Nick

Peyton, Pee Bee, and I were at the shop, trying to decide where to go to lunch.

“It’s Sunday,” Pee Bee said. “Nothing’s fucking open that’s good.”

“Pizza?” Peyton asked. “Haven’t had pizza in forever.”

“I’m not interested,” I said.

“Shit,” Pee Bee said, his voice a few octaves lower than normal.

“What?”

“Behind you,” he said. “Your fucking buddy.”

I turned around just in time to see the detective pull into the parking lot.

My asshole puckered at the thought of being arrested again, or being questioned in front of Peyton.

His car came to a stop beside us. He rolled his window down, and reached into the passenger seat. After turning around, he stuck his head out the window and grinned. “Can you read, Navarro?”

I nodded. “Comics and shit, yeah?”

He tossed me a newspaper. “Read that,” he said. “That right there? The front page? That’s good shit.”

“Peanut Butter, Navarro, Ms. Price.” He nodded toward each of us as he said our names. “Have a nice day.”

He grinned and drove away.

I opened the paper, saw the headline, and made note of the reporter’s name. I looked at Peyton.

She shrugged.

And, I began to read.

* * *

A mother dies in a horrific car crash, leaving her children to be raised by an overworked father and an immigrant babysitter. No one cares, because there wasn’t a photo attached to the story of her death.

A pic or it didn’t happen.

If it bleeds, it sells. But that shouldn’t be the case. The world has changed. A best-selling love story will soon be a thing of the past. If it hasn’t happened yet, it’ll be here before you know it. The romance world has been turned on its ear by step-brother romances, slaughterotica, and priests with a penchant for girls.

It must be shocking, or it won’t sell. If it’s a tale of love, hatred – or anything in between – it doesn’t sell. And it won’t.

Be the first to pen a new way to have sex with a corpse, and you’ll hit the New York Times best-sellers list. Write a book about two people who fall in love, get married, and have triplets, and you’ll go broke.

Front page articles are used to sell the newspaper. The cover story. Lure them in at any and all costs. Write it long enough to require them to flip to two or three more pages, and you’ve done your job.

How does a journalist tell a tale of love and still capture the interest of the reader enough to provoke them to complete the story?

Make it a shocker.

Race. Color. Creed. Religion. In the eyes of the almighty, we’re equal and we should remain so, but we don’t. As a nation, we’ve been taught to judge. The world, in fact, has been taught to judge.

We tell ourselves we don’t, but we do.

A man at a red light sits quietly with his wife and children, listening to his favorite music. A sound in the distance makes the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He fills with fear, for he has heard the sound before, and he knows what it brings.

“Don’t look,” he warns the family.

A group of men on motorcycles pull alongside the Buick. The man, petrified, stares straight ahead and prays to his maker for the traffic light to turn green before something happens.

Because something, he is certain, will happen.

The light turns, and he speeds away.

Is he right, or is he wrong?

At a bar the motorcyclists stop. Once inside, they notice a woman. A woman who is alone. One-by-one, they take their turn, raping her. They rape her of her innocence, of her trust, and of her ability to sleep at night. They rape her of her life.

Yet, somehow, she survives.

She stumbles through her days and nights that follow, not knowing how – or even if – she’ll ever survive.

The rapists are eventually caught, taken to court, and tried for the horrific crime they committed. After a lengthy trial, they are convicted and await sentencing. On judgment day, they receive six months in the county jail – in protective custody.

Even jailhouse justice is impossible. They’re protected from harm.

The girl, once again, is raped.

By the judicial system.

Downtrodden and beaten, she stumbles to the bar, hoping to dull the pain. Halfway through her first pitcher of beer, she hears a familiar rumble. Through the window, she confirms her suspicions.

A motorcycle club.

In fear for her life, she attempts to grab her things and go. Before she is able, however, they are upon her. Slowly, and without expression, one of the men approaches her. She cowers in her seat. He reaches for her.

She flinches.

And he picks a piece of lint from her coat.

“We heard about your case,” he says. “Don’t worry. Justice will prevail.”

She swallows hard, and attempts to acknowledge his presence, but the words do not come.

He physically looks no different than the men who haunt her dreams, but somehow she feels that he is.

With a glimmer of hope, her eyes meet his. Memorizing and blue, they provide her with comfort.

Embarrassed for her initial fear of the club’s intentions, her eyes fall to the floor. When she looks up, the men are gone.

She hears the rumble. Through the window, she watches as the taillights fade off into the darkness of the night, and her heart fills with warmth.

Is she right, or is she wrong?

Six months later, on the eve of their release, the rapists leave their protective cells. One by one, they walk away.

And one by one they meet their fate.

When the woman gets the news, she feels justice is served.

Right, I ask you? Or wrong?

For the first time since that horrific night, she falls into a deep uninterrupted sleep.

And she dreams.

She dreams of equality.

Of love.

And of a world that does not, will not, and cannot hate.

The familiar rumble wakes her from her sleep. Through the window she sees the man, sitting on his motorcycle.

Waiting.

And, without hesitation, she climbs on the back of the motorcycle, and she rides away.

Forever.

Right, or wrong?

Ask her the next time she crosses your path.

She is any survivor.

Signed, a survivor.