Page 2 of Truck Stop Tempest
I closed my mouth tight because he looked really mad. Boys were not nice, but they really weren’t nice when they were mad. I wanted to ask what song that girl was singing. I wanted to ask why Dad and Erik were watching TV, but I didn’t because my brother’s face was all red and scrunchy.
He didn’t talk to me all the way home. He didn’t hold my arm, either. I was glad because my arm still hurt from before.
The next day, Erik found me in my room, under the bed. Every time he came to play with JoJo, I tried to hide. He always found me. I needed to get better at hiding.
Erik told my mom we were going outside to play, but we didn’t play. He made me go to my dad’s secret house. He made me watch the movie with the girl and the rainbow song. He scared me when the lion came on, and he told me I looked like the witch, the bad one, not the good one.
After that day, he made me go to the scary house a lot when my mom and dad were at work and JoJo was with his friends. Sometimes he hit me. Sometimes he yelled at me. Sometimes he made me sit on his lap. Most of the time, he made me lay down, and he laid next to me and wouldn’t let me move until the movie was over. Sometimes, he hugged me. His hugs were not nice. They hurt, and sometimes I couldn’t breathe.
He always sang the rainbow song very loud. “Somewhere over the rainbow…”
He always made me walk home alone, through the woods.
I was happy when Mom told me we were moving far away. I asked her if there was a secret house where we were going, and she just looked at me funny.
I was happy that we were moving until JoJo told me Erik and his mom and dad were coming, too.
I didn’t like rainbows anymore.
15 months ago
Smoke billowed through the large space, seeping through the vents and down the stairwell, choking precious oxygen from the room. I fought unsuccessfully against my binds, thankful that I’d been thrown to the floor where I could still pull a small amount of clean air into my lungs.
Above my head, through aged floorboards and beams, came loud crashes, and screeching, the walls and windows releasing one last battle cry before succumbing to the flames.
Screams haunted me from the far corner of the basement, those of a dead man begging for mercy. Voltolini’s lawyer was their first target, and despite having lived the life longer than I’d been breathing, Mark Norton crumpled after a measly five minutes under the cut of Rafael Turner’s blade, spilling secrets not even I had been privy to.
He’d yet to give up the one thing Turner wanted, Aida’s location, not because he was a strong man, but because he’d been denied the vital details of her whereabouts. He did, however, spill a scarier truth, one that could bring Voltolini to his knees, and ruin a family. A truth I would most likely die for hearing.
That was if I survived the fire. Footsteps pounded around me.
A gruff voice yelled, “Time’s up, Turner.”
Rafael responded, “Who started the fucking fire?”
“Wasn’t us, boss.”
Rafael spit profanities. Fist hit flesh. A body fell inches from my head.
“The house is coming down around us. We go now.”
“Not until I know where they’ve hidden Aida,” Turner argued.
Dumb fuck.
“Won’t fucking matter if we’re dead. We go now. We go now!”
A deafening boom shook the foundation. Embers and shards of wood rained down. More footsteps. A boot caught me in the rib before a heavy body fell, cracking my ribs. The men surrounding me coughed and sputtered before heaving their fallen brother from the ground.
“What about Voltolini?” someone shouted.
“Let him burn,” was the reply. “Let them all burn.”
I fought to free my hands from the binds at my back. Fighting was useless.
“You win!” I shouted into the darkness, surrendering to my nemesis, my only worthy adversary, the Grim Reaper herself. “You win,” I rasped, ready for rest. Ready for peace.
Over the years, Death and I had shared a morbid courtship, dancing around in a twisted game of cat and mouse. Year after year, hit after hit, she would follow me into the dark shadows and offer a nibble of her sweet sanctuary, only to slink away, smiling, after I offered another soul in exchange for my own.