Find him if you wanna get found
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
It's February, Boston, 2008. She calls herself Lana right now. She calls the doctor Madea; all the girls do.
Madea is Doctor Shirley Walker, is fifty, black, with a tired, suspicious face and a tender heart behind a mile of thorns. That's why she works at the all-night clinic. Madea is what her neice calls her, her sisters, her whole family, and she supposes it's wrong to let the girls (whores would be cruel, and ladies of the evening ridiculous; she thinks of them as the lost girls) call her that, but she does anyway.
"Try moving them." She's taking splints off three of Lana's fingers.
"It's good." The girl is soft-spoken, with green eyes that don't tend to meet hers; they're big and wide and a weapon in her arsenal; reserved for men. She's mixed, with a pretty spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose and fluffy cinnamon hair. She makes a fist. "They're good."
The little finger on her other hand is crooked. The last time Lana had a broken finger, she 'shut it in a door' again while it was still healing. That didn't happen this time. "He's away again, isn't he?" Madea says. It's a taboo. She's breaking it.
Lana flinches. "LA," she says. "I don't know why."
"Good time to run," Madea says. She feels faintly amazed at herself, but the words are coming out. Her neice, Cassie, is this girl's age or even a little older, and God only knows what the girl went through before she fell into the hands of Josh Malloy, but since then Madea has seen her seven times in two years, not counting check-ups and blood tests. Twice for bite marks and a rabies shot, from God knows what vermin; four times now for broken bones; and one concussion she thought the girl wouldn't recover from.
Lana more than flinches; she pulls away, and Madea suspects that if she weren't barefoot in a paper gown she'd be running already.
"I can't. He'll track me down. He'll find me."
"Nobody quits on him."
"There's a shelter," Madea says. "It's safe. Confidential. He can't find you there
"You don't know what he's like. What he is."
"Lana," says the doctor. "One of these days he's going to kill you."
The doctor's right. The girl (and in her head, she's all ready stopped calling herself Lana) knows that. But she's right too. Nobody quits on Malloy. She thought she could once, when she was new, and she learned her lesson.
She's learned a lot.
She's never used more of the shit than she needs to survive, and now she's quit entirely. It was a bad two weeks. She's packed. Now she takes the blue line out to a house behind a gate with a warning and meets someone.
"You got it?"
The vampire is tall, with a shaved head and a tufted red chinbeard; lean and young and hungry. The vampires don't like Malloy. "Yeah, I got it." He teases her with it, a long thin bundle, then snatches it away. "You know what I want."
"Yeah," she says. She gives him the money first; then she shifts her hair away from her neck; tilts her head.
"Say it."
She fixes her eyes on a point on the wall of the house and focuses on the smell of snow here in the courtyard. "I give this to you of my own free will. My blood for you. My life for you."
"Then you are damned," he says; it sounds like it gives him a lot of satisfaction. His mouth closes on her throat and she tries not to give him the added thrill of a flinch.
She looks out the window and sees Malloy out on the sidewalk; dark mohair jacket over one of his ratty Fighting Irish t-shirts, dark jeans, sandals. Whoever he's been to see, they got money. His Caprice is parked at the curb, and she can tell he had it detailed after the trip even before he came to check up on his girls; before he bathed himself or changed his clothes.
He looks up, fixes her with his dark eyes (he says he can smell people looking at him) and comes up. She's in bed when he gets up there, naked, her breasts an invitation, the blanket over her lap. That's what he expects.
"Hello, Baby. Where's my money?"
He flexes out of his jacket; ordinarily that would be bad, means he means to stay, take out whatever he's got pent-up from driving cross-country on her, but today she likes it. It's good news.
"Spent it," she says. Her hair is brushed over the marks on her throat, but it won't fool him long. She lets her hand move under the cover
She can see him getting angry, and him liking being angry; can see it making him hard. He makes a fist, and the muscles under the sacred heart tattoo on his forearm cord and ripple alarmingly. "On what?"
She can feel the fear; it's heavy and it stinks and it wants to flatten her. It will if she hesitates. "This." She raises the sawed-off lying chilly against her hip and fires it from under the blanket; the field of fire is wide, and there's nothing in here she's afraid to hit.
"Oh you cunt," he screams, peppered with shot and bleeding from his arm, his thigh, his face; she kicks the blanket back, rises up on one knee, in a scrap of blue lace and sparkly blue toenail polish, and this time she aims it. He's got a pretty boy face, dark and sexy in a mean way, and she aims it there, but he's moving towards her, fast, and it hits him low and close to. Rips him open.
Laid out on the floor he's not so scary. He's a little guy, barely taller than her. It's funny how she never noticed that before. She grabs the bag from under the bed and bolts past him, pulling a dress over her head as she goes down the stairs and stopping on the stoop to lace up running shoes.
Three weeks later Tessa Walker wakes up when she hears the engine, and she starts running right then; through the hall, through the kitchen, out the backdoor. Probably she should stop to scream, to warn the other women in the shelter, but she doesn't. She runs and keeps on running, making distance while the Caprice rips through the front door and tears through the common room where they sit in circles and try to make her talk about how it felt to have a crazy homeless mother and a junkie dad and a deadbeat uncle hanging around the house all the time. How it felt to be at the mercy of someone like Malloy.
Well, she thinks, hearing the boards splinter and the women and the tires scream. Now you know. Tell me if you find any. She wonders what happened to Madea.
