Dominic
Though the roar of my motorcycle engine battered against my ears, and though my heart thundered, I felt strangely calm. Erica and Thunder needed me. I wouldn’t let them down by panicking, or losing focus.
And yet, as I rode my way to the Crooked Jaw compound, there wasn’t too much to think about. I had no plan. I had no weapons. My fellow Spires had protested both of these, but I wouldn’t risk it.
“No!” I’d declared. “Absolutely not! If they find out I’m armed, or trying something, they could kill Erica or Thunder on the spot!”
And though they claimed, again and again, that Thunder knew the risks of the club lifestyle and would not want me doing anything so stupid, they could not deny that Erica was, by all accounts, an innocent bystander. It was strange: I had expected them to harp on Erica the most. Thunder was an old friend, so I’d presumed they’d attack with such things as, “You’re gonna die for some slut you just met?” Or “Come on, buddy. There’s a thousand more like her.” But they didn’t.
Maybe they sensed something profound in me when I talked about her. Maybe they were just too conditioned by my harshness, to taking my orders, to try to argue with me.
“Yes,” I told myself. “That was it.”
I had been a hard leader for the Broken Spires. A good leader, yes–I’d brought the Flames more territory and fortune than the last three leaders combined. But how did I do such a thing?
I thought of Marco’s hand.
“By being hard,” I muttered. “By being cruel.”
But it wasn’t just Marco. All the people who stumbled across the path of my ambition–other Broken Spires, rival bikers, even cops and women–were chewed up by my ruthlessness as easily as a wood chipper devours wood.
I had been an enormously successful motorcycle club leader. But at what cost?
I thought of my initial horror, at seeing Marco’s hand. How I had been sickened, but also excited, triumphant. And how, the next time I left someone broken and bleeding on the ground, as a direct result of my actions–and not just self-defense–my nausea had lessened, and my exultation increased, until, time after time, death after death, I did not feel that horror at all.
Perhaps that was the price of my success: the little piece of myself capable of disgust at the thought of violence. A small fraction of my soul.
Was it worth it? Four weeks ago, I would have said, “Yes, definitely!” But now…
Something had changed. Even my dreams of retirement–of lavish parties and lewd women, a new one every night, had changed. I thought to myself, “That won’t bring that little part of me back. Why should I try? It’s dead anyway.”
I imagined it: drink after drink, one night stand after one night stand, all to drown out what I was just coming to realize:
There is a cavity in my heart. A hole bored through so I could attach cruelty and heartlessness, like the dire trophies of a barbaric mountain king.
I inhaled, feeling it ache. I needed it now: that coldness. Perhaps it would help me save Erica.
Maybe that was the point–what made it worth it. If it helped me to rescue Erica, it would all be worth it.
“She’s it,” I realized, then and there, the vibrations of my bike surging through my body, the wind whipping past my helmet. “She’s what I need to fill the hole.”
I imagined her instead, in my retirement. Having a home. Maybe a baby. Teaching it to ride a bike, when it was old enough. These daydreams struck as surprising and yet incredibly familiar, as if I had wanted them all along, without really knowing it.
I want a family, and a woman I can love the only way I know how to love anything–fiercely, and to the bitter end. She’s your redemption. She’s your way out. I just have to make sure I find a way to save her.
I thought about our nights together. How, in times of need, I’d been able to rely on her, even though she barely knew me–and what she did know was probably terrifying. And yet, she stood bravely and helped me. Because she was loyal, and kind, and generous. “Those are the pieces of my heart I want back.”
It was then that I realized, with a cold yet bracing clarity that if saving her meant sacrificing my life–so be it.
At last, I saw the Crooked Jaw compound looming in the distance. It was a grotesque, hideous building surrounding by derelict factories, crouching on a river like a crusty old crustacean among the detritus of its meals. I suppose it was perfect for what the Crooked Jaws wanted: easy clean up, and no one to hear the screams.
The Broken Spires though? We had more class than that.
Before I rode to where my enemies could see me, I paused and turned around, double checking that a team of my allies had not secretly followed in the hopes of rescuing me. I would not have put it past them, so I had been checking the whole time. Fortunately, other than hearing the roar of random motorcycles in the distance, I had not seen a thing.
I took a deep breath. “All of the pain and fear you’re walking into,” I told myself, “is for Erica and Thunder. Just keep thinking of them. Erica and Thunder.”
My face a mask of fearlessness, I rode right up to the Crooked Jaw door, parked my bike, and entered.
