Heartless (30 page)

“Don’t you worry, honey. Brody’s gonna warm you up. Get you ready for the rest of the pack.”

I couldn’t pull my dress down because his hips were pressing into me, and so was his fist, as he fumbled with his zipper.

“Stop!”

He covered my mouth again. I tried whipping my head from side to side, but it was partially wedged in the sand. And he’d freed himself now. I felt hot, hard skin against my inner thigh. I grunted and struggled but he was so big and heavy I could barely move at all.

Over his shoulder, above the log, I saw shadowy faces, their edges lit by the dance of firelight behind them, their expressions grotesque, hungry.

“Already at it, Bro? Sure she’s ready?”

The answer was a grunt and a thrust, but he missed, driving into my pubic bone hard enough to bruise as I clenched my legs together with the last of my strength. Figures shifted above the log. Someone said, “I want a piece ‘o that, man.” I heard laughter, and shoving, and zippers ripping open. A moment later, another man was bending over my head. I smelled beer, cigarettes, and sweaty cock. Brody removed his hand from my mouth to make room for his friend, and to force my legs open.

I screamed as loud as I could.

“Ain’t no one near can hear you, sweet thing,” said the rough voice kneeling over my face.

I heard another motorcycle getting closer. How many of them were there? Could I survive this? Was I going to end up by the side of the road, used, abused, and probably dead?

The arriving motorcycle got louder, its engine revving wildly. The laughter around me turned to confusion and then panic.

“Brody! Elton! Watch out!”

The shadows watching us dispersed as flames shot up in to the sky and fanned out around the campsite. Brody jumped off me, his erect cock sticking out of his jeans. I scrambled to my feet, catching my breath, pulled myself over the log toward the fire. I saw men running, heard engines revving, saw fire scattered everywhere and spreading, and a motorcycle spinning and twisting in the center of the mayhem.

“Who the fuck is that?!” said Brody vaulting over the log and heading straight for the biker in the midst of the fire.

“Get on,” said the biker to me. I shook my head. “Heather! Get on!”

“Josh?”

Brody was only two strides away from him, his hands ready to rip Josh from his bike. I ran forward, grabbed Brody. He shook me off easily. I hooked my leg in front of his to make him trip, but he only stumbled. He turned to me, pissed as the hellfire surrounding him. Before he could reach out and slap me I drove my heel hard into his crotch. He grunted and buckled, his knees crunching on embers. I leaped past him and and swung my bruised and scratched legs over Josh’s bike. His tires spun, sending flames spitting all around us, including in Brody’s face. Half the bikers had already taken off, the other half stared at the scene in front of us. Seeing what was happening, they tried to block Josh’s path. He sped up, broke through their defense. I felt a hand grab my arm but I held on tight to Josh and felt those grabbing fingers scrape across my skin and then let go. I buried my head in Josh’s back, and let the darkness push back the flames left behind.

Josh

Those fuckers! Those goddamned mother fucking fucked up
fuckers
! I could have shot them all. First in the balls and then between the eyes. I ride faster than I’ve ever ridden before, leaving behind those assholes. If they did anything to Heather…
Fuck
!

Her arms gouge into my ribs. She’s clutching, clinging, shuddering, and shaking. I should stop, I shouldn’t drive so fast, but I can’t help myself. I need to put as much distance between us and that fucked up scene as fast as I can. I swerve along the highway. I’m shaking too. Adrenalin courses through my body. We tear through the night. I don’t stop until I see the light of a pay phone.

When I pull over, Heather practically falls from the bike. She looks up at me with vacant, haunted eyes. She’s not really here, I can tell.

“Are you hurt?” I whisper as I hold her up.

She shakes her head. But I don’t really believe her. She may not be bleeding but she’s a far cry from not hurt.

“It’s all right,” I say, pulling her to me and pressing my lips into the top of her head. She’s pretty limp. She holds onto me just for support, not comfort.

“What were you thinking, running away like that?” I say. “I should call the police.”

She shakes her head again. Then she pushes me away—hard, considering how limp she feels.

