Wayne unknowingly walks out of the ball and past Ryan who is standing in the corner with a bouquet of flowers. His feelings were beyond hurt when he saw him leave with another man. To say he was enraged was an understatement. Ryan didn’t want Wayne to know that he’d seen the entire ball and wanted to surprise him. Now it looked as if he would never get his chance to show him how much he cared.
“Well hello there,” a queen says walking up to Ryan, who turned around to see Wayne all hugged up on Officer D. Hurts. “Are those flowers for me?”
Ryan staring at the Wayne doesn’t hear the queen at first.
“I said are those for me?” The queen persists.
“What?!” he screams looking at the pretty drag queen for the first time.
“Oooo, a rude boy? You just my type. Mean and fine!”
When he says that, Ryan cocks his fist back and steals him in the face so hard, he passes out.
“Fuckin’ faggots! Love playing games!” he says rubbing his knuckles. He throws the flowers on him and spits in his face. “You lucky I don’t take you out of here and gag you wit’ my dick like I do the rest of ‘em. Consider yourself lucky.”
Ryan didn’t care if anyone saw him. He had one thing on his mind, making Wayne pay for hurting his feelings. And he wouldn’t stop until he had done just that.
When I got home, it was about 3:00 in the morning and the house was completely empty. Tyrone was in the hospital and Adrian and Day were at the after party so I was all alone.
And all I could think was that I never felt more attractive than I did with Officer D. Hurts. In my entire life. He took me to dinner, sexed me in the car, took me to eat again and kissed me passionately for ten minutes before I left him. If you had been a fly on the window, you would’ve thought we were lovers all our lives. I hadn’t even made it to my room before he was calling my phone.
“You safe?” Officer D. Hurts asks when I walk into the house. The living room is still dark and I flop on my couch.
“Why…you gonna come save me or somethin’?” “I want to do more than just save you, Wayne. I’m ready to be serious about you. Only when you’re ready though.”
I laugh. “We’ll see how you act in the morning. I know how you guys are at night when passion runs deep.”
“The morning? I already fucked that pretty ass of yours and I’m still saying the same thing I said in your ear. I want you to be mine. I’m tired of fuckin’ around with you.”
My stomach flutters again and I wish he stops driving me crazy.
“Well you keep treatin’ me the way that you did tonight and we’ll see.”
“I can show you better than I can tell you,” he says.
“I don’t know about all that, Officer. But I do know I’m about to get in bed. Call me tomorrow?”
“No doubt. And make sure you’re thinking of me while you’re resting that pretty little head of yours.”
“I will.”
“Bye, beautiful.”
When I walk into the hallway, I lean against the wall with the phone pressed to my chest. I swear I feel like a teenage girl right now. That man thrills me!
I was just about to turn my cell phone off, when I see a voicemail from an unknown caller. The time shows that the call came in when I was at the ball so I see how I missed it. Still, I was curious so I hit the playback button.
“Mr. Peterson, I really needed you to answer the phone tonight. First off I want to thank you for your help in the case of Juan Anders. His family is indebted to you. However, when we finally got the warrant to exhume the body at the location given to us in Baltimore, the body wasn’t there. Now I hate to involve you in this case again but since Tyrone isn’t talking or even willing to help, we need you. Please call me or Officer Adesene soon as possible. You have my number.”
When I hang up, for some reason I feel eerie and bumps rise on the back of my neck. Thinking my uncomfortable feeling was because of the call, I walk deeper into my dark house. And when I enter my room, I hear an inner voice. I know it’s crazy but I swear it sounded like Miss Daffany saying,
‘Please leave, Miss Wayne! Leave now! You’re not safe here.’
“Girl, relax!”
I say to myself.
“I’m sure there’s a perfectly good reason why the body wasn’t where it should’ve been. And in the morning I can help them find out why.”
When I first came home I was still going to the after party at the Embassy Suites. But I decide against it because I’m drained. Instead, I get into bed without washing up, something I never do.
“Don’t worry, Wayne, you’ll take a nice long bath first thing in the morning.” I say.
I’m under the covers for five minutes before I remember all the nasty things I did tonight. And how Officer D. Hurts bent me over the edge of the car, and pumped himself in and out of my warm, waiting body. Then I think about how I dropped to my knees and sucked his dick dry.
