Chapter 1 #3
His body was withered and skinny. In the dim light, I could tell he’d lost most of his teeth even from here.
His eyes were bugging out and coming off crazed, like he’d been trapped in some haunted nightmare and couldn’t tell what was real and what was not.
His pallor was sickly, his skin yellow-tinged, with blue, almost black, veins clearly visible along his arms. What was even more disgusting was that the sores that were pitted in the crook of his elbows and down his forearms, and other visible areas of his skin like his neck and parts of his sunken face, were leaking pus.
He was literally falling apart from all his drug use.
However, like all those addicts, he had this weird energy that someone in his state shouldn’t be capable of.
Even being struck by a metal bat (I can see blood oozing from his head, trickling down the side of his neck) hadn’t slowed him down. It was like he wasn’t even aware of it.
He hadn’t noticed me yet. Instead, he stepped over Ms. Cooper’s unmoving figure and moved into the family room where my friends and I had just been sleeping.
I made my way down the hall and stopped at Liza’s body.
Bending down, I touched her shoulder, and she opened her eyes, her gaze unfocused.
After a few seconds, she recognized me, her eyes widening in alarm, and made a slurred objection, “N-nnooo… Vail… hiiiiiide.” She mumbled and tried to push me back down the hall, but her hand fell limply to the floor instead, her head thumping back against the floorboards.
In the family room, I heard the addict moving shit around, most likely looking for stuff to steal so he could sell it and buy more crack, meth, or worse.
I’d take care of him in a minute. I reached for the bat that had been forgotten on the floor just as I heard a board creak softly behind me.
I glanced over my shoulder, not surprised to see that it was Shaw who stood there, ready to back me up.
In the doorway to the bedroom, Lee was there, one arm wrapped around Casey’s stomach, and the other clasped over her mouth to keep her from screaming at the sight of her mother on the ground.
She was fighting him, kicking as her legs hung in the air, struggling to free herself, but Lee was already massive.
There was no chance she'd break loose. He’d keep her safe. I trusted him completely.
Shaw reached for the hockey stick, which I handed over, and then I picked up the discarded bat.
Liza protested more. I knew she wanted us to keep hiding, but I couldn’t let this go.
The fucker broke in here, attacked her, and would steal anything he could find that held value.
Ms. Cooper worked damned hard to support her and her daughter, and I couldn’t just stand by.
I’d seen addicts almost on a daily basis.
They were so lost to their habit and the pull of drugs that they were willing to do anything to get their next fix.
Only two weeks ago, there was a news story of a couple who had done some new street drug called ‘Bones’ together.
The girlfriend ended up pulling a knife on her boyfriend, wholly disoriented in her unstable delusion, and gutted him.
Police showed up after neighbors complained of overhearing a domestic dispute, two hours later, I might add, and found the girlfriend pulling the guy’s intestines out of his stomach and playing with them.
I felt my rage building to think that one of these unpredictable addicts was in here, threatening the only people in the world I cared about…
I peered over at Shaw one more time, our eyes locking.
Even in the low light of the hall, I could make out his blue eyes.
His gaze had nothing behind it, as was to be expected.
Shaw was deadpan and cold, but my friend.
He had my back. I nodded to him once, which he immediately returned, and we jumped to our feet and threw ourselves into the room with the intruder.
I didn’t remember much… only that I had seen the sick fuck standing next to the television, holding Casey’s framed class photo from this year in his grimy hands, and the next thing I knew, everything went black.
I could barely breathe. I felt dizzy and shaky and had to blink several times in order to clear my vision.
It was like stars were blocking my vision, flashing white lights.
“Hey, kid! Hey!” Someone’s voice, one I wasn’t familiar with, was yelling over my head.
I could feel hands suddenly gripping my shoulders and squeezing hard.
At once, my heart lurched in my chest, and I threw myself away.
I didn’t care who the fuck that was, they shouldn’t be grabbing me. Don’t squeeze me. Don’t touch me.
His hands wrapped around my throat as I was slammed back against the wall. I cough, spitting over his wrists, clawing at his grip in a hopeless attempt to free myself.
“Don’t you ever touch me, you little shit!” he screamed into my face, but I didn't even look at the fucker. My eyes moved over to the still figure on the floor… Mom.
“D-don’t… touch… h-h-” I choked, trying to tell him off as I gasped for air. If I had to watch this piece of crap hurt my mother one more time, I was going to kill him.
He laughed in my face. The disgusting scent of booze and sweat wafting over me, made me sick.
“She may be your momma, boy. But she’s my wife.
And I can do whatever the fuck I want with her…
” He reached over for the cigarette he’d discarded on the table, which was still burning, and picked it up, leaving behind a burn in the wood.
“If I wanna hurt her, mark her…” He smiled, still holding me against the wall with one hand as he turned his attention to the woman who was now struggling to lift her head.
“V-Vail?” she moaned, and I wrenched at the hold on my throat, wanting so desperately to save her.
But I couldn’t. I fucking couldn’t. I watched as he leaned down and pressed the bright, cherry end of his cigarette to her shoulder, and I saw red.
She screamed for me, over and over, the breaking cries forever scarred in my mind.
“Vail… Vail…”
“Vail!”
I blinked.
I was sitting in the corner of Ms. Cooper’s living room, almost hiding behind the lounger chair I had been sitting in hours earlier when we were playing chicken.
There was a body on the floor being wrapped in bandages, and hooked up to syringes, as a stretcher was brought down into the basement to carry him out.
That was when I realized I was covered in blood.
My hands, arms, t-shirt, and the sweats I’d gone to bed in, were all covered in blood spatter.
