SLAM HER(42)

That’s when it became a nightmare.

My mother turned and there was a gunshot hole in her forehead.

She opened her mouth… and I woke up.

That’s when I started to cry.

Bringing that entire thing back to life in my mind and telling Slam was hard. I had taught myself a long time ago to push the story away. To never think about it because there was no resolution. Nothing would bring her back and nothing would justify what had happened. The truth was that I expected my father to get hurt. He was the cop, not my mother. He was the one who should have been shot at and attacked. Not my damn mother.

I got dressed and tried to watch TV.

I drank a cup of coffee.

I stood outside on the balcony off my apartment.

There was nothing I could do to ease how I felt.

That’s when I found the bottle of vodka.

That was the one thing to chase away the memories. I’d be drunk by the time Slam came back and then we’d f*ck. He’d finally take the last sliver of innocence I possessed. We had been so close before. He rolled me to my back and… what? What was he going to do to me?

That would never happen again. I would never let that moment slip by again. That’s why I would be drunk. No emotion. No memories. Nothing.

I would give Slam everything I had to offer.

I twisted off the cap to the vodka bottle and threw the bottle back. I took a big gulp and it burned like fire.

But I liked the feeling.

It made me think of Slam.

He was fire… I was gasoline… and we would explode together… forever…





twenty-seven



(slam)



NOW



I was at the back of his house. Of all f*cking places to be. It was a nice kept yard with a bright blue shed, white trim, and even f*cking flowers all around it. Shit, the place looked normal. Knowing what I knew about Belle and her mother, it was almost haunting to be there.

When the back door finally opened, Chief Richards emerged with a bottle of booze in his hand. He was in his uniform pants but only had a plain white t-shirt on. His gut pressed against his shirt and bounced as he walked down the steps toward me. That couldn’t fool anyone though, Chief Richards was a tough man.

“The f*ck you want?” he growled at me.

“Peace offering,” I said. “Like I said on the phone.”

I took out my smokes and offered him one. He declined. I lit up.

It wasn’t like me to not have my motorcycle so I almost felt naked as I stood there. About ten feet away from me was a pickup truck. It had a black tonneau cover on it. Inside that cover was Tommy. It had to be hot as f*ck so I didn’t have much time to shoot the shit with the chief before showing him my peace offering.

“A peace offering would be your ass in prison for the rest of your life,” Chief Richards said.

“You’ve always had a hard on for me. Why?”

“Because you’re a punk. You don't belong in this town.”

“I won’t argue that. But I’m here. And you need me.”

“I need you? You and your friends have been a problem for years. I’ll get what I want out of this.”

I nodded. “Okay, Chief. I won’t argue that. But you need to pick better friends. You need to pick better witnesses.” I leaned in with a grin. “And you need to pick better ways to set up the Reap.”

I took a drag and blew the smoke in the chief’s face. He waved his hands and gritted his teeth.

“What do you want, Slam?”

“You called me the right name.”

“Call it a peace offering,” Chief said.

I walked him to the pickup truck. I popped the back down and reached into the bed, grabbing Tommy’s legs. I looked at Chief Richards as I slid Tommy’s body out of the truck and right to the ground. Chief jumped back and let out a spew of f*ck’s and it only got worse when Tommy started to kick and thrash.

“He’s alive?” Chief yelled.

“Yeah,” I said. “What do you think… I’m a murderer?”

For the first time in a long time I saw Chief Richards flabbergasted. He did a triple take as he looked at me, at Tommy, back at me again.

“What…”

I put a foot on Tommy’s chest. His hands were tied behind his back. His mouth gagged tight. Sweat covered his face, along with the bruises and cuts from the punishment he took. Whoops.

“Here’s the f*ck of it all, Chief,” I said with a smile. “Tommy has two stories to tell. Two completely different stories to tell.”

“What the f*ck are you trying to prove here?”

I leaned against the pickup truck and finished my smoke. I flicked the butt deep into the woods next to the gravel driveway.

“Hell of a setting out here,” I said. “You could get a lot done.” I looked at the chief. “You know, landscaping.”

I had the chief on the ropes. He kept looking down at Tommy.

“Tommy has a story that involves telling the truth. See, he knows if he does anything wrong, the consequences are really bad. Ain’t that right, Tommy?” I pressed the tip of my boot to his throat. He screamed and nodded. “So what that means is if you f*ck with Tommy… or you f*ck with me… he’s going to tell the truth. You and your boys are going to go down hard for setting me up. You tried a back door deal with Tommy. He took your word and you got me locked away for a little while. Isn’t that right?”