Take One With You
Authors: Oak Anderson
Table of Contents
Published by Valley of Saints
Copyright
©
2014
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
The use of trademarks, company names and logos in this work of fiction are not authorized by, or sponsored by the owners, and are used only as a means for enhancing realism in the story.
Cover Design by Oak Anderson and Minh Trinh
Mom and Dad
Thank you for your guidance and an incredible life. I love you.
“Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.”
-Socrates
“It’s better to burn out than fade away.”
-Kurt Cobain
“We get what we deserve.”
- Melissa “clairebear” Williamson
Take One With You (Sarah’s Song) Towy Kings
Farmerland Music, LLC
Gunshots after midnight, winter’s on the way
You’ll never see me comin’, you’ll never know my name
Let’s try a poison cocktail, or blades will do just fine
We’ll make it final, baby, just as long as you’ll be mine
Be my Towy, baby
Breathe your last with me
Go with me, sweet Towy
Across a bloody sea
Accidents will happen and darkness will descend
It’s never what you start off with that lasts until the end
The world’s a better place because of what you take away
It’s never what you think that makes you want to leave or stay
You’ll never see me coming
You’ll never change my mind
I’ll take one with me, baby
Then take you one last time
Be my Towy, Charlie
Breathe your last with me
Be my friend, sweet Charlie
Across my bloody sea
They’ll never see us coming
They’ll never change our mind
Let’s take one with us, baby
Then take me one last time
Be my Towy, baby
Breathe your last with me
Be my savior, baby
Across our bloody sea
Be my Towy, baby
Across our bloody sea
“Take one if you want.”
Max turned his attention from the sad, fading pictures over his soon-to-be-ex-cellie’s bunk and glared at the pathetic piece of shit who’d pasted them there.
“Fuck you, faggot,” he said with disgust, completely comfortable with the irony that he had systematically sodomized his weaker cellmate for most of his eighteen-month sentence. Max pled down to assault after the chick he’d viciously raped and beaten ended up with brain damage and couldn’t remember dick. Time served on the reduced charge was the easiest time he’d ever done. Traumatic brain injury was definitely the way to go.
That and Rohypnol.
“You think I wanna keep looking at those ugly sluts a yours?”
Max would have given the smaller man a beat down just for the hell of it if he wasn’t being released that very afternoon.
Not worth fucking that up for this shithead. Dumbass is doing life on the installment plan.
Max pulled out his own photo, from a sweet blonde honey in daisy dukes who called herself Missy and promised to be waiting outside that very day. He wasn’t sure how she’d found him since he didn’t post those dumbass personal ads in
Horny Inmates Digest
or whatever fucking rag his cellie used, but if she didn’t look like the picture, Missy was gonna get fucked up that very night. She’d get fucked up, anyway, of course, but if she was ugly he’d make it hurt a little extra. Max smiled. He couldn’t decide which he preferred.
“Shit, she’s fine,” his cellmate said, leering over the photo.
Max quickly yanked it back before the asshole could grub it up. He felt like he should slap the shit out of him for good measure, but there was also an absurd pride in the fact that his paper doll was so much better looking than any of the loser bitches who lined his cellie’s spank wall.
“Goddamn right she is,” Max answered, and pocketed the picture.
“Let’s go, Maxie.”
He turned to see Leadhead, a smirking guard who’d brought a whole team with him just to escort Max downstairs where he’d process out.
“You must think I’m a real dangerous man,” he jeered.
“You want we should come back after you book a whammer?” Leadhead asked, causing the other guards to bust up laughing at the thought of Big Max actually blowing his smaller cellmate.
“Fuck you,” Max answered, but he had to chuckle at that one.
As if.
***
He had to squint to see her as he walked out of the prison, but even with the blazing sun setting behind her, Max could tell by the silhouette that Missy was every bit as curvy in person as she was in the photograph.
He grinned and strode across the hot pavement where she was leaning against what looked like a brand new crotch rocket, spit-shined and gleaming, a helmet hanging from each handgrip. The closer he got, the better he liked. Looked like a bottle job,
but who gives a shit if the fucking curtains don’t match.
Her shirt was small, her shorts were tight, and those boots were definitely made for walking. Real slow and sexy-like.
