Authors: Jesse Abundis
They drove hours on end around the same spot, though to these three souls it didn’t seem that long, before they knew it night had come.
Peewee found himself in the need of a bathroom break after drinking down a 40.ounce big gulp soda at a gas station on their first pit stop. He parked the car on the highway and ran behind the bushes to urinate. Both Karen and Jamie exited the car to stretch their legs, but Karen wasn’t prepared for the question that stilled left her puzzled to this day, “ What Musketeer are you ? ” Jamie asked pointing her finger at Karen, with the blue moon light shining down on her.
“ I am Porthos! “ Shouted Peewee behind the bushes as he urinated.
“ I don’t know which one I am, I’m not familiar with the Musketeers.” Karen said rubbing her hands against her arms for warmth, as the cold night air breezed down on them.
“ What Musketeer does Karen strike you as, Peewee ?” She asked.
Peewee came out from behind the bushes shaking his pant leg, no doubt splashing urine on himself. “ Hmm, she strikes me as the ladies man type, after the girl, not really caring about things. She’s definitely Aramis.”
“ Aramis, you say?” Jamie rubbed her chin. “ I guess that makes me Athos!”
Karen could not keep a straight face through it all, she felt at home, she found her people. “ The three musketeers!” They shouted, letting their voices echo throughout the night sky. “ One for all, all for one!”
Soon after that night, chasing down crime scenes was their second job. They got off work, met one another outside their apartments and tracked down the latest case on their desk. With months their detective worked became more advance, as they would sleuth around police stations pretending to be media reporters looking for details for their columns. The reporter angle never failed, they had detectives spill their guts about cases the moment their fifteen seconds of fame were dangled in front of their faces, they thought this would help get that unpublished crime story they had hidden away under their bed to a big name publisher, that, plus a few bucks on the side never hurt to get them to talk.
The cops would soon get wise, and once they were caught red handed, they had a group of officers escort them out and threaten to arrest them if they ever showed their faces around the precinct. “ You’re just dogs chasing cars.” They yelled at them. But simple threats and name calling wasn’t going to stop them.
Jamie bought three police scanners from a friend of a friend who knew a guy. This way they could keep up to date on anything happening behind their backyards. They were no longer just hobbyist, they were full fledged detectives and no one was going to tell them otherwise. It was three years in paradise, three years of being alive, three years where everything felt right, three years that made sense, three years that filled a void in their lives. It seemed Indestructible.
“ I can’t do this with you anymore.” Except for two months ago when Jamie had a sudden change of heart. It was out of the blue, but the words were truthful. “ How do you want me to react, how the fuck do you want to react, Karen!” She remembered the shove that Jamie gave the moment she tried to wrap her arms around her. “ I’m just tired of these kids game, it’s stupid, I want more in my life. Don’t bother calling me again, please, I just need a change in my life.” Words that struck at Karen’s heart. Before she could even react or say something, their Athos, the leader, the father of the group was gone from their lives, never to be heard from again, forever dead.
“ Oh man, I need to take a shit!” Karen scrunched her face as the voice of the janitor echoed down, disturbing her memories of the past. “ I can’t hold it, shit, get off me, I need to go now before I crap the bed!” His footsteps raced from the bedroom to the bathroom in a blaze.
“ Jesus Christ, forget it. Take your time, I’m going to finish this on my own, like always!” Vanessa screamed so loud, people on the other floors begin to shout, telling her to put a lid on it.
“ Oh Jesus, you better do that, I’m going to be a while.” His bowels movements could be heard clear as day, making Karen nauseous as the mental picture began to set in.
She got off the bed and moved to the living room before the janitor or Vanessa did anything else that would cause her to blow her dinner all over the floor. “ Fuck, someone save me.” She mumbled to herself. All of a sudden someone up in the heavens answered her call. Her cell phone began to ring from her bedroom, she sighed knowing the salsa ring tone was Peewee, she wasn’t in the mood to talk, but it beat sitting in the dark like an idiot. She paced back to her bedroom, and found the phone ringing on the nightstand. “ Hello?” She said.
“ What are you doing!?” His voice was high pitched, meaning whatever he had to say must be good, he sounded a bit like Mickey Mouse when something was making him hot and bothered.
“ Just listing to my janitor take a crap and Vanessa fucking herself, how about you?” She could her Vanessa thumping her foot on the floor, meaning she had whipped out her battery operated boyfriend, Jimmy the Dolphin vibrator, they both owned the same one, different names of course, but the same high pitch humming noise gave it away.
“ Ok, first part gross, second part awesome !” Peewee was a breath of fresh air, he just could lighten up a bad day. “ But I got something better!”
Karen sighed. “ Peewee, I really don’t want to go over to your apartment to watch porn, I don’t mind us jerking off to it, but it just gets old quick. I‘d rather do it in the comfort of my own home. ”
“ It’s not porn, no, this is a triple murder.” Karen ears perked. “ Two kids shot in the back of the head execution style, the mother was beaten to a pulp with someone’s bare fist, cops can’t make heads or tails on what the hell happened, but, what they do know is that we have a husband that‘s missing, here‘s the kicker, they found a puddle of blood in the living room, it‘s not from the kids, not from the wife, they were murder in different rooms.” Peewee was selling the moment to Karen and was doing a good job at it. “ That only leaves one person, the husband, It’s the husband juicy sweet plasma. Thing is, where’s the dead body, you don‘t bleed that bad and walk away?!”
Her heart began to race, the old lure of it all began to come back, no matter how much she fought the urge of it. “ I thought you gave up, called it quits like me?”
