Tease Read online

  I was calm, my breathing even as I reached around to place my hand atop Bobby’s massive fist. It was nearly as big as my head. I thought of my favorite inmate, who was only slightly smaller than Bobby. Terence the Taurus had been named after him. Darius and Judge’s brother, Terence, was inmate number 43732. While I didn’t remember everyone’s number, I knew everything about Terence, having hung out with him when I’d been a child.

  Terence was tall, broad shouldered and had dark, ebony skin. He would have been beautiful, were he not marked down the left side of his face, and several other places on his body. He had a long scar from his temple to his chin that had been patched on the fly in his late teens. The rest of his body was peppered with other poorly healed abrasions from years of running headfirst down the wrong side of the tracks. I’d treated him several times for yard fights, though his bulk had always put him on the winning end of brawls, so he was never too bad off.

  Terence didn’t talk much. Never had, even when I’d been a kid and he’d been a teenager. The gang that formed around him in lockup was not of his choosing; he didn’t care about territories or grudges. Terence wanted peace and quiet. You had to respect that. He was so quiet that people thought he was stupid. Granted, his IQ wasn’t anything to brag about, but he was capable of learning. When I’d been learning to read in kindergarten, he’d tried to help me, but wasn’t much more adept at the skill than I’d been.

  In the first grade, we’d reached the point where I was tutoring him on how to read, so he learned to help me in other useful ways. When the brown, rusty bike Ollie had found for me in someone’s trash finally broke after a summer of abuse, Ollie couldn’t get the chain back on and was ready to call it. Terence didn’t say a word, but silently fixed my bike one night while I was sleeping. He was ten years older than me, but he never grew frustrated with my childhood limitations. Because he was huge, and unable to stop scowling, people assumed he was mean. I’m sure if you asked all the dealers whose arms he’d broken over the years, they’d concur with the general popular opinion. Terence was never vicious to me, though. He was quiet and calm. I saw him as a person, and not a terrifying monster. Thus, he was never a monster around me.

  I gulped, praying the same principal held true with Bobby Brady.

  Terence didn’t speak much at all, except to me. I kept a paperback copy of The Swiss Family Robinson on my desk in the infirmary, and casually read aloud to him whenever he came up. He thanked me politely after each encounter, never using my first name in mixed company – yet another way of keeping me safe. Though everyone else feared him, he was a safe place for me. Always had been.

  Pistola was quite the opposite. Horny from birth, Pistola couldn’t be around anything with boobs without causing a problem. That’s the beauty about working in a prison – though there’s danger, they’re all behind bars or heavily guarded, so you’re always aware of the danger, but after a while, it’s not so scary. Pistola often picked fights in the yard. When he’d come up to get patched, my skin crawled with his under-the-breath grossness. Pistola loved and hated women, which wasn’t all too uncommon in the prison populace. It was his shiv that was responsible for the scar that had marred the inside of my thigh and my arm.

  It was a thing of luck he’d picked a fight with Terence that day. Brenden was working on Terence, while I was disinfecting Pistola’s arm. Pistola was shorter, skinnier and didn’t look like much of a threat, but after a few weeks in lockup, he proved that you don’t have to be big in stature to be a giant problem.

  I didn’t see the shiv, though maybe I should’ve. Pistola said something with his hot, foul breath about me being a tease (you know, in my shapeless scrubs that were a uniform I had no control over), and then he attacked.

  I still remember the feel of the blade slicing my tender inner thigh after my block deflected his arm downward. Pistola turned me around, cuffed my mouth and held the shiv to my throat, demanding all the things a desperate and unstable man would when he doesn’t have a prayer of parole.

  The guards surrounded us, following protocol and trying to use words before force, but Terence had little patience for such things. He wanted peace and quiet, and Pistola was mucking up what could’ve been a sunny afternoon. Terence ignored the guards’ batons and ripped me away from Pistola, punching him hard on his temple, and sending him to the ground in a pile of limbs. I was shaking and bleeding when I was hoisted up in Terence’s arms, so high off the ground that I clung to him.

