Hittin' the Bricks: An Urban Erotic Tale (24 page)

A woman's screams cut into his haze, and Daniel ran around
to the other side of the car. To his horror the young woman who'd climbed out the window was now getting out of the backseat. She was screaming into the air and clutching something in her arms.

Daniel caught a quick glimpse inside the back of the car. A little girl was in there. She was slumped over, laying across the backseat. Still strapped in her seat belt. She looked just fine. Except her head was missing.

The screaming young lady was carrying it in her arms.

What happened next was so graphic that it scared the piss outta Daniel. He was a sick old man, and he'd long been considering returning home to the peace of his own country. What he was seeing right now was giving him the best damn reason to leave sooner rather than later.

A black Escalade pulled up next to the car. Two men jumped out and were joined by the three occupants of the crashed burgundy Expedition, one of whom appeared to be a sizable girl and had a large, bloody cut on her forehead. Together, they rushed the screaming young lady, grabbing her so roughly that she dropped the little girl's head. It rolled toward the gutter and came to a standstill at Daniel's feet.

As the crowd on the street watched in disbelief, the screaming black lady was dragged into the Escalade. The little girl's blood was all over her clothes and still dripped from her hands. All five of her kidnappers jumped into the Escalade with her as she fought and screamed, and Daniel covered his toothless mouth in fear and horror as the big SUV spun its tires and sped its occupants far away from the scene of their ferocious crime.

Black Girl Lost … Again

H
ands were all over her in the back of that Escalade. It was wide open like a limo back there, and a series of punches and kicks rocked down on her that were so brutal that Eva prayed for death.

But anything, even taking a beat- down, was better than the image that was frozen in her eyes. Eva balled up on the black carpet and screamed. Far more from the heart- stopping sight of Rosa's decapitated head than from any physical pain that Brody's goons could inflict upon her in this crazy life.

The whip sped down the streets of Harlem, and they talked shit and beat Eva until the car came to a stop. A fist landed hard on her right eye and she was dragged from
the car by her hair. She cried out as her bare back scraped across the floor, and then banged against the vehicle's metal step- up. Eva twisted herself back and forth and flailed her legs, until she realized that her right ankle was flopping around like it was boneless and hurt worse than anything else on her body.

Eva had no idea where she was. They tossed her into a big room with a cement floor and concrete walls. The room was cool but damp. There was cardboard on the floor and several machines that she'd never seen before. But there
was
something there that was real familiar to her. CDs. Thousands of them. Some in printed covers, others stacked two to three feet high on small tables.

She was inside one of the print bunkers that Brody ran. Mello had called them press and kills.

Eva stared from the floor as Brody walked in. He was dressed in a black wife beater and some jeans, and his bald head gleamed under the bright light.

He squatted down beside Eva and grinned.

“Hey lil bitch,” he said softly. “So you finally decided to come check me out, huh?”

Eva just shivered. Her body was a ball of agonizing pain, and the craziness in Brody's eyes scared the shit outta her.

He reached out and touched her hair and Eva yelped like a small dog.

“You scared of me?” he asked, grinning. “Why?”

Eva just lay there on the cold floor.

“I remember the first time I saw you,” Brody whispered. “You was visiting Fiyah on The Rock and I knew you was something special. You was wearing these little jeans that were so fuckin
tight …
I promised myself, one day your fine ass was gonna be sittin’ right on my face.”

He reached out to touch her and Eva flinched again. Without
warning, he ripped her earring from her earlobe, and warm blood cascaded down her neck as her flesh tore.

“So I got down on a little sumpthin’ with your cousin,” Brody kept right on talking like didn't shit happen. “You know, a little business got handled between men. Fiyah was all for that shit. A dick up the ass will make a niggah cool with a whole lotta shit! But when it came time for that bitch to show and prove … he did every fuckin’ thing he could think of to keep us apart. Now, why do you think that is?”

The pain in Eva's ear was practically unnoticeable. She hurt so bad in so many other places that her earlobe didn't mean shit. She knew she was going to die in that room. This wasn't the fuckin’ movies and wasn't no hero gonna blast up in there and save her ass. Eva felt her own death coming, and after the miserable life she had lived, she was cool with it.

“Is it because your cousin thinks I'm too hard for you?” Brody said, his fingers playing in the bright blood that was running down her neck. “Or could it be because you walk around with ya ass in the air like you too fuckin’ good for me?”

Eva didn't answer. She'd made up her mind. No matter what this beast did or said, he couldn't hurt her. Eva thought back to all the miserable days of her childhood. She remembered how she used to be able to make herself float and go limp. Become invisible and impenetrable. She tried that now. As she lay defenseless under Brody's evil glare, she let herself go limp and willed her soul to break free.

She felt the transition. The act of her spirit separating from her body. Eva felt light. The worst had already been done to her. There wasn't shit else this bastard could do to hurt her. At least that's what she thought until she saw what Brody was holding in his hand.

He laughed as Eva's eyes grew wide. He was loving her terror
. Getting off grand on that shit. “Oh, yeah,” he said as she stared at what he was holding out toward her. “Your cousin told me about that monkey that used to ride the fuck outta ya back. He said you liked that shit so much you used to do all kinds of nasty shit to get it.”

Brody held Eva's fear up in the air. He pushed the plunger and released a few air bubbles, then he smushed her face into the ground with his big, rough hand, and kneeled with his knee pressing into her temple.

“He said you liked to hit that main vein. The one in ya neck.” He guided the tip of the needle toward Eva's jugular. “Rosa liked it there too, ya know. She liked it there.” Brody reached under her skirt. He dragged his hand between Eva's legs and dug around in her pussy. “And she liked it right there too.”

