Children of Vice

by J. J. McAvoy

  She turned to the crowed and the rage that radiated from her left no one else air to speak. She walked around the circle, stopping at a woman with curly red-brown hair that was tied up into a ponytail.

  “Hi, Rachel.” Ivy leaned toward her.

  The woman, Rachel apparently, nodded at her, her arms wrapped around herself. “Hi, Ivy.”

  “Remember that time when we were going to homecoming and you thought it would be funny to mix honey into my shampoo? I ended up covered in hives so badly I had to go to the ER.”

  You fucking cunt, Rachel.

  “I used the bathroom. I didn’t realize you were—”

  “Liar,” Ivy whispered, leaning in more. “You’re lying, like you did then, and I could never do anything because I never had proof. People said I did it for attention. Apparently I’m no longer allowed to get justice in these meetings, which is why I wanted proof to begin with. Thank goodness, because I’d like to pay you back for that now.”

  “Ivy,” Cillian called out to her.

  However, Ivy moved over to the woman with the bob next to her, who was just as tall as Ivy.

  “Megan,” Ivy spoke to her. “Where should I even begin?”

  Megan shook her head. “We were stupid kids—”

  “Well, I’m a stupid adult. You want to see how stupid?” Ivy smiled, making the woman’s eyes open wider as she took a step back.

  “Cillian.” Rachel stepped up. “We voted. Rory needs to own up.”

  Megan, seeing the chance to save herself, spoke up as well, “She was old enough to know better.”

  Savages. It’s how I knew we were all kin.

  Ivy turned on the balls of her feet upon the grass toward Cillian, who now had to bear the weight of the crown he’d tried to put on his small head.

  He looked at Rory, who hid behind Pierce, wide-eyed and shaking, gripping onto his hoodie. “We voted.”

  “No. You can’t—”

  Cillian nodded at Elroy and the men behind him, who pulled them apart. “NO! STOP!”

  Rory stood in shock, looking, searching, desperate for help, and one by one they either looked to the side or just stood, uncaring.

  Ruthless savages, my people were.

  When she saw no help she got down on her knees. “Ivy, I’m so sorry! I’m—”

  WHAM!

  Ivy struck her so hard across the face with the baton that all I saw was Rory’s hair spin in the air before she landed on the ground.

  “This is the good part,” I whispered over to the teenagers on the bench, taking my sandwich out of the baggie and taking a bite.

  “I’m s—” She tried to get up, blood coming out of her month.

  Ivy didn’t stop. Over and over she beat her into the ground, her hands, her legs, her face, blood splattering onto her white dress like a Jackson Pollock painting come to life.

  “HELP!” Rory screamed, kicking her. She tried to run for help and no one offered it, nor did she get far due to the pain, and Ivy merely reached out, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling her backside back on the grass.

  “Ivy, please! IVY!” Pierce yelled, begging as he was being held back by Cillian’s boys no more than a foot from me. “Cillian, stop this!”

  “Shhh!” I motioned over to him, still holding on to my sandwich. “You’re not supposed to talk during the show.”

  And that is what this was.

  There was no greater show on earth than watching a person get exactly what they deserved.

  It was only out of sheer exhaustion that Ivy had to stop, and when she looked up from the woman now curled up into a fetal position, trembling, her face was covered in blood. Her hand was sore from gripping the baton so tightly. It slipped from her fingers, though I didn’t think she noticed. Instead, she wiped the blood on her face with her arm, which only smeared it. Reaching under the skirt of her dress, she pulled out the revolver.

  “My mother-in-law gave me this—”

  “IVY!” Cillian finally spoke up. “You have gotten a just—”

  “No.” Ivy shook her head, her eyes wide and hollowed out, and she pointed at Rory. “This will all heal. In a few months she’ll heal. Not like Sarah Foster, the paralyzed girl—”

  “Sarah Foster is not part of the neighborhood. This isn’t about—”

  “You don’t get it.” Her voice became softer, and everyone watching in silent shock could all hear her clearly. “It’s always about me. Sarah Foster cursed me in that courtroom. She screamed and cried, and I took it all because I thought it really was me who did that to her. I told myself I’d go to apologize when I got out. But then Sarah Foster killed herself. And the weight of that along with everything else…part of me died that day. Rory did that. So…I’m getting justice for me...still. She should live with something that haunts her too, right? Mental abuse is still abuse. It is either this or she comes to see me every day until that same part of her dies too.”