  I didn’t get many times in my adulthood where I felt truly safe. Ollie had moved to New York, and I’d been living alone. Most days I’d felt the isolation in my bones. In that moment, suspended above the fray, I knew that, despite Terence’s many violent crimes, I was safe. I knew as sure as breathing that he wouldn’t hurt me – couldn’t hurt me. He’d saved me, and I held tight to the truth that you can’t hurt the things you’re destined to save.

  It’s what allowed me to forgive Von and Mason, time and time again.

  Terence was my friend, my sometimes hero, and it had broken my heart to watched him get cuffed. He was led off to puzzle through the simple books he’d checked out from the library; he still couldn’t quite grasp the higher concepts. He needed me to help him understand them, but I wasn’t there anymore. No one else in Terence’s life cared if he knew how to read.

  But I cared. I wanted whole worlds of possibility, education and inspiration for Terence.

  I couldn’t think of a better person to name my Taurus after. Even naming my car “Mr. Brady” didn’t have the same ring of the deep breath “Terence” did, and that’s saying something.

  Bobby Brady wasn’t as harmless as Terence, but through the falling snow between us, I saw in him a similar desire for understanding. It wasn’t his fault that he survived on organs. He didn’t put that into his makeup. It’s why he was toying with us. He wanted to play like a human, instead of conquer in one fell swoop, like a monster.

  I offered up the cat with a pleasant smile on my face, ignoring my own blood that made me sticky. The bite on my breast stung like his teeth were still in me, but I was practiced at smiling while under duress. I slowly drew out my knife, tsking Bobby’s roar of indignation. With careful hands, I sawed off the cat’s ear, feeling like the worst kind of criminal for mutilating the pet so cruelly. Bobby was breathing through his long razor teeth, assessing with confusion why I hadn’t attacked him with my blade. With a calm expression, I offered him the kitty’s ear, which was truly the smallest gift I could’ve provided. I mean, it’s like having a Christmas ham hand you a hard-boiled egg and expect you not to want a bite of the juicy ham.

  Yes, I just called myself “juicy” in that analogy.

  Bobby was drooling big gobs of desire down his chin, which was still streaked with my blood and Lang’s. He took the cat’s ear from me, grazing my palm with his too-sharp nail, drawing blood so he could taste it again. Flavor his kitty with a little October Grace sauce. I preferred honey on my chicken, but to each his own.

  I tilted my head to the side in scolding. “I know you did that on purpose. Knock it off, or I’m not sharing with you.” I took a step closer, knowing that humans and animals alike could smell fear, even when it was properly masked. Since Bobby Brady was neither human nor animal, I hoped my in-control deportment fooled him well enough. I was a swipe away from being horribly disfigured, a bite away from losing a hand.

  Danny’s low voice was instructing me to step back, but I knew the second I did, the fighting would start back up, and my guys might lose.

  I watched Bobby swallow the cat’s ear in a single gulp without chewing. He stared at me the whole time to see if I would betray him. When he finished, I sawed off the other ear, taking a step closer so I could study his naked and muscular form in the light of the dim moon. His skin was tough, like an alligator’s, and I began to see the problem of why my guys’ knives weren’t piercing him through in many places other than his webbed leathery wings.

  But I had an advantage they didn
’t. I was close enough to the monster to see that between the top of his pelvis and the bottom of his ribs, his skin wasn’t as tight, and not nearly as armored. It moved as he drew breath, contracting and lightly expanding, while the rest of his skin remained motionless armor.

  I had one shot. One small window where the others didn’t. It was only a few inches I had to work with, so I knew my aim had to be perfect.

  I swallowed bile and remorse as I broke and sawed off the cat’s arm, still working up the courage to do what needed to be done. My next step forward landed me half an arm’s distance before him. His hot breath wafted down on me, smelling like old feces and ripe compost. This time, instead of letting him take the meat from me, I waited until he extended his hand, asking instead of taking.

  I smiled up at him, knowing I’d won. He could be taught. He could be reasoned with. He wanted to please me with manners more than he wanted to conquer.

