​20 Weeks – Chapter 10 (Part 2)
 
 
 
 
 
“You’re going to have to dig that hole a whole lot deeper.”
 
Startled by a voice that had come from the darkness behind her, Bijuu froze mid-shoveling, and then slowly turned around.
 
And then she smiled, a very awkward sorta smile.
 
“Pardon me?” she asked of the small boy in the Boy Scout’s shirt and tighty-whities.
 
“You’re going to have to bury that body a whole lot deeper,” the boy clarified without an ounce of mirth in his tone, or upon his face.
 
“Wha… what do you know about burying a body?”

“I watch NCIS, ya know,” the barefoot boy said, with a degree of huff.
 
“Plus, I know there are coyotes out here, not to mention wild hogs.  And that little bit of dirt ain’t gunna stop them from diggin’ up that body you got tucked in the ferns there, and havin’ it for breakfast.  And then have it drug half-way to the police station by lunch.”
 
Bijuu eyed the boy as hard as she could, but for the life of her she just couldn’t fathom his angle.
 
“Who are you?  Where did you come from?”
 
“My name’s Dillon.”
 
Bijuu narrowed her eyes on the boy that wasn’t much smaller than she was, and then she asked, “What are you doing out here Dillon?  And where are your pants?”
 
“You know this is a campground, right?” he asked, one eyebrow cocked as high as it could possibly go.
 
Bijuu looked all around, and then she smiled at the ‘0.5 Mile Marker’ sign that was posted just across the well-worn trail.
 
And then she swiped at some sweat with the sleeve of her sweatshirt, smudging even more of the already smeared skull paint she wore.
 
“Fuck.”
 
“Yeah, not really the best place to bury a body, if you ask me,” the dark-haired boy said with a shake of his messy head.
 
“Well, no one asked you,” Bijuu said in a huff, as she looked around and once again considered her options.
 
“Well, if you don’t want coyotes digging it up, you’re gonna have to go down at least six-feet.”
 
“How do you know that?”
 
“Everyone knows that.”
 
“Not me.”
 
“Why do you want to bury him anyway?” the pantless scout asked, in an all-business kinda way.
 
“That’s none of your business.”
 
“Is he your father?”
 
“What?”
 
“Is he your dad?  I mean… was he your dad?”
 
“What?  No.  Why would you ask that?”
 
With a small shrug the boy simply said, “I don’t know.”
 
“Well, it’s none of your business.  I…” Bijuu began, but the scout interrupted her.
 
“What did he do?”
 
And for a minute Bijuu had to stop and think, and then she thought about how the man’s hands had always sought her out, night after night, and there had never been anyone to tell.  No one who had ever asked, no one who had ever bothered to wonder why she preferred to drink herself to sleep every night.
 
“Why should I tell you anything?  Why are you out here in the middle of the night, without any pants on?”
 
The boy glanced from Bijuu to the body that was half-hidden by the ferns, and then back to Bijuu.
 
“It’s a long story,” he told her with a serious look.
 
“I bet,” Bijuu said, leaning her tired body into the shovel.
 
“They kicked me out of my tent,” he told her, but now his eyes were locked onto the hard-packed Texas earth.
 
“Who did?”
 
“The boys in my troop.  We’re on a campout.”
 
“Really?  Why?”
 
“It’s what scouts do,” the boy told her, sounding a bit confused.
 
“Funny.  I mean, why did they kick you out of your tent?”
 
“I don’t know,” the boy said.
 
And then after a long moment of silence, where just the cicadas screaming for sex could be heard, he finally said, “They called me a fag, and told me to get out because gays aren’t allowed in scouts.”
 
“That’s awful,” Bijuu told him truthfully.
 
And then she kicked Uncle Gary into the shallow grave.
 
As she loaded her shovel with a bit of loose clay, she turned to the boy and clarified, “Awful of them, I mean.”
 
And then she stopped what she was doing, and turned completely towards the boy.
 
“Are you?”
 
“What?”
 
“Gay?”
 
To which the four-foot-eleven boy just shrugged and said, “How should I know?”
 
“How do you not know?” Bijuu asked him with a face that was pinched into a knot, as she attempted to understand him.
 
“I’m twelve.  I don’t really like anyone, least of all stupid girls that bury people in too-shallow graves in the middle of the night.”
 
