To My Senses Ch. 01

"Cady," I said quietly, "What the fuck is going on?"

When she turned back to me, fresh tears had leaked down her face. "They want to do something else to her. She called me. She's thinking of running away."

"What? What's going on?"

She pointed at her desk with a shaking hand. "It's on there, I looked it up. Gary, it's..." she bit her knuckle to keep from trembling.

What could possibly be this bad?

I moved over to the desk, bent over the off-white wood, flipped up the screen. Someday, I hoped, laptops wouldn't be so big and bulky. It'd be nice to carry something around that didn't feel like a load of bricks. Or even just a screen...

The website she'd been looking at came up. There were descriptions. And pictures. I forced myself to read, despite the horror of the photos assaulting my eyes from the page. I felt physical revulsion if I let my gaze drift from the printed words.

The words weren't much better than the pictures.

I closed the site, and because removing that information from this room, this house felt like a good idea, I cleared the browser history.

I turned to Cady, and my legs felt weak. I felt hot, and there was a buzzing in my ears. "Dammit," was all I could think to say. It barely came out, my throat was dry.

I walked over and hugged my girlfriend, felt her shake against me. When I finally released her, I stepped back. "Why?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. It's like a religious thing or something. Maybe it's just opportunity. Nina said the woman who does it is kinda like...a specialist? Came over from Dearborn. Apparently she's got like a backlog of parents here that want that done to their daughters."

I tried not to think of the pictures I'd seen. Tried not to imagine that being done to Nina. I couldn't imagine a parent wanting to mutilate their daughter like that. It was a sickening violation of the sacred bond between parent and child. You kept your kids safe, you didn't let people butcher their bodies.

What the fuck?

"She needs to call Child Protective Services."

"And get dragged into a court case for months over something her parents haven't even done yet?"

"What do you want me to do, Cady? What can I do?"

"Your dad has that empty townhouse in his row, like two down? Could she stay there?"

"You want my parents to knowingly harbor a runaway until... When? She graduates?"

"I don't know!" she shrieked at me. "I don't know! I just know that can't... They can't..."

I walked over to her as she started to sob, and put my arms around her. "Shhh shhh... It's ok. We'll figure it out. I'll go talk to Mike. He'll have an idea."

"Mike will? Seriously?" She lifted her messy face from my shoulder. "What's he gonna do?"

"No idea. But we'll talk it out."

"Tonight? Please?"

I stepped back and pulled my phone from my pocket. My finger hovered over texting, then I thought better of it and called him instead.

"Yeah," he answered.

"I need you," I told him, and I hoped my voice conveyed the seriousness of my words. "Food court."

"Got it." His voice was hard. "Eight work?"

"Yeah."

He hung up and I faked a smile for Cady. "See, we're going to figure it."

"I'm going with you."

"No. Absolutely not."

"Why?" Anger fought with confusion for space on her beautiful face. "She's my friend."

"Because I can imagine, maybe, planning to do something illegal. And I don't want you caught up in that if it goes that far."

She gave me a horrified look. "What? What are you..."

I held a finger to her lips. "Nothing yet. Just being careful. Stay here. Call your friend back. Comfort her. See if you can figure out a way out of this. I'm gonna go talk to Mike."

Cady sighed heavily and leaned in to kiss me. Her lips were wet with tears. "I love you, Gary."

"I love you too." I stepped back, gave her a small smile and summoned up more calm than I felt. "It's gonna be ok. I'm not gonna let anyone hurt her. I promise."

###

Mike's face was grim, his Maori tattoos standing out even more sharply from skin gone pale. He'd called Colette, who had also heard the story from Nina, but in more detail.

"This is happening," he hissed. "Not twenty miles from here. This...bitch... Is alive and breathing and planning to hurt someone we care about within half an hour driving distance."

"Yeah," was all I could think to say.

It seemed impossible that the food court could be bustling busy around us. Shoppers in thick jackets, going on about their lives. Eating high sodium meals that tasted good. Texting their friends. Living without the knowledge of the horrors happening in their community.

It seemed dirty and perverse.

"So what do we do?"

He snorted. "What can we do?"

"I was hoping you'd know."

