LIKED - A Dark Romance Novel (Story of Dangerous Obsession and Lust) (10 page)

I Don’t Want to Talk About That

“Don’t call her, Gia,” Susan said as she took a step toward them planting
one foot in the spilled orange juice. “And don’t call him Jack anymore. He did
a shitty job of playing the part. He had his chance to have you and he screwed
it up. Her name is Gina Sullivan and his name is Justin Simms. No one gets to
be the star here except for me now, so everyone is going to use their real
names. Because we are finally going to get real and get straight.”

Gia looked down at the man she had called Jack. “Your name is Justin?”

He turned his head and looked away. “Yes.”

“And you sent me all those messages as Jack the Liker.”

“No,” he said.

Susan laughed and took a step back. She pulled herself up and sat on the
kitchen counter leaving an orange juice footprint under her. “He wouldn’t have
the brain to think up the shit you and I talked about, Gina. He could barely
keep it up to get his dick wet inside you when I got you all nice and worked up
for him. He’s pathetic.”

“Shut up, Susan,” he said.

“Shut me up, Justin.”

He swallowed and looked down into his lap.

“What is she talking about?” Gia asked.

“She sent those messages,” he said. “She showed them to me later when she
needed me to do the role play with you. I didn’t know anything about it until
then. Susan is the ‘Jack’ you know and have been talking to online.”

Gia looked up at Susan and Susan blew her a kiss. Gia looked away.

Gia’s voice cracked. “Did you kill Don?”

Justin Simms swallowed three times and finally spoke without looking up.
“She did?”

“You’re better off without him,” Susan said. “You would have figured that
out if Justin could have played his part long enough.”

“Why did you kill him?” Gia whispered.

Susan shrugged. “Sometimes people have to die, Gina. Your mother, our
parents, Old Pastor Jack, Don … lots of people.”

“She had already done it when she called me,” Justin said. “She said she
had confronted him about abusing you and he flipped and that she killed him in
self-defense.”

“That house was a massacre,” Gia said. “That wasn’t self-defense.”

“In our game, Justin believes what I tell him to believe and does what I
tell him to do,” Susan said.

“Stop it, Susan,” Justin said.

“What did you do to him?” Gia shook her head.

Susan narrowed her eyes and shook her head back. “Who?”

“Don.”

Susan tilted her head having her ponytail tip into view over one of her
shoulders. “Do you really want to know?”

“What did you do?” Gia’s voice came out as a weak breath.

“Before he died,” Susan’s voice pitched low. “I’d broken into his house
and beat the living shit out of him with a cricket bat he had hanging on the
wall. Who has cricket bats? LA is full of douche bags. Then, I cut him with
glass. Then I broke his stuff. Then I cut him with other things. Then …”

“Stop it.” Gia yelled. She raddled her cuff as her whole body shook in
her chair. “Just stop it.”

Susan sniffed. “Then … I stuffed him into the storage section of my car
and called Justin to help me save you. I played all distraught. He is a sucker
for distraught girls.”

“Stop it.” Justin closed his eyes and shook his head.

Susan stared at Justin and shook her head before she continued. “I didn’t
let him see the scene you saw. I told him we were going to have to get creative
to save a girl like you, Gina. I told him it was another role play, but it was
the only way to set you free. I got him ready and told him we were going to
your apartment. Then, you were calling Uber on your way to Don’s, so I gave
Justin the new location and we improvised. If he had been in place sooner, you
wouldn’t have had to see all of that, so this was really his fault.”

Gia swallowed on her saliva. After being dehydrated for days, now she
felt like she had too much. As she stared up at Susan on the counter, it kept
building up in her mouth and she kept swallowing. She couldn’t remember what
she had done with saliva in her mouth before that moment in that strange
kitchen sitting in a chair handcuffed to a radiator. She wanted to spit it out
to get rid of all of it building up thick in her mouth. She knew that she
hadn’t spent her whole life spitting on the floor up to that point, but in that
horrible moment at the mercy of Susan, she couldn’t remember what life had been
like before she was a prisoner. What had she done with all her spit?

“Was he …” Gia swallowed the buildup of saliva again. It was a different
temperature than the rest of her mouth. She tried to remember if it had always
been that way.

“Was who what, Gina Sullivan of Dark Orchard, Kentucky?” Susan said.
“Spit it out, bitch.”

Gia swallowed again. “Was Don still in the car when you drove me to his
house?”

Susan smiled and winked. “Well, it’s not like I had anywhere to keep him.
I checked the news on my phone this morning.” Susan patted one of the loose
pockets on her blue pajama pants. “They still hadn’t found him, if they are
reporting correctly. So, he is either still in there with tickets piling up on
my windshield a few houses down from the crime scene or they towed the car to
impound without opening it up. In that Los Angeles sun, it has to be getting
ripe in there. Death is one smell that never comes out either. That’s true in
life and in upholstery.”