  “IVY, if you—”

  “Don’t give me a reason,” I warned Pierce as he struggled. “At least she’ll live.”

  Cillian said nothing.

  “Ivy…” Rory reached up, grabbing her dress with her bloody hand. “Please…please…” She sobbed out.

  “Do you know what I learned in prison?” Ivy asked, staring down at her. “That everything that happens to you is your own fault.”

  “I…v…y…we’re…sis—”

  “Stepsisters,” she reminded her, ripping her hand away and then looking at the revolver to read the inscription. “Che sarà, sarà. My husband says it means what will be, will be.”

  She spun the barrel once before she stepped on her shoulder, holding her down.

  “IVY!”

  She fired.

  People jumped, gasped, turned away. Startled, one man even puked, but it was in vain.

  “Apparently this is willed to be,” Cillian stated when no bullet fired.

  Ivy smirked and so did I.

  “My mother meant what I will be, shall be. That at all times the choice is mine. If you live it is our will,” I said, reaching for her bag, and her heels, before rising to my feet. “If you die…it is our will.”

  Ivy fired once more, this time the bullet hitting her in the spine. Kneeling, I placed the heels in front of her. She took her bag and said to all of them, “Now I’m done. We won’t take up any more time.”

  She stood at my side, and I looked at him.

  “How much longer do you think I’ll let you stand in that spot, Cillian? How much longer will I let you believe everyone here thinks the Callahans should leave Boston? When will I show you just how many people have turned against you? How much longer will I let this city destroy itself?” I asked before glancing down at my watch. “How about until dawn?”

  “Any man who believes a word you say is a fool. You really think you’re God, don’t you?” He huffed, chuckling, though I could see the concern in his eyes. And the fact that I could see it meant he was nowhere as strong as he thought he was. But that was again my doing…I allowed his confidence to grow.

  “Simon,” I called out to the teenager who sat at the picnic table, who wouldn’t move before. He rose to his feet.

  “Yes, sir,” he asked, now much more respectfully.

  Cillian looked at him obviously.

  “How’s your grandfather?” I asked, though I hardly cared.

  “Good, sir, thank you for your help.”

  “You little disloyal bastard—” Elroy charged at him, but the boys around him all stood up, pulling out brass knuckles, a knife, one even a gun.

  “Plot twist.” Ivy smiled at Cillian.

  “Rory?” We heard her voice. Shay, Ivy’s stepmother, walked forward, people parting for her, in her hands two bags of groceries. Her eyes were large as she stared at the woman in the grass, in shock. “RORY!”

  She screamed, dropping the bags and rushing toward her daughter. “Rory!” Her hands shook as she touched her. “Call for help,” she said softly at first until no one move
d. “SOMEONE CALL FOR HELP.”

  “Call, but will they come?” Ivy asked her.

  It was then that she saw the blood on Ivy. She tried to lunge forward, but Cillian grabbed onto her, pulling her back, and so all she could do was scream.

  “Your crazy bitch! What have you done? WHAT DID YOU DO? I’ll—” She started to cough, collapsing. “I’ll kill you for this.”

  “If you don’t die from the water first. I hope you didn’t fill those with the water from your houses…” Ivy said to her, and she froze. All of their eyes looked over at the pitchers of water out for people. The man getting himself a cup dropped it and stepped back.

  “We did bring our own food for a reason,” she added.

  Everyone who held cups in their hands dropped them.

  “What can I do from a prison cell eight hundred miles away? You asked me that, remember? And I told you to watch your front,” Ivy said to Cillian as one man began to cough gently at first but much more violently, grabbing onto the people around to stand up straight. “This. I could do all of this.”

