“Cover your eyes, Pup,” King ordered.
“Why?”
“Because you may think differently of me if you keep them open,” he whispered, carrying me into the other room. “It’s not a pretty sight out here.”
I knew I should have listened to him, but a part of me, a very stupid part of me, needed to see. But no matter how much I warned myself what was on the other side of the door, it wasn’t nearly enough to fully prepare for the reality of what was in front of me.
Bodies.
Bodies. Everywhere.
Slumped over one another on couches, chairs, the floor. The white linoleum was covered in sludgy, dark red footprints.
Preppy sat in the doorway looking pale, clutching his side with one hand, blood saturating the area of his shirt his hand was trying to cover. Bear stood over him with his hands on his knees trying to catch his breath. Preppy looked up as we approached and scratched his head with the barrel of his gun. He flashed us a pained smile. That was so Preppy. Smiling while seriously injured in a room full of dead bodies.
“So…you guys ready to party now?” he asked, his usual loud and chipper voice was raspy, his breathing shallow.
He turned ghost white in a matter of seconds. The blood draining from his face at al alarming rate. His smiled faded as his eyes rolled back in his head until his pupils were replaced with only the whites of his eyes. Bear lunged to catch him as he fell face forward onto the cement.
Preppy exhaled on a strangled moan.
I would have given anything in the world for that smile and that breath, to have not been his very last.
Chapter Twenty-Six
King
Fifteen years old
“Fuck no! I ain’t gonna be nobody’s bitch,” Preppy slurred at Bear. He took another giant swig from the bottle of cheap tequila we were passing around. The three of us sat on overturned milk crates on the floor of the living room of the shitty apartment Preppy and I had just moved into. The crates were the only furniture we had. “That cut is cool as fucking shit, but you ain’t gonna see me announcing to the world that I’m a criminal. I keep my shit on the DL.”
The place was a complete shit hole. Two bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen that consisted of a hot plate and a sink that sat on top of two cabinets in the corner of the square living room. One strip of black and white linoleum squares marked off the ‘kitchen’ area.
It was dirty. There was an ant mound growing under one of the baseboards, flies stuck to traps hanging from the ceiling. A fan with two broken blades that didn’t turn on hung uselessly from the living room ceiling. The only window in the main living area was nailed shut so it couldn’t be opened.
It was the greatest fucking place ever.
“Nah man, it’s totally cool. Cops don’t fuck with us cause they’re scared of us. Besides, the MC parties all the fucking time. Pussy and blow everywhere, as far as the eye can fucking see, man.” Bear swayed to one side and kept himself from falling off his milk crate by straightening one of his legs and anchoring the heel of his boot to the floor. “It’s totally tits, man. You gotta join up. Prospect it out like me. Once I’m in, I’ll vouch for you guys. Then after a year, it’s fucking smooth sailing on the SS Tits and Ass. Besides, you’ll love the clubhouse. It has a pool table and a fucking bar.”
Bear had first told us he was going to turn Prospect for his dad’s MC, The Beach Bastards, when he started buying weed from us in the eighth grade. He’d known what his future held for him since the day he was born. Since he spent most of his time with either the MC or us, he’d been trying to get us to Prospect with him since the day he decided that we were all going to be friends.
“Not for us, man. We’re like our own MC of two. We’re like the non MC, MC,” I said. I’d moved on from the tequila and was lighting the two-foot tall purple glass bong that sat in the middle of the living room on yet another overturned milk crate, this one acting as our coffee table.
“You gotta kill people and shit?” Preppy asked in a lowered voice, like someone was listening in and he didn’t want them to hear. He reached over to take the bottle back from Bear, stretching out his too-long-for-his-body arm.
Where I was fifteen and taller and more built than most adults, looking several years older than I was, Preppy was smack dab in the middle of an awkward phase that made his arms and legs look like a stretched out Gumby and his face looked as if he’d had a chronic case of the chicken pox.
