​20 Weeks – Chapter 8 (Part 2)

20 Weeks – Chapter 8 (Part 2)
 
 
 
 
“We can’t bury him in the city.  We’re going to have to take the freeway out of town,” Ben hollered at Bijuu as the two of them raced to her topless Jeep, which was still parked out front of her house.
 
“There’s a wooded spot down by the river,” Bijuu hollered back, as she threw a nervous look to the body that was still draped over her backseat.
 
“Too bad we don’t have a van,” Ben said then with a sad shake of his head, and a nervous glance of his own to the burrito-wrapped man. 
 
“Do you really want to fight a bunch of homeless people for a spot to bury your boss?” he asked, as he turned to look once again at the distraught young woman, who had already started the Jeep and was quickly racing out of the neighborhood.
 
But before Bijuu could answer, what she was almost positive wasn’t a rhetorical question, a low-rider with a couple of gangsters in the front seat pulled up next to them at the light.
 
That’s when the man with the blue bandanna tied around his head turned to look at the man wrapped in a dirty rug.
 
And that’s when a single eye blinked back at him, from the recesses of the rug, right at the gangster, and for a second the young man (with the old man worries) blinked himself. 
 
And then he turned, Latin music blaring from his speakers, to once again stare at the young woman driving the Jeep, whose face was painted like a beautiful skull.
 
She’d done it just after they’d finished branding the two rapists who were still tied to her bed. 
 
Because honestly, the girl with little left to lose, thought the mugshot would look pretty darn bitchen.
 
And for a long-moment, just before the light turned the two thugs stared at each other.  And then the Hispanic gangster gave a slight nod, flipped a switch and popped the tail of his car high in the air, as if to salute the skeleton girl, with the bloody cargo in the back.
 
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Nyx said a moment later, as the Jeep raced down a nearly Texas highway.
 
The ghost had suddenly rematerialized, once again perched atop of the burrito-wrapped man.
 
“What was I supposed to do?  Let them get away with it?” Bijuu asked, now madder than she’d ever been. 
 
Which she proved immediately, as she took the next few turns on two wheels, one of which caused the rug-wrapped man to once again sail across the backseat hard enough that when he landed on the other side his head struck the steel roll bar hard enough to knock him clean out.
 
“No.  But now they’re gonna want revenge,” her ghost told her, as she poked at the now unconscious man’s brand-new bleeding gash on his forehead.  But her face held the same sad expression of one who truly understands the bloody ends any war can bring.
 
“Let them,” Bijuu said, but before she could say anything else there was a small chirp of a siren, and then the flashing blue lights of an undercover cop flashed in her rear-view mirror.
 
The cop motioned for her to pull over.
 
With a deep sigh of resignation, the girl with the shaking hands pulled her Jeep over to the side of the freeway, and then began to dig nervously in the front compartment for her insurance and registration.
 
“Put your hands where I can see them,” a deep voice said and Bijuu quickly obliged.  And then she turned slowly to face the approaching police officer, who nearly had a heart attack when he saw her white-skull-painted face.
 
“Dear Lord in heaven,” the middle-aged black man said, as he shined his flashlight right into the young woman’s face.
 
“What’s this now?” he asked in what Bijuu imagined was his angry dad voice.
 
“I was just at a costume party,” Bijuu lied flawlessly, as most teen-age girls are able to do.
 
“Oh.  Ok,” the man in the blue uniform said, as he flashed his light around the inside her Jeep.
 
“I was just giving my friend here a ride home,” Bijuu said with a smile, as she turned to look at Ben.
 
But when she turned, all she found was an empty seat.
 
“Why is he wrapped in a rug?” the tall man with the large muscles asked, as he shone his flashlight directly into the snoring man’s face.
 
“He… he was very drunk,” Bijuu told him with a tight grin plastered on her skull-painted face, that clearly had the effect of further unnerving the superstitious man.
 
“Why is he covered in blood?”
 
“Have you ever seen a man try to River Dance when he’s totally shit-face?”
 
“Can’t say as I have,” the police officer said with a grin, and then he bent down and gave a whiff of the man rolled in a dirty barroom rug, and winced.
 
“Whewie,” he said as if he had never smelled worse.
 
“It’s not pretty,” Bijuu told the man, in all honesty.
 
“I can imagine.”
 
A few minutes later, however, Bijuu was standing on the side of the road being told to touch the tips of her fingers to her nose.
 
Which she completed flawlessly.
 
“I told you, I didn’t drink anything.  I’m the sober driver.  And he’s the last one I have to drop off,” Bijuu said, jerking her thumb back towards her Jeep.
 
“Okay, okay,” the dark-skinned man with the kind smile said then, as he motioned for her to climb back inside her topless Jeep.
 
“That’s very commendable of you,” he told her, as he handed back her driver’s license.
 
“But you look like you’re on drugs.  So, maybe next time wash your face before you drive your friends home.  You nearly gave me a heart attack.”
 
“Yes sir,” Bijuu said with another tight smile, and a suppressed salute.
 
“Okay then, you be careful young lady.  And good job on being the responsible one.  I just wish there were more young folks like you out on these roads tonight.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 

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