“Big Max,” she said when he stopped a few feet away, still slightly amazed at his good fortune.
“In the flesh.”
“Been waitin’ for my Bandit,” she said, and he smiled even more broadly.
This chick is a little crazy. Or stupid. Either way, I like it.
“You know the Motel 6 in Porterville?” she asked, her lips wet and sultry.
Max nodded. He didn’t, but he’d find it.
“Take me there.”
Max leaned in, but she stuck a helmet in his gut, put the other one on, and motioned towards the bike.
“What’cha waitin’ for, big man?”
Max grinned and put on the helmet, mounting the bike in a single, fluid motion. He’d caught a wild one, that was for damn sure.
Best play along till we get there.
She climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, hands clasped four inches north of heaven. Big Max was acutely aware of her soft body, its heat burning into his back. He didn’t waste any time, starting the bike and roaring up the prison road towards Highway 99, grinning from ear-to-ear as he gunned past a slow-moving station wagon, reveling in the open road before him. He had no idea that would be his last memory for a very, very long time.
***
“Melissa! Come inside, sweetie!”
Missy dropped the dented pail and ran towards the house, her dress shoes kicking up splotches of mud across her formerly pristine white dress. She banged into the house, the tattered screen door slamming open and closed behind her, leaving tracks across the worn beige carpeting that, like the rest of the furnishings, had seen much better days.
“Goddamnit!”
Her foster mother just stood there speechless as her husband cursed, his large, callused hands already moving to unbuckle his belt. The action seemed reflexive, almost like an involuntary motion over which he had no control, which was not far from the truth on most days, but especially when he drank.
His wife, a slight, drab woman who could blend into almost any background, stood aside and stared at the floor. She had learned long before not to get in between the man she married and any of her children, whether her own or the foster kids they took in for the money.
Bud was a violent man, but he did not discriminate.
“No, Daddy!”
Claire stepped in front of her younger sister, pleading eyes and resolute stance. She had managed to keep them together through several placements after the death of their parents, and often found herself in the role of protector. Melissa had behavioral problems, perfectly understandable in light of what she’d been through at such a young age, and several families had attempted to take in only the older, better-behaved girl. Claire, however, always seemed to know what to say and how to act to make sure that idea was never advanced and the girls stayed together.
Bud stopped in his tracks, but he finished taking off his belt. His wife turned away and gathered their two natural born children, silently moving them into the bedroom to wait out the storm.
Bud smiled grimly. He had to admire the pretty one’s balls.
“Have it your way, Princess.”
***
They were really flying now. Her hands were on his arms, lightly squeezing and scratching in an unspoken request for more speed, and Max eagerly complied. When he hit ninety, she reached down and squeezed something else, and he throttled up again.
This chick is fucking crazy,
he thought,
and I like it!
Behind him, Missy’s tears flowed like liquid fire, hissing in the wind as they burned off below her darkened faceguard.
***
Claire stood before the judge in silence, watching intently as the old man looked through their voluminous case file. Melissa stood next to her, trying to conceal her fear. Usually just being near her older sister was enough to calm her nerves, but today was almost unbearable. Claire was barely seventeen, and even Missy understood that it was a lot to expect.
The judge finally looked up, somewhat bemused to see the two teenagers still standing as if there was a verdict to be read. He glanced at opposing counsel, who was idly sorting her other case files like a bored housewife examining swatches.
“You can sit down, you know,” the judge said, not unkindly, but neither girl budged. The older one gave him a polite smile, though, which he took as an understanding of some kind. He thought the younger girl looked ready to jump out of her skin, but every so often her sister would squeeze her hand and that seemed to quiet her younger sister’s nerves. As the father of three girls, the judge remembered quite well what a task that could be at times.
He closed the file and considered the two young women.
Fourteen and seventeen, eyes as dark as their hair. Parents killed nine years ago by a drunk driver. What a life so far.
The judge looked at their court-appointed representative, who appeared to be texting beneath the table. He cleared his throat and got the social worker’s attention, then spoke directly to the girls.
“I’m going to speak informally for a moment, is that all right?”
