A Whore and a Thief

"You do that," he said. "I have bigger problems than some small town slut and her brats. Suddenly his eyes took on a look of terror.

"Shit, they must've followed me here," he said. "Wait, they couldn't have. I was too careful. Did you say you spoke to Karen? Did she come here?" I ignored him. I was too hurt by the fact that he was willing to just let me and our children walk away without even the ghost of a fight.

He came across the room and slapped the shit out of me. Joey and I had argued before. And he had hit me a couple of time but never like this. My head was ringing. He put his face really close to mine and looked into my eyes.

"Did Karen come here?" he screamed. I just nodded dumbly.

"Shit, they know which house it is," he spat. "That bitch has killed us. What the fuck are they waiting for? There's two of them and only one of me."

Then we heard the sound of another car pull up in front of the house. More than one door slammed and Joey turned a whiter shade of pale in front of me. "Take your fucking brat and hide in the basement," he spat. "Don't come out unless you hear me tell you it's okay." I looked at him again. "Go Bitch," he sneered at me turning towards the door.

At that second Joey pulled out two guns and aimed them. One pointed towards the door. The other was pointed towards the living room windows.

I ran into my sleeping daughter's bedroom and picked her up. I moved as silently as I could. I went down into the basement of our small house. There was a nearly hidden door behind the furnace. It was barely a closet. It was supposed to be where we kept the large filters for the furnace and stored other things used for the maintenance of the house and heating system. I neatly stacked the filters and boxes on a table next to the door. Then I removed the light bulb that illuminated the basement. That way if anyone got past Joey, they might not be able to see the door. The door wouldn't be easy to see under normal circumstances since it was hidden behind the furnace. In the darkness it would be virtually invisible.

I took the shelves out of the closet, just as the first shot rang out. I couldn't tell if Joey was firing or the other guys. I just prayed that one of our neighbors would call the police and that they'd arrive quickly. I pushed Hannah into the closet and got inside of it myself. I pulled the table, with all of the stacked filters on it in front of the door. That way if anyone did happen to notice the door, hopefully seeing the table in front of it would make them think that nothing was inside of it.

More and more shots rang out. There was a pitched battle going on up there. I heard men screaming and guns firing. Then I heard the sound of heavy feet stomping around in our living room. Since it sounded like more than one person, I was sure that it wasn't Joey.

Fear clutched my heart. I heard voices screaming and Joey, who sounded as if he was in pain, answering. That told me that he was still alive, but it was no comfort to me. Joey had lied to me the whole time that we were together. Our entire marriage had been a sham. I was just coming to terms with the fact that everyone who'd warned me against him had been right. He didn't care about me or our daughter. He had just been playing me for a fool all along.

The worst though, and I know that all things considered, it was a minor point, was when he called me a slut. He'd called me, the mother of his children, a small town slut. I wasn't a slut. I was twenty four years old with a five year old daughter. Joey was the only man I had ever slept with and he had married me. How the hell was I a slut.

Unfortunately, while I was shivering in the darkness, lamenting my nice girl versus slut status, the events in my home were occurring at a rapid pace.

I heard several heavy blows and resulting groans from Joey and then a very fast slick sound. It sounded like a knife or a sword hitting flesh. Hannah was fully awake and I clamped my hand over her mouth. "Don't cry, baby," I told her. "Everything will be fine. But we can't let the bad men know that we're here. We're playing a game. We're playing hide and seek, okay?" Her eyes were huge and her fear was obvious. But she nodded.

I heard what sounded like liquid hitting the tiles of my kitchen floor. And a groan. "Oh shit that's nasty," laughed a very deep voiced man.

"They'll think twice before fucking with us again," said a man in heavily accented English. "Search everything. Tear this fucking shithole apart." If I thought I had been afraid before, my terror doubled. I heard men running through my house knocking things over and tearing it up. I heard feet on the stairs leading down into the basement. "Fuck, there's no lights down here," said a man only inches away from the furnace. At that moment I wished I had a weapon of some sort. I needed something to fight for our lives.

