Damaged Goods Ch. 04

He grabbed the Zippo and his pack of American Spirit Non-Filters from a shelf by the couch as Delilah continued to stare at him. He twisted the cancer stick into his lips, flicked the Zippo open, slipped the wheel, stoked up the stick and sucked a whole load of cancerous molecules into his thoracic cavity. Blowing out the remains like a factory smokestack, they locked eyes finally.

He stated firmly, "I have to go. Marisa is going to meet me to hand off more supplies. I also have to bake up some stuff for Duey since I'm his main supplier now. Don't expect me until tomorrow at the earliest."

Delilah huffed unceremoniously, "Whatever Deek. You do what you have to do."

Deek replied angrily, "I'm sick of your bitchy shit. If you don't like what I've given you, then why not leave?"

She answered with no less force, "Let's see, a shitty apartment that I can't keep clean, a pay cut that amounts to less than $200 a week, and the risk of getting caught since I am one of your gophers. Not to mention the fact that I am not the only one in this relationship. If you treated me right, I'd probably be a lot less bitchy."

He snorted and then puffed smoke at her. She coughed her disgust back at him and he just sneered. "I took you in off the street and gave you a place to lay your head. I even gave a chance to earn some income, and you aren't even grateful for that!"

She screamed back at him, "You let me stay here if I would service you whenever you wanted it. You promised me a relationship, you promised me monogamy and all I became was a whore in your stable of them!"

He chuckled at her, "I never promised you anything. I know what I said to you but did your really expect me to be this awesome dude. You knew what you were getting from the start, Dee. I am not Mr. Nice Guy, I am Mr. Bad Example!"

Delilah turned away from him and he knew that she had been defeated for the moment.

Deek was a decent manipulator. He knew how to get shattered females on the verge of adulthood to be drones for him, both sexually and corporately. He knew where the scars were hiding and he knew what kind of scars they were. Being of the social media generation, he knew which ones could be the perfect targets to bring into his version of the meth trade.

Deek was excellent at chemistry and staying out of the limelight. At age fifteen, he met a cousin who had done hard time for making and dealing meth. The product was substandard to what other local meth dealers had been producing and Deek decided to figure out how to change that. A whiz in school, he had taken chemistry as a freshman and was taking organic chemistry as a sophomore. He found the problem and he gave the fresh recipe to his cousin. Suddenly, the cousin was flush with quick cash and he gave Deek a sizable cut.

As a chemist, Deek was meticulous when it came to working in labs and keeping notes. By the age of eighteen, Deek had dropped out of school yet was working full-time for his cousin. A few months before his nineteenth birthday, Deek's cousin was pinched in an undercover operation and he immediately went underground. With his collected knowledge and experience, Deek decided to go into business for himself and it didn't take him long to establish a reputation as an enigma. He wasn't ever at the forefront of the operation unless he absolutely had to be, which included making deals and arrangements with prospective buyers and established heavies. Which is why he selected the young and vulnerable females. They acted as his supply proxies.

Deek added more salt to Delilah's already wounded being, "It's not surprising that you came to me when you did. With how fucked-up your relationship was with your parents, you need a parent figure to get you started in this big, bad world. And you also needed a man to turn you into the woman you need to be. Without me, you'd be on the streets and suffering from your third bout of chlamydia. You'd probably be sterile anyway, which isn't a bad thing. Kids are such a waste of time and energy."

Delilah seethed with unmitigated scorn as he put on a Buckcherry T-shirt, yet she maintained her reserve. Deek wandered up to her and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

He stated, "I may not be faithful, but you are by far my favorite bitch. Stretch marks and a pot belly would not look good on you. I am with a hot eighteen-year old, not a forty-year old virgin."

