Forever Twilight, Patrick Sean Lee [christmas read aloud txt] 📗

at the bloody shirt he wore, and then she pulled it up to inspect the wound. I had gotten him in the side, the bullet ripping open the flesh just above his hip, but passing through, into the sofa.

She paid no attention to me at first, pressing down on his side, one hand atop the other over the huge gash. “Kayla, find somethin’ to stop the bleedin’! That towel! Some tape or somethin’ to hold it down with. Hurry!

“Bernie, try to roll over onto your other side. I’ll help you. Roll over, sweetie, I know it hurts, but it ain’t too bad. That’s it. A little more.”

Bernie-Beast straightened his legs somewhat, yelping like a run-over dog.

“That’s it. That’s good.”

“She shot me!” he moaned. “Kill that son-of-a-bitch.”

“I will,” she muttered, lowering her voice to nearly a whisper. “That’s a promise.”

Kayla bounced around me with the peroxide and bloody cloth Celia had only moments ago used on Peter. She threw them at Celia, and then rushed out of the room in search of tape like she’d been told. Celia, in her touching, romantic way, leaned forward and kissed that ghoul, and then turned her head to me.

“You stinkin’ witch! Get that asshole and get outta’ here! Now you know why we don’t like no strangers! If Bernie bleeds to death, believe me, I’ll be comin’ to look for you.”

“Yes indeed, like one of you said, it’s dangerous out there,” I replied too cheerily. “I’m taking the three girls with us. You can stay with this fucking monster; toss him outside on top of the other bodies when he dies.”

“Get out!”

She returned her attentions to Bernie-Beast, pressing harder down onto the wound, planting more quick kisses over and over onto his fat face, assuring him that he’d live and recover. I turned to Peter. He had managed to get to his feet, both hands grasping the corner of the alcove, his eyes still glazed. Easing sideways to him, my gun still pointing back at the strange lovers in front of the sofa, I asked Peter if he thought he could walk.

“Think so. My head is just pounding like crazy, though. I’m sorry, Amelia…I should have been paying more attention when I…”

“It’s okay, Peter. All of this is my fault. I’m the one who should be apologizing. Put your arm over my shoulder. Let’s leave this madhouse. Let’s go home.”

“Yeah, okay by me,” he said.

Kayla came racing through the door with a roll of duct tape in her outstretched hand.

“All I could find,” she said.

Celia looked up in surprised consternation at the tape, and then that familiar scowl grew on her face. She took the tape from Kayla anyway.

“Bernie, you have to sit up…”

The two of them worked surprisingly well together, Celia keeping the pressure of her right hand on the cloth, cursing a little at her friend; Kayla laboring to roll the tape around his lower midsection over the folds of pasty, white flesh. I turned my attention to Sammie and Jude, still locked tight to one another in the corner.

“You come with us. Leave whatever things you have, we’re taking you to a new home where you’ll never have to endure the despicable and degrading treatment by someone like that guy ever again.”

Sammie, the youngest who’d had her head buried in Jude’s chest, finally broke away and looked over at me with the most hopeful, relieved look on her face. She lowered her arms from Jude.

“Really? You aren’t going to shoot us? You’ll take me and Jude with you?”

“Yes. If you want to leave.”

“I do! I hate him! I hate Celia, too. Celia, I hate you,” Sammie cried out, darting in mine and Peter’s direction.

“Jude?” I said. “It is Jude, right?”

“Yes.”

The older girl stood motionless for several seconds, peering over to the three people in front of the sofa, back to us, once more at Bernie-Beast and friends. And then she decided. She hurried to our side, at which point Sammie greeted her with another hug.

“Oh good!”

“Look out, Sammie. Let me help this girl with her boyfriend. God, I never want to see this place again.”

We shuffled toward the door leading out. As I neared it on Peter’s right side, I hesitated.

“Kayla? You want to go?”

Kayla let loose of the tape and looked at Celia questioningly. Then up at me after making her instantaneous decision.

“I’m staying. I’m sorry I hit you so hard,” she finished, bringing her eyes to bear on Peter.

Well enough, I supposed. She was old enough—all of them were, save Sammie—but I knew poor Kayla would regret the decision later.

We left.

Just An Ugly Wound Or Two

 

Part of me wanted to cry—leaving Kayla alone with Bernie and Celia. It was her choice to stay, however, and I had to accept it. None of us could force her to leave. Even so, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why she would want to stay. What power did he possess that ruled over what remnants of common sense and dignity that survived in her mind?