Then I remembered that Joey had a gun and it hadn't done him any good. They were probably still torturing him. Or maybe he had told them where we were and that was the reason that they were in the basement. I heard the sounds of the men banging about in my basement. I heard them look inside of my washer and dryer and then trying to tear the covers off of the furnace.

At that moment I went into mama bear mode. I got angry. My breathing deepened and became more rapid as I prepared to fight for my daughter. I didn't care what happened to me. But I would protect Hannah with my last breath. I knew that the only thing I had on my side was surprise. So I got ready to attack whoever opened that door with everything I had.

The man or men banging on the furnace were so close that I was sure they had to have noticed the door. Then things got quiet. Sweat broke out on my forehead. I think I even stopped breathing for a second.

"Is that a door?" I heard one of them say.

"I can't see shit down here," another guy answered. "With all of that fucking money they got for the drugs, you'd think he'd have paid the fucking light bill."

"This ain't his house, Dummy," said a third man. "Joey has two or three little places like this all over town. He has at least four women who think they're married to him. From what I understand, he might be married to all of them. Talk about a bunch of dumb bitches."

"Yeah, but they're all pretty cute too," said the first voice. "The one we fucked this afternoon was lively."

"She was at first," said the second voice.

"Try that door and let's get the fuck out of here," said one of them. But before anyone did anything, I heard it. They clearly heard it too. The mournful wailing of a siren getting closer by the second.

"Fuck," screamed the guys almost as one. And then I heard the sound of them running up my stairs.

Everything got quiet for a few moments. I could still hear them moving around outside. And a couple of them came back inside. They were trying to be quiet, but they weren't fooling me. Maybe they were, I thought. I definitely wasn't as smart as I'd always believed that I was. Joey had made a fool of me for years.

I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been. I had actually believed that he loved me. I had taken his words over what everyone else had tried to tell me and ruined my life.

As much as I hated to admit it, my parents had been right about him. And now I found myself in more trouble than I could believe and I truly had no idea what was going on, or why these men wanted to hurt me. I hope that the reason that things had calmed down was because Joey had given them whatever it was that they wanted.

As I hid there, in that tiny closet, shivering with fear, I imagined what I would do when I got out of there...IF I got out of there.

I heard footsteps moving down the stairs. This time they weren't making nearly as much noise as they had before, but even so I could still hear them. But they had also learned from their earlier mistake. I saw glints of light from under the door. They had obviously brought a flashlight with them this time.

Again the footsteps got closer and closer to the door. I was sure that one of the men who had been there before had just grabbed a flashlight and come back to satisfy his curiosity about what was in the closet.

I heard the handle of the door start to turn and I attacked. I kicked the door open as hard as I could slamming it into the man who tried to open it. I heard him groan and fall to the floor. I grabbed my daughter's hand and ran for the stairs. But a yell from the man on the floor froze me in my tracks.

"FBI, freeze!" he yelled.

I turned and walked over to him. I waited for him to get to his feet and threw myself into his arms sobbing loudly.

"What took you so long?" I cried. Within seconds, the commotion had brought several other agents and officers. They all wanted to know what had happened, and what I knew.

"You're safe ma'am," said the cop who'd been here a few days before. "You need to cooperate with the FBI and the DEA so they can get you some sort of protection."

"I don't need any protection," I said. "I'm going home. This whole nightmare is over for me."

"Sarah, you really have no idea what's going in here do you?" asked the guy I had knocked down.

"Not really," I said. "Joey never told me what kind of job he had. The only idea I had that something was wrong was when the police came by a couple of days ago. And then Karen came by, and I found out that Joey had ... had been lying to me and..." My voice broke up then and I started crying.

Suddenly I had a thought. "Joey, he caused all of this. He ruined my life. Where is he? Did he go off with those men? Tell that asshole that I'm leaving him. I'm going home."

"Sarah, we can't tell Joey anything?" said a female agent.

"That bastard," I said. "He left with them didn't he? Fuck him. I'm leaving him. I'm going home."