  “That’s a good boy,” I cooed, placing the small, furry arm in his hand. He devoured it with a loud slurp, hair and all, and whined for more. I leaned forward, slowly placing the rest of the cat in his hand. In an act of daring, and I’m sure insanity, I leaned my head to Bobby’s sternum in a show of trust. The men were roaring as they circled us – too afraid to make sudden moves, for fear of Bobby taking my head clean off. I didn’t know if my monster would hurt me more than he already had, but I knew for certain he would tear apart the guys as soon as he realized I had no more meat for him.

  A tear dripped down my cheek as I clutched the emerald hilt of Finn’s jagged balisong blade in my fist. I waited until Bobby was mid-chew before I let the dagger do what it was intended to. It was almost as if Finn was with me, pushing the knife up with more force than my torn conscience could muster. I knew the stab wasn’t enough, so I ripped the knife sideways, slicing through his abdomen and cutting through essential organs along the way.

  I shot back from Bobby as he roared, touching his stomach and looking at me with the same shock of betrayal I’d worn when he’d bitten me in his toddler form. His free arm flailed as he doubled over to nurse his side. He howled, bent over as he was, betrayed and bleeding. Before Danny could lunge from behind, and before Von could descend on him from my left, I flung my weapon forward and drove the tip of the blade through Bobby’s wonky eye, piercing without pause and twisting with a jerk before yanking it back out.

  Bobby didn’t possess many areas of vulnerability, but I’d managed to hit them both, including his insecurity born of a will to somehow reason with society. I stumbled back as I let the guys finish him off. Now Bobby was isolated from my protection, affection and kindness. His gut-wrenching howl rang through the woods, announcing that I was a bigger monster than even he.

  I turned from the horror of my hands, sobbing as Bobby’s cries turned more childlike, with less amplification. When I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the guys were winning, I let out a fresh sob when I saw that Bobby was no longer a monster, but had devolved back into a terrified toddler, bloody and mangled as Klark drove his knife through Bobby that final time.

  Forty.

  The Trap of Gravity

  I’m not sure how long it was that we walked through the frozen woods. I trusted the others to lead the way, since my brain had taken a vacation. Danny had stopped lecturing me I’m not sure how long ago, realizing that I didn’t stand a chance of basic comprehension. I’d helped to murder a little boy. I didn’t know what sort of redemption had been in store for me previously, but I knew none existed anymore. I didn’t even want my deep cut tended to, such was the state of numbness that descended on me, weighting my shoulders and dragging my feet. I’d killed Bobby Brady, and now I was dead inside.

  I wasn’t paying attention to anything, which was why I didn’t even blink when Ruiz walked right into one of Mason’s traps. The three trees formed Y-shapes near each other in a triangle, which was where Mason liked to lay his snares. The net scooped up our man in the lead, suspending him fifteen feet above us with a cry of surprise.

  Surprise, not pain. The guys spent the next few minutes assessing Ruiz to make sure he wasn’t hurt, but I already knew he was fine. Mason tried his best to make humane traps, in case family members came to Sombi looking for their loved ones. While the guys went back and forth on the best way to get Ruiz down, I started climbing up the trunk. I actually made it halfway up the towering tree before they noticed I was already working on getting Ruiz down.

  “Be careful!” Danny called to me, reaching for my feet to offer stability if I needed it.

  When my knee scraped against the bark of the tree, I heard Von groan. “If you could try not to cut yourself, I’d be appreciative. You’re walking around with a succulent feast smeared all over your glorious breasts. Adding more blood to the mix isn’t helping me not devour you whole, yeah?”

  “Oh, right. Sorry. You holding up okay?” I asked, perching on a sturdy branch and sawing at the rope that held Ruiz in place. My gloves were necessary, but problematic when it came to doing a speedy job.

  “No,” Von admitted. He’d maintained a healthy distance from me since the toddler-murdering incident. I think it was dawning on him that abstaining from blood altogether wasn’t the way to go. “If you could try to be less delicious, that would help. Perhaps you should start bathing in water with rotting fish heads.”