"I'll tell you what I'd like to do. I'd like to go to that store and put a stop to her permanently. This ain't just about Nina, there's dozens of other kids out there either suffering the same fate or gonna. It doesn't do any of them any good if we JUST help Nina."

"Call the cops?" I suggested.

"Yeah, that'll go well. Tell them a recent arrival from Dearborn owns a child-mutilation practice in the basement of a convenience store? Yeah, they'll take us REAL seriously."

"Call SeePeeEss? Tell someone at her school?"

"Same thing happens. Or maybe her parents just pull her from school and she disappears and now she's lost to the system. C'mon Gary, we already know they punch her around."

I exhaled heavily. The weight on my shoulders felt like a refrigerator, and I could only imagine how Nina felt. Poor Nina.

"What if we scare her?" I suggested quietly.

"Scare." It was a question, rumbled out as a statement.

"Like hoods or masks. 'You do this again, we'll come back here and kick your ass' kind of a thing."

He smirked. "It's not the best plan ever."

I threw up my hands, "Well Mike, I'm not exactly in the best headspace to come up with a good plan. I'm tired from class and work, my girlfriend is wigged out, and I just found out a friend of mine is going to be tortured. And I've got a fucking headache squeezing my brain right now."

Mike sat back and thought. Watched humanity stream around us. Contemplated our options. Considered what would happen to one of our friends. His lips hardened into a grim line, and combined with his tattoos, the look was terrifying. He leaned forward. "We do this, we do it like a military operation. Recon the location, establish getaway routes, find the optimal time to strike, hit hard and fast and get out."

"Um...ok. That sounds like it makes sense."

"I'm pretty sure that's what The Lone Ranger would do."

"You and that damn show..." I pushed my chair back. "I'm gonna go get food, you want anything?"

"No thanks." Mike leaned back in the chair, staring at the table in grim contemplation.

I saw Amy working the counter from a distance, and the sight of her made my heart jump. A smile from a pretty girl could always make my day better.

"Hey, Gary, how's it going?" she asked with a bright smile when she saw me.

I didn't feel any need to lie. I was wired, tired, keyed up, and worried. "I've had better days. You?"

"Looking forward to being done soon. Anything I can do to make your day better?"

I looked the gorgeous Asian women over, tiny body, dark almond eyes, golden skin, and now pink hair. "A blowjob" flitted through my mind as a response, but I nixed it. I school my head. "A turkey club and a water is about all you can do."

She rang up my food and I watched from the side of the counter as the folks in back worked to make it, as Amy checked out another customer, and another after that. Occasionally she'd glance in my direction and give me a soft smile.

Dammit, she was gorgeous.

The line finished and she shrugged at me, smiled again, almost like she was embarrassed not to have something to do. A minute later she retrieved a bag from the back counter, scribbled something on receipt paper, and handed both to me. "In case you want to talk. Or something." She seemed flustered.

"Thanks, Amy." My fingers brushed hers, and I could feel myself blushing.

"Of course. Hope your night gets better."

It won't.

"You have a good one."

I headed back to Mike, and he chuckled. "She give you her number again?"

I looked at the receipt. "Yeah."

"You're gonna keep it, aren't you?"

"Just like the last time."

"Manslut. C'mon, let's plan an invasion."

###

February

###

The car was cold. Even with the heater running the whole way here, the Minnesota winter was still winning the battle to chill the old Le Sabre's interior. And it'd be even colder once I got out. Mike had borrowed a car from one of his friends, and we sat in a parking lot from the street from our targets shop. We'd been alternating shifts in the lot this time of night for the last two weeks, both to watch the store and the neighborhood, and to get a feel for whether or not a getaway car sitting in the lot after hours would draw suspicion.

In this neighborhood, nothing drew suspicion. I'd see at least two drug deals go down per shift. There were no cameras anywhere in the block, and no police had cruised past- or even crossed our path when we'd entered the neighborhood.

Mike had shopped in the store a couple of times, his skin tone behind the face wrap blending in in this neighborhood better than mine would have. No cameras in the store, just our target and a guy my age who seemed to be security. Mike was certain he wasn't armed.

