Page 68 of Crawl
Cash
I stare at the brown door of room one-zero-two, waiting for the stepbrother to be brave enough to leave his motel room. It’s dark now, but I’m willing to wait. Tonight was supposed to be fun. I was going to surprise Remedy with a cage big enough to lock her up forever. It’s a solution that may fit us. Find a cage. Make her want it. If she’s not going to let me go, then I may as well capture her like she’s caged me.
But instead, I’m hunting her stepbrother.
I’m in my truck, parked across the street, but Key West is compact and I can see clearly. His silhouette shifts across the curtains, and he moves like he’s dancing to music. Like he doesn’t care that he just assaulted his ex-stepsister and threatened to rape her. Like he hasn’t got a care in the world. They’re all the same.
From what Remedy said, it sounds like he’s too much of a bitch to actually go through with anything, but I don’t care. You don’t fuck with what’s mine.
Finally, an hour later, he leaves, talking on the phone as he gets in his car. He used to be a local, so he’s probably going to meet some old friends on Duval Street.
I put on an old baseball cap. It’s leftover from a victim and it’s dirty, marked with dust and dirt, but there’s no blood on it. In the motel’s front lobby, I angle my head to the side so the receptionist can’t see me directly.
“Lost my card,” I say.
She doesn’t look up from her game of solitaire. “It’s twenty dollars for a replacement.”
I slap a twenty on the desk. “That’s fine.”
“Room number?”
“One-zero-two.”
She quickly swipes the new card, then hands it to me. I’m out of the lobby fast.
His room is humid from a hot shower, his cheap, spicy cologne stinking up the room. A duffel bag sprawls open on the bathroom counter. A pair of boxers lies to the side of the zipper opening. Deodorant and tweezers on the floor. One large window looks out to the parking lot, covered by thin curtains. It’s a standard room: a bed, a bathroom and shower, a coat closet, a dresser, and a small desk. To be honest, everything I see here is average. Remedy is probably right. He wouldn’t have done anything.
But I don’t care.
I hide in the narrow coat closet and wait. I’ve used this tactic on one of my foster parents before: find their motel, wait till they come back drunk, and kill them, making it look like suicide. It took patience to wait in a cramped space all night, but in the end, it was worth it.
Several hours later, when the window to the parking lot is completely dark and his motel neighbors are quiet, the front door opens. There’s a crack in the closet doors, but I can’t see anything. All I can do is listen. A feminine giggle. Staggered footsteps. Wet lips slobbering against each other.
“Let me do it,” he says. “You always liked it before.”
“How many times do I have to tell you, Brody? Not tonight.” She grunts, then the bed squeaks with her body weight on top of it. “But if you can be good, you can have me there tomorrow.”
His pants unzip, then fall to the ground. A few seconds go by. They slobber again.
“Baby,” he says in a hoarse voice. “Please don’t make me wait. Doesn’t it feel good?”
“If you use me for anal again, I swear to god I will beat your ass,” she says.
“Fuck. Fine.”
I adjust my gloves and wait for them to finish. Her stepbrother may not be into underage women, but heisinto pressuring them, just like his father.
But that doesn’t bother me. Why should I care about rape when I kill for amusement? Both actions are a way to control someone. They’re forms of power.
But you don’t touch Remedy Basset and get away with it.
The bed squeaks and the woman’s moans are dramatic, like she belongs on a soap opera. The stepbrother lets out a wail, and it’s over. They rest in silence for a few minutes. Then the stepbrother clears his throat.
“You should get going,” he says. “Don’t you have school tomorrow?”
“So that’s it? Really?”
“I’m just looking out for you.”
