Wild Thing

by Huss, JA

But I can’t hear him.

  This doesn’t worry me like it used to. The first time it happened I was around twelve. He’d become insufferable on school breaks. So much so that I begged my mom to send me places for breaks. Sometimes I went to friends’ homes, but more often than not, I was sent to a spa or some kind of camp.

  But it was Christmas when I first stopped hearing him, so I was home. I told my mother and she took me to a few doctors, who diagnosed high stress levels and told her to make my life easier.

  My stepfather blew up when he heard that. Literally lost his mind.

  How could she be stressed? Look at this home I provide? Look at that school I pay for? What could she possibly be stressed about?

  And I get it. It does seem a little absurd if you only saw me from the outside.

  If I only had a way to show people the inside. Maybe then they’d understand?

  Not him, of course. He knew exactly what I was stressed about.

  My mother was already very sick back then. She was weak, and depressed, and probably bi-polar, though she, nor anyone else, ever told me that.

  When you looked at my mother you saw her future and it was blank.

  I was actually amazed she made it as long as she did.

  But back then she wasn’t so bad yet.

  She took pills and sometimes I took them too.

  But the biggest difference between my mother and me was how my stepfather treated our issues. He wanted her to rest in the dark and not be disturbed. He wanted me to come to work with him.

  This is why I stopped coming home on breaks and this was why I decided I didn’t want to hear him anymore and just… shut him out.

  I didn’t understand the transient deafness back then but I didn’t care. If I couldn’t hear him I didn’t have to listen when he put the clothes out and ordered me to get dressed. I didn’t have to listen when he told me how to do my hair. I didn’t have to listen to any of it.

  Of course, by then I already knew what to do.

  So I did it.

  I’d put the clothes on, and someone would put my hair up in a childish style, and he always made me lick a sucker when we entered his private offices at work.

  He didn’t touch me. Ever. And neither did his friends.

  Not with their hands.

  But they did touch me with their eyes. Sometimes reaching inside their pants to massage themselves. And then there would be moaning and a stain would appear between their legs.

  All the while I had to lick that sucker.

  But it’s what they talked about when I was with them that really made me stop wanting to hear things.

  I didn’t want to know.

  I wasn’t really deaf. I just… stopped being present and went through the motions. Because there was no way out of this. I understood that from the very beginning. Ever since he came in our lives and offered my parents an indecent proposal.

  I can’t say I remember much from the days before I became Lyssa Baylor. I don’t remember my father’s face at all. But I do remember how my parents would fight about money. And how I was always hungry and sometimes, I was cold too.

  And then one day I was never hungry or cold again.

  I know my father sold us. My stepfather told me this over, and over, and over again when I was young.

  He didn’t love you or your mother, Lyssa. I am the only one who loves you. And do you see what I’ve given you?

  Yes, I saw it. I never did manage to trick my brain into transient blindness.

  So these office visits with his friends went on for a few years before he managed to convince my mother that I needed to come home from school so I could be more involved locally.

  By then the coping mechanism had mostly worn off. He was too loud not to hear. So I acted out. I tried to be something he didn’t want.

  It just never worked.

  He never stopped wanting me. Even now, after all I’ve done to convince him that I’m not worth it, he still wants me.

  I am still worth it.

  Because who else is he going to get to run this estate?

  And of course, even though I didn’t hear the plans they made for me, I did hear the plans they made for me.

  I just tucked it away into a little compartment in my brain and left it alone.

  Everything started to change in college. Every day I was away from him I got better. Just like back in boarding school. Only now he couldn’t make me come home.

  But he didn’t have to. My mother was very sick by then and if I left her, who would she have at the end?

  So it’s a nice surprise when I wake up from my second kidnapping in less than two weeks and I realize my father is talking…

  But I can’t hear him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - MASON

  I show up at the estate on Saturday in Lyssa’s Mercedes and without an invitation. I didn’t expect to drive right up to the house. I did my homework and I have first-hand knowledge of what his personal mercenary team can do. So when the security stops me at the end of the driveway, I tell them I’m just returning the car.

