Ironside Read online

  “I’ve handled worse,” I say dismissively. “Besides,” I add, looking her up and down. “Don’t know how much of outlaw life you’ve grown up around, but hospitals aren’t an option right now. We’re on the move.”

  I decide not to remind her that it’s because I put a bullet of my own in at least two men back there.

  And they give the two of us a look as we step in.

  I furrow my brow, wondering what they’re looking at, until I notice Justine. She’s on her feet and awake, but nearly falling asleep on the ride and the drug still working through her body makes her look dead on her feet, and both of our clothes are roughed up.

  There’s also a small patch of a dark stain under my kutte that could barely be made out in the green of my shirt, but nobody needs to know that’s from a bullet hole. But we look rough as hell, and the diners don’t seem any less uneasy when I nod to them and lead Justine to an empty table.

  She sits across from me, and I’m reminded again that she must be ten years younger than me. I’m in my early thirties, fit, and rough around the edges. She looks twenty and like she’s been drugged and tossed in a basement.

  Heartbreaker kutte or no, this doesn’t look great. I’ll have to bank on the diners having seen stranger shit in the past.

  “Can I get you two some waters to start off?” a waitress asks as she bustles up to our table, trying to look less concerned about the situation than she was.

  “That’d be great,” I say. “And a coffee for me. Justine?” I ask her, wanting to let the waitress know the girl and I are on a first name basis.

  Anything that makes me look like less of a kidnapper will do.

  “Just water,” she says with a weak smile before looking to me. “Do you mind if I get cleaned up in the bathroom? I...won’t be picky,” she says in reference to the menus in front of us. “But I’m hungry.”

  “Sure thing,” I say with a gruff smile, and I watch her get up and smile to the waitress before making her way to the bathrooms.

  When I look back to the waitress, I see that all mirth has left her face completely. She’s staring down at me with brazen suspicion, and sigh as I roll my shoulders back.

  “Couple of patty melts,” I grunt. “And two eggs. And bacon. Side of hash browns.”

  The waitress wordlessly jots the order down and heads off to the kitchen, leaving me to crack my neck and glance back at the bathroom impatiently. As soon as she gets back, I’m planning to have the loudest, most conspicuous conversation as I can get away with about how not suspicious the two of us are. Maybe I can even get Justine to laugh, that would do the trick.

  What doesn’t scream funny guy about the name Ironside?

  But when enough time passes that our food arrives with no sign of Justine, I start to worry. I wish I had a burner phone on me I could have handed her, but I just have to wait this one out. I don’t want to make them even more suspicious of us than they already are. Justine is in bad shape though, and letting her out of my sight already hasn’t gone well.

  “‘Scuse me, ma’am,” I say in my most professional soldierly voice, making her stop and look to me before leaving the table. “This all looks great, but I’m worried about my friend back there.”

  “Sometimes women take a little time, hun,” she says curtly, obviously thinking that the girl wants some time away from me.

  “She’s not well,” I say more seriously. “I mean, you saw her when we came in, didn’t you? She’s feeling faint, I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

  The waitress looks reluctant, but finally, she nods and leads me to the back of the restaurant and raps on the door.

  There’s no answer.

  The waitress knocks a few more times and calls the girl’s name, and when she gets no answer, she curses under her breath and takes out her keys.

  “There’s no window in there,” she murmurs as she turns the lock and pushes the door open, and I step past her to get inside.

  Justine is sprawled on the floor, out cold.

  Justine

  Everything is chaos. The world around me is a swirling black abyss, and I cannot for the life of me figure out if it’s night or day. A grim voice in the back of my mind informs me that it doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s the same for me. I am in the dark place, and here the rules by which normal people live their lives are bent and twisted. Nothing makes any sense here. Nothing is logical. I can’t tell which way is up and which way is down. It’s like my thoughts are a tiny metal ball in a pinball machine, and every few minutes, the board gets all shaken up. My train of thought moves slowly, sluggishly. Molasses through bog water. I want to move, to regain the power in my limbs to control my own fate again, but it feels impossible. Every part of me is so heavy, so weighed down with languid exhaustion. I wonder what they have been doing to me. I wonder how they have managed to scrape out my soul and separate it from my body. Because that is how it feels. Like I’m being torn in a thousand different directions and I can’t find due north. My internal compass is spinning like mad. Where am I?