She runs a long, long way.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO
It's February, Boston, 2008. She calls herself Lana right now. She calls the doctor Madea; all the girls do.
Madea is Doctor Shirley Walker, is fifty, black, with a tired, suspicious face and a tender heart behind a mile of thorns. That's why she works at the all-night clinic. Madea is what her neice calls her, her sisters, her whole family, and she supposes it's wrong to let the girls (whores would be cruel, and ladies of the evening ridiculous; she thinks of them as the lost girls) call her that, but she does anyway.
"Try moving them." She's taking splints off three of Lana's fingers.
"It's good." The girl is soft-spoken, with green eyes that don't tend to meet hers; they're big and wide and a weapon in her arsenal; reserved for men. She's mixed, with a pretty spray of freckles across the bridge of her nose and fluffy cinnamon hair. She makes a fist. "They're good."
The little finger on her other hand is crooked. The last time Lana had a broken finger, she 'shut it in a door' again while it was still healing. That didn't happen this time. "He's away again, isn't he?" Madea says. It's a taboo. She's breaking it.
Lana flinches. "LA," she says. "I don't know why."
"Good time to run," Madea says. She feels faintly amazed at herself, but the words are coming out. Her neice, Cassie, is this girl's age or even a little older, and God only knows what the girl went through before she fell into the hands of Josh Malloy, but since then Madea has seen her seven times in two years, not counting check-ups and blood tests. Twice for bite marks and a rabies shot, from God knows what vermin; four times now for broken bones; and one concussion she thought the girl wouldn't recover from.
Lana more than flinches; she pulls away, and Madea suspects that if she weren't barefoot in a paper gown she'd be running already.
"I can't. He'll track me down. He'll find me."
"Nobody quits on him."
"There's a shelter," Madea says. "It's safe. Confidential. He can't find you there
"You don't know what he's like. What he is."
"Lana," says the doctor. "One of these days he's going to kill you."
The doctor's right. The girl (and in her head, she's all ready stopped calling herself Lana) knows that. But she's right too. Nobody quits on Malloy. She thought she could once, when she was new, and she learned her lesson.
She's learned a lot.
She's never used more of the shit than she needs to survive, and now she's quit entirely. It was a bad two weeks. She's packed. Now she takes the blue line out to a house behind a gate with a warning and meets someone.
"You got it?"
The vampire is tall, with a shaved head and a tufted red chinbeard; lean and young and hungry. The vampires don't like Malloy. "Yeah, I got it." He teases her with it, a long thin bundle, then snatches it away. "You know what I want."
"Yeah," she says. She gives him the money first; then she shifts her hair away from her neck; tilts her head.
"Say it."
She fixes her eyes on a point on the wall of the house and focuses on the smell of snow here in the courtyard. "I give this to you of my own free will. My blood for you. My life for you."
"Then you are damned," he says; it sounds like it gives him a lot of satisfaction. His mouth closes on her throat and she tries not to give him the added thrill of a flinch.
She looks out the window and sees Malloy out on the sidewalk; dark mohair jacket over one of his ratty Fighting Irish t-shirts, dark jeans, sandals. Whoever he's been to see, they got money. His Caprice is parked at the curb, and she can tell he had it detailed after the trip even before he came to check up on his girls; before he bathed himself or changed his clothes.
He looks up, fixes her with his dark eyes (he says he can smell people looking at him) and comes up. She's in bed when he gets up there, naked, her breasts an invitation, the blanket over her lap. That's what he expects.
"Hello, Baby. Where's my money?"
He flexes out of his jacket; ordinarily that would be bad, means he means to stay, take out whatever he's got pent-up from driving cross-country on her, but today she likes it. It's good news.
"Spent it," she says. Her hair is brushed over the marks on her throat, but it won't fool him long. She lets her hand move under the cover
She can see him getting angry, and him liking being angry; can see it making him hard. He makes a fist, and the muscles under the sacred heart tattoo on his forearm cord and ripple alarmingly. "On what?"
She can feel the fear; it's heavy and it stinks and it wants to flatten her. It will if she hesitates. "This." She raises the sawed-off lying chilly against her hip and fires it from under the blanket; the field of fire is wide, and there's nothing in here she's afraid to hit.
"Oh you cunt," he screams, peppered with shot and bleeding from his arm, his thigh, his face; she kicks the blanket back, rises up on one knee, in a scrap of blue lace and sparkly blue toenail polish, and this time she aims it. He's got a pretty boy face, dark and sexy in a mean way, and she aims it there, but he's moving towards her, fast, and it hits him low and close to. Rips him open.
Laid out on the floor he's not so scary. He's a little guy, barely taller than her. It's funny how she never noticed that before. She grabs the bag from under the bed and bolts past him, pulling a dress over her head as she goes down the stairs and stopping on the stoop to lace up running shoes.
Three weeks later Tessa Walker wakes up when she hears the engine, and she starts running right then; through the hall, through the kitchen, out the backdoor. Probably she should stop to scream, to warn the other women in the shelter, but she doesn't. She runs and keeps on running, making distance while the Caprice rips through the front door and tears through the common room where they sit in circles and try to make her talk about how it felt to have a crazy homeless mother and a junkie dad and a deadbeat uncle hanging around the house all the time. How it felt to be at the mercy of someone like Malloy.
Well, she thinks, hearing the boards splinter and the women and the tires scream. Now you know. Tell me if you find any. She wonders what happened to Madea.
She runs a long, long way.
OoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoO