“Falling Inside the Black”—Skillet
ROLLING OVER TO BLINDLY grope for my phone, which was ringing incessantly, I regretted all the fucking alcohol I drank last night. Noticing the tangle of blonde hair next to me in the bed made me regret it even more. Shit. The phone quit ringing right as I finally brought it into focus. Grandpa. At four in the morning? Jesus.
Telling myself I’d call him right back, I stumbled across the room to piss. Stooping to grab the used condom from the floor, relief flooded me that I had the drunken foresight to at least wrap my shit. After finishing up in the bathroom, I prepared to dial my grandfather back, but first I kicked the bare foot sticking out of the covers. When she raised her head with a grimace, looking for the source of whatever woke her, I barked at her, “Get out.”
Standing there buck naked and without shame, I waited for her to comply before I hit the Call button. I was a fucking asshole. Ask me if I gave a rat’s ass. Since leaving the Marine Corps and moving to Iowa near Hacker, I’d been laden with hate and anger. If you asked me why, there wouldn’t be an answer forthcoming, because I honestly couldn’t fucking tell you why. It was like I hated everyone and everything. As a twisted, sardonic joke, they had started calling me Joker because of my usually surly countenance. It ended up sticking. Personally, I felt like it was fitting if you were referring to Heath Ledger’s or Jared Leto’s Joker.
“What?” She was awake now, for sure. Makeup was smeared across her face, and she looked like a circus clown someone had put in the microwave. “The fuck, Joker? Are you serious?” The sheet dropped down as she sat up, and I apathetically took in her fake tits and too-tan body. Maybe she looked good last night in my drunken haze, but now I felt nothing and was pissed at myself for passing out before I could kick her out of the bed. No, that was a lie. I was pissed that I ever stuck my dick in her at all.
“Did I stutter? Get the fuck out. Now.”
Cussing me and grumbling, she angrily gathered her clothes and jerked them on.
“Fucker.” Blurting out a last insult, she shoved her shoulder into mine as she passed me to go to the door. Grabbing her arm, I stopped her briefly.
“Don’t ever presume to think you can cuss at me like that. You’re no one special, and I made things very clear last night before you entered this room. So now you can get the hell out of here and know that I never want to see your ass here again. You get what I’m telling you?”
Yanking her arm from my loose grip, she flounced out the door, slamming it as she exited. Even though I couldn’t remember her name, I remembered her face as one of the little tramps that were at every club party “patch shopping.” She was bound and determined she would snag a patch member, but it sure as shit wouldn’t be me.
Evidently my patch party last night, and all the shots I took with everyone who wanted to toast me finally getting patched, destroyed my ability to make coherent decisions. My head was killing me. Shit, this is why I don’t usually drink.
Digging through the shit I dumped on the bedside table from my pockets before crashing with whatever-the-hell-her-name-was, I found the joint I had rolled last night prior to getting distracted by the blonde’s hands grabbing my junk. Pulling out the lighter I had tucked in my pack of smokes, I flicked it to life, and I inhaled to get the joint lit just as I hit Call.
Stretched out on the bed I had been given last night after getting patched, I took a long, deep drag and held the acrid smoke in my lungs. Grandpa answered on the second ring, and I released the breath I had been holding.
“Kayde?” Huh? Uncle Javier?
“Hey, Uncle Javier, where’s Grandpa? He just called me.” The quick inhalation on the other end of the line was quickly followed by a choked, mournful sound. “Uncle Javier? What’s going on? Are you okay? Is Grandpa okay?”
“Kayde, you need to come home. Mom… Abuela… she’s gone, Kayde. Fuck. She’s gone. Dad… he’s a mess. You need to get here.” And just like that, my world crashed down around me, sucking me into an endless black chasm. Breathing failed me, and my vision tunneled.