  I’m sure they’ve got a picture of me on their little clipboards because the one in charge walks off to the side to call up to the house.

  He stares at me under the shade of a tree, nodding his head. I raise my hand and say, “You tell Baylor I’m sending him a text.”

  And then I send it.

  Thirty seconds later I’m being waved into the circular driveway and a valet opens my door for me. I hand him the keys, straighten my smart-casual jacket, and walk up the front steps.

  Her stepfather is waiting for me in the middle of the foyer, already excusing himself from his guests and panning his hand at the office doors.

  We enter the office and he says, “I didn’t expect to see you here, Mason.”

  “I guess you don’t know me as well as you thought.”

  He closes the door and says, “What do you want?”

  “You saw the picture. I found it in the backpack she brought to my apartment. I guess your mercenaries didn’t search my place very well. Because leaving that behind for me to find—huge mistake.”

  “How much?” he says.

  “What?”

  “What will it take to make you go away, Macintyre? Another five million?”

  I just blink at this asshole. Because he’s real. This fucker is real. “I want Lyssa.”

  “The wedding is about to start. We don’t have time—”

  “No, you don’t.” I cut him off. “You’re out of time, Baylor. Get Lyssa down here right now, or I’ll—”

  “You’ll what?”

  “You know what. You dressed her up like a fucking doll. Made her act like a teenager and…”

  But I can’t even fucking say the words out loud. It’s too disgusting.

  “Fucked her?” Baylor laughs. “No. I never fucked her. And if she told you that—”

  “She didn’t tell me anything like that,” I say. “You got all your dirty secrets locked up real tight, don’t you?”

  He sighs. Like he’s getting bored with me. “You’ve got it backwards, Mason. She wanted me. All these years, she wanted me. She sends me texts of herself. All the time. That whole week you were here with her? She was sexting me from that princess room. Opening her legs, and playing with herself, and—”

  “Liar,” I snarl.

  “I’m afraid not, son.” He pulls out his phone, taps the screen a few times, then thrusts it at me.

  Photos of Lyssa doing exactly what he said.

  Which I already knew about. Because I found her phone.

  But that’s not the whole story. Not even close.

  “Here,” he says. “Take it. Look through all of them. This goes back years.”

  I take the phone and check the stream. “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, it does. You’ve been manipulating her a very long time. Maybe even since the day you met her.”

  Which just makes me sick.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, s
on. I’ve done my best to protect my daughter.”

  “Your stepdaughter,” I remind him.

  “Whatever,” he says, waving his hand in the air. “The point is… she’s ill. Clearly you can see that from the texts she’s been sending me. She’s done other things, Macintyre. Disgusting things you don’t even want to know about.”

  “Oh, I already know,” I say. “I found your files over there and read them all. Every fucking word.”

  “Good,” he says, straightening the lapels on his tux. “Good. I’m glad you took the time to familiarize yourself with her. So you know what she’s done in the past. And yet… here you are. Why, Mason? Why are you bothering with this one, mentally ill girl?”

  How far will he takes this?

  All the way, I decide. This shit he’s running demands that much.

  “Why didn’t you get her off?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “The charges,” I say.

  “If you read her criminal files the way you claimed, then you know I did get her off, as you put it. Every single charge was handled.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I saw that. Except… it wasn’t. Not really.”

  He squints his eyes at me.

  “She was found guilty.”

  “Because she was guilty.”

  “But then sentencing. Nothing but fines and community service.”

  “Because I care about her and didn’t want her to go to prison.”

  “Yeah,” I say again. “She’d have gone away for a long time if you didn’t pay off that judge. And then what would you do?” I ask.

  “Again, Mr. Macintyre, I’m lost. What is your point?”

