Page 8 of Whiskey Shivers

It was tipping into the downhill slide that was late October and I was curious, since Halloween was supposed to be on a Monday this year, what Cor had planned for dressing up. Myself, I’d got a pair of those familiar blue-gray coveralls and a good ol’ fashioned William Shatner mask that everybody recognized these days as Michael Myers. Had to get Mrs. Donal’s permission. She’d nixed the obviously fake big butcher’s knife with the squeeze blood handle and collapsible blade but I’d sure tried talking her into letting me do away with her at the school assembly that’d been planned for that day all in good fun.

She agreed to let me chase her off the stage at least.

Even the grownups had to have fun sometimes.

We had a grand ol’ Halloween bash planned at the clubhouse on that Saturday night and I was sorely tempted to invite Cor for a first-time get-together outside of school… yeah, even though she had some guy, was living with him and engaged and all that.

I had a good feeling that wasn’t gonna last. She never talked about him, and anytime the conversation turned toward him? She’d conveniently change the subject.

I took my hand-carried toolbox with me and went up the stairs. I had to pass her classroom to get to the bathroom that was having problems and was surprised to hear a bunch of loud and rambunctiousness coming outta the room almost as soon as I set foot on the second floor. It was after school hours. Most if all o’ the kids were supposed to be long gone – unless she had detention duty this week. I know it rotated through the teachers so it was a distinct possibility.

I slipped just inside the classroom door and barked out, “Hey!” The classroom of five or six settled right the fuck down.

“Where’s Miss Legare?” I demanded calmly.

“Bathroom,” one of the girls said.

“She’s been gone a while,” another kid said. He was a class clown type – funny as hell but didn’t know when to quit. Still, he was a good kid.

“Thomas followed her out a few seconds after she left,” one of the other girls said and I felt the first stirrings of dread tick down my spine. I didn’t know who Thomas was, so that meant maybe he was one of the quiet ones. The quiet ones gave me the heebs. Why? BecauseIhad been one of the quiet ones and I was into all kinds of shit.

“Y’all sit here and be quiet,” I said. “She’ll be back in a minute.”

I ducked back out, shut the door behind me, and went for the bathroom down the hall.

The second red flag when it came to this situation came in the form of Cor’s brightly colored and sparkly tumbler from a popular coffee chain lying on its side, water spilling out in the middle of the hallway’s linoleum.

“Shit, Fable…” I muttered, absentmindedly calling her by the pet name I’d given her over lunch last week. She’d told me about how myths and fables had gotten her through, given her a place to escape, when her mom was deep in her shit and bringing creeps home to hook up with for a fix. How she’d literally locked herself inside her bedroom closet when the creeps couldn’t get their rocks off with her mom and had come looking for her.

It'd been a tale as old as time, a familiar one, but one that’d still pissed me off no matter how much she’d assured me that by some grace of some higher power she’d never been touched. The conversation had turned then to religion, and how she didn’t believe in God. How she was a pagan, more spiritual, than anything.

How it made more sense to her.

It hadn’t been the first time I’d had the thought that she and Alina would be a pair, and what’d gotten the wheels in my head to turning that she maybe should come around the club someday. If I could trust her to keep that secret for me.

There was a sinking pit in my stomach when I pushed open the door to the girl’s bathroom up here. A pit that yawned open, the bottom falling out.

Every man’s got a monster that resides in him. One that when you push the right buttons? Well, his other side comes roaring to the surface. Some men were so broken, that like La Croix, and maybe Axeman, their others were more their full selves than their selves anymore.

I happened to be one of those men who jived with that other. Who managed a level of control that was unmatched. I’d never had my MC life and school life collide so hard as it did when I saw what that kid was doing to Cor.

The blood on the tile, channeling through the grout, the way his ass cheeks flexed with every thrust. The way her hand, pale and limp, swished back and forth through the puddle leaking out of her, the crimson thick and wet.

First thing I did was drop my tools with a crash. The kid was some kind of blessed that I didn’t think to grab a wrench or a hammer or something when I started to wail on him. I grabbed him by the back of his fuckin’ hoodie and ripped him off her prone bloody and beaten body, and I bodilythrewhis ass sideways into the wall.

He hit with a grunt, some of the old pink tiles cracking and shattering behind him. He slid to the floor, and I hauled back and buried my steel-toe booted foot in his guts. I kicked him. And when I say I kicked him, I mean I beat that motherfucker until he stopped moving, kicked the ever-loving shit out of him, beat his fucking ass like he was a grown-ass man. Guts, chest, head, it made no never mind. I wanted him dead but was only stopped up short by screaming coming from the fuckin’ doorway.

I rounded on the girl from Cor’s classroom and bellowed, “Get down to that office and call 9-1-1,now!”

I went to Corliss’s broken body and moved swiftly, dragging my radio off the floor where it’d flown from my pocket. I rambled into it, calling for help, my eyes trying to make sense of things.

She had a puncture by her neck, another down on her ribs. Her pants and panties were gone, her shoes too. The only thing she was wearing from the waist down were her fucking socks and I had nothing to cover her with.

I put my hands over the wound that seemed to be bleeding the worst, pressing down. Her breathing didn’t sound so good, and I recognized the sound. I’d been around a fair few to make it, friend and foe alike.

“Hang on for me, babe,” I muttered and I pressed.

“Oh, damn!” I looked up and said, “Gimme your jacket!” Tyrone pulled off his black hoodie and for having so much melanin, the kid looked ashen. He covered her up and I said, “Good, good, you read my mind. Now go stand at the door. Make sure nobody but an adult comes in here.”

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