He grabbed his keys and slammed the door. After a few moments of critical silence, she finally let rage come unbridled and she went on a rampage through the apartment. She was a mimic of Lilith scorned, sans the expansive wings and the eyes of scarlet. She grabbed a kitchen knife and shredded the couch, his favorite easy chair, every pillow, the bedspread and the bed itself. She even took his electric guitar and smashed every mirror and television set in the place. After her tirade, she quickly dressed in a white, form-fitting T-shirt and blue jeans, packed everything she owned in her rucksack and then took the $20,000 that Deek kept behind the heating grate in the spare bedroom. While Deek may have been a master in the meth trade, he clearly didn't have enough sense to not piss off the wrong woman. Slamming the door behind her, Delilah ran down the stairs and onto the street and disappeared to the north. Deek was one of those personalities that could appear out of the ether without warning. She didn't know why she chose to go north, maybe it was because it was the first thing that came to mind, maybe it was randomness.

Maybe it was the idea that the universe already had her plotted on that trajectory.

It wasn't far away and Delilah saw it. It was the rail yard that took trains in all directions and at that moment she decided that it was her best means of escape. She flipped her rucksack over and jumped the fence with ease. She saw an open boxcar directly ahead of her and she took off toward it. She didn't know where it would take her, all she knew is that she had to get away from there.

Get away from the city that made her life a living hell.

It wasn't long after she boarded the open boxcar that the train jerked forcefully to the west. Where she was headed, she didn't know but she knew she was free from the demented slimeball for who knew how long. And she could only think about the last thing he said to her.

About how she should be a sterile nothing of a woman.

Delilah was in deep pain, the kind of pain that one could never get over. She felt alone in the world even with her parents gone. She had no support structure beyond them. The day they died was really the day she died.

As the train tracks click-clacked below her, she was able to let loose the tears. The memory she relived was of the most visceral, horrifying event of her life.

She was back to the point where she had last seen Dylan, ever.

They had come quietly down the stairs, and her parents were already in a middle of a screaming match. It would be a rough one from the way it sounded. She positioned herself behind the small wall between the living room and front door and saw what unfolded.

Her mother yelled in a drunken timbre, "So this is what you've been doing since you were laid off! You've been texting and sexting that slut who lives up street!"

Her father screamed back, stone drunk as well, "At least she's willing to give me some. You haven't put out since the day three sixes appeared in a row on the calendar."

She replied angrily, "That's not fair. I have tried, but you are such a louse and sloth that you haven't made it easy for me to be in the mood."

He just chuckled, "Fuck, I need to be beyond wasted to get the proper wood for you!"

They had been facing each other from about three feet apart and that made her walk away into the kitchen. Delilah's father just sniffed and chuckled and told her to get him another beer. He laid down on the couch expecting Delilah's mother to be the beer bitch she was meant be. Instead, she returned with a 22-caliber pistol in her left hand pointing toward his head. The look of dread that came over his face was one that Delilah would remember forever. Her mother just sneered as she pulled the trigger. She retained the sneer as the bullet entered her husband's forehead and blood splattered back onto her face. Delilah suddenly screamed and it made her mother turn in that direction. She just mouthed the words "Good-Bye" as she raised the 22 to her left temple and squeezed the trigger. The bullet entered into the west wall along with a splattering of skull fragments, blood and brain matter. Delilah just screamed her lungs out wishing Dylan would be within earshot.

But he wasn't. He was already far down the street feeling emotionally dejected from what happened before.

But it would not have mattered. She was sent into foster care, but the city's system was already filled. She ended up finishing her schooling in another town, and Dylan lost track of her.

She bounced in and out of the foster care system, and every home she found herself in wasn't conducive for a teenager being loved, unless she was a sexual object. She had found herself in a place like that in a small town where the foster parents wanted her to be their brood mare because the older woman could not bear children. It was then she made her break from the system.

And she made her way back to the city to find him. She checked everywhere she could but she wasn't able to find him.

The universe had other plans for him.

And the hell in her life only compounded itself like bank account interest.