"Sarah, you really don't understand the game you're in do you?" said the cop.

"Maybe we should take her upstairs as kind of a wakeup call," said one of the agents.

"Uh, let's leave the little girl here though," said another. The female agent stayed in the basement with Hannah as the police officer and the other two FBI agents went upstairs with me.

My house was a mess. They had torn holes in the walls. They had destroyed every piece of furniture and every appliance. Someone had thrown the microwave through the TV screen. The biggest of the agents pushed his way through a couple of men in white coats that were looking at something on the floor.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me over so I could see it too. I looked down and immediately vomited the contents of my digestive tract. I dropped to my knees unable to breathe. I thought for a second that I was dreaming but as I opened my eyes I peeked back and it was still there.

"It" was Joey. Or what was left of him. They had taken him alive. It looked as if they had beaten any resistance out of him. Both of his arms were clearly broken. His knees were both bent at an angle that wasn't humanly possible. I wanted to vomit, but nothing would come out.

"I just need you to know what kind of people you're dealing with and why you can't go home," said the DEA man. "Your friend Karen...they searched Joey's other house, the one that she lived in..." He paused then for a second.

"But Karen was going ho..." I began.

"Karen wasn't quick enough," he spat. "It looked like they gang raped her before they put a bullet in her head. And Sarah, these guys aren't dumb. They know that Joey for the most part didn't tell any of his women anything. They killed Karen and mutilated Joey's body just like they did the rest of the men that Joey worked with for the same reason. There's a drug war going on in the streets. They're all fighting over territory. So they needed to set an example of what happens to anyone to tries to move into this area."

"They killed everyone connected to Joey and his friends. They killed the dealers, the drivers, the lab workers, and all of their wives and kids as well. These people are not fucking around. We don't know whether they know that you were here or not. They've already killed the rest of Joey's uh...women and the rest of his kids. But we can't take any chances. If you go home, and they do happen to know that you're alive, they'll kill you and your family too. Your best bet is for you and your daughter to go into witness protection.

Two days later, my long dishwater blond hair was cut in a short curly dark brown do. Hannah's hair was just like mine and we had different names. We along with a group of seven plain clothes US Marshalls were driving a Winnebago towards our new home and identities. The Agents themselves had a list of possible homes in several different states and would let our route dictate which one we settled in.

Despite the overwhelming number of agents with us and the fact that the men who killed Joey had been caught the day after they destroyed my house, I was afraid. The agents and the Marshalls had all been very kind and very reassuring. They were sure that the remaining members of the drug gang would be caught and were sure that they had no idea that Hannah and I existed. I had to stop calling her Hannah. Her name is Miley. Her last name, like mine is Cyprus, like the trees. She had chosen her own name and I let her have it. But I had already warned her that if I caught her twerking, I was going to beat her ass so badly that she wouldn't be able to ever shake it again.

I was still confused and the agents told me that I was in a kind of shock. It would take months for me to really come to terms with what had happened to me. Perhaps I'd come out of it a stronger person. Perhaps I'd come out of it a basket case. The same could be said for Ha ... Miley. Maybe the shock of the experience could even transfer through me and affect the child I was carrying. Only time would tell.

* * * * * *

Claire

Ray and I got married and we both got great jobs. Actually I got a great job. Ray was simply moved from the internship he had during his last two years of college, to the engineering staff. He moved up in the company the way a weed grows when left unattended. And if I had ever dreamed of throwing the fact that I had a Master's degree in education, while he only had his Bachelor's around, the difference in our salaries completely shut me up.

We both made good money but truthfully, Ray's salary and perks were better. But none of that mattered. As a matter of fact, nothing mattered. We loved each other with a passion that was scary. I was living my dream life, with the man of my dreams.

Our relationship had grown and evolved since our college days. Ray was no longer that shy little boy that I thought I needed to teach. He still loved me and spoiled me much more than I deserved, but he was no longer afraid to put me in my place if I started to get full of myself.

