Stay Vertical (20 page)

I asked mildly, “Do you want a ride back down the hill? Back to your clubhouse?”

He wasn’t even laughing at his own lame joke. He had that sort of permanent sneer, as though his lip had gotten snagged on a tooth. His teeth were a marvel. “Meth Mouth” had destroyed the enamel and the constant teeth-grinding of the addict had twisted them every which-way. He looked like he munched a box of broken Chiclets. I should have noticed that when he came in from the back, he’d tossed a heavy hammer on the kitchen table. But I wasn’t made aware of that until the following day. Hindsight and all that.

“Yeah, sure,” he slurred. I was so used to Iso being perpetually wasted that it didn’t stand out to me that it was eleven in the morning. Eleven in the morning, drunk, with a bloody hammer. Not a good recipe for success. “But first why don’t we have a little fun?”

It still didn’t sink in to my brain what he was driving at. Fun? No, thank you. I wasn’t in the mood for fun. My sister was expecting me at her McMansion to babysit, and I desperately wanted to ask her permission to tell Lytton the impetus behind Ford’s game-changing actions of last year. I was convinced I could smooth over the deathly Cain and Abel game Lytton and Ford had been playing. In my eternal role as arbitrator and counselor, I could get Lytton to understand Ford’s motivations. Within weeks we would all be one big happy family, going on picnics together, visiting vortexes, swimming in Ford’s kidney-shaped pool.

What a fucking moron I was.

“No thanks. Have you seen my phone around?”

Iso actually grabbed his crotch then. Was that a tip-off for me? Not really. I just figured he was being his usual repulsive self. “You sure you’re not in the mood for a few squat jumps into the cucumber patch? A little ol’ bury the bone? You look like you could use it, especially after riding that egghead’s pecker for so long.”

I was incensed. How
dare
he refer to Lytton’s penis? The two men didn’t exactly go hot tubbing together, so what did Iso know, anyway? Then I shuddered, thinking of a hot tub’s water after Iso had boiled in it. “Never mind. I’ll find my phone myself.”

I took off down the hallway. The three bedrooms of Lytton, Helium Head, and Toby were upstairs. I assumed the remaining downstairs bedroom was an office or storage, where I assumed Iso was sleeping.

“Hey, I wouldn’t go in there if I was you,” Iso called out as I stormed down the hall.

I shouted over my shoulder, “Why, because you took my phone? Iso, I don’t have time to play your games. I seriously need my phone. Do you want me to tell Lytton that you made me late for babysit—”

I shut the hell up when I opened the door.

What sort of room
was
this? A den of torture?

Handcuffs dangled from bolts in the ceiling. A giant human-sized X looked like a medieval torture rack. A padded sawhorse could almost be some kind of gymnastics device, if I brainwashed myself into thinking that. In a certain light, it could have looked like a workout room, were it not for the wall hooks holding paddles, whips, and floggers.

Well, well
. This was definitely unexpected, but I could deal with it. I knew Lytton’s proclivities. They didn’t bother me one shred. What bothered me was the whole rack of collars. That was what got to me. That whole time, he’d had an entire collection of perfectly fine, work horse collars he could have given me. I told myself he was waiting to find something daintier, more expensive, more day-to-day wear, to give me. Or maybe he was going to get me a “Property Of” patch for my leather jacket, like the one Maddy had.

“Well,” I muttered, “whatever.” I proceeded to rifle through stuff strewn about looking for my phone, as though the sadomasochistic furniture and devices didn’t ruffle my feathers one bit. Actually, having to slide aside Iso’s half-eaten plate of food and beer bottle bothered me more. I dreaded finding anything more personal. I knew I’d never find a toothbrush, that was for sure. Another pair of his pants lay on the floor, still partially in the shape of his body, and I was highly hesitant to go through the pockets.
Maybe for some reason Lytton accidentally grabbed my phone when he left this morning?

I must’ve jumped a foot in the air when Iso silently came up behind me. He’d gripped me by the upper arms, though, so I didn’t go anywhere.

