Raoul's 18th Birthday Ch. 04

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If Raoul wasn't sober already, walking into what might be an ambush definitely wakes him up.

On the way through the girls' dressing room he glances at his watch. Little past four in the morning.

There are fewer people in the club, which disappoints him. Some of his fans have turned in for the night. He walks nonchalantly to a corner table — later he'll look around to try to identify Todd's brothers and their posse, but for now he wants to play it cool.

"You alright, sweetie?" a waitress says to him, laying a hand on the back of his neck and pressing her large breasts into his shoulder.

"Yes, ma'am," he tells her. "Could a guy get a cup of coffee here?"

"Sure could. Cream or sugar?"

"Black and strong, please."

"Good man. That's how I take mine too. Man that takes black coffee's a man you can trust."

"Say, is Candy around? I'd like a dance if she is."

"I'll send her over."

"Thank you."

Candy turns out to be about five feet tall, skinny but with surprisingly full hips and breasts.

"I've heard you're a great dancer. Is that true?" he asks when she sits on his lap.

"Judge for yourself," she teases, winking as she runs a finger from his shoulder down to his hip.

"How much do I need to give you to get your best dance?"

"My very best dance?"

"Very best."

"How about forty?"

"How about thirty and we'll see what kind of a tip you get afterwards."

"If I do a good job, what kind of tip do you think it will be?"

"Do you think you can earn a twenty?"

"I know I can, sweetie."

"Do your best," he winks.

She slaps him playfully and begins her dance.

Wearing denim shorts cut so that the bottom of her ass hangs out, she begins to rub herself on his crotch. Then she stands up to wave her hips around, slowly pulling her t-shirt over her head, revealing a pink push-up bra doing full-time work.

She's cute, and she does her best, and Raoul cheers her on encouragingly, but he is not easily going to get hard. His dick has had a very busy day even by his standards, and it's just worn out. He's also had too much to drink, and he keeps watching the room out of the corner of his eyes, leaning back with his fingers laced behind his head.

But no one even seems to be looking his way.

Scott was probably just overly nervous. They got a look at Raoul and they thought better of making any trouble. It's like he thought: he welcomes the fight, so the fight avoids him.

Now Candy's labor is beginning to pay off. She's rubbing her tits in his face. They're not actually that big, but proportionately to her little body they're very impressive. He closes his eyes to enjoy it.

Then she's working his crotch as well as she can, rubbing her panties against it enthusiastically. In the background, Pat Benatar is encouraging someone to hit her with his best shot.

"Fuck yeah," Raoul says, looking down at her. "You are going to get tipped."

She laughs, arching her back so that her nipples point straight up in the air.

"Fuck yeah," he repeats again, regretting that he had not taken her to the VIP room.

Then all hell breaks loose.

Somebody shouts something.

Out of the corner of his eye Raoul sees a guy running toward him, one arm raised with a knife.

Everything is suddenly in slow motion, unfortunately including Raoul.

As the guy takes the last two steps, raising his hand to strike Raoul, Raoul tries to push Candy out of the way with one arm and deflect the blow with the other.

Unfortunately, he misses with both hands. Candy hits the ground much harder than he intended, and the guy's knife catches Raoul's arm a bit.

The only reason, Raoul realizes, that the guy didn't stab him good is that he was aiming for Candy.

But why the fuck would he do that?

Candy, apparently realizing the same thing, screams as loudly as Raoul has ever heard anyone scream as she scrambles behind Raoul's chair.

Meanwhile the guy has drawn back, this time to stab Raoul, but now Raoul has enough time to respond more effectively.

His attacker is just a little guy, tough and wiry, wild-eyed and unkempt. Probably stoned out of his mind.

Raoul catches the guy's right wrist, effectively ending the fight. They have a moment of eye-contact in which they both know what is about to happen. It's the moment when a predator and its prey acknowledge each other.

Raoul has to kind of spin around to get himself out of his seat and standing up, and his opponent, wide-eyed and with no idea what to do, just twirls around with him.

In the process, Raoul twists the guy's arm, so once he's up on his feet the guy is already bending over in pain. Then Raoul simultaneously brings an elbow down on the fist that holds the knife and a knee up into that elbow, smashing the man's hand.