“Yeah?  Well… he deserved it,” Bijuu said, as she turned back to the shallow grave and tossed the load of dirt in.
 
“What did he do?” the scout named Dillon asked again.
 
“He…” Bijuu began but then she had to stop to contemplate her words.
 
“Must not be too bad if you can’t even remember,” the scout told her weakly with an open look of disgust.
 
“I remember,” Bijuu said in a such a small voice it made the boy instinctively perk up.
 
“Who were you with before?” he asked her quickly, before she could begin to cry.
 
“What?”
 
“I heard you earlier.  I came to see what all the yelling was about.  My tent’s just over that hill,” he said pointing back the way he’d come.
 
“Were you yelling at him?” he asked, pointing to the small man who was lying face-down in his shallow grave.
 
“What?  No.  My friend was here.”
 
The boy looked at her like he didn’t believe her, but then he said, “Some friend, to leave you out here alone.”
 
“He’s helped more than you know,” she confessed, a little too little, and a little too late.
 
“Then where is he now?” the boy asked in all sincerity.
 
“At the car, getting something,” she lied.
 
Once again, the boy’s right eyebrow raced to the top of his face, and then hovered there.
 
“So, who’s to say you aren’t the bad guy?  Maybe I should call the cops on you.”
 
“I’m not.”
 
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for it.  Without any explanation?  You are the one standing over his body,” they boy told her quite astutely.
 
“It’s complicated,” she told him, with a sigh.
 
“Tell me about it,” the young man said, as he gave a meaningful glance at his bare legs.
 
“He… wanted me…” Bijuu began, and then she turned and looked at the man who had never once made her feel better about herself, despite how hard she had worked for him.
 
“He… wanted…” she began again, but the boy finished for her.
 
“You,” he said.
 
To which Bijuu just nodded.
 
“He’s a pig,” the boy told her, and then he spat in the man’s general direction.
 
Bijuu nodded again, this time a small smile turning up the corners of her mouth.
 
“He hurt you?” the defiant boy asked.
 
To which Bijuu nodded again.
 
“Well then, he deserved it,” the boy told her with as much confidence as any graduate of NCIS.
 
“He was a real wanker,” Bijuu told him.
 
“What’s that?”
 
“What?  A wanker?” Bijuu asked, her face now a dirty smear covered in a terrifying smile.
 
“Yeah, what’s that?”
 
“You know…” Bijuu said as she made a jerk-off motion with her hand.  “A tosser, a jerker, a weasel wrangler, a sausage slapper, a wiener wrestler… you know… a dick stroker, an organ oiler, a tube tugger…” she said jokingly, hoping to make this peculiar child smile.
 
But the boy’s laugh was light and full of embarrassment.
 
“He was gonna fire me,” she said with a snort.  “If I didn’t…”
 
But then she stopped, because she just couldn’t say the words aloud.
 
“I… I just couldn’t,” she finally said, as she once again looked at the boy who would decide her fate.
 
But he just nodded, a weak kinda smile that made her feel even sadder inside.
 
And so, the strange girl with the white and black smeared face turned towards the twelve-year-old boy and flashed him her bare titties.
 
And then, after a quick glance towards his underpants, she winked at him and simply said, “You’re not gay.”
 
“They’re huge!” the boy said with wide eyes and a look of utter surprise plastered across his face.
 
“I’m pregnant,” Bijuu told him, as she lowered her shirt back down.
 
The boy looked once again to the body lying in the too-shallow grave.
 
“No, it’s not his.  But I was raped,” she told him, as she scooped another shovel full of dirt and threw it into the hole.
 
“That’s bullshit,” the boy said.  “Did you call the cops?”
 
But his answer came only in the form of a glare.
 
“I guess not,” he said.
 
“Is he… what happened to him” the boy asked her, with all kinds of hesitation now coloring his voice.
 
“You mean them… what happened to them,” Bijuu said, turning around and smiling a truly terrible smile. 
 
“They’re still alive.  Tho… neither of them will ever forget what they done.”
 
“Then I should probably tell you…” the boy began, as Bijuu threw another shovel load on top of her former boss.
 
“What?” she asked, turning around to look at the boy.
 
“He’s not dead either,” the scout confessed, with a rather lame smile, one full of dread, as if he knew what was about to happen next.
 
Because just then the dirty form of Uncle Gary rose up out of the shallow grave he’d been tossed in, and started to run, leaving a wake of dust behind him.
 