  “The house,” I say. “What would you do with this estate if Lyssa was in prison? I mean,” I have to shake my head and laugh. Because this man… he is like a goddamned pillar of evil. “If she was in prison she’d be outside your control. And if she was outside your control she wouldn’t be here as your little figurehead. And then how would you run this place?”

  He stares at me for a few moments. He knows I know. I can see it in his eyes.

  It’s not panic. Not yet. He probably thinks he can make me go away. In his world money makes everything go away.

  “I think it’s time you leave,” he says.

  Oh, no. His response is nothing as simple as just asking. He is making plans for me right now.

  There is a bustle outside the office and I see Lyssa, walking down one of the staircases, dressed in… not the dress I bought her.

  The pink one. The one she used to wipe come off her face.

  “Lyssa,” I say, reaching for the door handle and pulling it open.

  But Baylor’s firm hand on my arm stops me from rushing forward to grab her hand and take her out of here.

  “Lyssa!” I call again.

  She looks at me with blank eyes. Defeated eyes. Destined to live out her stepfather’s sick fantasy for the rest of her life.

  But I say, “No.”

  “Get back in here,” Baylor growls, closing the door again. “She’s a sick, sick girl. You knew this when you took the job. And you took advantage of her just as much as I do. I have it all on film. I have cameras everywhere.”

  “Even up in the princess room?” I ask, raising one eyebrow. “Because I’d like to take a look at that footage. See if it matches what I have.”

  He points his finger in my face and says, “You’re going to walk out of here and never come back, do you hear me? And if you utter one word of these lies to anyone, I will take you down. I will have your mother kicked out of that treatment facility, and I will bury her, and you, at the same time. Whatever you think you know, you’re wrong. And you’re in way over your head, son.”

  I slap his finger out of my face.

  “You saw the texts, you saw the pictures,” he says.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I did. But I saw them first on her phone. Not yours.”

  He just stares at me. Then swallows. Because he fucked up. And now he knows it. Didn’t he wonder how she was sending him pictures? Or is this asshole so full of himself he thought he was home free? He thought I was just another greedy motherfucker on his payroll and this was a done deal?

  Well, surprise. I’m not.

  He finally says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Oh, but you do. You do. You’ve understood every fucking word I just spoke. I don’t think that criminal record is real. I think it’s even possible you encouraged her to drink and do drugs. Because you needed her to be Wild Thing, didn’t you? And then you set her up.”

  He’s shaking his head, but not denying it. I don’t think Baylor is used to being called on his shit.

  “I know what you’re doing with this house,” I say. It’s not entirely true. I’m guessing. But I’m a good guesser. So I continue without showing any signs of bluffing. “I know about the arranged marriage, and I know all about the photos, Baylor. Because you erased messages in your stream just in case anyone ever found out about your little obsession with your daughter. But you didn’t erase the pictures. Why?”

  “What the hell are you saying?”

  “I’ll take a stab at it. Two reasons, really. One. You’re a really sick, old fuck and wanted to keep them to look at. And two. You need them as evidence in case some enterprising wannabe detective—say me, for instance—came at you with the truth.”

  He says nothing.

  “I have them, Baylor. The texts you sent while I was here with her. Send me a photo, Princess. So I know you’re getting better.”

  He almost guffaws. I bet he still thinks he’s safe. But he’s not.

  “What’s wrong with being concerned for my daughter? I wanted to make sure you weren’t hurting her. I wanted proof that she was OK.”

  “Oh, wow,” I say, running my fingers through my hair. “You are one persistent bullshitter, you know that?” I lean in. Get right in his face. And I say, “Did you ever give her a flip phone, Baylor? Hmm? How long ago was that?”

  He just stares at me. A notch of worry finally appearing between his brows.

  It was a rhetorical question. Because there were dates on those texts. I already know that phone was ten years old. I found a prepaid credit card in her backpack. The kind you use to re-up your minutes. And that’s when most of this finally started to make sense.