# # #
As I expected, they were on me immediately. Crooked Jaws, fully armed with shotguns, handguns, and even a rifle that I saw in the back of the dingy, industrial looking room, poured down from all sides and grabbed me. Two held my shoulders while two more swept behind me and bound my wrists. The only thing with that jangle and coldness was handcuffs.
“Wow,” I sneered, hiding the discomfort as the metal bit into my skin. “I’m impressed. What does it take? Ten of you guys for little-old me?”
They ignored me, and then, after making sure I was safely cuffed, they commenced searching my whole body for weapons.
The leather of my outfit squeaked and groaned as they tore at it, lifting up my pant-legs, padding their hands down the length of my thighs.
“Oh, I always thought you Crooked Jaws were a little too touchy-feely for your own good,” I commented, as they probed beneath my legs. I knew it was stupid to prod them. I was helpless in their grasp, and I could see little benefit to making them angry.
Except, of course, the gleeful sense of satisfaction I got when I saw them scowl, and when they realized I was not afraid.
Sure that I wasn’t armed, they now pushed me further into the room, knocking aside chairs and tables as they went. The motorcycle president in me couldn’t help but notice the papers spewed out all over these surfaces: maps, banks lists, things they were planning.
“If I get out of this alive,” I thought, “I’ll be able to fuck them over as completely as a twenty-dollar whore.”
This made me smile. My retirement was coming, sure, but I could still send the Broken Spires in the right direction.
On, on, on. They half-carried, half-shoved me. Through winding, dimly lit halls, sweating coldness and stink. Down a flight of stairs, so fast that I had to struggle to stay on my feet.
At last, I came to a place that every single motorcycle club has–a necessary room that reveals a great deal about the club itself.
A dungeon.
The ”dungeon” of the Broken Spires is considered a finished basement room, with a lumpy old couch, a table across which an interrogator could sit, a toilet, and a sink. On that table, every time, without fail, would be a packet of cigarettes and a bottle of whiskey–in plastic, of course, to be safe. The goal of this setup is to convince the enemies we capture there is that our interest is in information and cooperation–not causing pain. Many bikers, deep, deep down, are actually cowards, who bend at the first sign of a threat, and switch sides for nothing more than that pack of cigs and a swig of whiskey.
For tougher cases, we let time and pressure work them over. Like water wearing away at rock.
The Crooked Jaw’s dungeon, however, indicated no such subtlety.
It was a bare, lightless, chilly cement room, well below ground level and close enough to the river for its slimy green fingers to be inching their way through and down the eastern wall. There was no furniture, be it bed, table, or chair. The only furnishings were strange hooks of metal, scattered around the room so that they hung from the ceilings, walls, and the floor in what would seem a random manner to the naïve.
I knew better. Each of those metal hooks was set in pairs, and reflected the approximate distance between a pair of arms, or a pair of legs. The floor sloped downward towards the middle, where a rusty drain waited like the mouth of some sewer-dwelling animal. Through it, I could hear the dull rumble of the river.
“This is not a dungeon,” I thought to myself. “This is a torture chamber. Marco really has gone mad.”
The Crooked Jaws dragged me in there, immune or used to its macabre chill. For a fleeting second, my handcuffs were unlocked. I felt my wrists thrust violently upward, and the clink of the cuffs reattaching. My arms were now banded, up above my head. With hooked claws, they dug into my sides and hoisted me straight off the ground.
Clink.
The chain of my handcuffed slipped over one of the metal hoops. I was now suspended, several feet in the air, dangling from wrists that were already throbbing from the agonizing bite of the handcuffs.
I watched all of this with morbid curiosity. I was not afraid. Every man they wasted trying to torment me was a man they couldn’t spare to harm Erica. If they wanted to hoist me up, that was fine with me. So fine, actually, that I wanted to laugh.
Until, that is, I felt them undressing me.
Zip. Zip. Ziiiiippppp. One by one the different components of my clothing–my jacket, my pants, even my boots and socks–were stripped away until I was dangling naked before them. The cold air raised goosebumps on my flesh. My testicles, now exposed, clung tightly against my skin, trying to make themselves a lesser target. I wondered where they would hit me first.
But the Crooked Jaws didn’t do a thing. They merely tossed my clothes into a corner, and then, leering and cackling, retreated from the room.
For a long time, I was left in silence, save for the steady drip of the leaking wall, and the rumble of the river beneath me.
And then, at last, the door cracked open. It was dark beyond, and barely open, so I could not see who was standing there, but I could hear his laugh leaking into the room like the cold air that follows a blizzard. His laugh grew, building to a tumultuous wind, until, at last, the cracked doorway blasted wide and I saw the man I knew was coming since the moment we found Thunder missing:
Marco. La Gancho. The Hook.