“Don’t touch me,” she says, and the words are like daggers in my chest.

“What? What’s wrong?”

She’s backing away from me into the road. In the distance, I see lights on the highway and my heart starts to race. Are the bikers coming after us? But it isn’t a line of single headlights. It’s just a car. Just a car passing on the Pacific Coast Highway. Maybe a road-tripper trying to make extra time tonight.

I pull Heather back to me, to the side of the road. She flinches at my touch, but lets me hold her as we lean against the phone booth. I’m thinking to myself that after the car passes I’ll try to get her back on the bike so we can drive back up the hill to our room. She needs to sleep. I want to tuck her in. We can talk in the morning.

The headlights, bigger and set wide, draw closer and slow down. Shit. It’s a pick up truck. It’s pulling over. To use the phone?

“Heather? Can you climb back on? Let’s go back to bed, okay?”

She looks at me with those haunted eyes that I’ve come to love. She shakes her head and my heart breaks a little. I don’t think she trusts me anymore.

The truck pulls over and some guy pours from the driver’s side leaving his door wide open.

“What the hell is going on here?!” He strides over to us. What the fuck?...

Heather turns to him. And pulls away from me.

The guy’s glaring at me. He looks familiar.

Suddenly my arms are empty and his are full of Heather. What the…?

“Brian!” She cries into his chest. He glares at me again and now I recognize him. It’s her boss from the paint store. Shit, this must look bad.

“What the hell just happened?” he demands.

I look at Heather and hold up my hands. I don’t know where to start.

“I just want to go home,” says Heather through her tears. “Brian, take me home.”

He guides her toward his truck. She slides across the driver’s seat and I can’t see her anymore.

Before Brian climbs in after her, he turns to me. “Don’t you dare come near her again.”

Adrenalin is still coursing through my veins but as the pick up truck pulls away I feel it draining away, and I feel the weakness that follows the flight and fight burst. I lean against the phone booth and slide down its side until I’m resting on my heels with my head in my hands. I feel as if I’m going to throw up… I lean to the side and retch until my stomach is as empty as my heart.

Heather

“Bonjourno, Bellisima!”

I opened my eyes at the sound of Leo’s voice and the bang of the front door. I’ve hardly moved since Brian dropped me off yesterday afternoon. First he took me with him to Ojai, where he’d been staying with his kids while his ex was away. She got home Sunday morning, gave Brian a strange look when he explained I was one of his work colleagues, and then we drove back to Los Angeles in his truck. He tried coaxing me to explain what had happened but I didn’t want to talk. He asked if I wanted to press charges. I shook my head and said nothing had happened. Thankfully, nothing had. Nothing that I wanted the police involved in anyway. Brian wanted me to come back to his place. Again, I shook my head. So he dropped me off at home and said he’d be back later with some dinner. I showered and slept and did everything I could to drown out the last 24 hours from my brain.

But I couldn’t stop myself from dreaming…

In my dreams, Pastor Guthrie had Josh’s face. And Josh had Pastor Guthrie’s fingers. The arousal I felt in my dreams made me feel sick when I woke up. I tossed and turned and fell into another dream. In this one, Ethan chased me through a cornfield. He had a moustache like the biker, Brody, and I was terrified of him. When he caught me, he threw me down in the dirt and climbed on top of me. I couldn’t do anything to stop him and he forced himself into me. I woke up slick and hot and uncertain of everything. Even what day it was.

When I heard Leo’s booming voice I knew it must be Monday morning. At first I just rolled over—Brian had told me not to bother coming in to work—but then I shot up in my bed when I realized Josh was probably with Leo. He had tried calling me on Sunday. All day the phone rang and rang and I didn’t answer it. Once I thought I heard a motorcycle cruise by but I had all the doors locked and I didn’t bother to look out the window.

Now Josh was probably in the house. But I didn’t have to see him. I could hide out in my bedroom. He wouldn’t dare come up while Leo was here. I huddled under my covers holding in my pee. I would have to get up eventually, but I could wait until they were busy with their tasks and then sneak into the bathroom. I really wanted to take another shower. To wash my dreams away.