The guy cries out as the knife falls away.

Now it's brutal.

It's just a little man against a furious Raoul.

Remembering the sight of Candy's nipples pointing into the sky the knife was coming down, Raoul grabs the back of the man's head and jams his face into his knee twices — using the full strength of his core every time. He's probably out the first time, but Raoul does it again, intending to shatter some teeth.

Blood sprays everywhere.

He would probably have done it again, but someone else is coming, so Raoul drops him and turns to the new guy.

This guy has only a beer bottle.

They stand there a moment, squaring off.

Out of sheer malice, Raoul reaches his left hand into his pocket, sliding the brass knuckles on.

This guy is going to get it.

He's about ten inches shorter than Raoul, not as big as Todd but not as skinny as whoever the first guy was. Raoul sees the fear in his eyes and smirks.

Then the guy just throws the bottle at Raoul's head, missing wildly, and runs off into the melee that has erupted in the room.

Raoul may be the cause of this fight, but no one seems eager to attack him at that moment, so he glances down at Candy.

"You okay?"

"No!" she cries, hiding behind the chair, but Raoul can't see anything wrong with her. She's just scared, he decides.

"Stay there. I'll stop the fight and come get you."

He strides into the chaos, his heart rejoicing.

As he approaches, a kind of clarity spreads through the room. It had looked like everyone against everyone, but when some guys turn to face him he begins to see who's on whose side.

Raoul, now with the brass knuckles on both hands, simply smashes through them like a man among children. They wield bottles, chairs, ashtrays, whatever they can find, and they do a little damage to him. He feels various objects hitting him, but without pain. This is his first fight in conditions like this, and nothing has prepared him for it, so he doesn't know what to do except just keep punching, figuring that the best defense is a good offense. Sure enough, each of his attackers falls after a single punch, the steel of the knuckles cracking jaws and cheeks and chins and ribs.

He has never felt so powerful. He's throwing his full strength and weight into every punch and, especially in the confusion and the flashing lights of the club, his victims aren't skilled enough to evade them. He feels like a cartoon superhero, knocking men out left and right.

It's just an immensely satisfying fight. An old-fashioned good time.

Almost exactly twenty-four hours ago he woke to find a beautiful woman lovingly sucking his dick, and he's had a lot of fun since then too, but this is absolutely the highlight of his day.

After he's knocked out six or seven of them, the rest back away, just in time to let him see Scott fall down as three guys attack him. The guys get some pretty nasty kicks in, but they scatter fast when they see Raoul approaching.

One, however, whose back was to Raoul, leaves a moment too late, and Raoul catches him with a roundhouse, too fast for the man to flinch away. His head snaps around and his body twists to the ground.

Helping Scott up with one hand, Raoul sees that one of the men who'd been kicking Scott was the guy who threw the first bottle and ran away, so Raoul goes after him.

He tries to run away again of course but this time he falls backwards over a chair, and before he can get up or roll over, Raoul's boot hits him in the crotch so hard it lifts him into the air and throws him, howling, about two yards backwards. No sooner does he hit the ground than Raoul kicks him again, a ferocious shot to the kidney.

There's no question of him getting up for a while. He'll be pissing blood for several days.

As Raoul turns back to the room he notices, just in time, two guys who apparently thought they had an angle to attack him. He manages to bash one of them in the side of the head with his elbow, knocking him back enough that he trips over someone on the ground. Raoul turns to the other one, but he has already retreated, fleeing into the grasp of one of the bouncers.

Whatever happens to him there is not as bad as what Raoul would've done.

So Raoul turns back to the first guy, who'd like to retreat but he's against a wall already. Raoul doesn't feel good about having his back to the room, so he simply feints with the right and connects with the left, as he'd done to Todd earlier, turning back around to the room as fast as he can.

But when he turns around, he sees that the fight's over now, at least for him. The bouncers are doing mop-up duty, and no one who's still able to fight seems interested in doing so. Even the girls have stopped screaming. Someone has turned the lights on, and the room looks much uglier.

About a dozen men lay on the ground, bleeding and unconscious.

