Riding with the Beast (an MC Fairy Tale)

9 - Sonja

Sonja

Slowly, I lifted the coverlet. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the brightness of the room, but before they did I saw his bed was empty.

I sat up. Looked around.

He was gone.

The room still smelled like his cigarettes. His beat-up red bag slouched on the floor beneath the window. He’d left a stack of bills on the corner of the desk. The implication was clear: he was coming back, and when he returned, he didn’t want me to be here.

I kicked the scratchy coverlet off and stood. The rug shed as I walked to the chair. I sat and wiggled my toes, trying to brush off the fuzzy strands, but they just balled up and stubbornly stuck to the creases in my skin.

Gross.

Deciding to focus on something else, I drew back the curtain and looked out.

Charity really wasn’t much of a town. There were a few houses and miscellaneous shops beyond Main Street, and then little, rundown homes dotting the horizon. Desert surrounded everything, looking just as dead as it had the day before.

I picked up the bills and counted them. $500. I’d never been involved with the payment portion of the business, but that seemed like a pretty big tip for someone who didn’t finish. Maybe he was trying to assuage some unspoken guilt.

Before Alexander took me, a man came to me at least once every two weeks. He’d call me by his daughter’s name while he fucked me softly, then hold me afterwards and cry.

I hated him more than all of the other men combined, even the ones that hurt me. Actually, the fact he didn’t hurt me upset me even more. Every time he finished I didn’t just feel dirty—I felt complicit in something unforgiveable. Sometimes at night, I’d think of his daughter and cry. I’d pray, too, even though I’d given up praying for myself years before. I hope he takes it all out on me. I hope you’re safe. I hope you don’t feel what I feel right now. I hope you never have to feel it. I’d whisper those things and others to the grunting, sleepless, sweaty night.

Lola. That was her name. I shut my eyes, trying to steady my restless heart.

The morning breeze smelled like dust and heat. I looked outside again. No bus stopped here, but maybe the Beast was right. The ladies at the diner seemed nice. One might let me stay with her for a while, or at least drive me to a bus stop. I had money now. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

I pulled up my pants, looped the belt tight and pocketed the money. Then, I removed his shirt, folded it and set it on top of his bag.

My fingers might have lingered on the faded, black fabric a little too long. The Beast had given me so much even though I’d done nothing for him. He’d even left quietly this morning so I wouldn’t wake.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d slept so well. On the train and on the road, sleep had come in short, panicked bursts until I’d gotten so fatigued that I collapsed. Before then, I never felt rested. I always fell asleep and woke with my heart and mind racing.

Fear does that to you. It turns you into something you don’t recognize. It strips away all your limits until there is nothing you wouldn’t do to survive.

I shut my eyes and breathed slowly as I counted to ten, reminding myself that didn’t have to think about that anymore because I wasn’t going back.

I yanked my own shirt back over my head. The Beast had been right. It did reek. Smiling, I glanced out the window one last time when I heard a car pull into the parking lot.

I froze.

It was black and shiny and in impeccable condition. I hadn’t seen a car like that in at least five days, and I hadn’t seen one with Louisiana plates since I left Nebraska.

It’s a coincidence. It means nothing, I told myself, but I knew it did.

He’d found me.

I stepped back.

Of course he found me. How could I have even believed I could escape? How could I have slept so peacefully last night?

The swamp never sleeps. Gators lie beneath the surface, their lethal snouts mimicking floating logs. Mosquitos shriek in your ears. And his arm is always around my stomach, holding me close even though doing so just makes that intolerable heat even hotter.

You’re mine, he whispered each night, his lips resting on the first vertebrae of my spine as his hand slid down my stomach to that place that was always so disgustingly sticky, wet and warm. Always mine.

I turned.

I didn’t look back.

I just ran.