Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The Stranger
Like a wet rat, Krick’s greased mullet slaps flat to his head as he cradles a nearly empty bottle of bourbon.
His handlebar moustache has overgrown millimetres too long, mirroring the shiver-inducing whiskers of a koi carp.
I’m pinned beneath his glare, and it happens—I finally feel something.
The emptiness turns to cold, the crawling frost physically spreading through my ribcage.
My eyes refuse to bow away from him, even as I’m considering the knife in my boot.
While sitting at the table—mine and Sasha’s table—he revels in taking his time as he swigs a mouthful of liquor.
It tips from the edges of his mouth and trickles down his chin.
He wipes his face with his sleeve and belches before slamming the bottle onto the table, but I resist flinching.
Without looking away, he pushes the wooden chair back across the floor with an ear-grating scrape and staggers towards me.
I’m not sure if his odour is terrible, or if my hatred and his scent combined have caused a visceral reaction, and I seal my lips so as not to gag.
I back against the wall as he comes before me, so close that his breath laces my freshly scrubbed skin, while I grip the wall to steady my trembling limbs, forcing myself still to keep the alarm from registering across my face.
“Touché, Lee. A clever move,” he says, pointing his finger at my wounds.
It feels like an age before he speaks again, layering me with his grimy breath.
“You will be having a welfare officer … visiting tomorrow,” he slurs, and pauses to belch, the scent of tuna fish hot on his stagnant, liquored breath.
“I know you like your deals… So, how about this? Protect me, and you can stay at The Riverside,” he says with a grin wide enough to expose his gold molars.
“If you throw me to the wolves … my dear nephew Connor will inherit my enterprise, and you will work … down at The Gentlemen’s Club. ”
He laughs in my face, and my nails press into my palms as my hands curl into fists.
Like a flame to gasoline, a fire flashes from my chest to the tips of my limbs.
I want to strike him, plant my fist squarely in that oily blackhead-ridden nose.
After everything he’s done, he comes to barter for protection?
! I can’t speak. I shouldn’t. The words racing through my mind will only worsen the situation.
But my restraint is spent on quelling the verbal reaction, without enough to stop the clench of my jaw and flare of my nostrils.
He spots it. His laughter dies, with his smirk morphing into a snarl resting beneath his wiry moustache.
Something changes. He scrunches his brows, puffs through his nose, and there’s a pause before the pounce.
His forearm slams across my chest, pushing me against the wall, hard enough to lift me from the floor.
His fat fingers pinch my face, pressing my cheeks into my teeth.
I resist the urge to scream, refusing to affirm the terror as I writhe beneath his grip.
“You thought you could escape me?! How fucking dare you?! The rangers would drag me to hell and back for losing a woman!” His breath spits through gritted teeth, the tip of his nose against mine with his voice threateningly low, shivering with restraint.
“Do the right thing, Lee! You have nothing left! Joey’s gone … because of you!”
His pressure loosens, and I slide down the wall as I gasp for breath. Tears rush my eyes at the mention of Joey, but I stop as Krick’s wandering touch slithers down my chest, cupping my waist. He audibly gulps before his arm falls limp to his side.
The step back he takes frees me while he brushes himself down and softens his tone.
“Say the right things tomorrow. Then you can live out the rest of your interval in that shitty bar!” He tidies the collar of his garish shirt while stepping to the apartment door.
“You can return to work after tomorrow’s appointment.
A driver will collect you. The streets aren’t safe enough for you anymore. For your own protection, of course.”
From his pocket, he produces a glass jar and leaves it on the kitchen table, filled to the brim with Kyte. With his index finger, he taps the aluminum top. “You might find you need something for the pain. You should be right as rain after a few of these.”
His lip curls as he moves away, fumbles with the locks on the door, and slams it shut, shaking the walls.
My face is tender as I catch my breath, my heart beating out of my chest—but it is beating.
The threat from Krick hasn’t gone to waste.