Lost, hungry, cold, she found an open garage to maintain her survival for only so much longer. She had been resorting to dumpster diving and shoplifting to keep herself going. On that night, she had evaded a police cruiser that was trying to stop her after she stole a Coke and a bag of chips from a convenience store a couple of blocks over. She ran down the alley and found the open garage. It turned out Deek Weller's garage door opener had malfunctioned earlier in the day. Deek drove in not long afterward and the headlights of his Chevy Monza Mirage caught her dark shape. Her beauty immediately stunned him and he decided to play Good Samaritan.

And the hell compounded even more.

Up until she could not take it anymore.

But she decided not to take him out the way her mother took out her father.

She wasn't a wife, just a scorned girlfriend among many other girlfriends.

She thought back to the moment just before the shooting, the happiest moment of her life.

She knew what was coming.

She knew Dylan was going to say the magic words.

She knew he might even go further than that.

And that was her final thought as the train came to a halt outside a town with a large slough on the eastern edge. She departed from there and started walking north again.

As if north was the direction that the universe had her plotted on to begin with.

And that was her final thought as Dylan's soldier softened and slid out of her. He kissed her back and neck several times and told her that he loved her and only her deeply. She immediately reached her head back to kiss him, showing her affection for him and him alone.

He backed away from her and she was puzzled by the maneuver. He immediately reached into the top drawer of his dresser and put something in his right hand. She had seated herself rightly, exposing her milky form to him just as he remembered from that special day two years before. He opened his hand showing the ring that he had placed on her finger during their playful, goofy interlude all those months ago.

Dylan said simply as he got down one knee, "Delilah, I wanted to do this two years ago but life got in the way rather abruptly. I still truly love you and cherish you. Will you marry me?"

Delilah was in shock at first and then screamed with a joy she never felt before, "Yes, I will marry you. I always wanted to marry you. I've wanted to marry you since the day you put your hand in your pocket."

Dylan chuckled at the memory, "You remember that?"

Delilah just laughed in reply, "Of course I remember that. I knew what you were going to ask me."

Dylan slid the ring onto her left hand and then sat next to her. They kissed for a little bit and Delilah stared at her ring finger in awe. For the first time in a long time, she was happy.

Really, truly happy.

Dylan made a small confession to her, "I was going to propose to you after we saw each other in the mirror."

Delilah asked, "Why didn't you?"

He answered, "I remembered how you reacted to me kissing you for the first time. You recoiled and I was afraid you'd never want to see me again."

She sighed, "I did that because I was afraid that I was like my parents or that you would be like your parents. I came to realize that you were a much better man than either one of our fathers. You treated me with respect, you understood me, we had that connection. And we still do."

He stated, "After all the shit that has happened to the two of us, seeing you again was the only thing that really kept me going. Two years is too long and I want to know what has happened along the way. I want to tell you what has happened with me."

She put her finger to his mouth and kissed him once more. "We have plenty of time now. We are going to be together until the end."

He agreed and then yawned and she mimicked his motion. He got up and turned off the light. She faced the wall away from him and he scooted in behind her and they were soon fast asleep.

Just like many night before, only they were naked this time. For the first time.

All was right with the world. For them.

For the time being.

Yet the universe always appears to have other plans in the works.

Back in the home city, Deek Weller was standing out on his front porch living within a dimension of rage that he never experienced before. He stood out next to the garage, drinking a highball glass full of cheap whiskey. He had been gone longer than he expected because one of his girls got pinched as she worked the southern part of the state, and he received a double order not only from Duey, his contact one state over to the east, but from Huey, his contact one state to the south. He and his compatriots worked hard for two solid days in two separate meth houses to make the deadline. When he returned, he never expected his favorite filly to have become a full-fledged rabid wolverine. What irritated him the most was the heating grate that had been removed in the spare bedroom. He sorely wanted his $20,000 back and he didn't care how he would go about getting it. He slugged the whiskey in three gulps and returned to his hovel. He went to his bedroom and reached under the bed to retrieve a 9mm handgun. He sat beside the bed and pointed to a broken picture of Delilah on his dresser. He pointed the piece right between her eyes and made a popping sound with his mouth.

The universe had other plans indeed.