  “I’ll make a note of it. Ruiz, can you reach through the netting and hold onto the branch? I’ve almost got you free, but I don’t want you to hurt yourself on the fall.”

  “I think so. Give me a second.” Ruiz worked his fists through the netting over his head and grabbed onto the branch, giving me a nod when he was secure. I chopped through the rope with a final slice, grateful that Ruiz didn’t crash to the forest floor and break his leg or something. Klark and Lang caught Ruiz with minimal bumps, while I tried to assess how I’d get myself down.

  “Just jump down,” Klark offered. “I’ll catch you.”

  It was a tribute to how much blood had soaked through my jacket that Von did not offer to catch me, but kept a healthy distance so he didn’t, you know, murder me. He was good like that. I gazed at the ground below, assessing how and where would be best to fall. Though I’d encouraged Ruiz to do the same thing, I was having trouble putting my trust in Klark or Lang to make sure I didn’t break anything. They were capable, I’m sure; I was just being a giant chicken.

  I suddenly realized how high up off the ground I was, and how small everyone looked. I felt the sting on my breast and on my palm. The pain of everything started flooding me, weakening my right arm and making me nervous as to how the crap I was going to get down.

  Danny met my eyes and raised his hands. “I’m right here,” he assured me. Danny wasn’t normally one for reassurances. He wasn’t the one to care much about what scared me or didn’t. He wasn’t my Reaper, but somehow even in the dark that was lit only by Lang’s fingers and the moon that filtered in through the evergreens and redwoods, I could see that Danny was trying to be kind. He could sense my nerves that were starting to creep in over my shoulder at being so high up off the ground, and wasn’t bothered that he had to help me.

  I closed and pocketed the balisong blade, and then climbed down onto a lower branch. I met his eyes with a look that told him I didn’t want to give my fear a voice, but that it was very much there. Oh, it was there.

  Danny nodded, seeming to understand everything I wanted to say, but couldn’t and wouldn’t. “I won’t let you get hurt,” he promised.

  My hands shook as I lowered myself down to hang off the branch, my feet still far out of Danny’s reach. Lang stood across from Danny, his good arm outstretched to offer his couple of superior inches to help. I dangled for too many seconds, afraid to let go, even though I had no other option.

  I’d had to let go of so much in life. I’d looked the other way when Bev didn’t want me. I’d let Allie go to California, and Ollie to New York. I’d let the countless crass comments about my body ricochet off me when the inmates w
ere bored and wanted to mouth off. Now here I was again, clinging to something I couldn’t let go of, but knew I would have to if I wanted to move forward.

  There were some days I was tired of forward. As I hung off the branch, I realized I wanted a whole lifetime of Bruce Campbell movies, naps and blissful stagnation. I wanted to rest, not move on to the next thing that would surely test me, and that I might never be ready for.

  I couldn’t hear Danny or Lang shouting their encouragements to me. It was Von’s voice that finally broke through the panic that was quickly mutating into an inability to move. “Close your eyes, Peach. Listen to my voice. Don’t think about anything else.”

  I let out a whine of distress as my fingers started punking out. “I don’t want to be here!”

  Von was mature and spared me the “I told you so” I knew I deserved. “Where do you want to be?”

  I closed my eyes and tried to picture myself somewhere safe. My house, though lovely with the remodel, didn’t feel like that place anymore. I didn’t exactly feel unsafe there, but it wasn’t the haven it once was. Like me, it had been through too much. We were still standing, but only just. I tried to think of somewhere I wanted to be, but all I could think of were all the places I didn’t want to have to travel to anymore. “Somewhere safe. Somewhere with a bed and books and the Brady Bunch. Somewhere no one can find us. Somewhere I can eat soup and drink hot chocolate and not be attacked.”

  I couldn’t see Von, but I heard the small smile in his voice. “I know just the place. Let go, and I’ll take you there when we get back.”

  “I can’t!” I knew my body was about to let go for me, whether or not I was ready. That’s the thing about life; it has a way of pushing you forward, ambivalent of the care it takes to pick yourself up after a crash. It doesn’t care about your struggle – gravity is gravity, and can’t be reasoned with.