Honey
Honey bumped around in the trunk of the car as Charlie tore down the road. The darkness was overwhelming, and Honey couldn’t even see her hands in front of her face, let alone any way she could escape from the tight, confined area. Aside from the rumbling of the engine, all Honey could hear were the sobs that slipped out of from her mouth, pitiful little whimpers that made it clear to her just how hopeless her situation was.
She’d heard the gunshots before and knew that it could’ve only meant that Grit was in hot pursuit. But after some wild driving on Charlie’s part, the car was steady and back on the road, and Honey knew that it meant that Charlie had lost Grit. She could only pray that it meant he’d outdriven him and not that he’d hurt him … or worse.
Grit. The man appeared in her mind in the darkness. He’d shouted out that he’d come for her, that he’d save her from Charlie. But she wondered if he’d actually be able to follow through on his promise. Charlie was out of his mind, and Honey didn’t have the slightest idea what his plans were with her. Fantasies was burnt to the ground, and the drug lab was currently buried under the rubble of her old job. It was clear from Charlie’s behavior that he was at the end of his rope, and anything that he would do next would be the actions of a desperate man.
“Oh God,” thought Honey. “What if he’s planning on driving this car over a ditch or something? What if he’s planning on committing suicide and taking me with him?”
She’d never seen Charlie act this insane before. She wondered if this part of him had been always lurking there underneath his cool exterior, or if this was just the result of being outplayed by Grit at every turn.
But before she could give the matter too much thought, the car lurched to a halt and silence overcame Honey. Her stomach tightened in fear as she heard the driver’s side door open, followed by the crunching of gravel under Charlie’s boots. She half-expected Charlie to pop the trunk, point the gun at her, and end it right then and there. Tears formed in her eyes, and all she could think about was the safety of the baby inside of her.
Then, the trunk popped open, revealing Charlie.
“Get the fuck out of there!” he shouted, grabbing Honey by the wrist and yanking her out of the confined space.
Honey shrieked as he pulled her out of the car and onto the ground. She fell to her knees and scraped her skin against the gravel. Charlie gave her another pull and brought her to her feet. Looking around, she saw that she was at some property in what looked like the middle of nowhere. It was a small, nondescript house surrounded by desert on all sides, a few outdoor lampposts the only light to be found.
“What the fu—” she shouted.
But she was cut off by Charlie clamping his hand down over her mouth and silencing her. Holding her in place with one hand, Charlie fished a piece of fabric out of his pocket and wrapped it around Honey’s mouth, tying it tight. She screamed and shouted, but any noise she made was muffled and indistinct.
“Fucking finally,” said Charlie. “Some goddamn silence. You know, I could’ve really used gags whenever you fucking girls at the club would complain nonstop about stupid bullshit. Would’ve really made my life a lot easier.”
He grabbed her by the wrist again and dragged her across the property and up to the front door of the house. He pulled it open and tossed her inside. Honey’s eyes darted around the darkened interior of the place and she looked for something, anything that she could use as a weapon. She spotted a small dish nearby that was likely used to hold keys and such, and she grabbed it without hesitation and brought it towards Charlie in a downward arc. But he easily grabbed her wrist and stopped her before she could actually hurt him.
“Whoa!” shouted Charlie. “Girl’s got some fight in her!”
He shook her wrist until she dropped the dish. Then he brought her over to an overstuffed chair and shoved her down onto it. Ropes were nearby, and he used them to bind her tightly to the chair. Within seconds, Honey was immobile. She was totally stuck, and she realized with horror that Charlie could do whatever he wanted with her now.
He backed off and looked her up and down with wild eyes, as if surveying his work.
“Perfect,” he said. “Now, first of all, I want to say that I’m sorry about all of this.”
He paced back and forth as he talked, his hurried movements a contrast to his now-calm tone.
“I know this seems rough, and that you’re probably freaking out right now, but you have to trust me that this is all necessary. This is all that needs to be done not just for my safety but for yours. See, you have no fucking idea just what kind of a spot your boy put me in when he torched that lab.”
Then, a look appeared on Charlie’s face, as though he had just remembered something important. He left the room, flicking on the lights as he did and revealing a sparsely-decorated bachelor pad. Honey was left in silence for several minutes, and Charlie returned after a time, his eyes now wild, a bottle of vodka in his hand, and a strange, chemical smell coming off of his body.
“Okay, great!” he said in an excited tone.
Oh, fuck, thought Honey. He’s high off something now. And if he’s mixing it with booze, who knows what the hell he’s going to be capable of.