“Shit!” Bijuu screamed, as she dropped the shovel and ran after him.
 
And then a phone began to ring.
 
Dillon, sourced the noise as coming from inside of Bijuu’s jacket which was lying on the ground, and pulled her phone from the pocket and answered it.
 
“Hello,” he said.
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 10 (Part 1)
 
 
 
 
“Where’s Bijuu?”
 
“I don’t know, why are you asking me?” 
 
“Because Candi is holding your guitar, and I can’t find her.
 
“What do you mean Candi has my guitar?”
 
“Over there, Candi is playing your guitar…” Cory said, pointing to the Latino man with the gold tooth and the blue mohawk.
 
“I dunno, I swapped it for Bijuu’s Jeep.   I guess she gave it to Candi,” Bijuu’s older and much dumber brother told the boy who secretly loved her.
 
“She swapped you a Jeep she’s not even done paying for, for that piece of shit guitar… why?” Cory asked, now madder than he’d ever been.
 
“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”
 
“Well, do you care that the Jeep’s not here, and that Adam and Steve are now tied to her bed, and from the looks of it they’ve been branded?”
 
“Pardon?” the tall blonde with the steel-blue eyes asked, as if he’d just found out aliens really do exist.
 
“She asked me to help her get a little revenge.  I didn’t… I didn’t know she was actually going to… permanently disfigure them,” Cory said, with a tinge of guilt coloring his face red.
 
“Show me,” the boy who could be as cold and as hard as iron said, without an ounce of wobble in his voice.
 
“I helped her tie them to the bed.  She said she was just gonna scare them.  But when I came back… this is how I found ‘em,” Cory told the boy who stood a good seven-inches taller than him.
 
“Why?  Why would she do this?” Chad asked of the kid he know thought of him as his ‘best friend’, though for Chad’s part the feeling only went one way.
 
“You know, man… because of your birthday party,” the normally cheerful Cory said in such a glum fashion it instantly stood Chad’s arm-hair on end.
 
“What about my birthday party?”
 
“I thought you knew… that you’d heard…” Cory said, not knowing what words to choose.
 
“Everyone else knows…” he added lamely, and then instantly wanted to scoop the words back into his mouth.
 
“Everyone knows what?” Chad growled, as he stared at the two fellas he used to call ‘friend’.
 
 
​
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.

20 Weeks – Chapter 9 (Part 2)
 
 
 
“This looks about as good a place as any,” Ben said with a huff, as he dropped the small man’s body onto the hard-packed Texas dirt.
 
“I… I don’t know…” Bijuu said, as she mindlessly twisted her bottom lip with a pair of pinched fingers.
 
“What do you mean ‘you don’t know’?  We’ve come this far, haven’t we?  I’ve done everything you asked.  You can’t just give up now.  We’ll go to jail.  I won’t do jail, Bijuu.  I can’t do jail.”
 
Bijuu set down the shovel she had slung over her shoulder, and looked long and hard at the sweat covered boy.
 
“Yeah.  Well, I don’t do dead bodies, and just look at me now,” Bijuu said, as she looked once again at her boss’ filthy body which was lying in a ditch and half-hidden by ferns.
 
“Yeah, look at you now.  Finally standing up for yourself.”
 
“Finally?”
 
“Yeah.  Finally?”
 
“What the fuck does that mean?” Bijuu foolishly demanded bitterly of the only ally she in had in the whole entire world.
 
“Come on Bij…” Ben cooed then, almost as if he could back-peddle.
 
But as it is with most exhausted and starving pregnant women, there simply was no back-peddling with Bijuu.
 
“Come on Bij… what?” she demanded, as if she wasn’t more than a foot shorter than the older boy.
 
“I mean… you let everyone walk all over you; Chad, your dad, your boss…”
 
“I didn’t let them do anything,” Bijuu told the large and intimidating young man in such a small voice she wasn’t even sure he heard.
 
But then he said, “No, but you didn’t fight back either, did you?”
 
“Fight back?” Bijuu asked, as her back bristled into a protective hunch.
 
“Fight back?  How can I fight back?  I don’t have any money.  I don’t have any power.  And we all know people get exactly as much justice as they can afford.”
 
Ben opened his mouth to speak, but Bijuu wasn’t finished quite yet.
 
