Trophy 21

Frank stepped out into a flat gray dawn, pinpricked by pink sky through the cloud cover. With how overcast the day was, it felt like more of the miasma that’d been inside the house, that covered the ground. He ate up the distance to the gate in long strides, each step scything through the smoke, leaving wisps of it cavorting on the ground behind him like tinsel fallen from a Christmas gift unwrapped.

He was pissed at himself for how close he’d come to disaster, indulging himself with the girl so much, and something in his guts churned at how he hadn’t finished her off, finished himself off. He blamed both on Bella. It was hard not to think of how sweet a woman’s orgasm was when she’d come on his fingers the way Bella had.

Ahead of him, a Haitian by the open gates had a cell phone to his ear. He was nodding his head.

Frank heard shouts from inside the house. He didn’t break stride. He was already going as fast as possible without raising suspicion. Taking his lighter from his pocket, he stooped and cupped the device to his mouth, pretending to be lighting a cigarette, but purposefully failing to make the striker work.

Ahead of him, the lookout glanced around, but his eyes slid off Frank, not able to check his face against whatever description he’d been given. Then he looked at Frank again, this time scrutinizing him, but by then Frank was in front of him.

Frank didn’t bother seeing if the guy wanted to give him a door prize. His left fist lunged out, taking the man full in the nose, blinding him with an explosion of color behind his eyelids. He staggered back. Frank tossed the lighter from his right hand to his left, then fed the man four knuckles below the ribs. It drove the breath out of his body; as he doubled over, his lunch followed close behind. Frank kept walking, out of the gate and onto cracked pavement.

Obscenities flew after him: “MOTHERFUCKER! YOU DEAD, WHITE FUCK! FUCKING KILL YOU!”

Frank turned right and ran along the sidewalk. Black bodies flung themselves against the rusting, wrought-iron fence that had once been meant to keep the bad element out and now all too literally kept them in.

Frank dodged some. One hand reached through the bars and got a hold of his shirt. Frank simply grabbed the wrist and bent it against a bar until it couldn’t bend any further. Then he made it bend.

The hand let go; Frank kept going.

They were streaming out of the gates now, a dozen Haitians with whatever weapons they could grab: pipes, hammers, a few machetes. Much as Frank hated to stereotype, he didn’t think he could beat all of them in a footrace. Which was why he’d planned ahead.

He sprinted past the burned out shoe store that neighbored Mason House, then turned into an alleyway between it and a massage parlor. There, he slowed, carefully following the pattern he’d memorized. Two steps forward, sidestep left, three steps forward, sidestep right two steps, another three forward…

Ahead of him, a dead end loomed. There was a dumpster in the corner, but even climbing on top of it, there wasn’t enough height for him to get to the roofs.

“DEAD AS DEAD, YOU SON OF A FUCK!” someone roared behind him, sneakers and sandals and bare feet slapping the pavement.

Frank paid them no mind, except to say something in Haitian that, roughly translated to English, stated that they were obliged to fuck their own mothers since their fathers were so profoundly incapable of handling their marital duties.

He kept going, unhurriedly, forward, sidestepping, forward, sidestepping, while the horde crowded into the alley to rush him.

It was good doctrine. Don’t give him a chance to defend himself. Obliterate with overwhelming numbers. But they didn’t bother scouting the terrain.

The caltrops that Frank had placed hours ago shredded through their footwear and into bare flesh. Screams went up from the advance team, but they were taken as just more war cries. Those behind them shoved them forward though they tried to stop—they went down, taking caltrops in their legs, bellies, groins, faces. It didn’t help when the stampede ran over them, driving the caltrops deeper.

Frank had been nice, though. He hadn’t coated the caltrops in anything. They just saved the Haitians a fortune on getting piercings.

Frank glanced at the horde. None of them had managed to make it through his area denial efforts. They carpeted the pavement, writhing in pain, moaning and screaming and cursing. Few had the wherewithal to try to pull out the spikes that were embedded in them. They preferred to scream and scream until more of their buddies showed up.

Frank decided to do something about the noise pollution.

He flung open the dumpster lid and retrieved his battle-pack from inside, but he wouldn’t need it. All he’d need was the aluminum bat.

He figured even in this neighborhood, the cops would have to show up for this. He allotted himself five minutes to add some broken bones to the lacerations. Make sure a few of these future scholars never had ballet careers.

People always complained about the crime rate—they never seemed to realize how it would go down with just a few criminals in traction.

***

No one but a fighter understood how good it felt to break bones. In those five minutes, Frank was purged. He was washed clean. Niggling thoughts of Bella came off him like dirt in the shower. The interlude with Divina might as well have happened to another man.

He returned to the airstrip, taking as trophy only a can of spray paint. He showered, though he already felt clean. The sweat that covered him from his exertions was purifying. He went to check up on Bella with a carboy of fresh water and breakfast. His tendons were finely tuned. The sunlight warmed his skin without hurting his eyes.

When he went in, the first thing he heard was tiny gasps, kicking off the walls like skipping stones. They were soft enough that Frank wouldn’t have heard them if the hangar wasn’t dead quiet otherwise. For a split-second, Frank wondered if Bella had hurt herself, if this were the sound of her pain, and denial blared like a klaxon inside him.

Then he saw her. She was on her side again—that Princess Leia post—but turned away from him, her naked ass on full display. She was even barefoot. He could see all of her, the full luxuriant sprawl from her long legs to the exuberant rounding of her ass, then her toned back muscles, subtle as a painter’s last few brush strokes.

Her dark hair touched the sweat-slick contours of her shoulders and neck and upper arm, as though hating to relinquish any touch of her. Strands of it sifted off of her bare skin and fell like autumn leaves to the pool of sable hair pillowing her head.

Every muscle in her body was part of a chorus—tightening, clenching, stretching, contracting—with her hand working between her legs. Her hips gyrated, the big brass of the symphony, going faster but in paradoxically slow increments. As the sound of her moans overwhelmed the soft trickle of her panting, Bella seemed to be trying to cajole a reluctant lover. She forced herself against her hand, almost trying to get it inside her, sobbing when she couldn’t.

Or so it looked to Frank. He could see only so much from behind her. That denial forced him to thoughts of what she looked like from the front: shallow breaths forcing her tits to jiggle until their contours blurred, belly quivering, one hand at her clit while the other gave her the raw penetration she needed to complete the feeling.