I was shaking, my face and fingers were numb, and I was wrenching at my hair like I was trying to rip it out of my skull.
I gazed up at the faces of three police officers, who were all watching me with nervous apprehension.
Off to the side, I saw Shaw sitting with a paramedic, who appeared to be checking him over, but besides a little spatter covering his shirt, he seemed fine—bored, even, if not a little uncomfortable with the medic who was trying to examine him.
As I expected, every touch had Shaw wincing uncomfortably.
“Vail!”
The voice that had snapped me out of my spiral called again, one I would know anywhere. It was her . I peered around one of the officers to see her standing with Lee, who’d been holding her back.
“Casey?” I whispered hoarsely, feeling like I’d ripped my vocal cords. Had I been screaming?
At her name, she pulled away from Lee and ran to me, ignoring the pigs’ protests about me being a danger, and threw herself into my lap, wrapping her arms tight around my neck.
I felt a weight lift from my shoulders as I hugged her back tightly, burying my face into her dark hair, and squeezed my eyes shut as I released a long, shuddering breath.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to her.
“Are you kidding me?” she said, incredulously. “Am I okay? Are you okay?”
I couldn’t quite speak yet, and honestly, I didn’t know if I was. All I knew was that holding her made me feel like I wasn’t alone, so I just held her tighter.
“... dad’s not in the picture anymore-” Lee’s voice floated into the room, and I looked over the top of Casey’s head to see him standing before one of the cops, arms crossed, almost as tall as the pig he was talking to.
I was glad it was him and not me. I couldn’t speak to a police officer without having to battle an extreme urge to lay one on them.
Fuckers had let me down one too many times.
And seeing the glare in Shaw’s eyes and knowing his history, I knew he was feeling the same way.
“Are there any other relatives she can stay with while her mother recovers?” Krispy Kreme asked my friend.
Lee glanced my way, his dark brows pulling tight.
Casey didn’t have anyone but her mother and us.
Keith was an abusive prick, and although they had left him two years ago, Liza wanted nothing to do with him.
She couldn’t go home with Shaw. His aunt and uncle, a minor improvement from his former life, were unstable as hell, constantly arguing and scraping by thanks to his aunt’s gambling problem.
As for me, well, my mom was barely getting by after everything we went through with my old man.
Her nerves were shot, and though she tried to hide it, I knew she was a closet drinker.
She was a shadow moving around our shitty, falling apart bungalow.
A ghost. She couldn’t even take care of me, let alone someone like Casey.
I nodded to Lee, both of us knowing what the best course of action would be, and hid my face in her hair again.
“She can stay with me and my parents,” Lee said at last. Several seconds of silence followed before he added loudly and firmly, “She knows my family and has stayed with us before. I’ll call them now.”
“Fine,” Krispy Kreme replied. He didn’t actually give a shit where she stayed.
Casey was a Harley Rat, just like me, Shaw, and Lee.
We were all Harley Rats. No one in Ashland would give a shit about what happened to us.
We’d be lucky if we lived long enough to see graduation, and even if we did, chances were we’d be delinquents, according to the mayor and his team of corrupt boys in blue.
Casey pulled back to look at me, her wide eyes strained with worry, but she didn't cry.
“Your mom…” I whispered to her.
She nodded and bowed her head. “She’ll be in hospital for a few days, but they said she should be okay.
Just a concussion…” She reached down and plucked at the bloody shirt I was wearing, making a face.
“Let’s get you cleaned up, alright?” She stood and headed down the hall, no doubt finding a wet cloth to wash away the blood covering my arms and face.
I gingerly rose to my feet as the room started to clear.
Lee had his phone out, messaging his parents to come to pick us up, and Shaw was giving a paramedic the cold shoulder after it was suggested that he go to the hospital.
Shaw hated hospitals. There was no chance in hell he’d willingly go back to one.
So he just turned his back and started gathering up our sleeping bags and backpacks, without saying a word.
I was about to follow Casey down the hall to the washroom where she was waiting for me, but then I caught sight of the broken picture frame on the floor.
It was busted, the glass shattered, and the photo was poking out between the fractured pieces.
I reached down and pulled it free, holding the picture in my hands.
It was taken just a few weeks ago at the beginning of the school year.
I remembered that her mom had forced her to wear a maroon, corduroy overall dress with a grey knit sweater underneath.
Instead of her usual ponytail, Ms. Cooper had braided her hair the night before so that it fell in waves for Photo Day.
She’d arrived at school red-faced and furious, but all I could recall was losing my train of thought at the sight of her, so much so that my mouth fell open.
“Either you guys stop staring at me like that, or I’ll kick you in the balls so hard you’ll be eating them,” she hissed as she passed by us.
I hadn’t realized I wasn’t the only one ogling her.
Both Lee and Shaw had the exact same expression as I did on their faces.
However, at her threat, we all snapped out of it.
We knew Casey well, and when she dished out a threat, she meant every word.
I’d been victim to a sack kicking from her, and it was no fucking joke.
Didn’t walk right for the rest of the day.
But in this picture, I could stare at her all I wanted. Her large, chocolate coloured eyes sparkled from the lights, and her lips were slightly parted in the smallest of smiles, something she promised her mother she’d do… smile showing her teeth.
“Vail! Get your ass down here and wash up! Mrs. Knight won’t let you in her car if you’re covered in blood, you douche-weed!” Her shout snapped me out of my trance. Without a second thought, I folded up the photo and shoved it into the pocket of my sweats.
“Coming, darling!” I called back, snickering when she responded with a revolted gagging sound. I stepped over the bloody carpet, not at all fazed by the squishy feeling beneath my feet as I headed her way. It was just another weekend in Harley.