  And in the context of this whirling darkness, who am I?

  Because the version of myself I used to know is gone. I am being erased, my personality deadened with drugs and torture. How can I remember the bright things when the dark is so full, so penetrating? I keep trying to get my eyes to focus, my consciousness to come back to life. But whatever they did to me… it was potent. I don’t understand how I got to this point. All I know is that it only gets worse from here. They’re hurting me. Or maybe it just hurts all over because my heart is broken. Because the one thing I know for sure is that I was betrayed. I have been perverted and subverted by the very man who was supposed to protect me above all else.

  My father. He is the devil who brought me to this particular ring of hell. He is the liar and the pretender who lulled me into a false sense of security and then used my acquiescence to his advantage. I have to hand it to him-- his plans fell into place so perfectly. I realize now, even through the thick fog surrounding my brain, that he has been preparing me for this my whole life. He is the one who made me soft and pliable. He is the one who taught me to say yes, to do exactly as I am told even when I don’t want to. He led me down what I thought was the golden, shining path to eternal purity and safety. If I just preserve myself, if I keep myself whole, then I will dance forever in the gardens of heaven on earth. What a pack of lies. Here in the darkness, the lies burn brighter than anything else. They’re a neon flashing sign, reminding me of just how easily swayed I have been. But then again, I was made this way. They want me this way. It only makes their job easier. I don’t know exactly what they have planned for me, but I know it’s not the pure, sunny world they promised me.

  The snakes have led me into Eden, but the gardens are turning brown and dying with every moment I spend here. How could I have been so foolish? So trusting? I should have known better than to ever trust a man, not even my own father. But the scripture… it told me to listen and obey. Women are meant to be seen and not heard. Little girls can aspire to nothing greater than the eventual service to a man. I was promised milk and honey if only I did as I was told. But whatever they gave me does not taste so sweet. There’s a persistent bitterness lingering on my tongue. I wonder if that’s the drug they gave me. Or maybe this is just what betrayal tastes like: charcoal and sawdust in my mouth. I can feel a cold, hard floor under my limbs. My bones ache down to the marrow. I feel violated and intruded from all angles, like no part of my body or soul has been left innocent. They have taken everything away from me: my life, my hopes, my dreams. My assumption that I would continue along the same safe-- if a little dull-- trajectory I was set upon like a wind-up doll from the start of my childhood. I did everything I was supposed to do. I have been the good girl they told me to be. The scripture shaped me like rivers smoothing a stone, and I have allowed it because I thought it was my ticket to paradise. Nothing hurts so badly as the realization that I was wrong all along.

  There is another
flavor in my mouth joining the palate of bitterness and regret: a mineral-y, metallic taste I slowly register as being the distinct taste of blood. A flicker of fear passes over me, and with it comes a wave of powerful nausea that threatens to bowl me right over with its intensity. I wonder whose blood it is I am tasting. Reason dictates that it is probably my own, and while that is horrifying enough, it terrifies me even more to think it might belong to someone else. And that is possible. Improbable, maybe, but still possible. Especially because I know for a fact I am not completely alone in here. There is someone else suffering here with me in the darkness. I can hear a soft whimper, a sound similar to the whine of a dog who has been struck by a vehicle. My muddled mind hands me a memory, one so frayed and stained with the passage of time that it’s more of an impression than a full recollection. The neighbors had a dog. A little mutt with wiry hair and a crooked tongue. A name surfaces in my thoughts: Rory. Rory the dog. I remember her whine as she lay broken in the road.

