Chapter 13

I was going to start this by recreating the moment I woke up in a hospital bed. That was a story in itself. The thing is, I don’t really want to relive not being able to open my eyes or talk. There are things that are good to relive. That experience wasn’t one of them.

I’ll just leave the experience as a summary. From my perspective, one minute I was in my apartment and the next I was lying flat on my back, not being able to will my eyes to open or hear the sound of my own voice - yet I was conscious. Awake and locked in my own head. That passed however it felt like it took a month even though it was probably less than a full day.

There was one good thing to come of my stay in hospital. At the beginning of my story, I mentioned a picture I always keep next to my bed. After that, I focused on my experiences with the mother and daughter duo of Samantha and Meagan Thornbush. The picture I kept next to my bed was as close to my ex-wife as I’d been in two years. Until now. My employer had her name as my emergency contact and when they contacted her, she came to me, despite being my ex.

To be alone in a hospital in a part of the country I’d never visited before with no family or friends to turn to, would have sucked. My ex was the closest thing to family I had and my friends were all my workmates, however they’d now moved on to their next job. I’d been in this bed more than two weeks.

I’d been admitted after being dropped off at the emergency room and something they’d given me there had done a number on me. I mean a MAJOR oops. I went into a coma.

Denise, my ex, came up and she’d already been here three days when I came out of it. The first thing she did when I was able to consciously interact with her, was to berate me for basically being me. I could, at the same time, see that she was actually very relieved, so I let her unload on me.

I didn’t have to wait too long to find out why Cherry and Berry weren’t here too. I heard all about that and that’s where I really want to begin. I was Denise’s captive audience because I was unable to get out of the bed. I mean physically unable. It took several more days to get my body back under my own control and while I could have sent Denise away, she was my only companionship now and I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That and I’d missed her terribly. Denise used the time to fill in the blanks – the stuff that had apparently gone on while I was a vegetable.

Denise knew way too much of my private business, yet that’s the way Denise has always been. She’d put some private investigators to shame with how much information she can wring out of a source. She spent a lot of time later, discussing ‘us’ with me, however that’s later. This story is mostly about two bitches.

I did my part with Denise. Eventually. At first, when she asked me what happened, I had no idea she knew anything at all and I tossed up whether to begin a fictitious tale with her. That, I decided, was why she was now my ex, so instead I threw her in the deep end by being brutally honest with her. Well I thought I would be shocking her. I needn’t have worried. She did more than her share of filling ME in.

There had been a knock on the door just moments after I’d told Kelly that she was welcome to stay. Berry was assigned as the official greeter, so it was her job to open it, which she did.

The next part is difficult for me to admit to, because I knew better. I have military training and that was a VERY basic part of it. The guy at the door grabbed Berry by the hair and pulled her through the doorway to the sidewalk outside, as if he was going to abduct her. Berry was of course naked and not happy at all about having her hair grabbed or being pulled outside where anyone would be able to see that she was naked. I acted without a thought. No, that’s not true. At first I couldn’t process what my eyes were seeing, THEN I acted. I’d been out of the military too long. I was acting like a civilian.

I rushed to Berry’s aid and that was exactly what Berry’s ‘abductor’ wanted. As soon as I cleared the doorway, a second person out of sight on the other side of the door frame smacked me with something that sent me to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I blacked out for a moment while the guy holding Berry by the hair laughed. My last thought for a few seconds was humiliation at being tricked so easily and then being laughed at.

When I came to again, the apartment was a scene of bedlam. Everyone was shouting and cussing and two guys had all three women by the hair. Chester was cowering in a corner, hugging his shins and trying to look invisible. He wasn’t a threat to them so they ignored him. Cherry was pummeling the bigger of the two guys even though her hair was in danger of being ripped out by the roots. The guy was just laughing at her efforts and calling her a wily slut.

A third guy was using my own rope to tie me to a chair and doing a very good job of it. I was already incapacitated and I could feel blood from a cut on the back of my head trickling down my neck. Once the guy was finished with me, he deftly took care of Cherry before Kelly, who almost managed to break away from the smaller of the other two guys. Within five minutes, there were three females hogtied, me tied to my own kitchen chair and Chester zip-tied hand and foot and sitting on the couch, openly crying.

All three females, despite being hogtied, were threatening the guys and cussing up a storm. They weren’t scared, they were pissed off.

The biggest of the guys, called Ted by his buddies, saw the look in my eyes and approached me but stopped short, turned and shouted at the females to, “shut the fuck up or I’ll shut you up myself!” Cherry and Berry quieted down immediately.