The plan was simple. Go in, lock the door, I'd subdue the guard with a chokehold Mike had taught me, he'd corral the woman, we'd yell at her and break up the store and tell her if she ever harmed anyone ever again, we'd come back and do more damage than just property. Leave, change clothes in the car, dump the clothes in a garbage bag in a grocery store dumpster, pay for burgers with credit cards across town to establish a location, crash at a hotel I'd rented with my card earlier today... And then do the next, uglier part tomorrow. I didn't want to think about that part.

That was the plan. I remembered Tyson's quote about plans and being hit in the face, and had a feeling this would go south, but given our recon, it didn't seem like much could go wrong. We weren't being watched. The only people we'd encounter was a guy I outweighed by thirty pounds and an overweight, middle-aged woman.

Mike adjusted his head wrap, reached around and pulled the knot tighter on mine. "You remember that choke I taught you?"

"Yup. Rear naked. Hand to bicep. Hand on the back of the head."

"He'll probably throw elbows at you. Don't let him twist toward you. If you go to the ground, wrap your legs around his waist, not his legs. Hold him in place until he stops fighting."

"Got it." I took deep breaths, tried to call my nerves. "You sure about this?"

My best friend laughed. "I'm sure we can do this. I'm sure we should. I'm sure if we don't, a friend of ours is going to be horribly mutilated while she's awake, because her family is a bunch of assholes. If you think you're gonna lose your nerve, remember, they're not people. People don't hurt each other like that." His voice was angry, feral. If I could see his face through the wrap, I had a feeling his teeth would be bared.

"What if we get caught?"

Mike sucked in air to fuel his next rumble. "We won't. And even if we do, that still saves Nina, and a bunch of other little girls from being tortured. From going through life disfigured. I don't know about you, but a couple years in jail sounds like a good trade if we have to make it."

I tried to relax. Just like a basketball game with everything on the line. Relax. Do your best. I reached over and pulled the door handle.

###

"We've got a runner!" Mike shouted as his footfalls hammered the scuffed tile floor in pursuit of the woman through the back room. With her size, and what she was wearing, she shouldn't be able to move that fast.

"Little busy!" I yelled back as I struggled with the wiggling youth on the floor, his elbows pummeling my sides frantically.

###

"Dammit." That was all I could think to say.

Dammit.

I felt cold and hot all at once. Hot spreading through my legs and stomach, freezing me in place. Cold radiating out from a tight, hard ball of hate and disgust and violent fury burning a hole in my chest.

It had been one thing looking at pictures on a website.

Coming across evidence of it was something I was not prepared for. The room in the basement had chairs around a mattress laying on the floor. The mattress had shackles attached to the carry handles on the sides, and blood and waste caked the fabric from waist down. Part of the upper half was stained with vomit.

A rolling tool chest sat nearby, an array of knives and scalpels and - fuck me - that was fishing line on top.

The whole scene was lit by harsh fluorescent bulbs hanging from the ceiling. All the better do grisly work by.

I realized I was hyperventilating, and fought to control my breath. Fought to keep from puking. Didn't want to leave DNA on the floor.

I looked over at Mike and saw evil in his eyes as he held onto the struggling, babbling woman. Cruelty. A desire for bloody justice. A need for vengeance, to do evil to see greater evil punished. I felt that myself, felt dirty and stained and defiled just by breathing the air in the room, like I was infected, violated, made unclean just by seeing this scene, existing on the same planet as this woman. I wanted to take a shower and boil off my skin just to get clean, and even then, this would still exist, trapped in my mind forever.

I tried to imagine Nina being led down here by her parents, this woman. The fear she would feel.

I looked over at Mike and all I said was "No."

###

I threw up in the Burger King restroom. Vomited out everything I'd eaten in the past year and then some, retching stinging mucus up past a throat scraped raw. I leaned on the toilet and gasped in air, fought to keep from crying.

Dammit.

Just...dammit.

I rose and splashed water on my face, washed my hands. The tracksuits we'd been wearing had been disposed of in different grocery store dumpsters in generic garbage bags and I was back to wearing my street clothes. I felt like I was overheating. Burning up.