  I want to say her name. Rory. But it’s not a dog crying in the room with me. It is a human woman, and she is in pain. I can feel it, the heat and the agony twisting around her. I try to reach out through the void and close the space between us. My eyes can see her, but only barely. She is a folded-over slump in the shadows of the corner. I wonder what they have done to her. I strain my eyes in the dark place and just barely make out the pale glow of her limbs. She’s bunched up like a broken accordion, and she is crying. Tears slick the floor under her filthy cheek. I am horrified by what I can see, but even worse is the knowledge that I might as well be looking into a mirror. She is me. I am her. We are together one and the same under the thumbs of these men who seek to hurt us and take out our souls. Where are we? It’s a hell on earth, but it still has to have an address, right? But my brain is too confused and panicked to come up with coordinates. I’m somewhere on earth and I am suffering, but no god reaches to lift me out of torture.

  I blink desperately in the low light, trying to let my vision adjust. I make a concerted effort to drag myself across the room. I need to get closer to the other woman. I want to touch her with my soft hands, reassure her until the whimpers soften and go away. The need to give her comfort in this lowest hour is so powerful in me that I manage to scoot a few feet, even though it’s like the connection between my soul and my body has been snipped. It takes all of my power just to move an inch. I get the bizarre sensation that I am not really here. That this is an ugly dream, hideous in its accurate portrayal of real life. Why can’t I dream of something good? Someplace better? Why must I return here, to this room, of all places? I never wanted to be here in the first place. I have escaped it once, but now I know that this hellish prison exists not only somewhere in the world, but inside of me. The parasite is in me even now, devouring me from the inside out as I struggle to remember and forget at the same time.

  “Help me,” whispers the other woman. Her voice is weak. Fading.

  I want to help her, but I can hardly move. I am so far away from my body. I can feel the life seeping out of my companion’s body. She is drifting away, her soul getting so small and so swamped with pain that it can no longer power her body. She is dying right in front of me, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. Tears prickle up and burn in my eyes. I am totally helpless. I am totally afraid. Because I remember something else now, something that frightens me down to my core.

  A warning. A threat.

  If I do not obey what these men ask of me, I will meet the same dark fate as the other woman fading into death across the filthy floor from me. It is a punishment for daring to deny what the captors ask us to do. She has been silenced for breaking a rule. For fighting back. These men don’t want difficult captives. They want easy, soft girls who bend like branches. They will fracture us again and again in pursuit of their own pleasure and their ugly profit.

  It is all starting to come together in one narrative. Daddy wanted me pure, not so that I can reach for heaven with my gloved hands, but so that I am an unmarred product on the shelf. He wants a doll without blemishes, a smooth canvas upon which to paint the filthiest colors. Brick red like rust and blood. Pale white like color draining from a fearful face. All my years of protecting myself and guarding what I was taught to believe is my most precious gift-- all a waste of time and hope. The high road ends here, in the darkest ditch. I’m angry with myself for even believing him in the first place. I let him brainwash me. I let him own me. And for what? Only to end up in the ownership of someone else?

  Another alarm bell rings in the back of my mind and I realize there is a sound piercing through the dark. It’s a voice, an ugly one that makes me flinch. I don’t understand what the man is telling me, only that his tone is hateful. Poisonous. My skin crawls to hear the timbre of his voice, imperative and boastful. He knows I am completely helpless. He knows he is in full control over me. I hate it. I want to fight back, but I know there’s no point. They have invaded not just my mind but my body, too. They injected me with something that makes my skin burn. Some kind of evil pumping through my veins and rendering me limp and lifeless as a doll.

  It isn’t until I can feel the wind whipping through my hair, cold and playful, that I start to wake up from the drug-induced fog. A weight lifts off of my shoulders as it dawns on me that I’m no longer in that wretched little cell. I can smell fresh air now. I hear the nocturnal insects singing and screeching in the night. There’s something hot and vibrating between my thighs. An engine rumbling like the grumbles of a giant. My body is pressed up against someone else’s, making me feel safe and protected. The warmth of that feeling is formidable, a worthy opponent to the fear that captivated me before. I smell something other than the night air. Something more man-made. The spicy scent of cologne burning my nostrils and enticing my body. It makes me feel all warm and tingly inside. My mouth salivates at that smell. It’s like black pepper and musk, autumn leaves and cinnamon. It reminds me of crackling fires. Warm places. Silk soft under my bare skin as the sunlight streams in to gently rouse me. A veritable bouquet of old feelings resurfaces in my mind. There is so much to consider, so much to sort through. The scent takes me on a journey and whisks me away from the grim scene I found myself inside.