“What was I saying? Oh yeah! Your boy toy fucked me over, Honey. And not just me, you. I mean, Fantasies is where you work, that’s your goddamn meal ticket. You and that tight fucking body, that is. And now that it’s burnt to the fucking ground, you’re out of a job! I hope you make sure to thank him for that, if you ever see him again, that is.”
He continued, his tone still frantic and hurried.
“And here’s the deal: you know the bosses of Fantasies?”
Honey thought about it. Now that she was asked, she realized that she’d never even met the owners before. As far as she knew, Charlie ran the place from behind his bar.
She shook her head “no.”
“And that’s for a reason. You see, the owners are some real high-ups in the Vegas crime scene, some real old-school gangster types who don’t fuck around, not one bit. And they put me in charge of this drug-running operation. See, I’d been running Fantasies, using the place for money laundering, human trafficking—whatever they needed it for. And they figured that they could trust a guy like me with their newest drug-production operations.”
He took a long pull from the bottle, as if trying to put out a fire deep inside.
“And I was up to the task. I was gonna start making the product down in the basement, and when it was ready, get operations moved out here into the desert. Sure, the product had some problems at first; not the purest quality, I guess. Yeah, some people died here and there, but they were just junkies. Who gives a shit, right? Then, I finally got the product down solid. But then your fucking biker asshole boyfriend had to come and ruin everything!”
He took another swig.
“You have any idea how much fucking trouble I’m in now? You have any idea what the owners are gonna do to me once they find out that the club’s torched? That the operation’s been fucking wrecked? It’s not gonna end pretty for me, that’s all I have to say. And that’s why I’ve got you here with me, sweet little Honey. I’m keeping you around to keep the heat off me from the fucking Vandals, and once I get my shit together here, you and I are gonna hop back in my car and head down south. Mexico south.”
A crazed smile was on his face, and Honey was more scared than she’d ever been in her life.
“Of course, as long as you’re willing to play ball, little lady,” he said. “Because if you’re not, baby or no, I’ll put a bullet right through that pretty face of yours and toss you out into the desert for the birds to eat. Got it?”
Honey nodded slowly.
“Now, I’m gonna take the gag off, and you’re gonna prove to me what a good girl you can be. Kapisch?”
Honey nodded again.
Charlie reached slowly towards her, as though he were approaching a wild animal, and took the gag off of her mouth.
Honey didn’t waste a second. She spit right in his face, sending Charlie staggering backward.
“Hey!” he shouted. “What the goddamn fuck!”
He pulled the gun out of his waistband and Honey worried that this was it. But he collected himself and took several slow, deep breaths.
“Okay, okay!” he said, wiping the spit out of his eye. “I get that you’re pissed, but that’s the only fucking warning you’re gonna get!”
He pointed the gun at Honey until she made it clear that she’d gotten his point.
Then, the gun still in his hand, he let out a soft chuckle.
“Sweet Honey,” he said. “Always so delicate and innocent. And now she’s spitting in my fucking face. Where’s this fire been all this time? Could’ve made you some money on the stripper pole. Or on some other poles, if you get my meaning.”
“Let me go right fucking now,” hissed Honey. “You’re holding a pregnant woman hostage, and you’re gonna be in some serious fucking shit if Grit finds you. When Grit finds you.”
“‘Grit’,” chuckled Charlie, apparently not bothered in the slightest by Honey’s threats. “What a stupid fucking name. Oh well, we won’t have to worry about him anymore. There’s no fucking way that he’ll find us out here, and even if he did, all I’d have to do is put this gun to your head again and he’d do whatever I want. So, kiddo, I wouldn’t get too excited about your man coming to your rescue.”
Honey realized that Charlie, due to whatever drugs he was hopped up on, was in a motormouth kind of mood. And the longer she could keep him talking, the more time Grit would have to find her. Not to mention the fact that she wanted answers for what Charlie had done.
“Bethany,” she started. “You killed her. Why?”
Charlie’s eyes went wide and he took on an expression of shock, as though he couldn’t believe that Honey would make such an accusation.
“She did it to herself,” said Charlie. “She was a fucking junkie like all the rest of them. She shot up my product, and it killed her. No one put a gun to her head and forced her to do it.”
“But you said that the product was bad. It was fucking poison and that’s why those people died. You put a loaded weapon in her hands and encouraged her to pull the trigger. You’re just as culpable for her death as she is.”
Charlie rolled his eyes.
“Save the bullshit for someone who it’ll work on. If your fucking friend was so goddamn interested in living the clean life that she couldn’t shut up about, going to night classes or whatever the fuck else bullshit she had in mind, then she could’ve told me straight-up that she didn’t want to use. But when I came over and rolled out that junk in front of her face, oh man, you should’ve seen her. It was like I pulled out a pint of Ben and Jerry’s in front of a fat chick who just got dumped. She was so eager that it was almost pathetic.”