I thought about Cady waiting for me at the hotel, and wanted to puke. I wanted to shower with her, to feel the purity and love in her touch healing my heart, but I had a feeling that she'd take one look at me and be infected by the hate and the dirt and the violence I'd seen and felt and done.

I couldn't be near her. I couldn't bring myself to walk into the same room as her, the thought physically repulsed me.

My fingers dug the scrap of receipt paper out of my jacket pocket, held it trembling before my face as I punched the number into my cellphone. I felt anxiety burning in my stomach as I listened to the ringing.

"Hello?"

"Hey." I tried to make my voice sound normal. "It's Gary. From the mall."

"Hey." Amy sounded bright and chipper and happy. "I was just going to do some homework. What's up?"

"Nothing. I was just wondering if I could stop over. Hang out."

"It's like nine-thirty." I couldn't tell from her voice if that bothered her.

"Yeah."

"Yeah, sure, I'll give you my address." She actually sounded excited as she rattled it off for me.

"See you in a bit."

"I'll be waiting."

I shut the phone, took a breath to compose myself, walked back into the dining area. Mike didn't look too bothered. It was hard to believe a monster hid inside him.

Hard to believe it hid inside me.

He nodded, motioned at the tray across from him. "Eat."

I sat and devoured the burger and fries, barely tasting the meal, feeling only the carbonation of the soda pricking my tongue.

I looked up from my food. "Mike?"

His eyes were hard, and his voice was low. "We don't talk about it. Ever. It never happened."

I shut up.

###

In the car, I overcame my feeling of shame and disgust. "I can't go back to the hotel."

"No?"

I...I can't see Cady. I can't...I can't...I feel like I'm infected. Like I've got smallpox, and if I breathe on her, she'll die. She's too...good." Even the word felt wrong in my mouth.

"Where do you want to go?"

I told him the address. He rolled out around inside his head for a moment and then his lips set in a scowl and that face tattoo looked even more menacing. "That's by the college."

"Yeah." My voice was small.

"That girl from the food court."

"Yeah." My voice was a whisper.

"You really want to throw away your relationship with the woman of your dreams on some skank from the mall?"

"I'm not gonna have sex with her, Mike. I just need...I need to be around someone who doesn't know me. Who doesn't think of me as a good person by default. Cuz I'm not, you're not, we're both..." My voice trailed off. "I need to be someone other than Gary Galloway for just...just a night."

"You gonna tell her what we did?"

"Fuck no!"

"You gonna drink or use drugs if she offers?"

"Probably not."

"DON'T."

###

Mike parked in front of the multifamily home where any lived. His dark eyes burned into my soul. "What should I tell Cady?"

I swallowed hard. And again. "Tell her I just walked away from Burger King. Just started walking. That I was distraught."

"You want me to lie for you."

"Yeah."

"You'll be at the rally point tomorrow, early."

I'd totally forgotten about that in my self-loathing wallowing. "I will."

"Cuz this job is only half done."

"I'll be there, I promise." I didn't want to be, but I'd be there.

"Good," he rumbled.

I pushed on the door handle and the crystal clear cold invaded the car, biting my face, burning through my jacket.

Mike caught me by the arm, stopped me from leaving. "Don't throw away something really good in your life, ok? Cady is the woman you want to marry, have a family with, have a life with."

"She is. But right now, I can't -- I CAN'T - go anywhere near her." I twisted my coat free of his grip.

"One more thing. Gary, you're my brother, and I love you, but if you tell her what we did...I won't go to prison for just hurting ONE person..."

"I understand."

"See you, brother."

The car sped away and I walked across the street, shoes crunching wetly in the snow. The wooden staircase creaked in the cold, surprisingly loud. I felt like I was walking under water moving slow, deliberately lifting each foot for each step.

I stood on the landing outside Amy's door. It was too late to call Mike back, I'd left my cellphone in the car.

I was alone in this empty, frigid night, and I had nowhere to go. For a moment I wished the staircase would collapse and crush me, simply do I wouldn't feel like this anymore. Then I raised my hand and knocked.

Held my breath.

Waited.

Amy opened the door. Her pink hair framed her beautiful, angular face, and when she smiled, I felt a smile of my own turn my mouth upwards. "Hi."