Page 10 of Ballistic

“Thanks again, Brother. I’ll let you know if anything comes up,” the one who’d called me baby answered back.

Dax.

The monster inside my belly retreated, and that name followed me back into the void.

* * *

I awoke in what felt like minutes. My body shuddered as another wave struck my stomach, and against the restraints at my wrists, I curled into myself as much as I could, hoping if I made myself smaller, the pain might shrink, too.

The hard plank surface beneath me prodded my muscles, and the once cool sheet had become too hot against my skin, like sandpaper scraping across it with a chasing burn. Every sensation had intensified, and the pressure in my belly felt as if it might explode, pop my insides open.

Branches of ice snaked across my bones and vibrated with the kind of chill that tickled the chest. The kind no amount of blankets could smother. Acids gurgled somewhere deep inside of me, a volcano of sickness ready to erupt, and I turned my head in time to expel it from my body. A burning torrent that fell into a black hole set beside the bed. Through a sleepy haze, I focused on the shine around the rim of it, and realized I was staring down into a trash bin.

After I’d emptied my stomach, I lay back on the pillow and stared up at the white stucco ceiling above me, muscles tense as the creeping threat of withdrawals settled over me. The words of my mother rattled inside my head, like noise bubbling inside a hot kettle. Prayers she’d whispered while slung over a dirty toilet, or lying passed out in bed on nights she’d gotten so drunk she couldn’t even remember her own damn name.

O Lord, in your anger punish me not; in your wrath chastise me not. For your arrows have sunk deep in me; your hand has come down upon me. There is no health in my flesh because of your indignation; there is no wholeness in my bones because of my sin. For my iniquities have overwhelmed me; they are like a heavy burden, beyond my strength.

Those were times I’d sneak out of the house and roam the neighborhood alone. That was how I’d met Dmitry and ended up on the shit-list of the state’s most dangerous criminal. His name chiming inside my head left an encroaching black obscurity on the fringes of my consciousness. Perhaps another blackout.

I could’ve laughed, if not for the tears stinging my eyes, as the acids burned my throat, while my memories took me back to nearly seven years ago.

* * *

“Momma. Wake up.” I shook my mother’s bony shoulder, and slipped the thinning strap of her worn bra back up her arm. “Wake up.”

The stench of sex clung to the air. I shouldn’t have known that smell at my age, but I did, and I buried my nose into the crook of my elbow to keep from breathing the filthy scent into my lungs. Beside my mother lay a pig of a man I couldn’t stand to look at, sleeping passed out in the white sheets of the bed, on the side where I sometimes snuck to on nights I couldn’t sleep. His tongue hung out of his mouth, the drool dried in white patches across his cheek as his snores filled the room.

The sheets would have to be bleached.

He ran the trailer park where we lived, like one of those mafia guys in the movies that came around collecting money. Only we didn’t have much that week, which probably explained why he’d spent the night.

Momma didn’t believe in women sleeping with strange men, but she thought him to be charitable, in the way he’d cut her a break on rent in exchange for her company.

An act of God.

The man lying next her was the furthest thing from being pure and holy as far as I was concerned, but she liked to make up her own rules about the Bible sometimes.

I looked around the room at all the empty bottles lying about. She’d spent the grocery money on beer and liquor again. Maybe fifty empties I could return at ten cents apiece. It’d get me something.

I grabbed a discarded plastic bag from the floor and gathered up the cans and bottles, dumping the last bits of beer into a red Solo cup that held cigarette butts on the nightstand beside Pigman, as I called him. Bending to the floor, I reached just beneath the bed and slid the can of Busch toward me, eyeing the brown wallet sticking out from the back pocket of the fat bastard’s jeans. Scanning back up to where he slept, I kept my gaze locked on his face, grimacing at the glisten of his sweat seeping into the bed, where there’d undoubtedly be a yellow stain left over. His gut hung over the edge of the bed, like a whole other human grasping to him for dear life. How she could sleep with such a thing was just gross.

I slid his wallet from the jeans and flipped it open to a license picture that looked like a mug shot, and an EBT card. Behind those, a small bit of green, and I delighted at the sight of the ten-dollar bill, quickly stuffing it into my pocket.

He didn’t so much as twitch, as I backed myself out of the room, with the bag of empties clutched in my hand.

I pushed through the flimsy screen door of the trailer and nabbed my bike propped against the outside of it. Bottles clanged in the bag I’d hung from the handlebars, as I rode two blocks up to the party store.

Only one car sat parked in the lot—a fancy black ride that reminded me of something out of a movie. The kind celebrities drove, with shiny chrome and tinted windows.

I parked my bike off to the side of the building so it wouldn’t get stolen. Even if it was a boy’s bike my mom picked up from somebody’s garbage.

A chime rattled when I entered the party store. I lifted my bag so Pops could see it, as I made my way toward the back of the store. Place was usually empty during the day, since most people bought their alcohol at night.

“How many you got, kiddo?”

“Sixty.”

“Liar.”