Soctt and him nod at each other. Scott's bleeding from a lip, and obviously sore from being kicked, but doesn't look too bad.

"How you feeling?" Raoul asks him.

"Shit, I'm glad you showed up." Scott actually hugs him. "Thanks, Boss. Jesus Christ, how are you doing?"

From the way Scott is looking at him, Raoul supposes he must look pretty bad. He doesn't feel any pain — in fact, he feels pretty fucking awesome — but when he wipes his forehead with his arm, it comes away with more blood than sweat.

"I'm fine, man," he shrugs. "I've got to get Candy."

He struts back across the room as the music blares, "Breakin' the law! Breakin' the law!" Men he's laid out roll on the floor, moaning, weeping; others lay silently. From far away he hears the sound of police sirens growing louder. They must've been ready nearby — the entire fight couldn't have lasted more than a minute.

Scott yells to him, "Bring her through the girl's room. Meet me out back."

So Raoul picks up Candy, who's put her shirt back on, carrying her over his shoulder in one arm like a father would carry his daughter, and she clings to him the way a frightened woman clings to a man she trusts to protect her. On his way back across the bar someone tries to trip him, and so he kicks that guy in the kidney too.

Darrell and James seem to have done well for themselves. Apparently unharmed, they're each standing over a couple guys. He shakes their hands. "Darrell. James. You take care."

"You too, Boss."

But new surprises await him in the dressing room.

Some of the girls are fighting each other for some reason. None of them are fully clothed, and two are completely naked. Their fight is more sound than fury: they're pulling each other's hair and clothing, smacking and kicking each other a little, but mostly screaming.

Raoul watches for an instant before he realizes that behind them, on the other side of the room, some really fat, hairy guy has Raven by the hair, slapping her with his free hand, calling her a fat bitch, a fat fucking slut, and so on. (Her attacker easily weighs three times as much as she does.) Still wearing the cop uniform, she's bent over, trying to pull away, trying to protect her head with her little hands and arms, yelling, "Please, Phil, please stop, please! I'm sorry, Phil! Stop!"

Of course that doesn't go on much longer.

"Hey!" Raoul shouts, putting down Candy, and as the guy turns to look Raoul's roundhouse left smashes into his face, the full force of the steel landing square on the man's forehead. He's out instantly. His head naps back as he collapses backwards into the concrete wall and then sideways onto a table covered with makeup and beauty products, but Raoul, too furious to stop, pulls him up by the hair.

He's heavy — very fat — so Raoul can't throw him around as easily as he'd like, but he slams him against the concrete and punches his face several times, shattering teeth and bones as blood sprays everywhere.

Finally through his rage he hears Emma screaming, "Raoul! Raoul! Raoul!"

He turns to see her and Candy as near to him as they dare to get, eager to pull him away, and near the door is Scott, beckoning him to leave. Half a dozen women in their underwear, no longer fighting each other, cower around the room, shocked by the violence they've seen.

"Come on, kid!" Scott growls. "Get the fuck out of here. What the fuck's wrong with you?"

But Raoul doesn't let the guy go.

"Who is this mother fucker?" he demands, holding him up by the hair so everyone can see his face. The man's body just dangles limply from the head.

"My cousin," Emma screams.

"Your cousin?"

"It's okay. I hate him! I hope you killed him! But let's get out of here!"

So Raoul drops him, and instantly Candy leaps back into his arm.

On his way out, Raoul waves at the women. They wave back timidly, covering themselves with their arms, apparently having forgotten whatever they were fighting about.

Raoul gets on his bike, putting Candy in front of him, and while he slips off the brass knuckles, putting one in each of his pants pockets, Raven climbs on behind him. Raoul quickly pulls his jacket off and wraps it around Candy, who's wearing only a thin t-shirt. Raven clings tightly to him from behind.

"Jesus, Raoul," Emma says, seeing the gash open on his forearm, flowing with wet blood. "Are you okay?"

He looks at it, surprised. It hadn't even hurt until that moment, and then suddenly the pain seems to fill his arm, shooting into his shoulder and neck.

"I am for now. We'll clean and bandage it soon."

By then Scott has the gate unlocked and is on his bike, ready to ride away.

