Jessie

Author's note:

This chapter contains no sexual activity. If that's your motivation for reading, please pick up the story again next week.

This chapter contains discussions of injury, crime, violence, suicide, physical and mental trauma, and other mature topics. If that would bother you, please skip this chapter.

As always, thanks for all your feedback, votes, and views.

###

'cuz my Monsters are real

And they're trained how to kill...

- Monsters, Shinedown

###

I'd done this before.

Too many fucking times.

Answered the questions while an officer jotted down in a clipboard or notebook.

Handed over firearms to the authorities because someone else had shot at me.

Undressed for a doctor to document and inspect my injuries.

Been on the receiving end of deadly violence.

I'd done it too many fucking times before and I was getting fucking sick of it.

I had a broken rib, and the doctors didn't know the extent of the long term damage to my hearing, we'd know more in a few weeks, but it was safe to say there were frequencies I'd never hear again.

Jessie had a minor concussion from hitting her head on the floor when she fell. She swayed on my arm and was slurring her words.

McKenna was woodenly answering questions in the presence of her lawyer - apparently being one of the richest people in the city gets twenty-five hundred dollar an hour defense attorneys out of bed at two in the morning. I wondered if the guy slept in a pod or powered down at night or something - he'd walked into the hospital looking as fresh and chipper as if it had been ten in the morning. Gotta be a clone or a droid or some shit.

And Sienna... Sienna was fucked up.

I left Jessie out in the hall and walked into See's room. She looked lost and alone in an ocean of white bedsheets, eyes unfocused and groggy and elsewhere. Her status as an opioid addict meant the hospital had to get creative with painkillers, and they were trying ketamine first.

She NEEDED the painkillers. Morgan and the Brotherhood had tortured her.

She had multiple broken ribs, though it was anyone's guess whether they were from getting kicked inside my house or before, she steadfastly refused to answer any questions about The Brotherhood. Two of her teeth had been pulled. Her nose has been broken.

And her tattoos had been burned off. Her arm and opposite shoulder were swaddled in bandages, and last I checked, the doctors were discussing the possibility of skin grafts. If she'd been self-conscious about her one long scar before, she'd never wear short sleeves again.

Needless to say, she was doped to the gills.

I looked down at the blonde, and my heart broke. She didn't deserve this. I wished I could feel this pain for her instead. I'd take her place in an instant.

"Hey schoolgirl," I whispered, and she took a moment to focus on my face.

"Hey, professor."

"How you doing?"

"I...I feel like shit."

"You look gorgeous though."

She smiled drunkenly, and I could see the spaces that Morgan had ripped into her face. Motherfucker.

"You lie."

"Nope. You have always been one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen."

She closed her eyes, reopened them slowly.

"I need to ask you a question."

"Yeah?"

"What was he looking for?"

Those tired, defocused eyes looked out beyond the room. Somewhere back in time. What she saw scared her. "It's a bomb. No password, he's bad with computers. Got him drunk and he showed me. Don't tell anyone...they'll kill me."

"What?"

"My shoe."

"You're not making sense, See."

She shifted in bed, and looked up at me with an expression like she wanted to cry but didn't know how. "Gary?"

"Yeah."

"Will you still take care of me now... now that I'm not pretty anymore?"

I felt tears well up in my eyes. I blinked them away, leaned down, and kissed her forehead. Dammit, she felt good just to TOUCH her, to reassure myself that she was still warm and alive and here in my presence. "Of course. I lo - " I caught myself. "I'll let the nurse know to check on you."

Another shift, another sad look, and then she closed her eyes.

I walked out of the room. Jessie leaned on the wall tiredly, looked up at me. "She good?"

"I've got no idea."

We walked past the waiting room, and I nodded at Don. He was sitting with McKenna and her lawyer. Jane played with a worn dollhouse in the corner, picked from a pile of toys the hospital kept for bored kids.

I'd given my competitive shooter friend a couple hundred bucks to stay and watch over Sienna and Ashley for a day or two. It was getting to be the off-season for construction, and he was looking for a side hustle before snow removal started. Drinking coffee in a waiting room and watching over two women was easy. No Brotherhood assholes would sneak in to finish the job on his watch. For a guy who wore just jeans and t-shirts, I had been surprised before by how many guns he could produce on a moment's notice. Woe to anyone who tried to fuck with my friends.