Gia leaned forward and spit a wad of clear saliva on the floor between
her feet. She paused and then her stomach muscles tightened into rock hard
knots. She heaved and threw up a swill of orange juice, bacon, eggs, and gummy
toast bites that had not had time to digest. She heaved again and spilled clear
liquid from her mouth on top of it that burned her throat after it had passed.
She heaved a third and fourth time, but nothing more came up. Gia spit a few
times to try to get the raw taste out of her mouth, but failed.

She sat back up and laid her head against the wall behind her so she
wouldn’t have to look at the mess. The trees outside the window over the sink
were swaying again. The motion started to affect the twitching muscles of her
stomach. Gia closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see anything.

Susan laughed. “Thank God the floors in this damn group home were mostly
concrete, huh, Justin? There was a lot of throwing up in here. You remember how
you used to hold my hair?”

Justin’s voice shook. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I used to throw up so much after Pastor Jack used to visit. You
remember, Justin?”

“I don’t want … to talk about it, Susan.”

“Then don’t talk,” Susan shouted. “Shut your fucking mouth, if you don’t
want to talk.”

Gia’s eyes fluttered open. Susan was red in the cheeks where she sat on
the counter. Gia slid her eyes to look at Justin slumped beside the radiator.
Gia’s head started to throb and she moved her eyes back forward to stare at the
ceramic clown with the dead triangle eyes. She wondered if there were any
cookies still inside and her stomach turned again.

“You said you were going to kill him for me, Justin,” Susan said. Her
voice broke with the shake that indicated she was about to cry. Gia cut her
eyes in Susan’s direction. Susan was shaking. Her eyes were glossy. She looked
more full of rage than she did sad. Gia looked back at the cookie jar because
the clown was less frightening than Susan. Susan continued. “You said you
wouldn’t let someone do that to your sister, but you did, Justin. You did let
him do it.”

“We were just kids,” Justin whispered. “I was scared too.”

“We are all scared,” Susan growled. “But I didn’t let that stop me from
cutting Pastor Jack’s brake line and I didn’t let it stop me from taking care
of Don Blackheart.”

“I shouldn’t have left with you,” Justin said. “I shouldn’t have gone
with you.”

“Maybe not,” Susan said. “But you felt guilty that you hadn’t killed Jack
for me. You were my brother and after mom and dad died, it was up to you to
protect me. The police were asking questions. It probably didn’t help that
Gina’s mom was drunk during the accident either.”

Gia blinked, but kept staring at the clown. “What the hell are you
talking about?”

“I’m sorry,” Justin said. “I didn’t know she had cut his brake line until
the accident had already happened. I was seventeen. Susan was sixteen. We just
took off and headed to California as soon as the police showed up here.”

“What are you saying?” Gia shook her head.

“Your mother was on the wrong road at the wrong time when Pastor Jack
came off this hill to pay for his many sins,” Susan said. “Was that five years
ago? Time flies. We are all grown up now, but here we are back in the Sweet
Orchard Group Home throwing up on the concrete floor together just like it was
yesterday.”

Gia swallowed on the sour taste in her mouth staring into the clown’s
shiny, dead face. “You killed my mother? You killed Don?”

“Your mother was an accident,” Susan said. “I was making that up to you
with Don. I was going to give you what you needed and wanted through Justin. You
see?”

“You’re a monster.” Gia breathed.

“You can’t be too upset. You didn’t even come back for the funeral …
until now. We are back to deal with our dead now. Aren’t we?”

“Are we back in Kentucky?” Gia shook her head.

“Sweet Orchard Hill,” Susan said. “The kids may be gone, but the water
and power are still on. The website says they are raising money to renovate and
then will rent the place out for parties. Why wait? We are having a hell of a
time now. Pastor Jack had his last party here too.”

“We are back in Dark Orchard?” Gia closed her eyes feeling dizzy and
weak.

“Sweet Orchard Hill overlooks the bridge the bad girls use to go over to
Mount Seller for cheap booze and blow jobs,” Susan said. “When you left, your
mother started going over there to take your place. She was on her way back
that morning after laying one on and sleeping it off in the parking lot. Turns
out she was still a little drunk when Pastor Jack flew off the hill like a
pervert out of Hell.”

“Shut up.” Gia wiped her eyes with her hand that wasn’t cuffed.

“Shut me up,” Susan said. “If it makes you feel any better, she probably
wouldn’t have got out of the way in time even if she was sober. Old Jack was
flying.”

“Shut up,” Gia growled.

Susan laughed, but then suddenly stopped. Her voice went low again. “Of
course, if you hadn’t left her all alone just like your father did, then maybe
she wouldn’t have been out all night drinking and whoring to meet Jack in the
morning. Just two sinners flying into each other out of control, right?”

Gia screamed making her throat burn worse than the stomach acid had.
“Shut your fucking mouth, you psycho!”

“Leave her alone,” Justin yelled raising his head.

Susan jumped down off the counter and clenched her fists. “Are you
kidding me, Justin? You are ready to defend her from my words, but you wouldn’t
lift a damn finger when I was being hurt?”

Susan charged forward and kicked Justin underneath the chin. His head
whipped back into the wall with a solid clunk. As his head lolled back forward
she kicked him in the center of his chest. He grunted and she kicked him in the
ribs cutting the noise off. Justin pulled his arm up against his side and she
kicked his chest again.