“But you didn’t have to tempt her,” said Honey, tears now in her eyes. “You could’ve peddled your drugs on someone else. Why her?”
Charlie took another swig of his booze and plopped down onto the couch behind him. He placed his arm on the armrest, the gun still trained on Honey.
“You want to know the answer? It’s because I needed someone to test my shit on. Simple as that. See, I was sending my product out onto the streets and getting back reports that junkies were dying left and right. So, I had to figure out just what the fuck was going on. And that kind of shit is hard to figure out when you can’t see in person how the user reacts.”
He shot up out of his seat, the drugs clearly making him want to be on the move.
“So, I had to get someone to use in front of me, so I could see what happened when they shot up. And I knew that Bethany was a big fan of her junk from back in the day, so I figured that she’d be the perfect test subject. After all, she was easy enough to talk into sucking my dick whenever I wanted it, how hard could it be to get her to fall off the wagon and shoot up?”
Honey felt the anger rise in her stomach. She couldn’t believe that Charlie would be such a miserable fucker that he would use a girl like Bethany in such a way.
“She took to the drugs like someone fresh from a famine would take to food. She was more than happy to take what I was giving her. And things were fine, at first. She said it was some of the best shit she’d ever had, and that she’d do anything for me. And I mean anything. So I kept her loaded up with junk for the next week or two, and things were looking good. It seemed like I’d finally hit the recipe that I was looking for.
“I made a couple more tweaks and brought over the new batch. And, uh, let’s just say that the experiment was a fucking failure. Don’t get me wrong, Honey—I never meant for her to die. I swear it. But whatever I did to the recipe went through her like a bullet. One moment she was lying on the couch, blissed out of her mind, the next she was thrashing around like a trout on the deck of a boat. It was fucking gnarly; you should be glad you weren’t around to see it.
“But good news for me, I learned what I needed to and made the adjustments to the recipe. And the product was all ready to move. Now it’s under a pile of melted stripper poles. So, I guess you could say that she died for nothing, thanks to your fucking stupid-named boyfriend. At least before, her sacrifice would’ve made some junkies happy for a while.”
Honey couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Here was the man who’d set himself up as the boss who looked out for all of them, making sure they stayed out of trouble and that the grabby, sleazy customers didn’t put their hands all over them. And now he was confessing that he’d used one of his most loyal girls to test out his product.
“You’re fucking disgusting,” said Honey. “That girl cared about you, and she trusted you to watch her back. And you rewarded her by treating her like a lab rat.”
Charlie chuckled.
“I know you’re young, kiddo, but let me give you a tip about how the world works. This shit we’re in? The drugs, the sex, the crime? Anyone who steps foot into this world is looking out for himself, and that’s it. And anyone who tells you otherwise is lying through their fucking teeth. Your precious fucking boyfriend? He’s just as bad as the rest of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if right now he was partying with his fucking boys, celebrating torching their competition’s lab. I doubt he gives even the smallest shit about what happens to you.”
“You’re wrong!” shouted Honey, the tears now streaming down her face. “He cares about me! And you’re gonna be eating those words when he shows up and puts a bullet right through your fucking head!”
Another chuckle.
“I’ll believe that when I see it, kiddo,” said Charlie, moving closer and closer to Honey. “But I’ll level with you—I’ve had my eyes on you ever since you walked into our place and asked if you could have a job. I mean, there’s a reason I’ve been keeping you around for so long, and it’s not just because you come to work on time, you know?”
He kept moving closer under he was only a few feet from Honey. Then, he closed the last bit of distance. Honey struggled against her restraints, having no idea what Charlie had in mind.
“I’m just thinking,” he said. “What with you being tied up and all. Maybe we could make the best of this little situation of ours.”
He was so close that Honey could feel the heat from his breath and smell even more intensely that sick, chemical smell from whatever drugs he was on. Honey struggled and struggled against her restraints, trying her best to get free.
“Get the fuck away from me right now,” she said, her words coming out in a harsh hiss. “If you even try to touch me, so help me God …”
Charlie stood up a bit and let out a long laugh.
“You’ll what?” he said, his face an expression of total disbelief. “You’ll fight me or some shit? Honey, you’re lucky if you’re a hundred pounds soaking wet. You might as well just relax and let whatever happens happen, you know? Who knows? Maybe you’ll even enjoy it.”
The thought of Charlie putting his hands all over her made Honey sick to her stomach. But there was nothing she could do.
However, as she struggled, she felt the pulling of one of the knots that held her leg down. She gave it another tug, and sure enough, it came loose. Charlie stared lecherously into Honey’s eyes, and she took advantage of his distraction to work her leg out of the restraint more and more.