###

We took Jane home, and I took the morning streets slow, window down laying the warm fall morning air stream through the truck. The city was awake, alive, people going on about their day, listening to our trauma on the radio like it was mass-produced for their morning consumption like their Cocoa Puffs and over-sugared orange juice.

The police had promised us a rotating guard, and I saw the police car assigned to us exiting the street as we pulled up to our house.

The answering machine had run out of space for all the messages left by reporters, and I deleted them all with a snarl. I'd seen the media carry water for The Brotherhood for two years now, they didn't have any interest in telling the truth about what had happened here.

There were bloodstains on the dining room tile, surrounded by white tape, and I covered them with towels while Jessie set out our McDonald's breakfast in the living room. She and Jane ate while I went upstairs.

It felt like a violation to search Sienna's belongings, but I did anyway. What had she said last night, in a shoe? She had like six pairs, and I pried out insoles, picked at the heels of each one.

I found it in a battered old New Balance. A compartment had been razor-bladed out deep in the heel, a flash drive inserted, foam replaced, insole over the top. I held the little piece of plastic in my hand as I knelt on the floor, turned it over and over between my fingers.

This was death.

People had died for it. People would continue to die for it. Something so simple, so innocuous, it was as dangerous as plutonium, and I held it in my hand.

I wanted to crush it. Destroy it.

I wanted to open it immediately.

I went back downstairs to eat breakfast with my family. I'd call McKenna later.

###

"You owe me," McKenna said with a pout.

"Yeah. I know."

"For the computer, not last night, dummy."

"For both."

She shrugged. "Did what had to be done. It's not like I had a choice."

"You shouldn't have had to. This is the second time you've saved my life. Thank you."

"You're welcome. I won't say it been fun, but it's been real."

"Lawyer say anything?"

The little programmer shrugged. "Clear cut self-defense. Pretty sure Castle Doctrine applies. We're betting I don't even see a courtroom, much less a holding cell."

"Good." I grinned.

"And since those Brotherhood asswipes were holding guns, and you know, actively engaged in a crime, it's gonna be hard for the cops and the media to sweep this under the rug. They've gotta acknowledge it now."

"How are you doing? You know..."

McKenna sighed. "I'm ok. I wish... I just... I'm tired of violence, you know. On the radio, on TV, in our lives. This shouldn't have happened. But it did. And now we've all gotta live with it. I went back home for the computer, someone had spraypainted "Die fascist cunt" on my door."

My jaw tightened and I clenched my fists. "Everything alright?"

"Yeah, they didn't get in. My computers are safe. And since I'm staying here for a while, so am I. This place is a castle."

"Yeah, don't get too comfortable, I'm sure those media douchebags will be showing up soon."

"I'll tell them to fuck off. Maybe give a very profane interview. Something they can't use."

"Good girl."

"So about your computer."

"Yeah."

"Just like you requested. No internet card. Operating system wiped. Completely. Same with the BIOS, it has a new one." She held up another flash drive. "Here's your operating system. Custom Linux distro. Loads into memory, nothing left on the computer once you pull the drive out. That thing is just a brick."

"Thanks. I need something secure."

"For full security, keep the machine air-gapped. Don't turn it on in a room with any other electronics. I've heard tell of security systems that reactivate in a computer by communicating through inaudible audio pulses with other machines. Hell, I heard of one that was able to communicate by turning the fan on and off. It's rare, but you want security..."

"Will do."

"What do you need it for? This is a pretty specific request. Like, if I came to you and asked for a sniper rifle, you'd know I wanted to shoot someone far away..."

"I'll tell you tomorrow? I need to figure out what I've got first."

"Sound good."

###

After dinner, I helped Jessie clean up. She and McKenna were gonna take Jane to see Sienna, then come back and go to bed after doing some homework. She looked like death, moving robotically, if unsteadily around the kitchen.

I stopped her, hands on her hips like we were dancing, and she looked up up me confused. "What's up?"

"Wondering how my girl is."

She sighed. "Tired. Worried. Anxious. And it doesn't help I'm dizzy and I'm getting angry randomly. Trying to control it when I sense it, but... I'm sorry if I've been hurtful to you."

I kissed her forehead. "No worries." She'd snapped at me over dinner, something stupid, and I'd had to remind myself that irritability came with a concussion.

"I'm looking forward to getting See back home. Trying to start some kind of normal life again. I'm a bit behind in my classes, but the professors understand."