  But those memories are not current. They are old. Irrelevant, right? Whatever is happening to me right now is something totally different. It just gets so hard to sort it out. All the events are jumbled up on top of each other like a ten-car pile-up. What happens when and whose grasp is around me? The delicious scent starts to fade away, being slowly replaced by something much less pleasant. I wrinkle my nose and pull away from the scent of chemicals and filth. What is it? Where am I? I have to get out of here. I have to escape. I can’t be here anymore. It makes me sick to my stomach. It’s like disinfectant mixed with pungent orange peel and clove, a powerful symphony that still is not quite enough to cover up the stench. People have come here and relieved themselves for years. This place holds onto the bad things. I can feel it.

  And then I feel something else entirely: hands. Large, calloused hands with broad palms and deft fingers landing on my body. They are the anchors that tether me to consciousness. I drift back and back and back until I’m closer to my body than I have been all this time. Hands, stroking my face and smoothing down my sides. Firm and waking. My eyes flutter open and I realize with a jolt that everything I have been seeing has been in my own mind. A fluorescent light flickers urgently overhead, and as my vision swims back into focus, there is something looming over me. A human head, a handsome face, framed utterly by the golden-white light like a halo round the precious head of an angel. A guardian angel, by the feel of it. He is here to rescue me, but from what? And how?

  Either way, I can’t help but lean into him. I manage to wake up enough to slither my arms around his thick, muscular body. I hold onto him tightly, curling in his embrace. His hands push the hair back from my face, stroking my cheek gently. The softness of his touch nearly moves me to tears. It’s a welcome depart
ure from the manhandling I have endured in recent days. He doesn’t want to break me. He is holding me together in one piece. I have the worry that if he lets go, I will splinter into pieces and never come back together again. So I cling to him desperately. I won’t let go. I can’t. He bends down to whisper something soft and ticklish against the shell of my ear and his warm breath gives me shivers.

  “Are you okay?” he asks gently.

  I shake my head, tears trickling down my cheeks. “I’m so scared,” I choke out.

  “Come on,” he urges me. “Let’s stand you up and get you back to the table, okay? You have to eat something or you’re just going to keep collapsing on me.”

  “I’m not hungry,” I whimper as he lifts me up.

  I brace myself against him as we get right-side up, and I realize we are in a public bathroom-- and a fairly gross one at that. I shudder to think that I have been lying down on that filthy tile floor. But my savior slowly leads me out of the bathroom, back to our table. There are plates of food there, but I’m too foggy to even recognize what it is. The waitress comes flouncing over in her apron, a ballpoint pen tucked behind her frosty curls. She has a look of concern on her face as she approaches.

  “Sweetheart, you doin’ alright?” she asks me in a low voice.

  “She’ll be fine. It’s just been a long day. She needs to eat,” I hear my savior tell her.

  “She looks messed up,” the waitress says. “You sure she’s okay?”

  “Yes. We just need some time. And privacy,” the man says emphatically.

  The waitress seems unconvinced, but eventually she walks away.

  “I’m serious. You need to eat something. Can you do that for me?” he asks me softly.

  “I...I can try,” I murmur, reaching for the utensil.

  Fork or spoon, I can’t tell. But my captor grabs it for me and starts trying to feed me bites of food. It’s something savory. A little salty and soft. Potatoes, I think, with other vegetables mixed in. I can hardly open my mouth to accept the food. Suddenly, there is a hand holding mine under the table. Warmth spreads through my whole body when I realize it’s his hand. And he’s looking at me with such intensity. He’s clenching his jaw. His body is tense.