So I hop out of bed, take my clothes off and take a nice long bath. I’m a freak but I’m not trying to sleep in my shame either. When I’m clean, I slide into a white teddy with matching silk panties. Once under the covers, I feel something cold and hairy next to my leg. Pushing the covers off my body, I gasp when I see the decapitated head of the boy who had died in my house earlier that the week.
“Ahhhhhhhh!” I scream jumping out of bed.
Then I see Ryan walk through my bedroom door, his white t-shirt covered in brown dirt. His eyes are bugged out and he looks like a zombie. When he runs up to me and places his entire weight on my body, he knocks me to the floor. I try my hardest to fight him off but he’s overpowering me, and considering how strong I am, this is no easy feat.
“What are you doing?!” I scream hitting him wildly. “Why are you in my fuckin’ house?!”
“Shut up you fuckin’ tease!” he says stealing me in my throat so hard, I’m no longer able to make a sound.
“You wanna play games with me, huh?” He asks pulling my hair and throwing me on the only chair in my room. On some sort of sick ass mission, he ties my arms and legs to the body of the chair. “After all the shit I did for you…you give somebody else what belongs to me. This is why I can’t stand fuckin’ faggies! You play too many games!”
He rips my satin nightgown off, pushes my panties to the side and rams four fingers in my ass. My legs tense up and sweat pours down my face. For some reason, I wonder if this is how Tyrone felt when I sent someone to take care of him. I guess I should’ve thought about how I treated people, good, bad or indifferent before I dished it out.
“You fuckin’ whore!” he continues ramming his fingers in and out of my body. Fingernails scrapping my inside. Nervous and scared, I partially release my bowels and feces cover his hands. Crazed and insane, he licks the shit off his fingers and stares at me wildly.
“You had him inside of you, didn’t you? I can taste him.” When I don’t speak he says, “Answer the fuckin’ question!”
Again I try to speak, but soon realize he may have crushed my windpipe from when he hit me the first time. I only pray that I will be able to continue to breathe. Feeling my breaths go shallow, I inhale and exhale very slowly while trying my damndest to remain calm.
“Why you make me add you to the list of faggies I hate huh?” he asks walking around the chair. “Why you make me do this to you even though I didn’t want to?”
“Please don’t kill me,” I mouth, no sound leaving my lips. “Please.”
Tears run down my face and he uses his soiled hand to wipe them away. I smell my own bowel on my face and I feel nauseous.
Reaching behind his back, he removes a metal ball hooked to a strap from his pants then jams it into my mouth, shattering a few of my teeth. I immediately piss myself.
“You’re not going to believe the things I’m going to do to you. First I’m going to fuck you like I know you want to be fucked. Then I’m going to decide if I’m gonna keep you around as my slave or kill you like I did the others. They gave me the name the Drag Queen Slayer, when I should’ve been called Justice Slayer. I think that would have been a better fit don’t you?”
Oh my, God! He’s the person who’s been running around murdering gay men. It wasn’t Queen Paul after all. They arrested the wrong man for some shit he did.
“Look at your thick pretty legs…I wonder how they’ll taste if I eat them.”
I never imagined this happening. I don’t want to die like this…not when I have so much to live for. My mind races and I look up at the ceiling so I won’t have to see the horror in his eyes in my last minutes alive.
When out of nowhere, he hits me in the face so hard, blood fills my mouth and I start choking. Trying to breathe, I swallow my blood and choke wildly.
“What the fuck were you just thinking about when you were looking up there? Are you trying to hatch some fuckin’ plan to escape? Don’t fuck with me, Wayne! You got a better chance of doing what I tell you to do and living, than anything else.”
I start coughing and he pulls the ball from my mouth to allow the blood to pour out. I bend down and cough harder to clear my throat. When he the thinks I’m fine, he slams the ball back into my mouth shattering more of my teeth.
“Now I can’t have you dying on me now can I? I need you to stay around, Wayne. Don’t you want to stay with me?”
Tears run down my face but I know they are useless. The only thing I can do is make peace with my fate. And for some reason, when I close my eyes, I see Miss Daffany and Miss Sky smiling at me. They are waiting on me and I feel a sense of peace knowing that I have angels waiting in heaven. I guess I’m not alone even in my darkest hour after all.
“It’s okay, Miss Wayne. Everything is okay.” Says Miss Daffany.