I can feel again. The hiss of his foul breath lit a fire.
Rage pumps through my veins, fuelling my engine as memories of the injustice done to Joey play in my mind.
The memory of the pounding batons beating into his back mimics the thumping of my heart.
A scream rises from deep within my chest, like steam escaping an engine, whistling through my throat as I expel the anger building inside.
This is not over. I still have a battle to fight. With my fathers long gone and Joey no longer beside me, I’ll use this to power me. Joey is still part of my endgame.
If I lose myself, we lose everything.
The opening of the bar’s door wafts the familiar smell of beer and liquor into my lungs.
While standing looking over the bar, I squeeze the end of the key, pressing its metallic teeth into my grip.
A tease of pain, something to jumpstart my numbing body into action.
I grossly underestimated how hard this would be while I’m still trying to swallow the horror of that day.
With an almighty breath, I walk past where I last felt Joey’s touch.
Walk past where we were both beaten … and stagger still before our spot, where we last stood together against the back counter.
My mind feels like a seesaw, and I feel the tip teetering between cradling myself in a crying heap on the floor, and the drop into the cold, numb, emotionless shell I am sinking into more often.
I throw my jacket and bag below the counter, and startle at my crestfallen reflection staring back at me between the liquor bottles on the mirrored wall.
I had hoped the apartment’s fluorescent lights were exaggerating the bruising, but the daylight shows them all the same.
They have faded to clouds of brown and yellow, with blood blister freckles surrounding the scarlet slice high on my cheek.
A crescent of red sits within my eye like a blood moon, while the burst vessels have grown to hug my iris, adding to the Frankenstein’s monster quality.
Even if I could style my hair to shadow my eyes, I cannot hide the dark, swollen cut on the bridge of my nose.
I extend my neck, tracing my fingers over the bruised grip from Donnie, still feeling the soreness with every swallow.
For what it’s worth, I sweep my hair across my brow, restyling it to conceal my injuries as best I can, but it will be no secret.
There’s no doubt that exaggerated versions of the event are already in circulation, and I dread the whispers, the questions, but there’s no escaping this. I must move forward.
“Zoom out.” It’s something Rex always said when strategising.
It’s dangerous to become fixated on something so intently that you lose your peripheral vision, missing opportunities and danger signs.
I need to zoom out, to consider my options and rethink my plan to move forward.
That’s why I lied to the welfare officer this morning.
He visited me in my apartment, taking photos of my injuries as evidence to file against Donnie for his assault charges.
I stared at my reflection in his helmet as he quizzed me on the facts, laying the blame on Donnie, exonerating Joey, and delicately choosing my words concerning Krick, neither confirming nor denying any details and keeping a loaded gun of incriminating information close to my chest. I gave the jar of pills to the ranger and said they had been given to me, but I had been threatened not to snitch.
Hopefully, it will be enough for them to investigate Krick without the word coming directly from me, and hopefully it will go against any charges they pin on Joey.
There’s an emptiness within my mind. Like a firecracker in a grand stone hall, it fizzes and echoes, but never extinguishes.
Its ferocity doesn’t slow, but the heat is building, rising to the surface, perhaps emitting from the hollow of my bones in place of marrow.
Beneath my skin, it accumulates, threatening to combust. It’s the only emotion that doesn’t falter—wrath to use as a weapon against those who hurt me, hurt Joey, hurt my family.
I wish I could summon more comforting thoughts to mind, but like a carousel of villains, their faces spin before me among a procession of rangers: Donnie, Krick, President Beckett.
I stand alone in my spot, rubbing the coolness of Joey’s smooth ring across the split in my lip.
Even with the extended illumination of summer, the light seems duller.
I’ve been in the glow of happiness so long that without it, everything seems shadowed.
Without my beacon, the days are devoid of colour and life.
It’s just sadness upon sadness. I can’t escape it, and I’m not sure I ever will.
And with Joey goes the life and soul of this bar.
There will be no games. No music. No effort. No more.