“So, Honey,” he said, leaning in once again. “Here’s what’s gonna happen: I’m gonna kiss those sexy little lips of yours, and you’re gonna like it. Then I’m gonna do with you what I’ve been wanting to do for years. And you bet your ass you’re gonna like that, too.”
With that, Charlie moved in closer and closer, his eyes fixed on Honey as he went in for the kiss.
But Honey wasn’t about to give up that easily. Her leg now free, she pulled her knee back, took aim, and shot her foot out right at Charlie’s crotch. The foot hit home, and she felt Charlie’s balls crunch under the weight of her impact. Charlie’s eyes bugged out, and it looked to Honey like they just might shoot right out of his head. He made a strange “urrk” sound as his hands shot to his balls and he staggered backward.
Honey now had the space to get free. She struggled more against her restraints, the undone knot by her leg making the rest of the rope loose. After some squirming, she was able to slip out of the restraints and climb over the back of the chair.
“You … fucking bitch!” shot out Charlie as he fell backward onto his ass. “I’ll kill you! You fucking hear me? I’ll kill you!”
Honey wasn’t about to stick around to find out how serious he was. She scrambled to the front door and pulled it open, running out onto the front of the property. Looking over her shoulder, she could see that Charlie was struggling to his feet and would be after her soon. She looked ahead, then to the left, then to the right, and saw nothing but desert in all directions.
Where’s the fucking road, she thought, eagerly scanning the area around her. Just gotta follow it and get back; it’s my only chance.
Finally, she laid eyes on the winding dirt road that led from the property and Honey took off along it. Throwing one last glance over her shoulder, she saw that Charlie had started after her.
Fuck, fuck, she thought. Please be too drunk and high to follow me. Please, please.
Honey ran as fast as she could, the adrenaline pumping through her body as she rushed down the side of the road. Looking off into the distance, she saw that the road led to nowhere, just off into the horizon and deeper into the desert. But she didn’t care; all Honey wanted was to put as much distance between herself and Charlie as possible.
“Where the fuck you think you’re going, bitch?” Charlie shouted after her. “It’s forty degrees out here in the desert! You keep going down that way and you’re as good as fucking dead!”
But she didn’t care. Every bit of her screamed at her to flee from Charlie, to get as far away from him as possible.
The, to her horror, she heard the engine of the car rev to life, followed by the sound of the tires crunching on gravel. Casting a glance over her shoulder as she ran, she saw that sure enough, Charlie was getting ready to take off after her. Hot tears formed in her eyes as she pumped along, and she felt the energy drain from her body. To her horror, she realized that a pregnant woman was absolutely the last person to be able to escape anyone in a pursuit.
The engine of Charlie’s car grew louder and louder, and soon he was right on top of her. He honked the horn, the sound jolting Honey and causing her to weep in frustration. Then, Charlie pulled the car up alongside of her. More and more energy left her body, and she was now reduced to a speed that was a trot, at best. She’d never felt more hopeless and helpless in her life.
“Might as well stop running now,” said Charlie, slowing the car to match Honey’s pace. “You’re only gonna get more tired.”
“Fuck you!” shouted Honey.
“You bitch!” he shouted.
Then, out of the corner of her eye, she watched as Charlie, one hand on the steering wheel, raised his gun and pointed it right at Honey’s head.
“I could pull the trigger right here and now,” he said. “Just end all this shit for you where you stand.”
Moments passed, and Honey kept on going, doing her best to ignore Charlie’s threats.
“Or …” he said.
Honey watched as he pointed the gun down, moving the aim from her head to her belly. Honey gasped as she realized what he was doing.
“Or, I could put a bullet or two right in the pregnant belly of yours. Make you live with all that. Or you could cut out this bullshit and stop-fucking-running!”
With that threat, whatever fight Honey had left in her slipped out of her body. She dropped to her knees and began to weep. Letting her head fall back, she looked up at the deep black above her, the night sky glittering with the stars she’d forgotten existed.
“Atta girl,” said Charlie.
He killed the engine, came to a stop, and got out of the car. Moments later, he had Honey by the arm and was pulling her back to the car. Once seated again, she slumped forward and stared helplessly into space in front of her. She knew then what it was like to have not a bit of hope left.
“Don’t need to do anything stupid,” said Charlie. “I’ll take real good care of you.”
Minutes later, they were back in the house and Honey was tied up to the chair again. This time, Charlie double-checked the knots to make sure that they were all secure.
“Not gonna make that mistake again,” he said.
Please, Grit, she thought, as though she had the power to project her thoughts. If you’re out there, please help. I need you. Your baby needs you.
It was all she could do.