Even years after we married, the passion on our relationship was still there. We were very lucky because more than half of the couples we knew from college had either broken up before they graduated or had gotten divorced. Ray and I seemed to fall more deeply in love every year that passed.

One of my favorite feelings was after a night of sex, to wake up and find my husband staring dreamily at me. Sometimes he still just gazed at me, trying to memorize every feature of my face the way he'd done when we first got together.

"What are you looking at?" I'd ask.

"The most beautiful woman in the world," he'd reply.

"I'm not sure my husband would be okay with you staring at me," I'd joke.

"I'm your husband," he'd say very seriously. It was as if he still didn't believe it. "I must've done something really good in a past life to deserve you."

I felt the exact same way. "Well you're not going to have me for much longer of you don't feed me," I'd tell him. "I uhm ... had a really intense workout last night."

"That was amazing," he'd say.

"Ray, we've been married for a long time," I told him once. "Are you bored with me yet?" He looked at me as if I was crazy.

"How could I ev..." he began.

"Behind every beautiful woman, is a man who's tired of fucking her," I quipped.

He laughed. "It's a good thing that I'm beside you then, isn't it?" I kissed him and we shared our morning breath.

"But seriously Claire, I feel so lucky to have you. I'm still in the shocked and awed part of our relationship. And as selfish as it sounds, I think we're lucky that we didn't have kids. And I say that for lot of reasons. Number one, over the years I haven't had to share you with anyone. That keeps us closer. I feel like every year we get closer and more in love cause there are only the two of us. Number two we can do anything we want, from last minute weekend trips and getaways to long vacations on the spur of the moment. We both have tons of vacation time squirreled away, so we can do anything or go anywhere we want. And of course the best reason in the world..." He got a really nasty expression on his face.

"You're going to talk about how since it's only us living here, you can make me do all of those nasty things whenever you want, aren't you?" I laughed.

"I wasn't going to," he said. "But it's true. I was going to talk about how all of my friends are constantly complaining about how uhm ... loose their wives got after they had kids." His fingers trailed down my stomach and settled between my legs. He didn't have to do anything. Just the feeling of his fingers near it got my pussy wet.

"This thing is still as tight as it was when we first met," he said rubbing it lightly. I couldn't help it, I moaned. The sound of my voice was like a switch for Ray. He immediately reacted by stroking his fingers through my pussy lips and moving on top of me.

The house that we'd bought was in a very nice neighborhood and it was only two miles away from the school I taught at. Our best friends were the couple next door. Betty Cooper and her husband Archie. Betty was a blond like me. She showed me some pictures of herself when she was twenty years younger and sixty pounds lighter. She'd been pretty. Her husband Archie shared her girth but not her boobs although his man boobs were bigger than mine were. Archie was a redhead when he was younger but now he was bald. Their kids had long since grown up and left the nest.

Ray had to drive for almost an hour to get to the plant, but the only time he complained about it was in the winter. During the summer he drove his Mustang and loved every second of the drive. The years, as I've said had been good to us. And I had no regrets. Before I knew it we had been married for thirteen years and I was turning forty. Ray swore that I looked exactly the same as I did the first day he laid eyes on me. I take that with a grain of salt because I know that Ray looks at me through love colored glasses.

Three years ago, when we went to our ten year reunion at college, we ran into a lot of people we'd known back then. Many of them had been married and divorced more than once or were married to someone they hadn't known during our time in college. Most were shocked that Ray and I were still together. One of the people commented on our old classmate Rudy's statement that I'd be bored with Ray in a week. Unfortunately Rudy didn't attend the reunion to comment.

A lot of people also commented on how well Ray had aged. He'd grown from an awkward but sweet, college boy to a very confident and very handsome man. When we first got together, it might have seemed like Ray was the luckiest guy on earth. But thirteen years later, it was clear that we had both hit the lottery in terms of spouses.

I also loved my job. I had resisted going after a PHD and becoming a college professor because teaching high school was so much more rewarding. My maternal instincts got a workout every year as I herded awkward freshmen towards adulthood.