace and Mia, I wasn’t fundamentally good, I had too much of my father in me. And so I made the decision to stop trying to be something I wasn’t. I embraced the monster.
In the years that followed, I thought the fighting would stop, but it only increased. Everyone wanted a piece; wanted to see if they could get the better of me. Mace would have found another way, wouldn’t have resorted to violence, but I only proved how much like my father I really was because I took them on, every single one of them. I turned from the prey to predator; working out at the gym to build muscle and endurance, shaving my head so my hair could never again be used against me, beating the piss out of anyone who looked at me funny. And every time I took my fists to someone, a little piece of my soul died because I was becoming him.
Rehabilitate me, that was what the judge had said when he sentenced me. What a joke; this place only honed the very behavior they were trying to rehabilitate. Talk about fucking ironic.
The sound of my feet pounding on the pavement interrupted the otherwise silent night. Rain misted, the weather turning colder. I’d been out of juvie just over two months. Trying to find work when your most marketable skill was breaking bones wasn’t easy. I had gotten a tip about a guy looking for people with my particular skillset; the fact that our clandestine meeting was in the more seedy part of the neighborhood was a pretty good indication that the pay for this job would be under the table.
Mace had offered me a job. Had shown up on release day with a grin on his face and a job offer, remarkable considering I had stopped taking his visits and returned his mail unopened. It seemed the concept of giving up wasn’t one with which he was familiar. I turned down the job; he didn’t need the aggravation that would come from employing me. My juvie record was sealed, but everyone in the neighborhood knew what had happened. Had he hired me, he would, for all intents and purposes, be hiring a killer. And Mia, she was just getting to the age where she’d want to date, bringing guys around; she didn’t need to be taunted because of me.
Mia, unlike her dad, had given up on me. Not that I blamed her because it had been me who shut her out first, but in a part of me I had buried really deep, I missed her.
Reaching the back door of the club where I was meeting my potential employer, I knocked in the pattern instructed. A little over the top in my opinion, but if they wanted to be all cloak and dagger, whatever. It only took a minute for the heavy steel door to open.
“You Cole?”
“Yeah.”
“Follow me.”
Hadn’t realized it was a strip club and despite my best efforts, my cock grew hard. Had lost my virginity to Nancy Baker when I was fifteen, had a few girls after, but it’d been nothing but a dry spell for the past three years. Hadn’t been my first priority, getting laid, but seeing the tight bodies of the women working the place. Yeah, sinking into one of them just became a priority; business first and then pleasure.
As soon as we stepped into the office in the back, my attention immediately went to the man behind the desk because he was nothing like what I imagined; tall, even sitting down you could see he was pushing seven feet, and reed thin, but it was the shock of pale blond hair, so light it looked white, that made him seem like a character out of a graphic novel. His focus was on whatever he was reading, but as soon as his attention shifted to me I couldn’t help but think if eyes were the windows to the soul, this dude didn’t have a soul because there was nothing looking back at me.
“So you’re Carl Campbell’s son.”
Wasn’t aware he knew my dad; that was a deal breaker. “If you knew Carl, we’re done here.”
Leaning back in his chair, his lips curved up but something looking that sinister couldn’t be called a smile. “Knew him, didn’t like the worthless piece of shit.”
“Something we’ve got in common.”
“So three years in juvie. Did you find yourself?”
“I found I liked hitting over being hit.”
“Good answer. I’ve had my eyes on you, like what I’ve seen which is the only reason you’re here now. I’m looking for a collector. We’ll put you on a trial run. If you do well, you’ll get your own beat. You take ten percent of what’s collected and I don’t send out collectors for anything less than ten grand.”
“When do I start…” I didn’t even know the name of the man I intended to cause pain for.
“Call
me Donny. Tomorrow night. Meet me here at seven.” He stood and walked around the table to shake my hand.
“Sounds good.”
“Now, you could probably use some female company. Why don’t we see if there’s anyone out front that interests you. Consider it a perk of the job.” We walked out front to women clothed in only G-strings. One in particular caught my attention, long brown hair, light brown eyes and a body of a gymnast. My cock strained against my jeans.
“Ellie.” Donny called and the girl walked over, her hips moving in a rhythm that had visions filling my head of her straddling me, riding me as I gripped those hips and ground myself into her. Her tits were perfection, large enough to fill my palm with nipples that just begged to be sucked.
“Why don’t you take my friend Cole in the back and show him a good time.”
Reaching for my hand, she smiled at Donny before doing exactly as he asked. The door had just closed at my back and she already had my cock out. Kneeling down in front of me, she looked up at the same time she leaned in and swallowed me halfway down her throat.
“Fuck.” But that felt really good.
She worked me like the pro she was, massaging my boys, stroking, licking, sucking, but it been three years and I wasn’t coming in her mouth. Pulling her to her feet, I turned her and bent her over the back of the chair that she no doubt performed award-winning lap dances on.
“Condom?”
“Table.”
Grabbing one, and rolling it on, I spread her legs wider, bent her lower and slammed into her. It felt so good, being buried in all that wet heat. Pulling out, I slammed into her again, felt as she pushed back into my thrusts, arching her back to take more of me. Maybe she was just that good, but when she climaxed it sounded genuine. A couple more thrusts and I seated myself deep as the knot that had formed at the base of my spine exploded bringing intense pleasure. She tilted her head, her eyes meeting mine.