Quit Stalling

Rocky watched Travis pull the pliers from his pocket and place them next to the other implements of torture on the table in front of him. Travis picked each tool up and caressed it as if it were a long lost lover. Rocky knew Travis loved his tools more than most men loved their wives. After all, they had never failed him and didn’t talk back.

He also knew that letting the victim watch as he complied the tools he was going to use to break the guy was a turn on for Travis. Rocky knew all this, the head games Travis played and everything, but that didn’t make it any easier now that he was on the receiving end of the act.

He still couldn’t believe he’d gotten himself into this mess. He’d worked for the Torino family for twenty years. In all that time, he’d never made a mistake until last week. And what a mistake it was, he thought as he watched Travis walk closer, rubbing a hammer slowly across his lips.

When Travis reached Rocky’s side, he savagely ripped the duct tape off Rocky’s mouth. Rocky knew it was coming so braced himself for the pain. He refused to give the man anymore satisfaction than he had to. 

“I never thought I’d see the day,” Travis said while he traced the hammerhead along Rocky’s thigh. 

Rocky knew when Travis reached his knee he was in trouble. Travis always started with the knees. He believed it made a person more open to talking when he broke a bigger bone, especially one such as the kneecap. He didn’t believe in starting with fingers. Rocky guessed he had enough experience in torture to know what worked and what didn’t. He always got the results Tony Torino wanted.

Rocky was tired of waiting. He knew what was coming. He also knew he would probably break in the end. He’d never seen anyone withstand the things Travis did to him or her. That didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try. There was too much at stake if he talked. 

He thought his one hope was in provoking the man, which wasn’t an easy feat. The only thing Rocky had going for him was that he knew Travis, which meant he knew the man’s weaknesses. He only hoped he could make Travis mad enough.

Rocky didn’t plan to leave the building alive. 

And if he could die before revealing anything, he would die a happy man. He didn’t want the Torino’s coming down on his friends and the only way to keep that from happening was if he never revealed who those friends were, especially the ones that were on the force.

Rocky wondered who would come to his funeral. He hoped to hell that his friends were smart enough to stay away so nobody started looking too closely at them. He knew the information he’d passed to them over the years had been invaluable, but it wasn’t worth their lives. If he had the chance, he’d tell them so, but that wasn’t going to happen. They were smart people. He would just have to hope smart enough.

Travis was still playing around with the hammer on Rocky’s leg, dragging out the suspense. 

Rocky looked Travis in the eye and spat in his face. He knew the man had a fear of germs. That’s why he wore that ridiculous getup every time he tortured someone.

Travis roared back and started wiping at his face. Rocky knew he’d be buying a new getup tomorrow. One that had a face shield. He didn’t understand why Travis had never thought of it before.

When he finished wiping his face, Travis rushed forward and hit Rocky on the knee with the hammer as hard as he could. No matter how he tried, Rocky couldn’t stop the scream that escaped. 

Travis stood back with a sick smile on his face. He waited until the pain had lessened enough that Rocky was breathing normally again before walking forward. This time he was holding the pliers.

“Who were you passing information to?” he asked Rocky.

“Your brother,” Rocky replied and smiled.

Travis pulled Rocky’s front teeth out with the pliers. He screamed obscenities at Rocky the whole time. Swearing at him for talking ill of the dead, and telling him he’d soon be seeing Marky, his brother, and could apologize in person. Rocky was sure he was correct.

They went back and forth for an hour with Rocky growing weaker by the moment, and Travis getting more outraged. No matter what he did to Rocky, Travis couldn’t get him to give up a name

.

“Come on, Rocky, just tell me who you talked to and I’ll let you go,” he told Rocky right after he broke his left pinky toe with a rubber mallet. “You can go to the hospital and get fixed up.”

Rocky wiped snot from his nose with his hunched shoulder, smiled a toothless grin, and said, “Quit stalling, Travis,” which he knew would drive the man crazy because he prided himself on getting information quickly.

The last thing Rocky saw was Travis turning red and raising the mallet.

Picture Perfect

Finally finished my story for this weeks Three Word Wednesday prompt. It is also my story for the letter P of the A to Z Challenge. Hope y'all enjoy it.

Clara stared at the photograph. The man and woman gazed happily into each other’s eyes. The children were laughing while trying to hold a small ball of fur still. Dogwoods lined the walkway that led to the cherry, red front door of a modest little house. 