“Come on, Justin,” Susan yelled down at him. “Come on, Jack. Show me how
you are going to protect her from me.”

Gia gripped the back of her chair with her free hand and swung it around
as she stood. The metal edge where the legs met the seat connected with the orb
of Susan’s left eye. She glared into Gia’s eyes as Susan went down. Gia saw
darkness in them as dead and empty as the lifeless clown.

***

Make Me

Gia let go of the chair like it weighed as much as the world. The thing
bounced and rolled away from her across the floor through the orange juice. It
struck the lower cabinets cracking one of the wooden doors next to the hinges.
The handcuff key on the counter danced closer to the edge with the impact, but
then came back to rest.

As Gia leaned out to the limit of where the handcuff on the radiator
would allow her to go, she felt like she had made a terrible mistake letting
the chair slip out of her grasp.

Susan laid on her back staring up at the ceiling. The flesh around her
eye socket had not had time to bruise, but it was swollen up enough to make her
face look misshapen. The eye seemed to be drifting independent of her undamaged
right eye and the lids were forcing shut with the swelling.

Susan let out two short grunts and held up her open hands in the air
grabbing at the empty space. Whatever she was trying to catch, only she could
see it.

Gia pulled against her cuff trying to pull free, but the radiator was
solid, if lifeless. The noise of the metal seemed to bring Susan back from the
world of things she was trying to catch in her vision to reality. The glassy
stare in her disconnected eyes began to drift into angry focus. Susan blinked,
but with the swelling in her face, it looked more like one eye twitching and the
other winking.

Gia stretched out to the end of the cuff along the front of the radiator
reaching up Susan’s body. She could only reach as far as her knee where Susan’s
legs were splayed.

“Jack … ugh, Justin?” Gia said. “Get her phone out of her pocket.”

Justin was curled in a ball in the small corner at the other end of the
radiator where the swirling pipes connected to the wall. He was staring down at
Susan in the floor with eyes wide. There was a bloody, skinned mark on his chin
where his sister had connected with her shoe when she kicked him.

Gia reached across and took hold of Justin’s jaw over his chin. He
blinked several times rapidly and peeled his lips back from his teeth.

“Justin, reach in her pocket and get her phone. Hurry.”

Justin recoiled from her grip and hit the back of his head against the
wall again. He folded to the side away from her head and covered his head with
his free hand.

Susan got one elbow under her body and lifted her head up off the floor
with her eyes squeezed shut.

Gia grabbed Susan by her ankle and yanked her across the floor toward the
radiator. Susan slipped off her elbow and bounced her head on the concrete. She
covered her eyes with both hands as Gia leaned back and pulled her again.

Gia reached out and patted the front pockets of Susan’s pajamas and found
the phone exactly where Susan had pointed when she talked about checking the
news on her phone. She pulled the phone out with two fingers, but Susan shot
up, sitting arrow straight on the floor and grabbed her phone with both hands
pulling it away from Gia.

Susan pumped her legs pushing herself back away from Gia with the phone.
Gia grabbed Susan’s ankle again. Susan kicked until her sneaker popped off, but
Gia held onto the bare foot. She pulled hard and dragged Susan back toward her
through the mess on the floor. Susan kicked with her sneakered foot connecting
hard enough with Gia’s shoulder for her to feel it through her skeleton. Gia
rocked backward into the wall, but managed to hold onto Susan’s ankle somehow.

Susan rolled over onto her stomach and clawed at the floor. Gia saw the
phone in one hand scrap along Susan’s side as she tried to get away. Gia let go
of the ankle and grabbed the phone again.

Susan screamed and came up swinging. She hit Gia across the cheek, but
Gia kept pulling on the phone with one hand. Gia felt Susan’s nails dig into
the flesh of her cheek as Susan bared her teeth and stared wild with her one
open eye.

Gia let go of the phone and drove the heel of her hand into Susan’s
closed eye near the spot where she had struck with the chair. Susan fell back
covering her face with both hands.

Gia looked around the floor, but the phone was gone.

Susan rolled away until she slammed into the legs of the table. Her blue
pajama bottoms were pasted dark to her skinny legs from the orange juice and
dotted with pieces of Gia’s breakfast.

Susan scrambled to her feet and ran out of the kitchen into the main room
wearing one shoe. She kicked the phone with the toes of her bare foot with a
dull ring and she yelped. Susan stumbled through the cord and ran into the side
of the couch.

She recovered and kicked herself free of the tangle. She lifted her one
open eye and glared at Gia. “I’m going to the van and I’m getting something to
make you suffer for this.” Susan stared for another couple beats and then said,
“I’m putting you into the dirt next to your drunk, whore mother.”

“Fuck you!” Gia screamed and lurched out toward Susan along the radiator as
far as the handcuff would allow her.

Susan smiled at the reaction and vanished around the corner. Gia screamed
again and picked up the loose shoe. She threw it over the couch and bounced it
off the wall between the clown’s balloons and a giraffe.

***