Maybe it was because he sounded that intimidating, or maybe it was because the girls were actually learning to follow direction at last. Kelly didn’t care that her sister and niece got quiet. She was not in the least happy about being hogtied and she wanted the cashiers at the Spermmart across the road to know it.

Ted took care of Kelly himself. He took two steps towards her, reached down, grabbed her hair again, lifted her head and viciously slapped her twice. I shouted at him to leave her alone however I was ignored. She screamed on the first one and hushed after the second. I wondered if the open-handed slap had loosened any of her teeth. They definitely left fingerprints embedded in her skin. They were really hard against the soft flesh of Kelly’s cheek.

“Keep it up bitch and I’ll force that dildo over there down your throat to shut you the fuck up. Got it?” he yelled at her. Kelly just whimpered but didn’t say anything. “Good. You’re learning, you fat cow.”

Ted then returned to me. “You thought you could set up shop in Buckman County and we wouldn’t hear about it? Senior is not happy and when Senior’s not happy, I’m not happy.

“I don’t know who you or this, ‘Senior’ guy are, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got it wrong somewhere.” I answered in a reasonable voice despite the ringing in my ears. “We’re conducting training here, and the girl you just slapped the crap of is Kelly. She only came to visit her sister, along with her boy, Chester who you’ve got tied up on the couch.”

“Well good. Introductions done. Now understand this, dick-wad. I don’t care. You’re operating a cathouse here and you didn’t get the okay of Senior. Not a good move in HIS County. Tell me why we shouldn’t just take care of you on a permanent basis?” he asked, trying for intimidation.

“Let the kid and his mom go then we’ll talk. I said it was just a misunderstanding. Be reasonable,” I suggested. That got me gut-punched, which took away my breath but was otherwise little more than a reminder that I couldn’t defend myself.

“We have a problem. You seem to think you are in control here. You don’t control shit here. That’d be my job and I don’t like you. Damn ferener. So I’ll ask you again. What the fuck were you thinking when you posted ads on Craigslist? You had to know you’d be inviting trouble, dumbass.”

“I’ve only been in town a few weeks and I was trying to help. I STILL don’t know anything about this, ‘Senior’ guy. How could I have known he runs this County? Does he have a billboard or something I missed?”

“Funny guy.” This time he punched me in the face. Either he wasn’t really trying to do damage or he punched like a girl. Either way, my jaw survived just fine.

“Hey Ted, I think he really doesn’t know anything,” one of the other guys said helpfully.

“Yeah I know, but we got to make a point, right?” He emphasized his point with a few more punches to my lower chest and stomach. They sucked and one of them actually cracked a rib, I later found out.

“Business is closed. If you get anyone turn up for a fuck, send them to the Buckman. That’s THE place these days.” He said while punching me. The guy was an asshole but he couldn’t hurt me as much as he wanted to.

When he finished punching me, he kicked my chair over backwards and I hit my head. That was the last thing I remembered.

Denise took up my story then. She’d found out, just in the last three days, that it was Kelly and Chester that had brought me to the emergency room and dropped me off, leaving without even waiting to see if I’d be okay. And they’d used my own truck for the delivery. The least they could have done is left my truck at the hospital. I mean I would usually have been patched up and released except that some dumbass screwed up the medicine they gave me.

When she’d explained the drop off to the ER, Denise asked who my girlfriend had been. That had kind of pissed me off, because my ex was asking about someone who wasn’t even my girlfriend and Denise probably knew it too. She was just venting her anger at me, I figured.

“You mean Cherry, don’t you? I mean Samantha, I guess.” I asked, looking into her eyes.

“The slut who was living with you. You can call her any damned thing you want. All I know is that she was a stupid whore who was out to take everything you have. You never learn, do you?”

“Cherry’s not like that. We became friends. Me, her and her daughter.”

“Friends would be here right now. Both of them are at some trailer park fucking anyone with a couple of dollars to throw their way.”

“What?” I didn’t believe her. Cherry had become a whore to pay bills, learn respect, humility and honesty and Berry would never be a whore if her mom had anything to say about it. Even then, she only did it because she was with me, training. Without me there to guide her towards re-education, she’d sit around all day eating Cheetos, sipping soda and watching bad TV.

“It’s true. She stayed at your apartment for a few days, trashed it, took every penny she could find and went off with that Ted guy you mentioned. I spoke to a teenager called ... ummm ... shit. What was his name? Donkey or something. Doesn’t matter. Anyway, he said he watched them climb naked into the bed some old pickup truck with a bunch of other whores. That Ted guy cleaned you out of your laptop and camera gear too. He must have figured you weren’t coming back.”