There were no rules. No laws. No societal pressure to behave by all the old standards. No punishments if you did conceive of and perform any number of the most evil actions mankind in its worst eras could possibly have imagined. If Bernie had decided he wanted to ensnare and rape every young girl who had survived and wandered into his black web, who or what was to stop him? It might be true that he provided some sort of salvation for these once-innocent girls by giving them food and shelter and the strength of group identity—certainly all except Celia would probably have long ago perished out on these streets alone—but the flip side of the coin was a life of physical and mental abuse so profoundly heinous that it turned my stomach in a way, and to a degree, I’d never experienced before.

Nearing the truck, I made a decision of my own. Something I should have done while I was still standing over him with the gun raised.

“Get Peter into the truck, Jude. Then you and Sammie climb into the seat behind him. I forgot something. I’ll be right back.”

“Okay. Be careful, though. I know Bernie and Celia have guns.”

“I’ll be careful. Thanks.”

I reentered the house. Voices rolled out of the ruination of a study in tiny waves the second I stepped across the threshold. Celia whimpering and cursing low. The softer, monotonous and yet-lower voice of Kayla uttering what sounded like a prayer of petition, maybe to some perverse deity lingering in the rafters, smiling and looking down on the mess. Bernie grunting and groaning. I walked across the foyer and into the room quietly.

No one had moved. Celia looked up as soon as I stepped in. She narrowed her eyes and began to curse me. I raised the pistol, aimed with both hands holding the weapon this time, and gritted my teeth. The moment I raised the gun, Kayla screamed, and then jumped for cover behind the desk. Celia had been kneeling in front of Bernie, facing him, cursing me until she saw the pistol. At first she threw her body over the disgusting creature to protect him. I held my stance. Like she didn’t think I’d shoot her, too? Her death would be no great loss to anyone. I aimed at her back. Her next move surprised me, though. She quickly jerked upright, and then turned to face me, her arms flying outward; her back, this time, sheltering that monster. Gone was the scowl, replaced by a pleading look of terror and the slow shaking of her head.

“Get off him or I’ll do you first.”

“Please don’t kill him. Please. You got what you wanted…and he might die anyway. Haven’t you done enough?”

I hesitated. Perhaps Celia was right. The chances were more than good that infection of the wound in his side would do its slow work in the absence of proper care. Bernie would die in time. She could stay with him until that day; until his body rotted and she went mad with grief. She actually loved this man enough to take a bullet for him?

I lowered the gun a little. I blinked. Celia won.

But I wasn’t quite finished.

“Kayla, come over here. You’re leaving with us.”

Her head peeked out from the corner of the desk, her long, unkempt hair dangling down, moving right and left as she shook her head.

“No. Please do like Celia said…just go and leave us alone. I told you I was sorry.”

“But why? Why would you stay here with that beast?”

It took her a second or two, but finally she answered the question.

“I could care less about Bernie…but, Celia is my sister! I’m not leaving her. Please, just go!”

Oh. Oh. So that was the reason! Her refusal to leave Bernie’s brothel now made a weird, if not perverse, kind of sense. I wanted more than ever to shoot the old man, and yet…the thought sprang into my head. I intended to kill him when I had been distracted by Celia and Peter. Why else would I have turned the gun and fired? What was I becoming? Shooting the man who led the gang down in San Diego was different, but in a way the same. He was moving on Denise and me. He meant to attack. I had no choice that time. Or had I? But Bernie…a scumbag who in a better world had no right to live. It’s just that I had no right in this new existence to strap him on the gurney and send the deadly fluid into his veins. If I killed him—or killed both him and Celia, his devoted accomplice—who would be next? And for some petty reason even less heinous than what I’d seen today in this house.

I let the gun fall to my side.

“You’ll die, Kayla. Someone else will discover this place. They’ll sneak in like I did, and the first thing they’ll do is get rid of Bernie, if he’s still alive. After that…maybe there will be two of them—or ten. Just imagine what they’d do before they killed you and Celia. I’ve seen them out there. Leave your sister. Come with us.”

“Tell her to fuck off, Kay.” Celia, on seeing me lower the gun, reverted quickly to her old self. “We’re good here. I need you to help me take care of Bernie. He protected us for God’s sake! He gave us a home. We’ll keep the doors locked. You can’t turn your back on us. Tell this witch to leave!”

Kayla rose and faced me. I clearly saw the anxiety written on her face as she mulled over what I’d said, and what her sister had just said in response to it. Her lips quivered, and I expected her to break down in a fit of crying at any second. But she didn’t. Instead, she regained her composure, and then took a deep breath, bringing both hands forward and down, where they came to rest on her womb.

“No. I stay.”

Oh sweet Jesus! How far along?

I turned back to Celia and groaning Bernie. “Get out of the way!”

“No! Leave us alone, goddam you!”

Kayla began to freak again. “Don’t do it, lady! I beg you!”

I shot my eyes back to her.

So be it.

A shattering, gut-wrenching