“ What can I say, I’m weak.” His oath to lay off porn was proof of that, thirty-minutes later he was jerking off to his phone in the bathroom. “Come on, tell me you don‘t want to see this whole hot mess for yourself?”
Karen bit on her lip, she wanted to say yes, but it just felt wrong. “ I can’t, it doesn’t feel right, with Jamie gone.”
“ Look, Jamie isn’t coming back, we need to carry on our work, with or without her. This is our calling, you’re telling me your going to give it up, just because one bad bump in the road?”
What to do, they were a group, and now they wanted to move on like nothing happened. “
This group flies and dies together.”
She took a deep breath before saying a word.
“ Ok, let me get dressed.” Knowing inside it would kill her to continue. “ When will you be here?”
“ I’m outside waiting, hurry up.”
She could hear him honking. “ You were that confident that I was going?”
“ Of course, you and I are alike.” She couldn’t argue with that.
Chapter 6
WELCOME TO THE LAND OF OZ
The old mustang was fighting to hold it together with each stoplight. “ Listen to that baby purr.” Peewee patted the dashboard of his prize possession. The history between Peewee and the car went way back, it was owned by his late father who always cherished his car more than any of his children. As a child Peewee would stand outside the garage watching his father change the oil, do a tune up, replace the tires, fix the breaks, everything a mechanic would do, but his father would never let anyone touch his car, everything he did, he did on his own.
Peewee never moved an inch from that spot outside the oil stain floor driveway, always picturing himself doing the mechanic work, making it sure it ran like the day it was bought. Peewee remembered one day finding the courage to ask his father if he could help, his father answered back with a strong backhand, and a threatened to chop off his dick if he came near it.
“ You really think your pussy little hands could ever handle this car, fuck no. So keep your fucking eyes off it.”
Sound words that never left his mind through the years.
Peewee’s father was a heavy drinker, who came home at night to rape his own wife when she refused to let herself be groped, and beat any of his children who were still awake just for kicks. Those were nights Peewee could still remember, he would hover over their beds in the middle of the night, waiting for one of them to flinch, so he could have a good excuse in dragging them out by their hair and beating them until the blood drenched from their nose. One of the reasons he could never sleep comfortably in a bed.
If anyone dared to stop his father's fit of rage, his old man would make them regret it, as he and many of his siblings found out when they tried to pull him off his assault. “ Is the boogeyman going to get us?” He could still remember those scared words coming out of his little sister Alice as they hid under their bed, trying to hide from their father who was flipping the two other beds over, trying to find Alice, she had thrown away his booze after she saw her father force herself on their mother, Peewee could just remember fighting his father off as he tried to yank Alice from under the bed, in the end he took her place.
When Peewee was fourteen his father was diagnosed with stage four penile cancer, fitting for a man who thought with his dick. The cancer had spread through his groin and to other parts of his vital organs, he sobbed and begged his family to be with him in his darkest hour. They did, but it wasn’t to ease his pain or give the man comfort as he fought to live, it was to see the bastard be eaten away slowly.
September 1, 1994 they came to the hospital for a visit, only to find their father a stiff corpse, Peewee’s baby sister Alice asked her mother “ Is the boogeyman dead ?” They smiled knowing he was. His death meant no more beating for the kids and his mother was free to live her life. It was a day to be relished. All the Doctors and the Nurses frowned at them for looking so pleased, but when you stay years locked up with a rapist and a monster, you can’t help but feel a tad pleased knowing somewhere in hell he‘s receiving what he dished out.
His father's car was never sold, it was left in the garage for years, never being used or touched, letting the dust and rust eat away at it, he was surprised that they didn’t’ end up burning the thing, seeing how their father cared for it so much. But once Peewee turned sixteen and got his license, he knew what car he planned to drive for the rest of his life. It was the backhand his middle child wanted to give his dead father’s soul, it was payback for all the crap he did to them. It also served as a reminder to never become the monster his father was.
Only two people outside his family knew about this vehicle's connection with his past, Karen and Jamie. The only people he could trust, that was saying a lot. Though sometimes he wondered if he put too much trust into the wrong people.
“ This thing sounds like it’s going to die at any moment.” Karen said as she smacked the AC, trying to get it to work. “ You should just buy a new one.”
“ You’re smacking it wrong,” He pulled her hand away and hit the sweet spot himself, but it wasn’t a cool breeze of air, it was a cloud of white smoke, followed by a hot and musty garbage like smell. “ See, this baby has ten or fifteen years to give.” He coughed and swatted away the fumes.
“ You don‘t say?” Karen gagged from the smoke, she rolled down the window to catch some air and let the harmful fumes out. She took a quick peak at the back of Peewee’s car, which was litter with old coke bottles, candy wrappers, pizza boxes and a Hentai comics. “ Doing some late night reading on your stakeouts.” She pulled the comic from the back, showing the two busty female characters in front of the cover.
He began to cough and sweat, not because of the fumes. “ I don’t know where that came from, must have been one of my buds.”
Karen rolled her eyes at him. “ I’m the only friend you have!”
“ I have others ! ” He shouted. Feeling disrespected over that comment.
“ Really, name one.” She tapped her fingers on the hentai comic. “ Beside these two.”
“ umm…Kurt… Frank.. Moby.. Joe...” Naming musician as friends wasn’t getting past Karen.
“ What's Joe's last name?” She waited for him to answer.
“ Budden..” He could hear the gong in his head.
“ What's the odds of that.” She couldn't help the grin on her face. “ Who else?”
“ Ah, fuck it, it’s mine.” He said in defeat, taking the comic from her and putting it under his seat. “ We’re not here to discuss my literature.”