A few minutes later, I heard a
beep-beep-beep
coming from the street—that annoying backing up beeping that big trucks made. I tried putting the pillow over my head but the noise got louder. I mustered the strength to glance out the window. A 5-ton truck with the words Anatole’s Appliances on the side was backing into the driveway. Today must be delivery day. I sighed. Soon the renovation would be over, Marsha and Wayne would be home in a couple of weeks, I would go off to college in the fall, and I could pretend Josh never happened. When the beeping stopped, I crawled back into bed and closed my eyes.

In the next dream I was on the back of Josh’s motorcycle and I felt happy and free and whole. My dream-self was not tainted by my past. My hair flowed out behind me. I lifted my arms and began to take flight. I flew over the highway looking down on Josh as he rode north. Then I turned inland, riding warm thermal currents, and I coasted above The Pepper Berry Ranch. The square turquoise pool shimmered like a jewel. I soared over the forest hills where horses trotted along worn paths. Then the wind changed and I was forced back towards the water, to the beach, past the pay phone, until I hovered over a secluded beach park where the sand and earth had been torn up by skidding wheels around the sooty remains of a bonfire. The charred gray-black logs, tinged with white ash, look like bones. Leg bones and arm bones, hip bones and tiny finger bones, and skulls, so many skulls… These faces of the dead stared up at me as I floated in the sky. Their bones seemed to shift in the breeze, beckoning me closer. I tried to ignore them but I felt myself drawn back to Earth as if a great magnet were pulling on me. I scrambled against this force but I had nothing to hold onto up in the sky. The dead pulled me down. The skulls seemed to be laughing. Finger and hand bones joined with arm bones and worked together to pull me down. They pinned me face-first in the soot, which was still warm and smoky. The ash got in my nose and mouth and I couldn’t breathe. I thrashed about but the bones had crawled on top of me and their weight held me down. I couldn’t breathe. I was going to die here in a pile of ashy embers amongst the dead who had died more than three years ago. I was buried by bones. Some of them were shaking me now. I felt a hand clamp onto my shoulder and pull. The other bones rattled and fought. I fought, too. I tried to reach the hand that was trying to pull me up. The bones started to fall away from me and I could move again. I could breathe… I rolled over and stared up at the sky, which was no longer blue but white.

I heard whispers. “Heather? Heather?… Can you hear me?”

It wasn’t the sky I was staring at but my ceiling. I was tangled in blankets and sheets and someone was pulling them off me. Someone with a living, smiling face…

“Josh?”

Was I still dreaming? No, I was in my room. Josh was kneeling beside my bed.

“You’re burning up,” he said. His hand felt cool on my forehead. I grabbed his hand with both of mind and out poured the deepest sob I didn’t even know I had in me. I rolled onto my side and held my head over the side of the bed and started gasping.

“You need a doctor…”

“No. No, I don’t.” I sat up. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“I was worried. You didn’t answer my calls… I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m not okay. Not with you here. You have to leave.”

My words had hurt him. His face screwed up in a funny way, like he might start to cry or something.

“What happened to you, Heather? Did my father do something to you. Is that why you hate me now?”

Hate? Did I hate Josh? No. I loved him. I loved Josh. I hated Pastor Guthrie. But Josh was his son. I cursed the stars, and Fate.

“You lied to me,” I said. He didn’t really, but it’s all I could think of to say. “You didn’t tell me the truth about who you were.”

“Does it matter that much?” He could tell by my face that it did. He looked down at his hands. “Like you, there were some things I wanted to forget about. Everyday I made myself forget that the man who’s son I am led innocent people to a useless, tragic death. I feel such deep shame about that, even though I didn’t do anything. Everyday I forget about the months he kept me from my mother, trying to convince me that he and his wife were better parents, plying me with candy and toys, and praying for my salvation. I
wanted
to be saved, you know. But by my mother. I wanted her to come rescue me. And when she finally did, I thought I was safe. But three years ago I found out what a monster he really was, and how many people died because of him, and how I could have died in that fire, and you, too.”