A Penitent's Petition for Parole

"Bed?" she huffed into his ear, then rolled over him. As things calmed momentarily, they lay there gathering the strength to move. Still lodged inside of her, he lifted her body and gingerly placed her on the bed.

"Finally," she grinned. "Lie down here and ... play with me."

Eventually, Grey and M.J. found that the bed was much more amenable to those around-the-world moves Mary J. promised Alan. His last orgasm diminished his ardor enough that he was interested in repaying M.J. for her willingness to cater to his lust first. He explored her longingly, following her voiced prompts to touch, kiss, nibble, and ... suck at her pleasure spots. She exposed him to all those and how to find her G-spot as they rolled each other up in the twisted sheets, driving her body toward more bliss. M.J. enjoyed her multi-orgasmic responses to his ministrations and returned the favors until he couldn't rise to the task again. Long after two o'clock in the morning, exhausted, they snuggled in one another's arms. Grey took her smiles as engaging responses to his kisses and touches as he fell asleep.

Yes, it was a little of that, but she smiled more with thoughts of finding someone with whom she might finally bond. Mary Jane awoke first in the early pre-dawn light. Naked, she slipped out of Alan's bed and into the hallway. She'd learned from experience that the first waking moments in a new paramour's bed had unsettling moments of regret as the turn of events shifted into reality mode after a long night of sex, cock sucking, and cunt licking. She tiptoed to the bathroom to wash away the early morning's transgressions, then back into the hallway, intending to go to her newly relocated bed.

Mary J. froze in the first blush of morning's light as a shadow crossed her path. It transfigured into a silhouette, then, quickly, into a sword-wielding ninja — or someone dressed very much like a sultry half-naked ninja. Mary Jane gasped in fright.

"Good morning, Ms. Blythe; I trust you enjoyed your first day at work. Grey looks so at peace lying there stretched out naked like that," Wilson whispered in a bemused sultry tone as her almond-shaped eyes roamed Mary J.'s lithe, naked body, assessing it for stress and damage.

"Let's have some girl-chat time. You and I need to talk."

Mary J. led the way into her new room, barely lit by the pre-dawn glow from the window. She felt reposed, naked on her bed, realizing she faced the parole supervisor Alan described as a beautiful, conniving bitch.

In the time she spent with Asuka that morning, Mary J. had time to assess the circumstances of how the three of them crossed paths. It may have been that she was conniving, but in Mary J. Blythe's mind, it wasn't the action of a conniving bitch; instead, perhaps a conniving, well-connected lady samurai or a guardian angel, if you believe in those.

M.J.'s second boyfriend had conned her into co-signing for a limo purchase. "Babe, you and me are gonna make it big time by driving high rollers down to the casinos," he bragged.

She wasn't good with numbers, but he was so convincing. He skipped town, and the loan shark came to her for the payments. She cried and begged and pleaded that she had no way to pay. The shark grinned with his pearly whites and told her, "There's always a way to pay, babe — even if you got no money — honey."

He left it to her imagination — for a moment — then stood up and unbuckled his pants.

After four years, he told her debt plus interest was greater than when she started working for him. The debt would never end, she realized finally. It took those four years and a dark stormy night to gather the courage to run after her last bachelor's party at the service end of a train of twelve guys. And, in desperation and her darkest hour, Mary Jane received a miraculous call at the women's shelter where she had been ensconced to avoid the wrath of her loan shark, her enslaver. Her thoughts, now, were of that faithful call.

"Ms. Blythe, your debt to the loan shark has been canceled, and the hellish nightmare he had put you through is over," the anonymous caller informed her.

"How? Is this a trick?" M.J. asked with uncertainty.

"M.J. You're safe now. But in return, I need a favor ..."

Mary Jane agreed to a caretaker's job, a place to live, and an offer to help her regain her dignity. Listening to the ninja's voice early this morning, she recognized that the sultry voice of her guardian angel matched this allusive parole officer's melodious words.

M.J. was glad she had accepted the offer. It got a slimeball out of her life. And his friends and customers out of her cunt, her ass, and her mouth as she worked off her never-ending debt. In the last four years, M.J. had experienced a woman's worst nightmare — being owned by a loan shark -— serving as a sex slave, and unable to break free.

"I thought you were coming back at noon?" she remarked as their girl-talk discussion wound down.

"Business terminated early," a tired-sounding voice announced, sparing her the details.

"What now? I know you didn't tell Alan about my past or that I was coming. Guess that was planned. You expected this to happen? Or, now, will you throw me out for breaking some parole rule against fucking that you have?" Mary Jane spoke in barely audible tones.

"Ms. Blythe, Grey has rules to follow, or he loses his parole agreement and spends the remainder of his sentence in the penitentiary — until he's sixty-nine," Asuka's soft voice murmured, mimicking M.J.'s quietness, not wanting to awaken Alan Grey.