“Only people that need killing,” Bear answered like he was reciting something he’d heard a million times before, and no doubt he had. “No women or kids, nothing like that. Just people who know the score and understand the consequences, or people who fuck with the MC and us earning.” Bear looked up at Preppy through his messy white hair and brushed it out of his eyes. “Why? You got someone who needs killing?”
He sounded very much like his father, President of The Beach Bastards. Bear’s father was a psychopathic killer, who dealt in drugs and women, but Bear still managed to have the most stable upbringing between the three of us.
“Nah, man,” Preppy said, waving his hand dismissively like the question was ridiculous, but I knew he was lying. I saw it in his eyes. “Just curious is all.”
I also had a very good idea of who he thought ‘needed killin’.
Bear looked around and leaned in close, waving for us to lean in bring it in as well. “We got these guys, specially trained. Pops calls them ‘the janitors’. You know what their job is?” he asked pausing dramatically, waiting for Preppy and me to urge him on.
“What?” Preppy asked, totally enthralled. “What do they do?”
Bear smiled, elated that Preppy had taken the bait. “When people need killin’, or get killed, they sweep in and make it so it never happened.”
He made a wiping motion with his hands in the air, extending them out to his sides. He sat back, looking pleased that he could share with us something about the MC. It wasn’t until he turned prospect that he’d finally gotten a glimpse of the inner workings of The Beach Bastards, and he was always excited to tell us more about the club he was raised in but didn’t necessarily know a lot about before he was given a PROSPECT cut.
The kid was a born biker, but as much as he tried to get us to join, it wasn’t for us.
Preppy and I never strayed from our plan.
Ever.
“You guys ever need a cleaning up, you call me. I can put a word in. Problem is, you’d owe us a favor. That’s how it works. No matter when we call in that favor or no matter what that favor is, you gotta do it.” Bear lit a cigarette and waved the smoke away from his face. “Nuff of that shit, boys. Preppy, you got the goods or what?”
“Goods?” I asked. I wasn’t aware that we were selling to Bear today, or any other day for that matter. Since he turned Prospect, he bought his weed from the MC.
Preppy hopped up and walked over to the hall closet. He came back holding something covered with a ripped sheet. “What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“This—” Preppy waved his hand over the sheet. “—is your birthday gift, you ungrateful fuck.” He set it on the floor and grabbed the sheet in the middle, lifting it off like a magician. “Voila!” He stepped back, and my eyes focused on what was in front of me. It was a cardboard box and inside of it were bits and pieces of something.
Not just something. It was a tattoo gun.
“Happy birthday, you fucking fuck! Now, let’s figure out how to put this thing together, because Bear and I already picked out which tattoos we want from your sketchbook.” I stared at the equipment in front of me, not believing my eyes.
“If you take any longer to get started putting it together, I’m going to request mine be put on my taint,” Bear said, knocking me out of my stunned state.
“Thanks, boys.” I lifted the box onto my lap and started tinkering with the parts. “And Bear?”
“Yeah, Man?”
“There is no fucking way in hell I’m ever going anywhere near your taint.”
“Noted.”
That day, I tattooed for the very first time. I didn’t do the ones the boys had picked from my sketchbook. They were too elaborate and although I could draw, I’d never used a tattoo gun before so the full back piece Bear wanted with intertwining snakes, The Beach Bastards logo, would have to wait until I knew what the fuck I was doing.
Instead, Bear got a small shamrock behind his ear, although I’m not quite sure if he was any sort of Irish. Preppy settled for PREP on his knuckles. The lettering was thin and crooked. They were the worst tattoos in the world. Blown out edges, a bloody fucking mess. But the boys loved them, and I couldn’t wait to practice on them some more.
“I’m so gangsta.” Preppy said, admiring his newly tatted up knuckles.
“You’re about as gangsta as my ninety year old Grandma,” Bear said.
“Bear, doesn’t your grandma have a full chest tattoo and purple hair?” I asked.
“Sure does,” he replied.
“Then, I actually think she’s way more gangsta then ole Preppy here,” I said.
“You guys laugh now, but you’ll see. King here is gonna tattoo my neck next. I’m gonna look real mean.”