They follow him around to the front of the building. There are four cop cars, lights flashing in the dawn, but there's only one cop outside. He stands near the door, apparently to prevent anyone else from going in. The others must have gone inside.

Scott rides right up to the cop.

"Hey, there, Jackson," he says. "You had a merry Christmas?"

"Sure," the cop replies. "And a happy New Year. How about you?"

While Scott talks to the cop, Raoul checks out his arm. The cut's about two inches long, on the outside of his arm below the elbow, not too deep. He must've just got nicked with the point of the knife as it came down. There's just a hell of a lot of blood — he can't even tell how much of it is his — and he needs to clean it out.

In 1987 the word AIDS hangs over every open wound.

Checking himself in the mirror of his bike, he sees that he has smaller cuts on his forehead, cheek, and chin, and a purple bulge on his temple that looks like it's going to get sore.

It took about twelve guys, he reflects, to do this to him.

It would be very satisfying if only his left arm weren't hurt so badly. The pain seems to be swelling, filling his forearm elbow to wrist and into his thumb. He can feel his pulse as shots of pain.

"Hell, spoiled my boys to death." Scott has said. "Listen, here's something extra for you for the New Year's alright?"

Raoul looks up in time to see Scott hand the cop what looks like a fifty.

"Appreciate that, bud," the cop tells him.

"Jerry'll fix y'all up better, but I gotta get the kid out of here right now," Scott says. "It's past his girls' bedtimes."

"Looks like big boy there was on the wrong end of the stick."

"Wait till you see the other guys," Scott laughs. "But he doesn't need to be caught here."

"Gotcha," the cop nods, fist-bumping Scott.

"Take care, Jackson. Tell Trish and the boys I said hi."

"You too, Ross," the cop tells him. "You do the same."

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About a quarter mile down the road, Scott pulls into a gas station parking lot. It's closed, but inside someone is working, preparing to open it.

"I've got to get back to the club," he tells Raoul. "They'll be missing me before long. But you got to get yourself cleaned up. You know where to go from here?"

"Oh yeah, we'll be fine."

"Mighty nice of you to stop by, though. Fuckin' A, you were killing 'em in there. How many did you put down?"

"I don't know, maybe seven or eight."

"Bullshit," Candy interrupts. "At least ten. If not more. Like twelve."

"I never seen anything like that," Scott grins. "Boss Fucking Badoss."

"The knuckle dusters sure came in handy," Raoul says. "I appreciated them very much."

Scott's eyes bulge. "Oh, shit. I forgot about them."

"What do you mean?"

"You were wearing them in the fight?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus, Boss," Scott gasps, "you probably did kill some of those guys."

Raoul and him look at each other as the day brightens around them.

"I mean, we'll take care of it," Scott swallows. "You don't have to worry. Them cops there are all our guys. They won't even take statements we don't want them to."

Raoul waits, too shocked to think, while Scott looks toward the sky, thinking hard.

"Oh, shit, Boss, you better stay away for a while."

"You serious?" Raoul can't believe it.

"I don't know. Maybe." He rubs his eyes with his palms. "Shit. They was falling hard."

When he looks at Raoul again, it's different than anyone has ever looked at him.

At least in Scott's mind, Raoul is a killer.

Scott takes a deep breath, nodding at him. "Well, son, you're a fucking Khan now. Nothing you can fucking do about it. But you got to get the fuck out of here right now. Get that arm taken care of and don't say a fucking thing about it. Come up with a story. And you two, you better keep your fucking mouths shut too. You know better than to talk."

As soon as it's clear that his threats are understood, he looks back at Raoul.

"Come see us tonight, Boss. Come alone and late, after the crowd. We'll let you know what's going down."

"Okay."

"I gotta go, Boss," he says. "We'll see you tonight, but I gotta go now."

And with that he rides away, turning back to the club.

As the sound of his bike recedes, Raoul asks the girls, trying to remain calm, "Where to, ladies?"

"I live just up the road," Candy suggests. "Not far. Come to my place."

"You live alone?"

"With my mom. We'll take care of you."

"Sounds good."

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This is the final "Raoul's 18th birthday" story, but the plot continues in the stories titled "Raoul's first murder."