  A Belladonna indeed.

  “For these enemies of mine, who did not want me to reign over them, bring them here and slaughter them before me,” I said, picking up the bag of bagels Shay had dropped out of the grocery bag. “I may not be God, but that does not mean I can’t take lessons from his playbook, now, does it?”

  After all, if anyone knew how to seek retribution it was the Lord. “Dawn, Cillian. That is how long I’ll wait for your apology. For you to remember you were nothing but a puppet king who forgot he was on strings.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Find what you love and let it kill you.”

  ~ Charles Bukowski

  AN HOUR UNTIL DAWN

  IVY

  Fury.

  Wrath.

  Rage.

  Death.

  Ethan, at this very moment, was all of those things, personified in silence, as we, and everyone else within the neighborhood and beyond, stood outside, watching as the Boston PD and the FBI raided my former childhood home alongside that of Cillian and Elroy. The whole place looked like the ending to a Christopher Nolan action movie. Helicopters hovered in the air as their spotlights beamed down on the street below, camera crews and reporters recording from off to the side, cops putting up yellow tape, dogs sniffing around the houses…and like the movies, no crime scene was complete without a body. There were a few in the street, people who’d supported Cillian who’d chosen to go firing at the police. Some were young, probably teenagers, teenagers who so badly wanted to have a purpose and be rich. Most of them were older, around Cillian’s age…all of them following him…straight to the grave. Who’d killed him, no one was saying, not with the feds all over the place, at least.

  “Thank you, Cooper,” a female reporter spoke loudly into the light and camera in front of her just off to the side of us. “Right now, I, along with many other reporters, are standing at the home base of the notorious ringleaders behind the infamous drug known as the Cocktail. Shortly before five forty-six this morning, the DEA, FBI, and the BPD descended on South Boston where a shoot-out between the Boston police and the assailants occurred no less than a few feet from where we are standing. Another one of the attackers drove right into a yard of bystanders in the neighborhood, leaving multiple dead and injured. The whole area is on high alert. There has been no word yet on who has died and if this puts an end to the deadly drug. But we will not be leaving until we find out what exactly happened here.”

  He took it all in. His gaze shifted from the reporters to the police, the dogs, the burning car crashed into the house next door, everything…until he reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He pressed only two keys before putting it to his ear.

  “Enjoy this moment, Takahashi, burn it into your mind, because when I find you, you’ll never show what is left of yourself again. You are the mayor of nothing and no one now,” he said, hanging up and heading into the house quickly.

  He walked into the living room and waited till the door closed before he grabbed the fire poker and began to destroy any and everything.

  “FUCKING SIMPLETONS!” he roared out, swinging into the television set, shattering the glass. “I BUILT UP EVERYTHING AROUND THEM AND YET NO ONE LISTENS!” He shattered the coffee table. “THEY CALL ME A GENIUS FOR PLANNING. DON’T THEY HAVE BRAINS? CAN THEY NOT FUCKING THINK?”

  He hammered into the wall, breaking the wood.

  “GET POWER! GET RICH! STAY POWERFUL! HOW? HOW?” He swung at the lamp. The bulb exploded on impact and there was a giant flash before the light went out. “THEY DON’T FUCKING KNOW HOW? THEY ARE GREEDY MOTHERFUCKING COCK SHIT!”

  Nothing left to break, he threw the bent, deformed fire porker to the ground. Pinching the bridge of his nose, he rubbed the corners of his eyes.

  “How many people died in the street?” he asked, and I wasn’t sure he was talking to me or himself. Dropping his hands, he looked at me. “Thirteen, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “Plus Cillian. Makes fourteen.”

  I nodded again.

  He paused, tilting his head to the side. “Which means Elroy escaped.”

  I didn’t know the answer to that question, so I didn’t move at all. He didn’t seem to notice or even care. He was thinking quickly.