Claire answered in a clear, confident voice that was a bit too loud for the silent courtroom. “That’s fine, Judge.” She squeezed Melissa’s hand and the younger girl nodded and may have said something he couldn’t hear, or perhaps there was no sound at all.
“How many foster homes have you two been in, Claire?”
“Six.”
“How many?”
“I don’t count the Chadwicks,” she said. “That was only a week.”
The judge saw a faint smile almost lift the corners of the younger girl’s mouth before falling back in line with the seriousness of her sister’s tone.
“Do you really believe you can take care of yourself and your sister if I grant your motion?”
“Your Honor, the state doesn’t believe Miss Williamson can care for herself, let alone her sister,” the state’s attorney interrupted, now fully roused from her sleepy swatches.
“Can, too!”
Everyone now looked at Melissa, whose vehemence was like a cannon shot across still waters.
This time it was the older girl who nearly smiled.
The judge looked at the state’s attorney coldly and she promptly shut her mouth. The girls’ caseworker, who a moment ago looked as if he was about to speak as well, now thought better of it and looked down at his legal pad to avoid a similar fate.
“I’m going to give you a chance, Claire,” the judge said, turning his attention to the older girl, and the words were barely out of his mouth before the two sisters’ four knees seemed to buckle at almost exactly the same time and they fell into each others’ arms for support, as if an invisible bearing wall had collapsed between them.
The rest of the hearing was a blur, but both girls knew their lives were about to change forever. What they didn’t know was that ‘forever’ would not last beyond a few short years.
***
“Faster!” Missy screamed, and reached forward as far as she could, placing her hand over Max’s and throttling up until they were going over a hundred miles an hour. She was hanging off the bike like some crazy bulldogger, and Max was once again both shocked and turned on by her recklessness.
Missy immediately ran her hand down his arm and then reached inside his shirt, caressing his prison-hardened chest for a moment before allowing her fingers to drift downward, and all other thoughts flew from his mind.
All Max knew was that this chick was going to take his rod in every hole and twice on Sunday.
“Goddamn, girl!” he screamed, and pushed the bike up to a hundred and ten.
Can’t get to that motel fast enough!
Missy ripped off her helmet with one hand and released it into the wind, the sound of it skittering across the grooved pavement behind them never reaching their ears. Her long blonde hair with her dark roots whipped around their heads like a frenzied, honey-colored tornado dancing around its blackened soul, and when she lifted his helmet off and let it go, Max was as horny as he had ever been in his life.
“I’m gonna fuck you good, you goddamn whore!” he screamed, but the sound of his voice, like everything else, was lost in the wind.
***
Melissa threw open the door. She’d been up all night, frantic. Two police officers were standing there. She read the truth in their eyes, and burst into tears.
***
For a moment everything stopped, as if the bike was moving so fast that time itself slowed. It seemed as if her consciousness had somehow released its bond to the physical world, and she was looking at its wonders not as a participant, but as an observer. She turned to the right and saw the landscape frozen in a kaleidoscope of color and form. Each sound was now a single, crystalline track not yet merged into a symphony of engine noise and wind and speed, and it was all perfectly clear and focused.
At that moment it almost seemed possible to just let go, both physically and emotionally. In an instant she could put it all behind her, erase everything that had been and everything that was to be. Nothing was set in stone. Nothing was inevitable. In her mind, Missy threw open her arms and tumbled backwards, floating in space, and the bitter cup passed from her lips and slowly faded outside her grasp into nothingness.
Was that how it felt for Claire? As her mind slowly gave way? As she finally buckled after so many years of relentless pressure and gave in to the world that had done nothing but crush her spirit? Or did it better describe her final thoughts as she laid tracks up her arms in that cheap motel, finally clear on her own final solution?
Her eyes found his in the side mirror. The eyes of the man who ruined everything. It wasn’t the world. It was him. Missy looked into the eyes of the man who was responsible for Claire’s death, and reality flooded back like a cold slap in the face.
“Almost there, baby!” he yelled, and it was then that he saw her eyes, really saw them for the first time in two years. And Big Max knew that he’d fucked up. He’d been blinded by the hair and the tits and the ass and the attitude, and he’d never really looked into those eyes. It was then that he saw her, really saw her, and knew things weren’t going to go as he’d planned.