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The only place I was planning on letting her go to, was to lead me back to the other two douchebags. Asking for me to spare Conners life showed me that she had some sort of loyalty toward him, so when she said that they were probably heading to Coral Pines to meet with their dealer, it wasn’t exactly like I was going to take her word for it. She could’ve been sending me right into a trap.
The second we pulled up to the station, Dre opened the door before it was even in park. “Hey!” I said, thinking she was about to jump out and make a run for it, when she leaned over and puked onto the pavement.
H withdrawals are no joke.
When she was done heaving she sat up slowly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She got out, and I leaned over the seats to shut the door behind her. She turned around to me and flashed me a sad smile as she stood there clutching her only possession, her bus ticket, to her chest like it was a precious newborn baby.
“Is your dad a good guy?” I suddenly asked, surprising even myself. “A good dad? Like does he spend time with you and take you places? He put fo
od on the table and send you to school?”
She nodded. “Yeah.”
“There are a lot of people out there whose dad’s don’t do any of that, or wouldn’t give a shit about getting their junkie daughter home, so when you get there, try and go easy on the guy,” I said, as if I really believed she was going home and not heading back to the male drugged-out-version of the Olsen Twins.
Maybe I did believe it. There was only one way to find out.
She smoothed her hair out of her eyes. “Maybe you’re Dr. Phil after all,” she said, before disappearing under the shadows of the awning, heading toward the empty bus benches.
If she felt as bad as she looked, and she really was getting on that bus, then it was going to be one fuck-of-a-long bus ride to wherever it was she was going.
“Not fucking likely,” I muttered as I pulled back onto the road, and as soon as I cleared the next block, I turned down the dirt road that used to act as the service entrance to the old motel. I parked in the back of the bus station which wasn’t really a station at all, just a small brick building with a flat roof and a ticket window facing the street with a few scattered benches. The light overhead where Dre was sitting was flickering on and off, casting the grassy area in spastic shadows.
Shit, maybe she really was getting on that bus. And for a second, I was happy that the kid was going to be reunited with her father. I wasn’t messing around when I told her that most people didn’t have dad’s that cared enough to give her an ultimatum like he did. I was about to pull back out when I saw the headlights of a bus pulling into the station. I’d just decided that I was going to wait for her to get on the bus before I headed to Coral Pines, when suddenly her feet stopped tapping and retracted back into the shadows.
Not like she stood up, not like she pulled them back.
Like she was being dragged.
I pulled my gun from my boot and got out of the car, shuffling to the side of the building, my eyes adjusting to focus in the dark, until I spotted Dre across the lot.
She was being dragged all right. By her hair, through the parking lot, toward the old motel where the neon sign was blinking between VACANCY and NO VACANCY. The man dragging her was almost as thin as she was, but you didn’t have to be big to overpower someone as small as Dre. One of the motion lights clicked on and gave me a better view of Dre, whose black eyes were open, but glazed over and unfocused, she was foaming out of the side of her mouth.
“You shouldn’t have left,” the man muttered, pulling Dre up and over a parking curb, her legs scraping against the ground as he huffed and grunted through his exertion. “You think you can just leave me? You owe me Dre. Remember that. You can’t just go home,” he said, to a semi-conscious Dre who looked a million miles away. “If I can’t go home, then you can’t go home. I’m sorry, I…I’m sorry I did that to you,” he said more quietly. “But I just gave you some of my new stash, so you should forgive me. It’s good shit, the best, and I saved it just for you.”
I crouched and ran through the shadows from the back of the bus station to the overhang of the motel. As much as I wanted to blow the motherfucker away just for dragging her, I had to wait, each second was like a decade with my hand already twitching against the trigger.
“I’m here, Dre. Conner is going to take good care of you like this from now on. I promise. You’ll see. You just can’t try and leave again because we are having such a great time and you’ll ruin everything!” he yelled. “But that’s what you do! You ruin things!”
This was Conner? The one she’d wanted me to keep alive?
He took a deep breath, fixing the awkward smile back onto his face. He wiped his forehead with the back of his ratty sleeve before hauling Dre up from underneath her arms, his hands against her tits so he could lift her awkwardly up over the curb. He opened the door of one of the rooms. “I mean, I’m so sorry, Dre.” Conner sniffled. “I mean, I think even though you were mad, that you really did like what we did to you. I think they were good screams. When Eric get’s back…” Conner’s voice faded abruptly as he kicked the door shut. The 9 marking the room number fell off one of its nails, becoming a swaying 6 before clambering to the sidewalk.
Maybe it was his words. Maybe it was the way he treated her, like he owned her. Maybe it was that this was the guy she’d wanted me to save, but all I knew was that I was going in.
Fake promises be damned.
