Page 15 of Kept By the Loan Shark

Arms loaded down with bags, I left my apartment and carried the groceries to my car. The sun had finally started to set, but the change in temperature was negligible. The suffocating, humid heat left me grimacing as I hefted the bags into the backseat of my car. On the return trip to my apartment, I decided to grab all of the remaining bags and loaded them up my arms. Straining a bit under the weight, I closed up my apartment and turned toward the parking lot.

The sun had set completely, and the night was dark, no moon glow in the sky tonight. Crickets chirped and cicadas rattled noisily in the trees. My mind was so occupied with dinner ideas that I never even saw it coming.

Something hard slammed into the right side of my head. I gasped as pain exploded along the side of my skull. My legs gave way, and I fell forward onto the uneven, broken pavement. My knees skidded across it, rending the thin fabric of my leggings, and my arms, heavy with grocery bags, hung uselessly at my side as my jaw and then cheek impacted the pavement.

I had barely managed to draw in a shocked breath when I felt another impact, this one on my upper back. I could hear something jingling as another burst of pain knocked the wind out of me. Coins, I realized in a daze. Coins in a sock that was being used to batter me like a mace.

An angry hand gripped my loosely coiled bun and jerked my head up, forcing my back to arch unnaturally. “Tell your loan shark sugar daddy that the next time he comes after my man he better make damn sure he puts me in the hospital, too. If Travis dies, I’m going to kill you. Do you understand?”

I couldn’t make sense of what Janine was saying. My ears were ringing, and my head was throbbing.

Janine fisted my hair even tighter and punched me in the side of the face. She was a bigger, stronger woman, and the impact left me reeling. “Do you understand? Huh? You skinny bitch!”

“I under—under—understand,” I stammered, my tongue feeling heavy in my mouth. I tasted blood and felt it running down my chin.

Janine let go of my head, and I didn’t have the strength to hold it up. My chin cracked against the pavement, and I saw stars. Still angry, she kicked me twice in the side with a final kick aimed at my backside that sent me sliding across the hot, uneven pavement, scratching up my exposed skin. “You can replace your laundry baskets with this.”

Pennies, nickels and dimes showered my back and head, rolling off my body and clattering onto the parking lot. The tinkling sound of the coins hitting the pavement and spinning left my head throbbing. When the last coin fell, Janine crouched down and roughly jammed the dirty sock in my mouth. “Good luck crying for help.”

Then, as if she hadn’t done enough, she spit in my face. “Whore.”

Stunned and panting for air around the dirty sock in my mouth, I tried to free my arms from the bags. My body felt strangely detached, as if the synapses in my brain weren’t firing properly. I blinked, trying to get my bearings and clear the blood from my vision. It was running down my head and pooling under me as my vision tilted and spun, taking me back to those hot summer afternoons at the playground with Ronnie. He would take hold of the merry-go-round handles and run so fast while I clutched onto the middle and imagined I was an astronaut rocketing through space.

But I wasn’t in space now. I was bleeding and losing consciousness in a parking lot. The smell of oil and blood filled my nose as I finally managed to work the sock out of my mouth. Weakly, I called for help, but the lot was deserted. I had fallen between my car and another. Could anyone even see me?

Exhaustion overwhelmed me, and I started to drift, my vision turning dark and my muscles slackening. What little faculties I still possessed told me I was in bad shape. I wondered how much that sock of coins had weighed. How hard had Janine swung? What was the force of the impact? All my knowledge of physics and math was useless now. Had she cracked my skull? Was my brain bleeding?

Am I going to die?

“Cassie? Cassie!”

It was Kyle who dropped down next to me. “Oh, shit. Shit! No. No. Don’t move. Stay still.”

I clutched at his hand, gripping his fingers and smearing my blood on his skin. I tried to lift my head, but he urged me to be still as he held his phone to his ear. Vaguely, I was aware of him talking to a 9-1-1 dispatcher. I squeezed his hand, my strength failing, and said, “John. Call John.”

“I will, Cassie,” Kyle promised, his phone clamped between his ear and his shoulder. “Just don’t move, okay? There’s an ambulance coming.”

“Ronnie,” I murmured, feeling exhaustion take hold. Someone had to call my brother.

“No. Cassie! Stay awake!” He touched my face, his fingers sliding in the blood. “No. She’s passing out. Are they close? Jesus. I think she’s dying.”

Maybe I was.

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