"Let me know what I can do to help, ok?"

She chuckled. "What do you know about being a nurse?"

"If it bleeds, put pressure on it. If it's hot, cool it down. If it's cold, warm it up. If it smells, wash it out."

Jessie burst out laughing, stood up on tiptoes, kissed my nose. "I LOVE you, Gary. But don't you dare go into medicine, you caveman."

"Better at putting holes in stuff than closing them up."

###

I waited until the girls had left, poured myself a drink, and took McKenna's brick of a computer and the pair of flash drives upstairs.

Airgapped, huh?

Fuck, I had a lot of electronics. The voice controls for the doors and windows were in just about every room, clocks and tablets and phones and even a smart microwave in the tiny kitchen. I hadn't really noticed it until I started looking, but I'd really installed a lot of things with cameras, microphones, and internet connections in my house.

Finally, I settled on my weight room. I left my phone in the bedroom, shut the door - dumb, one of a few -and sat down against the wall. McKenna's loaned laptop flickered on after a moment after being plugged in and having its flash drive operating system installed, and I found myself looking at a fairly common Linux home screen. I plugged in Morgan's flash drive, loaded the file explorer, and paused before selecting the drive.

It felt like the computer might explode, and I could feel my heart rate accelerate.

A drink to steady my nerves, and I double-clicked.

It was a big drive, lots of studio and video files. I selected one at random.

###

Three hours later, I rose and set the computer on the weight bench. I wanted to smash it. I wanted to burn the flash drive. I wanted to take a shower. With Drano, scrub the caustic liquid into my skin until it erased the creeping dirty feeling spreading through my body.

I wanted to sit and cry and not get out of bed for a year.

I wanted to put my gun to my head and paint the wall with my brains just so I could ESCAPE.

Getting drunk seemed like a good idea. Seemed like a fantastic idea.

I had to think about walking for a minute, concentrate on something other than awfulness. This drive needed to be hidden. Where?

It was the work of a moment to pop the end off a thirty round rifle magazine, and I pulled the spring out, stuffed in a pile of tissue paper, added the drive, added more paper, put the base back on. I put it with a pile of empty mags at the back of my safe. On second thought, I locked up my Sig too. I felt naked without its weight on my side, but guns and alcohol don't mix.

I headed downstairs. Jessie and McKenna were sitting on the couch, Jane 's head resting on the little programmer's lap as they all watched an episode of The Waltons. I paused for a moment. Hard to believe something that pure had come from someone so evil. Existed in a world so evil.

Jessie saw my face and her expression changed to shock. "Gary, did you get a call? Did something happen? Why are you crying?" She started to rise and I backed up. I didn't want to touch her. Didn't want to infect her.

"Going out. I'll...be. Back. At some point."

I let the screen door slam and I heard footsteps on the porch behind me, Jessie watching me walk away, probably.

My neighborhood was dark and familiar, the fall air warm as I passed under the still, shadowed trees. Some houses still had lights on, third shift workers returning home, night owls watching TV, people blissfully unaware of the rot and violence in the world, unaffected by the news. They had to know something was wrong, right, like a song they couldn't quite remember the lyrics to, the feeling of badness had to be there at the edge of their consciousness.

How could they just go on?

How could I just go on?

Everything felt fake, the beautiful warm September night felt like a projection over a world that would be horrifically ugly once I flipped a switch and turned the lights on.

Fuck, it would be. All I need to do was reach out and flip, and the whole corrupt fucking thing would burn to the ground.

I let myself in the back of Ashley's store, I knew where she kept the key. I moved through the small building by the light of the moon and the exit signs, avoiding the glass and blood on the floor, ducking crime scene tape. I knew what I was looking for.

I stood in front of her small display of liquor, staring at a frosted bottle with spidery black writing. It seemed to glow in the night, blue light from the moon and orange from the streetlight cutting hard shadows of black over the entire store and reflecting crazily off and through every glass surface.

Hadn't had that in...how long? Four years? Five now?

I dropped a fifty on the counter, took the Chopin, left the store, and locked up.

No traffic, and I walked down the center of the street all the way to Greene Park. There were just a few lights at the perimeter, and I cut through the darkened lawns under black trees reaching towards a sky slightly less black.

I took a seat at the basketball court bleachers, twisted the cap off the bottle, inhaled the scent. Looked at the word "Chopin" for a long time.