He growled in my ear, “You don’t want to take a joy ride? Guess I’ll have to go down the dirt road then.”

What the fuck?
Not only was he starting to scare me with his lewd suggestions, he was talking like a six year old. I managed to jam a rapid elbow into his chest and spin around. “Listen, Iso, I’m not about to lay any pipe with you! See this cuff?”

Iso’s eyes flashed angrily. “Yeah. It’s a stupid fucking cuff.”

“It means that I’m Lytton’s old lady now, so
hands off!
”

I didn’t turn my back on him again, but I darted to the side to inspect a table littered with, ironically, cuffs, ball gags, and leashes. Some cuffs were even nicer than mine, and I remember sort of bristling that he couldn’t have even come downstairs to choose this rhinestone-encrusted one for his cuffing ceremony.

I know—my survival instincts must have been asleep at the wheel or something. But I still wasn’t alarmed that Iso would get out of hand. I mean, I was Lytton’s old lady, and this was his house, right? They had a business partnership and Iso would ruin it for
that?

Apparently I have a gift for overestimating people. No sooner had I brushed aside a pair of Velcro cuffs—like the ones Lytton and I had used in the greenhouse—than Iso whipped them past my fingertips. He’d already fastened one around a wrist before I really comprehended what he was doing.

He was snarling like a dog with rabies, and I cringed away from his foul breath as much as from his grime-encrusted being. “You think I give a shit whose old lady you are? I get what I want. And I fucking want
you
, you cunt.”

I tried kneeing him in the balls, but for a fucked-up wasted guy, he was surprisingly adroit. He sashayed his hips aside time after time while hooking me to a strong D-ring bolted to the wall. I could still reach out with some awkward karate kicks, and Iso dodged all but one that finally connected with his groin. I was wearing the black leather cowboy boots I thought went along with my new image, and they had a firm, pointy toe.

It was a full-on nut kick that had Iso doubled over, mouth gaping with pain. My free hand flew to unhook the cuff from the D-ring.

Iso was faster. Rebounding from the widowmaker kick, Iso backhanded me across the face. I fell to my knees, completely stunned. Everything went black like they say in novels, and I briefly wondered if he’d severed my optic nerve or something. I was so overwhelmed with sudden fear that I didn’t protest when he took my free hand and encased it in a different kind of cuff.

“Fucking cunt,” he muttered as he worked. “Think you’re hot shit because you’re an Illuminati whore. I told Zelov not to trust Driving Hawk. Fucking the sister-in-law of Ford Illuminati? That looks like a lowdown weasel who can’t be trusted, to me.”

Apparently he was yanking on some rope or pulley. Now that my wrist was encased in the new leather cuff, he could pull it toward the ceiling. I was sitting on the floor with limbs splayed, my eyesight coming back. It returned like a reverse tunnel vision, clearing first in the center as though I looked through a long telescope.

I thought of my phone, which I had seen on the table next to a ball gag. It was about six feet too far for me to grab. I was being manipulated like a marionette by some sick and dangerous psychopath.

“There!” he chortled. “You’re not going anywhere now.”

I knew the best reaction to dealing with instances like this was to placidly go along with things. I’d taken Peace Corps classes in diplomatic self-defense and the best course of action was to be submissive. Women who screamed and fussed and put up a fight were the first ones maimed or worse. I might not even be tasting my own blood on my tongue right now if I hadn’t tried to fight Iso.

Playing along is sometimes the best method. I used to watch those survival shows that depicted people extricating themselves from certain death, interviews of women who’d almost been raped and killed. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, hands down, the woman who played along was the survivor. It went against every grain of my being, but I had to pretend to go along. I wasn’t exactly in any physical position to rebel.

Of course, my spiritual conditioning had me making a few feeble attempts. “Iso. My sister Maddy is expecting me at noon. She knows I’m up here. She’ll come looking.”