“Fuck. That’s MY stuff. The money would have been Cherry’s anyway but I’m getting my stuff back as soon as I get out of here!”

“Already did. I know how you are. They’re in your truck, which has a few dings you’re probably not going to be happy about and the inside’s trashed, but that could have been your doing. At least I got that back too. Your girlfriend’s sister was driving it. She said she thought you didn’t want it anymore. I had a hell of a time tracking her down too. Only found her by accident when I was at the trailer park, actually.

“You went to the Buckman?” I could hardly believe my ears.

“I knew you’d want your shit back. Did you know your girlfriend and her daughter are the latest local internet sensation around here? They look like shit too. Both of them must have been whipped pretty bad and they both had all sorts of bruises, but the video I was shown online was something else. She’s a nasty piece of work Mike. You could have done better than that. It showed them servicing a line of hillbillies and I mean I counted seven guys waiting for a turn. The young one had a dick in her butt and her mom was, well there’s no other way to put it. She was going lesbian on her own daughter while she was being poked by another penis from behind. I told you they were both whores. And doing that to her own daughter? It’s more than just illegal. It’s disgusting,” Denise said with a self-satisfied smirk at the look of horror on my face, folding her arms over her chest as if daring me to argue the point.

“Cherry is NOT and has never been my girlfriend. Friend only. I was trying to fix her is all,” I defended both her and myself while working hard not to think about the visual Denise had provided.

“Yeah, she told me.” Denise admitted. I KNEW she knew Cherry was never my girlfriend.

“You talked to her? What happened? Why are they there? Do I need to go get them when I get out of here? Shit! You could have started with that!”

“Calm down! I got a letter for you. I already read it. Sorry. You know me. But they don’t need your help any more, that’s what she said when we spoke.”

“Cherry said that? She was doing so well with her training. I’m sorry Denise, I can’t believe you.”

“Can’t or don’t. Believe what you want, Mike. Anyway, they don’t call her Cherry there. She goes by a name I can’t repeat because it includes that ‘C’ word I abhor.”

“They call her cunt? In front of everybody?” I asked

“Mike! Jeez. I said I hated that word. Anyway, they added the word ‘slime’ after it. She said it’s because she’s always slimy down there. She actually seemed proud of the fact that her girl parts drool all the time. I said she was nasty. And her girl is now called ‘Knockers’.”

“That’s pretty mean. She doesn’t even have any,” I said but it made me smile despite my worry about them.

“So the great big rings through her nipples are new? I thought so,” Denise admitted. They do make her look like she’s got door knockers attached to her chest though. You know she doesn’t even go to school any more? I don’t know how they get away with it.”

“It’s Buckman County. Seems that they can get away with whatever they want. I know Cherry and Berry are there against their will though. Cherry just wanted to learn how to be a better person and wanted her daughter to avoid her mistakes. We called it, ‘getting their bitch buttons reset’. It’s why Kelly and her son were at the apartment. Cherry needed to apologize for all the crap she’d put her sister through their whole lives and it was supposed to help Cherry and Berry on the road to recovery. That and learning humility and patience, to name just a couple of things.”

“You’ll just have to read her letter then. It’s at what you optimistically call your ‘apartment’. It’s a freaking motel room, is what it is. You know that, right? What happened to you, Mike? You used to be a good person even though you cheated on me.”

I wasn’t ready to get into that right now. I was just worried about Cherry and Berry, although since they were now called cunt slime and knockers, I’d rather get used to calling them Samantha and Meagan again. They didn’t deserve names like the ones they’d been given at the Buckman. That Ted guy had to be some kind of sadistic asshole fucker to do whatever he’d done to the girls. And I was stuck in a hospital bed. You can bet I began to think of how many lawsuits I’d be throwing at those ER doctors!

Over the course of the next few days Denise and I did a lot of talking. More than we’d done in many years before our divorce ... Well separation anyway ... we’d never finished off a divorce. I never planned to get married again and Denise hadn’t seemed to care that we were still officially married.

On the second day, we had been talking about the apartment and why I’d been there in the first place. Denise told me how she’d talked Rajneesh into opening it for her because she’d assumed that I’d been living there alone. When she’d stepped inside, she’d thought Raj had opened the wrong apartment because it was like a hoarder had lived there. A hoarder who loved Yoo-Hoo and candy, potato chips, pizza and other assorted junk food wrappers and cans and bottles. There was even a piece of dried up pizza jammed between the cushions of the sofa. She told me all this, then said how surprised she was to see a picture of her next to the unmade bed, which had also surprised her since I’d often given her a hard time about not making the bed first thing after getting up in the morning.