No matter how hard she tried, Clara couldn’t recall the day in the picture. She kept closing her eyes and willing her mind to go back to that time, a time when happiness wasn’t just something other people talked about, but it was elusive. 

Maybe happiness had dependence on happiness, she mused. With it missing from her life now, she could no longer even recall what it felt like. 

She noticed the photograph was starting to rumple around the edges. Of course, how could it not since she held it every day. 

It was the last picture she had of all of them together. 

“Are you ready?” George asked from the doorway.

“Just a minute,” Clara replied, and then slipped the photograph back under her pillow.

George and Clare rode in silence. Clara wasn’t surprised by George’s lack of communication. It had been years since they actually talked to each other, more than just what was required. 

 “Did you get the book?”

“Yes,” Clara answered. “I picked it up yesterday.”

She knew Janie would enjoy the book. The pictures anyway. It had been a long time since Janie would read the words. 

Clara remembered when Janie stopped reading. Her sister, Rebecca, had run away from home three weeks before and they had no idea where she was. Janie had taken it badly. First, she stopped talking to anyone. Then, a week earlier, she stopped leaving her room, and two days before, she tore every book she owned up and tossed them out the window.

It wouldn’t have been a big deal for a ten-year-old to refuse to read, except Janie had been reading since she was three and, before Rebecca ran away, was never seen without a book in her hand. 

The middle of the next week, they committed Janie to the hospital after she quit eating. She’d been in one hospital or another for the last four years now. Rebecca was still missing, and Janie, while she would now look at books with pictures, still wasn’t reading.

Clara believed Janie would get well when Rebecca came home, but she had given up hope of that happening a long time ago.

She and George spent their nights in the same house, although in separate bedrooms, and their days living separate lives. He went to work at the law firm and her to the daycare. He couldn’t understand why she wanted to be around other children when they had lost both of their own. She couldn’t understand why he didn’t.

But that was not the only thing they disagreed on. Far from it. It would be easier to count the things they did agree on these days, than the things they didn’t. Clara was glad George still went to see Janie with her. For a while, she feared he would stop.

He had proved he could still surprise her one other time as well. She had found a receipt for a private detective in his desk drawer one evening a few years back. When she asked George about it, he told her he’d been paying the guy ever since Rebecca disappeared, and would continue to do so until she was found. As far as Clara knew, he still sent the weekly checks, even though there had been no sightings of Rebecca in three years. 

When they arrived at the nurses’ station, Nurse Andrews stopped them. “We received this for Janie yesterday, but thought we’d show it to the two of you first.”

Clara opened the letter, and with George looking over her shoulder, started to read. By the time she finished, tears were streaming down her and George’s faces and they were hugging each other. 

Clara ran her fingertips over the return address, which read: 

Rebecca James
452 Fountain Blue Lane
Rock Creek, MN 08766

It seemed that even though they hadn’t been able to track Rebecca down, she had found her sister. For the first time in a long time, Clara thought their family might be more than just picture perfect again.

Only Once

Margie ripped the knife through the Italian leather car seat with a vengeance. She then started in on the tires, not skipping one. By the time she had spent her rage, the entire car was destroyed.

She still wasn’t satisfied, but couldn’t think of anywhere else to vent her anger. Jacob and his tramp were already taken care of and Marcus, Jacob’s best friend and confident, was in London. 

When two girls rounded the corner into the alley, Margie decided she would just wait for Marcus’s return. She never was very patient though so hoped he would be back soon.

***

“Are you going to be alright, Mr. James?” the detective asked Marcus.

“No, I’m not going to be alright, you ass. I just found my best friend slashed to death.”

“I’m sorry, Sir, I know this must be hard for you,” the detective said through gritted teeth. “But we need your help to find the person responsible for Mr. Parker and his girlfriend’s death.”

“She’s not his girlfriend,” Marcus told the detective. “At least not in the sense you’re talking about.”

“Explain please.”

“Jacob was dating Margie, but seeing Janet here on the side.” Marcus shook his head before adding, “He was always so proud of himself. Having sweet little Margie to take care of him at home and sexpot Janet to tend to other matters.”

“Maybe we should have a talk with Margie,” the detective said and took out a notebook. 

Marcus gave the man Margie’s address, but also told him he couldn’t imagine her doing anything like this. “She was always so docile. Jacob treated her like a doormat and she seemed to enjoy it.”

“We’ll still check her out. You never really know what will make a person snap.”