What happened next played out like a violent video game, a halo of blur around the edges of my vision as I advanced on the motel room. The gun in my outstretched hands in front of me as I kicked open the door. Conner was crouched low on the floor over Dre, who was lying on her stomach, face down on the faded blue shag carpet. Her shorts down over her naked ass while the dirtbag fisted his little pecker in his hand. The slam of the door against the wall had Conner looking up with surprise, his reaction delayed by whatever shit was running through his veins. “Who the fuck are you? Get the fuck out…” he said, before zoning in on my gun. “What are you gonna…?” Conner started to ask, his face paling and his bloodshot eyes widening. “Wait, I know who you are…”
“Good, introductions can be so boring and all,” I said. “You know,” I scratched my head with the barrel of my gun, “junkies like you give drugs a bad name. You’re the very reason some of my favorite party enhancers will never be available and marked down at a discount on the shelves of my local neighborhood Wal-Mart at good-ole-American, made-in-China prices.” I aimed my gun at his chest. “Move away from her or I will end you right fucking here.” Conner stood up with his shoulders hunched forward, his softening little pecker hanging out of his zipper as he raised his hands and did as I commanded, stepping back from Dre. I spotted the open bathroom door. “Back, through there. Stand in the shower.”
“Please. Please don’t shoot me,” he begged as he shuffled backward. I spared a glance at Dre, kneeling down I made sure she was breathing. She was. I flipped her onto her back and turned her head to the side so she wouldn’t choke on her own vomit if she started puking again. I followed Conner into the tiny bathroom where he tripped over the rim of the tub, landing on his ass in the shower, pulling down the beige plastic curtain over the top of him. “I’ll do anything. Anything,” he said, glancing at my crotch.
“Dude, have some fucking self respect,” I said. “Unless that’s your thing. You a gay man, Conner?”
He shook his head, his lower lip trembled.
“Listen, I respect anyone’s choice to fuck the way they want to fuck and fuck who they want to fuck, but since you’re telling me that you’re a straight dude, then you’ve seriously just sank to the very last rung on the junkie ladder my friend, which in case you haven’t guessed it, is offering to suck another dudes cock.”
“I’ve just…I’ve got a problem,” he said, his feet dangling over the edge of the tub.
“Yeah, you fucking do.” Noticing a fingerprint on my gun, I huffed some air onto it and buffed it off on the rolled up cuff of my shirt.
“I just need help. I promise, I’m really not a bad guy…” he stammered.
I rolled my eyes. “Conner, stop your babbling. I believe you, buddy,” I said, using my most reassuring voice. I crouched down so our eyes were level. Instant relief filled Conners eyes.
“You…you do? You believe me?” His hope at getting out of that bathroom alive was downright fucking tangible.
I nodded. “Absolutely, I do.” I leaned over and pinched his cheek hard. He flinched but smiled awkwardly. “I think you’re just a confused kid who made some big BIG mistakes.” I turned my gun so it wasn’t facing him. Conner’s eyes nervously followed my every move. I stood up and leaned my hip against the sink, crossing my legs at the ankles. I turned the faucet on and let it run for a second or two before turning it off again. Wiping the grunge off the mirror with my closed fist, I gave my reflection a once over and straightened my bow tie.
“Thank you! Thank you!” Conner stammered, attempting to sit up in the tub. “I’m really
a good person. This junk’s got me all fucked up. Makes me do stupid shit. Man, I’m so glad you’re not gonna shoot me in the fucking head.”
“Don’t be silly, Conner. I don’t shoot people in the head. You know how much blood and gunk gets sprayed around when you go all gangsta willy-nilly and start shooting people in the head? Let me ask you something, Conner, you ever see a watermelon explode?”
“Uh, what I meant was. I mean. Just thank you for not killing me.”
“When did I say I wasn’t going to kill you?” I straightened my posture, turned back to Conner, and raised my gun, aiming it straight at his chest. I watched the confusion pass through his eyes, followed by realization, and then fear.
“W…wa…wait!” Conner studdered. The sound of water bouncing off plastic caught my attention as he pissed himself on the fallen shower curtain.
“I really fucking hate it when that happens,” I muttered, the scent of urine immediately unbearably strong in the tiny room and made my eyes water.
“No, please no!” he cried, holding out his hands in front of his face, even after I told him I wasn’t going to shoot him in the head. It was almost like the fucker didn’t trust me. “You said… you believed me. That…that you didn’t think I was a bad guy!”
I let out a long breathy sigh, which turned into a yawn. Not because I was tired, but because Conner and the whole will-I-or-won’t-I-kill-him situation was growing boring as fuck. “I don’t think you’re a bad guy at all.” I cocked my gun. “But, unfortunately for you…” I squeezed the trigger three times, sending pops of bright red splattering across the dull beige shower tile. “I am.”