“I’m on my way.” Disconnecting the call, I rushed to the bathroom to shower. The reflection in the mirror was someone I didn’t recognize. Hair a mess, dark circles under my eyes, smeared slutty red lipstick across my chest. Shit, I wanted to vomit. Instead, I took another couple of hits as the water warmed. It was the only thing that stilled the shit swirling in my head, and I seriously needed to calm myself before I hauled ass out of here. Stubbing the last of the joint out, I set it on the counter and climbed in the scalding-hot water of the shower.
Scrubbing viciously at the lipstick with the washcloth I found under the sink, I wished I could scrub the filth from inside my head and soul. This has to be a bad dream. There was no way my abuela was gone. I had literally talked to her yesterday after I got patched. It was a proud moment for me, getting patched with the Demented Sons MC. It was the closest I had felt to belonging since the first mission I went on with my Force Recon team.
She had sounded happy for me, but had harassed me about going home to visit. It had been a year since I had seen her. After my last injury, I had made the decision to get out. Never before had I used Uncle Matias to get anywhere or anything in the Marine Corps, but that time… that time, I had asked him. Surprisingly, he hadn’t tried to talk me out of it and had complied by pulling strings only someone with his time, rank, and level of respect could accomplish. He’d gotten my medical discharge rushed through, and approximately four months later, I was in Iowa.
It took me all of thirty minutes to gather the few belongings I needed into my old Marine Corps rucksack, tell the prez, Snow, and Erik—now known as Hacker—that I was leaving, and book a flight on my phone. All on top of my shower. Thank you, rapid deployment experience.
Hacker offered to drive me to the airport, which was about three hours away. Despite my trying to tell him I would be fine riding my bike, he refused. So instead, I bypassed my sleek black Harley V-rod to drop into his classic Challenger. He had just finished restoring her, and she was a thing of beauty, but all of that escaped me at the time as my mind swirled within itself with the gut-wrenching anguish that dug its claws into me.
Few words were spoken during that drive as he seemed to sense my need for quiet. Expecting him to drop me at the front of the airport, I was surprised when he entered into the long-term parking area instead. Pulling into a spot, he shut off the growling beast of a car, and we sat for a few minutes without speaking, the silence interrupted only by the ticking of the massive Hemi motor.
“Look, man, I know this has got to be tearing you apart. Are you sure you don’t want me to come with?” His unusual turquoise eyes seemed to bore into my very soul as he sat waiting for my answer.
“I can’t ask you to go with me last minute like that. Besides, you don’t have any of your shit or anything. I’ll be okay. Fuck, I need a smoke.” Lunging out of the car, I grabbed my ruck and dug out a cigarette from the inside pocket of my jacket. Fucking tried to quit smoking, but it hadn’t lasted. Maybe I would try again, but right now wasn’t the time. As I lit up with shaking hands and sucked in the first freeing drag, Hacker rounded the car. He shook his head at me as I continued to consume the cigarette, like he was going to snuff it out if I didn’t hurry.
“I’m not gonna rag on you about quitting, I know that’s the last thing you need right now.” He popped open the trunk and leaned in as he reached for something shoved up near the back of the seats. As he slung a ruck, much like my own, over his shoulder, he grinned at me. “And I think you forget, I was in the Marine Corps too. I’m always prepared for a surprise trip.”
“The ticket was expensive, bro. You can’t do this.” The ticket didn’t hurt me any, as I had been saving all my money during deployments since I first joined, but I didn’t know how he was sitting.
“Please. You’re not the only one who’s been saving.” He had been the one who had helped me invest the money I saved, so I knew he was aware of about what I had. “Not to mention, my parents are loaded and my mom slipped me money to help out with our travels. She knew I wouldn’t let you go alone after I told her what happened. Of course, I didn’t realize what it was she slipped in my jacket pocket until I stopped for gas, and it was too late to tell her no.” That explained his brief stop at his parents’ place on our way out of town. My head shook in consternation at the giving but stubborn nature of Hacker and his family.