“We love you and want you to know that everything will work out at the right time.” Says Sky. “Trust in God and remember your faith.”
The moment she says that, I’m struck over the head with an iron baseball bat.
When I come back to consciousness, I see that he placed the dead boy’s head on my bedroom dresser, his body on the floor directly below it. I close my eyes and cry silently.
Lying flat on my stomach and I can feel Ryan behind me pounding in and out of my body. And the panties I slipped into after my bath, which are covered in feces, sit next to my face. The leather strap, which is connected to the ball in my mouth is so tightly bound, it burns my skin.
In that moment mentally, I go somewhere else. I remember the time my mama bought my first pair of heels and I think about not being able to see her before she dies. After that I think about being with my friends on the steps when we were kids and how close we were. What I wouldn’t give to go back to those days.
“Uhhhhh,” Ryan moans loudly into my ear as he raises himself up off my body, and releases warm sperm onto my back. Then he turns me over, looks at my battered face and jerks himself into another thickness. I know now that he gets off on the pain and conquest more than anything else. “You look beautiful. Just like I like ‘em. You wanna taste it don’t you, Wayne? You wanna suck my dick?”
I turn my head to the side and he turns it back. “Look at you…even now you still want me. After all this shit I did to you, you still want to be with me don’t you? You like to be beat. Yeah I know it…that’s how all you faggies are and if I’m ever caught I’m gonna tell them the same thing.”
When he’s hard again, he removes the ball from my mouth and rams his dick in and out my throat. I want to bite him but all of my teeth in my mouth are gone. When he cums again, he turns me over and starts all over fucking me again...this continues for more than two hours. And when he’s had his fill, he gets up and says, “I’m gonna make us somethin’ to eat, baby. You hungry?”
The tone he uses sounds like it did when I first met him. It was as if nothing terrorizing just happened.
I nod yes.
When he disappears into the kitchen I try to move. And then I realize my right arm is broken or dislocated because I can’t move my fingers. I try again to move…and nothing.
That’s when I give up.
I let go.
I accept my fate and pray it will all be over soon. The moment I surrender all, I hear my mother.
“You’re strong, Wayne. You can do anything in Christ who strengthens you.”
Then I think about Shantay, Miss Parade and not being able to say goodbye to any of them. So I force myself to move until I’m out of the bed and on my feet. Since my ankles are tied, I hop toward the bedroom door and I can hear him moving pots and pans in the kitchen.
I knew then that one of two things were going to happen …either he was going to kill me or I was going to leave with my life. Nothing in between. One thing was certain, I wasn’t going to allow him to rape me any longer.
Moving slowly into the hallway…I hop as lightly as I can toward the front door so I don’t make a sound. My heart races when I see I’m only ten feet away from escaping. So I hop faster, making more noise than I wanted to now.
When I reach the front door, I turn around so that my left hand, which is still tied behind my back, is on the doorknob. I turn the knob slightly but realize the lock, which is further up on the door, prevents me from opening it up. So I turn around, put my mouth on the lock and twist it. It’s open. When I turn back around to turn the knob Ryan is standing there, looking at me. He hits me in the face so hard I fall to the ground like I had so many times that day. This is it babies. It’s over for me. I’m dead I just know it
“I see you gonna make me kill you earlier than I wanted to.” He says staring down at me. “I shoulda killed your ass after you acted up at the airport. I wanted to! But I’m not gonna make the same mistake and let you live again.”
When I hit the floor, I keep my gaze on the sunlight that is shining through the window next to the front door. And then I see two figures coming through the door. Am I seeing things? Am I losing my mind?
As he drags me by my hair toward the bedroom, I believe I see Adrian and Dayshawn walk in the house. On a mission, Ryan pays no attention to the door opening. But I see their faces as they gasp quietly and cover their mouths in horror.
For some reason I think back to the question Ryan asked me earlier in the week. He wanted to know if I lived by myself.
That little lie may very well be the same lie to save my life.
Maybe.
After a long night of partying, Adrian and Dayshawn finally made it home to find Wayne being drug by his hair at the hands of Ryan. At first they thought it was some kind of freaky sex game until they saw Wayne’s blood splattered alongside the door. Quickly, Dayshawn walks back out the front door, pushing Adrian back outside with him. The nickname he earned as sneaky Dayshawn came in handy once again.