Chapter 8 #2
The woman rolls to her side, trying to get up.
It’s clear that even if she’s physically unharmed, somebody drugged her the way they did to me.
Even on her hands and knees, she can’t keep from swaying.
On cue, she starts vomiting, body recoiling like a cat trying to get up a hairball.
There’s a stirring from inside the trailer.
The living room window is yanked open.
A rifle pushes out.
I stare into the dark barrel and think back to the first time I pulled a trigger.
I was a little kid, standing on the dirt road by my house.
There was a snake coming at me—a copperhead—whipping hard back and forth.
My mother stood a few yards off the porch, hands on her hips.
I still remember her screaming at me but not daring to move in case it came at her instead.
“Put the damn gun back, baby.”
Bam—I blew that motherfucker off the map. Then, I took the tail and nailed it to the porch as a sign to all the other snakes. Pass over this house because there’s a crazy six year old with a Smith and Wesson inside, and he sends snakes to meet Jesus.
My mother beat my ass, which was her solution to everything. But she let that tail hang up there, because why the hell not? Maybe, deep down, she was a little proud.
I glance down at the vomiting girl, then back at Pat Pretty, then over at the rifle.
Panic sets in. I’m getting out of this death house right fucking now.
Tensing my body, I swing my AK up and pull the trigger, unloading the magazine like an amateur, but it works.
Pat Pretty goes down, spilling out onto the porch, stuck in the metal bars.
The rifle in the window disappears back into the trailer.
I can’t run. They’ll shoot me. So, I step over the woman and swing onto the porch, kicking the door open. There’s another magazine on my belt. They didn’t take that. I rip it out, pop it in the rifle, and stride into the kitchen.
All three men are up now, scrambling for their guns. I mow them down. One by one, quick and steady as that snake in the grass.
Parts of the couch flutter through the air.
The woman on it is screaming, wide awake now.
There’s no threat to her. All the men are dead.
Just to make sure, I walk through that house and kick open every door.
Then, I go through the front, walking fast, to the gray Toyota parked at the end of the gravel drive.
Heart pounding, I hightail it down the gravel road. Maybe I should have gone back for the women, but there was nobody left to hurt them. They can run and have as fair a shot as me.
I don’t know what happened to get me to this point, but I know I did something terrible. Pat Pretty is the man in charge of running all the Caudills’ product. He’s protected by all the power of their family. I don’t think even Brothers Boyd can save my ass now.
This means war.
I don’t stop. I get on I-75 and head towards the other side of Lexington without washing the blood off my hands. I don’t take my iron grip off the wheel until I pull up in front of Brothers’ mansion.
The gate pulls back as I hit the button. I drive up to the porch and get out, leaving the door hanging open. My body is stiff, and it’s making me limp.
The security code doesn’t work. I beat the front door with my fist. The cameras swivel and lock on me.
The door swings open. It’s Jem Boyd, who just got back from a trip overseas a month ago.
He’s wearing a tracksuit like he was about to go for a run.
His brows rise, and he steps back, jerking his head, indicating I should go inside.
I spill into the foyer, just as Brothers appears at the top of the circular staircase. His brows rise, face a mask. I stand, gasping in the middle of the room. He descends and looks me over from head to foot.
“So you decided to come back,” he drawls. “What the fuck happened?”
“Pat Pretty—he’s dead,” I burst out.
Jem freezes, and Brothers Boyd’s face goes slack, all the lines easing out. His eyes round, then narrow. The curl of his palm tightens, knuckles going white.
His throat bobs. “You kill him?” he asks, voice flat.
I nod.
“You know he’s protected by the Caudills?”
Everybody knows that. It’s why nobody’s ever touched that fucker. I nod, more scared than I’ve been in my entire life. The world’s worst silence follows.
“Get inside, Jen,” he says. “Don’t leave my property.”
But I do—I turn around and go home for the first time since Cherry kicked me out of her trailer. And the minute I walk through the front door where I spent the last few years of my teenagehood, I know why he told me not to run.
Sunlight filters through the broken kitchen window. Flies buzz over bloody linoleum. The microwave beeps, and I open it. There’s a cold cup of coffee sitting inside that nobody will ever drink.
The Caudills were faster than a striking snake. They sank their teeth into my neck and injected their venom into everyone I ever loved.
NOW
My body startles so hard, I sit upright. Everything spins, and my skin is cold. For the last nineteen years, I haven’t dreamed, at least not anything that wasn’t a wet dream or the one where I get punched in the mouth in the ring and lose all my teeth.
Why can’t I dream about that night I can’t remember?
Maybe it would release me from my resentment if I could just remember what Brothers did to me, or said to me, that made me leave.
I run my hand over my face, dropping my head. Decades later, I’m still haunted by unanswered questions. I ran west. I became someone else with a whole new life.
I should be at peace.
But here I am, still dreaming of the horror that was home.