Oh dear Lord.
He was unbuckling his belt. I’ll never forget—he had a hand-forged buckle with the crossed swords logo of The Cutlasses, the belt so worn the leather was practically disintegrating in spots. Displaying how long he’d been a Cutlass, I guess. “You think I care, cunt? I can just sit on the front porch and pick off anyone who drives up. You think that little girl is going to scare me?”

As if on cue, my phone declared, “Call from Madison!” followed by the honkytonk jangling of the piano ringtone.

Great. Just great.
I knew for sure he’d toss the phone out the window or stomp on it, but he didn’t seem to care. He was too involved in taking his dick out of his jeans, and the stench was unbearable. I turned my head aside and took several deep breaths, knowing I’d have to hold it.

“Driving Hawk thinks he can score all the fine, obedient bitches. He’s been lord of this fucking manor for years, showing off his slaves, his cunts riding up and down the mountain on his pussy pad. Then he has to go and be a woos, shoot me in the foot.”

Iso went on and on in this manner, totally spilling scorn on Lytton. As though they hadn’t just done a job together, as though Lytton wasn’t working hand in hand with his club.

So I dared to ask, “If you hate Lytton so badly, why do you work with him?”

“Zelov tells us to. Hell, we’ve been trying to steal Driving Hawk’s pot for over five years now. Suddenly we’re supposed to believe he’s our friend? No, the only way that fucking blanket-ass Injun is our friend is by giving us nice tight cunt like you.”

He grabbed a handful of my hair so tightly my eyes were forced open. Not only was I choking on the emanations of his stench, he was throttling this long twisted wiener in my direction.

“
Mungu moja,”
I whispered.
One God.

“You’re gonna open wide for chunky, bitch.” I could hear Iso snarling filth as though from the end of a long tunnel. I think my survival instincts finally
were
kicking in, and my senses were shutting themselves down. “Suck my sugar stick, baby.”

He rattled my head around for emphasis, and I felt as though my brains were sloshing around in my skull. He’d probably broken my nose with that fierce backhand, but it could definitely be a lot worse, if only I could open up my jaw and take—

He rubbed the smegma-coated corona against my teeth. “That’s it, you fucking slut. You know you love it. I heard about you sucking Driving Hawk’s big dick out in the greenhouse for the whole fucking world to see. That’s all you want to do all day, give knob jobs to brothers. You’d make a perfect sweetbutt. That’s it, just open up and worship at the altar—
Agh!
”

Maybe it was his horribly juvenile way of referring to sex acts—or in this case, acts of violence against women. I knew sex had nothing to do with forced brutality like this. My body knew it before my mind could mull it over, and automatically, my jaws clamped down around that disgusting appendage.

It was as though I could hear or feel my teeth biting into the glans. There were definitely two or three senses at play simultaneously when my jaws did the Great White Shark around his skin flute. More liquid flooded my mouth as Iso let loose with an animalistic howl.

Instinctively he pulled away, hollering so loud the very equipment around me vibrated. “
What the fuck? What the fuck’s wrong with you, you fucking slut? Why’d you have to go and do that?
”

I spit out blood and whatever else onto the floor. I knew he wasn’t about to leave me alone. I had just enraged him.

Every blow of his fist had me swinging about like a puppet on a string. Which, basically, I was.

Every blow made my world darker. When he bashed my ear, I thankfully stopped being able to hear from that side. One of the last things I felt was Iso tearing my mesh tank top from my torso. He must have grabbed some implement from the wall because he was just lashing and lashing my face and torso with something that had a thousand stingers while seething angrily what mostly sounded like “
Shit…fuck…cunt…
”

“Call from Madison!” my phone kept insisting cheerfully.

I wished to hell he
had
smashed that phone.

LYTTON

“U
gh.”
Did I actually just say “ugh”?

Lytton rolled onto his side and tried to pry his eyes open. They seemed to have been glued shut. Unfamiliar furniture greeted him. Tacky, eighties stuff in pastel shades that made him want to vomit. Again.