Short bursts of panicked air were all Eva could squeeze from her throat. She lay there panting, terror clogging her chest. Her worst nightmares were about to be repeated and there was nobody who could save her. She squeezed her eyes closed tight. And when she felt that old familiar sting, and then that powerful rush of fear as it coursed through her veins, she screamed.

There was no day and there was no night.

There was only darkness and pain. Twisted anguish and joyous fear.

Eva lay on the cold cement floor naked from the waist down. Her broken ankle was cuffed tight. A chain had been looped over a ceiling beam and her injured leg was suspended in the air, way over her head.

Brody had brutalized her. Every time she moved, she hurt. Deep lashes had cut into her pretty brown skin, laying open
her flesh in some places down to the bone. He'd pumped her up with fear too. The fear that she'd once both despised and adored was now an ever- present specter in her world. Eva nodded and she drooled. She picked at her open lacerations and let her soul fly free.

Sometimes she was alone, and other times she was not. Rosa spoke to her often, and India did too. She heard other voices in the darkness. The cries of a small baby and the drunken curses of a long- lost mother.

Time passed by in a haze. She was violated painfully. With objects, fingers, and other body parts. Brody fucked her in brutal, degrading ways. He inserted himself into every part of her body that he could, and he made sure he hurt her each and every time. Eva rode the pain and bore it well. She had suffered much worse before and she comforted herself with the fear that suspended her in a stupor, dulling her senses. Brody was generous with his fear. At least in the beginning. Eva's mind stayed in a tunnel. In the darkness of a project clothes dryer she prayed to God and suffered for her sins. There were some clear moments too. Moments where she fully understood that Brody controlled her fear. And once more, after so much fuckin’ time, fear had gained control of her body.

It didn't take long for her to start jonesing for it.

He made her cook it herself now. And find her own damned vein too.

Brody liked seeing her squirm on a string. The first time he left her alone for too long, sickness gripped her and Eva shit all over the floor. He hosed her down like a dog. He laughed hard as fuck as she begged for that shit. He grinned as she spread her lower lips offering him pussy, top, ass, anything. Then he left her there sick and alone, wet and trembling in agony, begging for that fear.

Brody made sure she suffered as much as possible. Every few hours his belt would rise and fall on her stomach and breasts as she vomited bile and shivered on the frigid concrete. Her broken ankle turned black. Her toenails paled and curled backward as her flesh died from lack of circulation. All the muscles in her body stiffened. Her nose dripped. She prayed to God.
Please. Please, dear Lord. Give me what I love. Give me what I fear. Give me what I need!

He left her alone for the next two days. And when he came back she was sicker than she'd ever been in life. When the door was finally raised up on its tracks Brody had to beat back flies and wave his hand in front of his nose at the shitty smell.

Eva lay there spread- eagle, one leg still up in the air, her eyes half open. Her lips were caked and parched, and black rats had bitten and chewed on her flesh all through the night.

“Fuckin’ bitch prolly dead,” Brody said, unconcerned, but when he kneeled down next to her he saw she was still breathing. She was still jonesing too.

“Here,” he said, holding out a package before tossing it across the room, just beyond her reach. He sat on a small stool and watched as Eva used the last of her strength to retrieve the dope. She stretched her arms and scooted her torn body across the cement, and when her broken ankle swung on the chain, she moaned deeply from the excrutiating pain and had to rest and catch her breath before she could try again.

The bitch was determined—Brody gave her that. She dragged the package toward her with her big toe, then scooped it up in her hands like it was made of gold. He tossed her the dirty works that had been used on countless fiends before her, and watched as the once- beautiful Eva cooked brown skag with grimy, trembling hands.

Eva prepared her fear like an old pro. And truly, she was.
There was enough for three hits in the package and she knew exactly what she was doing as she pulled back the plunger and filled the syringe with every drop of cooked fear in her spoon.

By the time Brody realized what was up it was too damned late.

“That's too fuckin’ mu—!” He lunged toward her and warned, but Eva's deft fingers had already found her sweet spot. She depressed the plunger and pushed the dope into her groin as fast as she could, and by the time Brody managed to tear the syringe from her hands, Eva had already hit herself with a lethal amount of fear.

Brody went fuckin’ bonkers. “Stupid bitch!” He kicked her in the head, the face, the back. He swung his fists, and then grabbed his belt and swung that too. Exhausted, he dug his boot into Eva's stomach sending clear liquid shooting out her nose and mouth.

Eva just lay there. She didn't feel a thing. Her life was a tragic collage passing slowly in front of her eyes. She saw the closet she used to get locked in and the bathtub with the fat water bugs crawling out the drain. She reflected on her near starvation. That odd feeling of having a stomach bloated full of chewed toilet tissue, yet still being weak from hunger. She remembered those early days of desperation, when, forced to feed her own habit, she had to get out on the cold streets and sell her body to any man who had the cash she so desperately needed.

As Eva spiraled into that forever tunnel of darkness, her fear slowly turned to joy. She saw her friend India, and her baby sister, Rosa, whose life she had entrusted in Eva's care. Miss Threet came into view. She was sitting on the bench in front of building 420, surrounded by mad little kids. Eva's curly- haired baby boy was one of them. His name was Cameron, and he was
staring at Eva with a birthmark under his chin and love in his big brown eyes.

Life only hurts until it starts feeling good.

Eva looked up with a smile on her face. Mello's hands were on her. Tickling that weak spot right behind her knees. She grinned at her baby. He was it, and she was his. Brody still raged over her, but she was way beyond his reach now.
“Thank you, baby”Eva
whispered, although her cold lips never moved. She felt Mello's weight pressing into her from behind. His strong arms scooped her up from her ankles to her waist, holding her in his protective embrace. “Thank you, baby.” She whispered it again, and she meant that shit. “Thank you.”