  “Did she, perhaps, once upon a time, lose one of the burner phones you gave her to message you and your friends? Because if so, that’s the one I found. That’s the one she was using last week. It took me a while to figure this part out,” I say. “She told me that furniture was hers. She opened the desk drawer to show me all her teenage crap. And some time while she was upstairs because I had sent her to her room to be punished, she found that phone and that credit card. And she called her daddy.”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at but—“

  “Do you think she did it so I’d figure things out?” I ask. “Or did she do it because she was conditioned to? Did the simple act of placing her back in that room trigger something inside her? Some coping mechanism to get her through her new nightmare?”

  “Again, Mr. Macintyre, I’m going to ask you to leave.”

  “I don’t know. I doubt even she knows. Hell, maybe you don’t even know. But let’s forget about what we don’t know, OK? And concentrate on what we do know. You and your friends have a sick fetish for little kids. You used Lyssa to fulfill some disgusting fantasy.”

  “I never touched her.” And still, even though I’m getting dangerously close to the truth, he laughs.

  “You don’t need to touch a child to ruin a child,” I say. “And this place? What’s up with this place, Baylor? And if you say it’s a gift, I’ll punch you in the fucking face. Because it was never meant to be a gift. It was her prison. That’s why you made sure she had a very long criminal record. I admit, I was buying it until the pandering and prostitution stuff came up.” I shake my head. “You overplayed your hand there, asshole. I know what you pla
n to do with this house with twenty-one bedrooms. You’re gonna fill it with young kids. And invite your friends over for some fun. Close a few deals while you’re at it. And you were gonna make Lyssa run it, weren’t you? So if anyone ever found out, she’d take the fall.”

  “You’re insane!” he bellows.

  “Am I? I don’t think so. All those drug charges, maybe. Maybe all that really was all her own fuck ups. But you took it too far. Anyone who knows Lyssa would never accept that she sold her body for money. Or sold the bodies of others, for fuck’s sake. She went off the rails back when she was fifteen. Why? I don’t know yet. One day, when we’re far away from here and you’ve been locked up in prison for a while, maybe then she’ll want to talk about what you did to her. But it doesn’t matter. You saw a beautiful, wild girl and decided you could use her. Like you use everyone else. That you could buy her, just like you buy everyone else. And then one day she fought back, didn’t she? And you couldn’t take it. You can’t take anyone telling you no. So you decided to take it a million steps further than it needed to go. You decided to ruin her life again, and again, and again.”

  He shakes his head.

  “Did you have another one of these estates somewhere?” I ask. “Did it go under and that’s why you set Lyssa up as this prostitution mastermind? Or was this just revenge for you?”

  He glares at me. “I saved her.”

  “No, you killed her.”

  “Don’t be dramatic. She’s right outside this office.”

  “You killed her soul. And in my eyes, it’s the same thing.”

  Baylor sighs. Still not convinced he’s in any danger. Even though I’ve very calmly spelled it out for him.

  “I called her father,” I say, deciding it’s time to put this sick fuck out of his misery.

  “I’m her father,” he growls.

  “No,” I say. “You’re not. You blackmailed him to make him leave, didn’t you?” He opens his mouth, presumably to lie, because that’s all this asshole does. But I stop him. “He was a broken man back then. Penniless. Barely able to feed his family and then you came along and made… what’s the name for that?” I stop to think for a moment. “Oh yeah. An indecent proposal. You bought them both, didn’t you? He never forgave himself. He told me he tried to make contact a few years after he took the deal and you had him framed for attempted murder and assault. He spent most of his money on lawyers and a retrial and eventually the facts came to light and he was set free. He contacted Lyssa’s mother, used the rest of his money to buy that apartment and put it in Lyssa’s name when her mother died. He gave her an out and she took it. She was better. She was thriving and then you found me and told me to break her.”