  “There was no word, no chatter of the raid, which means my people in the department either didn’t know until the very last moment or all communication was shut. If I didn’t know, then how the fuck did Elroy escape?” He paused again and looked up at me, but the way his green eyes looked through me was eerie. “He didn’t escape. He betrayed Cillian. Cillian was going to bow, surrender to me. At least for now to get me to leave. Elroy’s pride wouldn’t have it. He killed Cillian, took whatever money there was, told the men outside to stand watch and then left. No.” His eyes shifted back and forth as he pieced it together. “They both could have escaped, if that was Elroy’s end game. Cillian wanted to wait to strike…Elroy wanted to fight. Which means—IVY!”

  He tried to reach for me, and I didn’t know why until a gun was pressed up against the back of my head and his eyes went wide.

  “Damn, you really are a slick one, Callahan.” Elroy laughed behind me, gripping onto my arm. “You figured me out…just a little bit late. Ain’t that a bitch.”

  ETHAN

  When I’d heard the sirens and the gunfire we left the house, but didn’t close the door behind us. While we were watching his house and the police, he’d snuck in and waited. Trapping himself in the safest location possible, the one place where my guard was down, and holding the weapon he could kill me with…her.

  “I was kinda expecting this place to be more…luxurious, you know?” He looked around the shattered room, his grip on Ivy tighter, tapping the mouth of the gun on the back of her head over and over again. She didn’t look bothered, just stared at me blankly. “I mean, a little paint could have gone a long way.”

  I said nothing and didn’t dare look away from her. “You’re going to be all right.”

  “Maybe you don’t understand the situation here!” he yelled, and I still didn’t look at his face.

  BANG!

  I flinched, for the first time since I was a child when he shot into her shoulder. She bit her bottom lip hard, swallowing her screams and her pain. The blood soaked through her blouse.

  “LOOK AT ME!” he hollered, and I did then, unable to stop my hands from shaking. “That’s right. I’m in charge. Disrespect me again, I’ll shoot other body parts. How much can you take, Ivy?” he asked, squeezing her jaw. She pulled away, turning her head to spit the blood out of her mouth. “A little warrior, ain’t she? She’s always been like that. Getting into fights, not letting people see her cry or weak. She’d just run. But I gotta say, if you weren’t my cousin I’m sure we could have put on a nice show for your hubby here.” He stroked her neck and brought his nose to smell her hair. “Such a shame…but.”

  “Let. Her. Go,”
I said through clenched teeth.

  “He speaks!” He guffawed, rolling his eyes. “But that sounded a little disrespectful to me, didn’t it, Ivy?”

  “Don’t!”

  BANG!

  “FUCK YOU!” I hollered out, watching as her leg buckled and she fell forward, muted whimpers the only thing coming out of her mouth, but he caught her and held her tight to him.

  “Ha-ha!” He laughed, stomping his foot into the ground. “This is great! I was planning on waiting till you both went to bed before killing you all, but this…this is so much better. Who would have thought I’d get a front row seat at your own undoing, first the mistake, then the temper tantrum, the shaking, now this…watching you as you watch me slowly kill your beloved childhood sweetheart. All your big talkin’, all your planning, and this is how it ends. How does it feel to be the dumbest man in the room?”

  “Hum…hah...” Ivy laughed gently in his arms. “It’s funny because I was just going to ask you that same question.”

  “You must have lost your—”

  Before he could finish she brought her free hand up, holding a shard of something I’d broken, and swiped it across his face, over his eye as quickly as she could. “I have long arms, motherfucker!”

  “AH!” He let go, his hands going to his face, causing her to slump onto the ground. The moment she was free I lunged from the window over the couch, tackling him on the ground, my fist colliding with his face.

  “YOU LITTLE—”

  BANG!

  I froze on top of him and glanced down at the blood now staining my shirt.

  “ETHAN!”

  I gripped his neck and reached for the gun with the other hand, tossing it to the side. I squeezed, and he punched the wound over and over, both of us now struggling on the ground.