"My oral agreement with you is to be his caretaker. You're doing that pretty well; I see," Asuka remarked wryly.

"Perhaps, you can figure out how to keep him on the straight and narrow. As to rules for you, ... you are free to leave ... or stay — it's your choice."

"Go back to being ass-fucked by my loan shark, you mean, if I leave?" M.J. whispered as she flung her body back onto the bed, fearing her few hours of bliss might be on the edge of being pierced by a sword-wielding ninja-parole officer.

"No," Asuka declared adamantly as she sat next to M.J. "The loan shark and I have a very steel-sharpened understanding. If he tries to touch you again, and ... well, let's say he's already had one taste of my ire and its consequences. In a month or maybe two, he will heal and be able to walk normally again — gingerly at first."

"You are going to be okay, Mary Jane. Trust me. I know. That man has had a fear of a warrior put into him," Wilson whispered reassuringly while stroking M.J.'s long hair.

Mary Jane studied Asuka Wilson's face. She didn't see or hear the harshness Alan had described in her appearance and tone. She breathed deeply and sighed.

"You are not how Alan first characterized you — as a conniving cold-hearted bitch, after all, Ms. Wilson, ... so that you know," Mary J. acknowledged. Mary Jane Blythe wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer, but her backhanded compliment hadn't fallen on deft ears.

The Fixer chuckled as she stood up, "I'll pretend I didn't hear that. And as for your question about 'what now?' Well, I have a new assignment. My business with Alan Grey is almost concluded. I'll keep track of him, of course, ... and you too, ... so walk a straight line, both of you. I just came upstairs to see you were safe, and I'm out of here. I've left a package on the kitchen table for Alan and you. When he wakes up, you can read through it together. And be sure to clean up the mess on the kitchen floor. A person could get hurt slipping in all that honey."

"Mary Jane, sugar, I know all about your past. I've cleared a path ahead of you to get to a better place. Put your history out of your mind, adjust to the here and now, and move forward. I suggest you keep this between us and let Fate take its course. If you and Grey are meant to be — Fate or karma will give you a clear signal of what's in the stars for you. Like that old Spanish saying — "Qué será, será."

"Sleep now. Tomorrow a new beginning dawns," the Fixer whispered as M.J.'s body relaxed and her head sank. Mary Jane experienced a feeling of comfort as her body eased and her head nestled into the cozy covers.

In the quietness of that pregnant moment, Mary Jane raised her head to look up, wanting to say thanks, but the shadow in the corner of her eye had vanished between thinking about it and expressing her gratitude for giving back her dignity. Mary Jane Blythe felt her thoughts growing dim. She yawned and stretched her naked and satiated body out to dream. Her dream revolved around tiny handsome swimmers swirling around inside her womb. Grey's ravenous hunger after six years of penitence had exhausted her body; sleep overtook her.

"Alan, I mean it. She really said she wasn't coming back. This is something she left saying we both were to open and read," Mary J. announced as she poured coffee, slathered biscuits with left-over honey from the prior evening's kitchen tryst, and served Alan and herself scrambled eggs with thick sliced bacon.

Grey took the heavily-stuffed brown envelope and opened the clasp. "It's somebody's last will," he announced, shuffling through the legal documents.

It spelled out the bequeathing of the debt-free house to Alan Grey and Mary Jane Blythe to hold as equal partners. The van and tools were also cited as items in the bequeathment in Alan Grey's name, along with sole proprietary ownership in a business named Grey's Custom Restorations. Within the brown envelope was a white one. It contained a cashier's check marked 'Seed money. Pay it forward.' It was enough money to carry Grey until his business got up on its legs.

Grey's face was marked with disbelief and consternation. He didn't recognize any of the names in the will and was about to question how he and Mary Jane got named as beneficiaries. But he let that question dissolve when Mary Jane's face lit up like a Happy Valentine's Day box of chocolates sent with a dozen red roses. Alan realized she was elated — that was all that mattered at the moment.

A week later, as Grey drove Mary Jane to pick up some supplies for their first remodeling job, the radio announcer cut into the music with breaking news. Mary J. was deep into a trashy noir novel she was reading and stopped to listen as Grey turned up the volume to catch the details. It sounded important.

"What a day in the city! Police earned their pay today, folks. An armed nut job died in a hail of lead as police fired at least three hundred rounds into a barricaded warehouse on the slum side of the city. When the smell of gun smoke cleared out of the afternoon skies, police pronounced Joe Earl Jones dead." The announcer excitedly informed his audience.

"Police found a small locket belonging to a girl savaged six years ago around the nut job's neck. It had a picture of her twin brother inside. The incriminating evidence on Jones' bullet-riddled body linked him to a girl beaten and left for dead in an abandoned city area just two blocks away. He'd worn her locket as a trophy for all those years. 'Truly an asshole' is how his co-workers described him to the police team. An anonymous tipster, close to the investigation, informed yours truly that Jones' three cousins were also tied to the tragic death of the young nineteen-year-old."