Sighing in resignation, I looked at him with a wry smile. “Thanks, man. But we better get moving if we’re gonna get you a ticket and make our flight.” When he held out his fist, I gave a small laugh as I bumped knuckles with him before striking out for the ticketing counters.
By the time we got to San Antonio, my grandmother’s body had already been moved from the hospital to the funeral home. My grandfather was inconsolable in his grief, but didn’t shed a tear. His ravaged face appeared to have aged eons since I last saw him. The light had left his gray-blue eyes, leaving them a dull storm gray as he stared blankly at the powerless television. Slumped in his recliner, he sat in the small living room of the home I had spent some of the best years of my life in, while my uncles sat quietly with him. The broken man sitting in front of me was but a shell of the man he had been.
“Grandpa.” My voice cracked at the single word. All eyes zeroed in on me, and Uncle Gunnar stood and hugged me first. We had been the closest in age and had been pretty close as I grew up. “Hey, Uncle Gunnar.” My whispered words were all I could manage as tears threatened to choke me. It still seemed weird to call someone uncle who was barely six years my senior, but he had been my grandparents “oopsie baby” after they thought they were done having kids.
After that, Javier, Samuel, and Alejandro hugged me, telling me Matias was on his way back from Afghanistan and would be here as soon as he could. It bothered me that my uncle was still deploying, and I worried about him, but he had told me he was hanging on for a couple more years, then would retire. I prayed he made it that long.
Before going to the kitchen, I crouched in front of the larger-than-life man who had raised me, clutching his hands in mine. Pulling one hand free, he placed it on my head. “She loved you so much, son. The last words she spoke to me were ‘Güero should be here to see how good the Labor Day decorations look.’ Then she got in her car to head down to do some shopping. I should have gone with her. I should have driven her.” His head dropped back, and he told me he needed a few minutes alone.
My uncles, Hacker, and I all respected his wishes and moved to the kitchen table. We sat quietly discussing what happened and the plans. Massive heart attack was what they were assuming. She had been driving, and her car had run off the road before flipping and landing against a telephone pole. She probably never saw it coming, and they said she was killed instantly, so she didn’t suffer. Not that it made her loss any easier to deal with.
Emotions in a distraught turmoil, I needed some air. Standing, I excused myself. When Hacker moved to follow me, I held his shoulder and told him I needed some time to myself. As I passed through the living room, I glanced at my grandfather, who appeared to be dozing. Pausing long enough to ensure his chest still rose and fell with life, I stepped quietly out front.
Out of habit, I pulled out a cigarette and moved to light it. Looking around at the red, white, and blue decorations that covered the yard, I thought about Abuela begging me to quit and crushed the cigarette in my hand before dropping it, unlit, to the ground.
Anger boiled up in me at the unfairness of life. My abuela had been the kindest, sweetest, most generous woman I had ever met. Taking in the lost young boy I’d been, then raising me while my parents gallivanted across the country without a care, meant more to me than she’d ever know, and now I’d never be able to tell her. Being a good woman, she’d been loved by everyone who knew her.
Thinking about all my close calls with death and how I was still standing, while she was taken from this earth, I lost my fucking mind. Ripping the nearest display from the ground, I crashed it into the one next to it. Jerking the lights down from the porch posts, I flung them across the yard. Part of me acknowledged that my rage was a combination of all my pent-up grief over every loss I had sustained in my life. Item after item fell to the savage destruction of my grief. My mother. My father. Tyler. My team members. Sera. Always Sera. The losses overwhelmed me, sucking me under like dark ocean waters drowning me.
As strong arms crushed me, pulling me to the ground, a roaring wail registered in my brain a split second before I realized it came from deep in my chest. Thrashing and fighting to break free of the constriction around my arms and body, I fought like a crazed, rabid animal. “Joker! Kayde! Fuck, man. Stop!” Hacker’s words were next to settle in my consciousness before I went lax and sobs were torn from my demolished heart.