***

Margie watched the cops drop Marcus off at a downtown motel. She waited until the last car left, and then walked to the front desk and bribed the clerk for Marcus’s room number. 

“Who is it?” Marcus asked at her knock.

“The manager. I need you to sign some paperwork, Sir.”

“I thought the cops were taking care of all tha…” Marcus was saying as he opened the door. “Margie?”

“Hello, Marcus,” Margie said and pushed him back into the room, quickly closing the door.

“The police are looking for you, Margie,” Marcus told her and the whispered, “Jacob is dead.”

“Yeah, and his little slut is too,” Margie replied. 

The smile on her face chilled Marcus. “Did the cops talk to you already?” he asked, and started backing away from her.

“Not yet. I’ve been waiting to talk to you first.”

“Me? I was out of town. I have no idea who killed them.”

“Oh, I know who killed them,” Margie said. 

Marcus couldn’t believe his ears. He grabbed Margie by the shoulders and shook her. “If you know, you have to tell them so they can get the bastard,” he demanded.

He tried to move out of the way of Margie’s first thrust with the knife, but since it came as such a surprise, he wasn’t quick enough. “That would be the bitch, not bastard,” she told him while he lay bleeding on the floor at her feet.

“Why?” Marcus managed to ask.

“Because you only make a fool of me once,” Margie replied. She then bent over him and started stabbing. 

“Only once.”

Nowhere to Run

“You might as well stop, Brent,” a voice from behind called.

Brent ignored him and kept on running. He had no idea where he was going because, as far as he could tell, he’d never been in those woods before, but he refused to just stop and let them kill him.

If only he’d listened to his wife and never got involved in the cover-up in the first place, but no, he loved the idea of being a big shot in the firm. He remembered how he told her they’d be moving up the ladder so quickly, she’d get dizzy. 

He wondered if she felt dizzy the day those bastards pushed her off the roof. 

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” another man shouted from close in front of Brent.

Veering to the right, Brent broke into a sprint even though his lungs felt like they would burst at any minute. He wished he’d kept going to the gym regularly, but doubted it would matter in this situation. He couldn’t outrun a gun. 

Brent sprang out of some undergrowth into a clearing. He looked behind him, and confident he’d lost them for the moment, pushed forward. After going about one hundred feet, he came to an abrupt stop.

“Well, well, what do we have here?” Jameson asked as he walked up behind Brent.

Brent stepped back another foot, careful not to slip off the edge of the cliff he’d just stumbled upon. He could feel dirt sliding off the edge under his feet.

“Looks like there’s nowhere left to run,” Parker answered his cohort.

Brent thought about trying to bribe them, but knew no amount of money would make them turn on Charles Wentworth. Not that he had enough money to out pay Charles in the first place. 

Charles Wentworth. The thought of him getting away with everything he’d done tore Brent up inside. He was so busying replaying the last nine months, that he completely forgot the two men waiting to kill him. When Jameson suddenly rushed forward and said, “boo,” Brent involuntarily took a step back in fright.

“That was easy enough,” Parker remarked to Jameson as they watched Brent fall to the rocky ledge some fifty feet below the cliff.

My Own Terms

Sam,

I didn’t know how to tell you so decided I’d write you instead. 

I’m leaving.

I know you’ll pretend to miss me, and the children will be devastated, but I can’t stay. And even though I know it’s not her fault, every time I look at Daniela, I see her mother. Before I start treating her differently, I need to leave.

Please tell my mother I love her. It’s the least you can do after all I’ve done for you. 

I thought about divorcing you, but that wouldn’t really solve anything. Daniela would expect to come visit with Becky, and I’d still be forced to live the lie I’ve been living the last five years. I still can’t believe you talked me into lying to everyone, even my own child, but then again, maybe it is for the best.

It’s not Daniela’s fault, and I’d hate for Becky, or anyone for that matter, to treat her differently. She really is a beautiful little girl, just like her mother. I hope that’s the only thing she takes after the woman. I’d hate for Daniela to turn into the self-centered, husband-stealing woman her mother is. 

Although she didn’t steal you, did she? No, she just used you and left me with a child. 

Anyway, we’ve been over this before. I know you’ll find someone to take my place soon. And she’ll not have the problem I do. Neither child will be hers. I hope she treats them well.

It’s almost time for you to get home so I’ll close. I’m using the Glock. I know it’s your favorite.

Please keep the children from seeing the mess.

                                                                                                                                     Mary