Grey recognized the location and the locket's description as missing at the scene of Abigail's attack.

As the news continued, he learned about Jones's diary describing him as being pursued by a woman ninja. No matter where he went, at his every turn, she was there to face him. She even haunted his dreams, telling him the police were coming for him. Jones noted that some nights he would wake up in cold sweats with her sitting at the edge of his bed, holding a sword in her lap — smiling.

Other times she appeared at his work — working beside him, and even at the gas station pumping his gas for him. She was even the fucking mailwoman at his door with that damned sword on her back! The packages she delivered ... were pictures of his every move. She even delivered blurry photos of the night he took that bitch's locket. Jones' diary grew even more bizarre, claiming that when he went to prison, an avenger would castrate him.

"You'll know the day justice is coming for Abigail," that damned ninja warned him numerous times, Jones had written in his diary, "because you will find Lady Justice has marked it on a calendar with a big red 'X.'"

"Warehouse workers where Jones worked noted a new calendar by the timeclock that day. It had a large red 'X' as they filed inside for work. A co-worker remarked as he punched in, 'Hey, Jones, this red 'X' has your name under it. What's that for?'"

"Police got a call that a violent gun-wielding warehouseman had gone berserk, barricaded himself, and threatened that the cops wouldn't take him alive."

The newly minted couple stared at one another for the longest moments as the radio returned to playing music. "You don't think 'The Fixer' had anything to do with that, do you, Alan?" Mary J. quietly asked Alan Grey.

'Well, I certainly didn't," Alan announced. "Asuka Wilson told me to keep my ass out of it, and she'd handle it. Maybe she did. Maybe it was a coincidence. I'm not going to mention it to anyone, either way. Besides, I'm sure there are lots of ninja women who have swords like that. The announcer said he was crazy and maybe just fantasized about that stuff."

"Mums, the word, then," Mary Jane breathed softly. "And I'm sure you're right about those lady ninjas with swords, too," she added while grinning at Allen.

She relaxed, watching Grey's hands gradually loosen his white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel. M.J. watched as his shoulders shifted and relief washed through his body. She watched as Grey turned left toward his father's place. From the faint smile appearing on her handsome man, she realized that he was headed to his dad's home to share the good news.

Abigail's justice came late to the table. Sometimes Justice doesn't play out like law books and the court systems say it should. Sometimes it needs an intervening force, not bound by law, a Fixer, to correct and adjudicate for the oppressed. Alan Grey found solace and strength and renewed his belief in a new kind of justice that had prevailed in its own mysterious way.

The Fixer was okay with that too. Asuka Wilson moved on, ready to assist others when they needed a different kind of justice.

M.J.'s eyes turned from Grey's smile back to reading that worn paperback, a dime-store thriller about a guy named Mike Hammer. She'd found it in the glovebox when she'd heard the phone ringing two weeks ago. The forward described the action thriller as being about bent guys, death, bimbos, femme fatales, and dangerous noir situations. Mary J. thought about those dark and foreboding noir elements, then smiled as a fecund thought floated across her brow: 'Asuka Wilson would make a great femme fatale and a mysterious character like the private dick — Hammer — all rolled into one. Even Alan, a penitent parolee, and she, a formerly enslaved woman, could be players in such a novel. Who says the Hammer character has gotta be a macho guy?'she thought, 'Hammer's persona could easily be a woman samurai, like The Fixer.'She pondered that, smiling, as she rolled her thumb against the new engagement ring on her finger — getting used to its feeling and the recent stirrings in her nipples.

You may be familiar with the Wilson characters from my other stories about 'The Fixers' and how they came into being. JW or Jack Wilson, an ex-airborne ranger, got involved in an Atlanta FBI cold case in 'Justice for Alina.' Jackie was another character that sprang up as an Amerasian sword-wielding ex-Navy girl and has appeared in several stories. JW recruited her and gave her a new identity as Jackie Wilson. Today, you met Asuka Wilson, another new member added to the team, yet another alias. There are also other Jack Wilson recruits, a covert jet pilot and a doctor specializing in enhanced techniques at Gitmo. Coincidently, they are also named Jack Wilson. Each of those dedicated to stepping in when Justice requires help — just outside its boundaries. I envision all the Wilsons being involved in a major case together one day. That will be an exciting story — that plot has yet to ferment.

Thanks for reading my Mike Hammer noir submission.

Please, rate my submission and leave me a comment with your thoughts if you have time. I'd appreciate that, as I use comments to improve my writing and make corrections as needed. Again, a word of appreciation for the assistance of kenjisato in editing this.

DMallord