I took a long swallow from the bottle, coughed as the warm, slightly sour alcohol stung my lips and tongue and throat. Took another.

I'd gained a taste for the stuff after my parents had died. I'd lost that taste sometime since moving to Milwaukee. Let's see if I could find it again.

"Whatcha doing?"

I shook my head to clear the cobwebs from it. The vertical and horizontal hold were gone, like a broken TV. There was a considerable amount missing from the frosted glass bottle. Maybe the missing liquor was with the TV remote.

"Thinking."

Jessie sat down beside me. "You look like a wino."

"Thanks." I passed her the bottle, she took a sip, made a face, and I took a slug when she handed it back.

"Whatcha thinking about?"

"Dying. Killing people."

"Reasonable."

"This isn't my first rodeo with bad people, violence," I told her.

"I know. Denver, the farmers market. Minneapolis."

"Before that, even." The words felt like they needed to be coughed out.

"Yeah?"

"College. Technically..." I sighed and looked at the stars glowing in the blue-black sky, the city lighting up the horizon. "Technically I'm still on the run."

"For what? What could you possibly have done?"

I laughed harshly, took a drink. "Lots. 'course, the only two people who could finger me for it are dead, so... I'm safe."

My lover was silent, respectful, waiting for me to continue or not, at my own pace.

Fuck it. Why not rip this particular scar open too?

"My high school, college girlfriend, Cady, she had this friend, Nina." My voice came out it a growl.

"The one who died."

"Was murdered," I corrected her pointedly. "A few years younger. Remember what I told you was done to her? The religious mutilation? Her family wanted that done to her even back then. I guess they even have...fuckin'... DOCTORS for that stone age shit. Specialists. Cady told me and Mike and we decided we weren't going to let that happen. So we found the doctor, were just gonna scare her. And..." My mind drifted away to a cold Minneapolis winter night, fear and anger and pure, clear rage so distilled as to be holy.

Jessie blew out a long breath. "You killed them."

"I walked into a room with a bloody mattress on the floor. It had restraints on it. And fuck me, but I felt evil. I felt the physical, corporeal manifestation of all that was fucking evil in the world. How someone could do that to kids, to anyone. And I wanted to be evil too. I wanted to paint the world with their blood, a big fucking stop sign of pain to stop anyone from ever being that cruel again. I wanted to die so I didn't have to see it, feel that anger and violence and so fucking dirty. I still feel stained by it, whenever I let myself think about, which ain't too fucking often."

"Gary." Jessie's voice was forceful and direct. "What did you do?"

I turned and grinned. "Mike and I made sure she never did it again. And then we got Nina away from her family. And that was that. She floated in and out of my life until they caught up to her and got their revenge. If you're wondering, no, I didn't murder that...doctor. But it made the papers. Ruined my relationship with Cady."

"Sounds like you did the right thing. Whatever that was, sounds like that woman deserved it."

"She did. In spades. Heres the thing though...if I don't do that, if I just walk on past and let that awfulness happen to an innocent girl, my life...its perfect. I marry Cady. Two point five kids. Picket fence. Job as a programmer. Maybe Google. I never meet Tori. I don't become a teacher. I don't meet Sienna. I don't meet you. I don't get shot. I don't send Sienna away and she doesn't meet Morgan. All I had to do was just turn my head, let something bad happen, convince myself I couldn't do anything, and everything changes."

"And that's what's got you out drinking vodka out of the bottle at one in the morning in a ghetto park. You want your old life. Back."

"No." I turned back to her, vehemence and anger in my voice. "That's the bitch of it. I don't know how I could've done anything different. Every FUCKING choice, I've had to make. I couldn't live with myself if I DIDN'T do everything I've already done. Its like fucking...fate or something. And I'm sick of it. I want it to stop!"

"How do we stop this, how do we fix this, Gary? What can you do, what can I do? I see this is hurting you, how do we fix it?"

"I don't want to do it anymore!" I exploded at her. "I don't want to wait around for the world to burn down around my ears, for some violent asshole to come looking to kill me because he feels he's entitled to it! I don't want someone coming to arrest me because I'm living with and sleeping with two women and they think I'm a fucking polygamist, or coming to arrest me because my gun holds too many bullets! These people who think they have the right to fuck up my life when all I want to do is live in fucking peace, I want to fucking kill them! I want to cut them into pieces while they scream and I'm sick of feeling like that and I just want it to STOP!"