“All I ever do… all I can ever do, is deal with the consequences.  That’s all women like me ever know… how to pay the consequences of other people’s actions, other people’s choices.”
 
Bijuu looked up that, straight into Bens’ big brown eyes.
 
“And you know what we get in exchange?”
 
“What?”
 
“We get to go goddamn insane.”
 
“Bullshit,” Ben said without a second’s pause, and with a bit of conviction in his voice.
 
“Fuck you,” Bijuu told him, with a bit of bite of her own.
 
“No.  Bijuu.  Fuck them.  They’re the ones you should be mad at.”
 
“I am mad at them.”
 
“Oh yeah?”
 
Bijuu turned away at that, and then put a protective hand on top of her stomach, her empty stomach that pained her and made her sick all at the same time.
 
“You’re so afraid of being hurt.  So afraid of more pain.  You’ll do anything not to look at the problem, just stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it’ll all go away.”
 
“What would you have me do?” the young girl with the painted face and sad eyes asked, in all earnesty.
 
“I’d have you face it.  Face them.  Tell the world even, what they did.  Make them face it Bijuu.  Make them pay for it.  Because nobody should get to treat you like that and get away with it.  Nobody.”
 
Bijuu’s eyes welled with tears and her nose ran with snot, but still, she did not say a word.
 
“No more running around, hiding in the woods.  It’s time, Bijuu.”
 
“What would you know about facing your fears?” she asked the boy who had left her to deal with the cop on her own.
 
“Who are you?  Just some wannabe musician, what have you ever done?  When have you ever been brave?”
 
Ben snorted and then said, with a degree of indignation Bijuu did not feel he deserved, “At least I’m not lying to everyone.  And besides, I’m the one that’s kept you alive this long.  You think those two guys in your room would’ve been so compliant without me?  I’m the whole entire reason you’re still standing on your two feet.”
 
“Oh yeah?” Bijuu asked with a derisive snort, but inside she was quaking.
 
“Then go.  If you want me to stand on my own two feet FOR ONCE – just go!” she screamed at the boy who moments ago had been her salvation.
 
“You don’t mean that, Bijuu… just like you never mean anything you say.”
 
“Just go!” she screamed in a loud whisper, as they were both still cognizant to some degree at least that they were not entirely alone.
 
“You don’t mean that…” Ben repeated, looking the young woman square in the eye.
 
“Go,” she repeated, without blinking an eye.
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2022
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 9 (Part 1)
 
 
 
 
“Where did you go?” Bijuu demanded angrily of Ben, as he slowly emerged from a ring of bushes that lined the camping space tucked into a bit of untamed nature, not too far from where she’d been pulled over.
 
Bijuu had been sitting on the hood of her Jeep for about the past five minutes, as she contemplated what to do about the man in back.
 
“I didn’t want the cop to see me,” he said with a guilty look.
 
“Why the hell not?  You just left me there, to take the fall.”
 
“What fall?  You ain’t arrested, are you?  No cops.”
 
Ben gave a soft push to Bijuu’s shoulder and then tilted his face in perfect puppy-dog fashion.
 
But still, she didn’t smile.
 
“Well, I would be if the cop had noticed that my ‘drunk friend’ is really dead.”
 
“Look, Bijuu… I’ve been meaning to talk to you.  I have something…”

“Can’t it wait?  The sun’s just about to come up, and I think I’m gonna be sick.”
 
Bijuu slid off the hood of her Jeep then, and ran into the bushes.
 
“When was the last time you ate anything?” Ben hollered after her.
 
And a moment later Bijuu was suddenly terrified all the other campsites could hear the sounds of her loud retching, or Ben’s booming voice.
 
“Shhhhhh” she admonished him, as she climbed back out of the thicket.
 
And then she shrugged carelessly, wiped her sleave across her mouth, and then smiled up at the tall man.  Her skull paint now a smear of white and black across her face, which had the effect of being twice as scary.
 
“Are you gonna help me or not?” she asked sharply, as she climbed into the back of her Jeep and began tugging at the man’s rug-wrapped legs.
 
Ben, not saying a word, simply walked to the Jeep and lowered the tailgate.
 
But the man rolled in the rug did not budge.  So, Bijuu gave him a kick and a shove.  And then Ben gave him a hefty tug, and a moment later there was a meaty THUMP, as the small man’s rug-wrapped-body hit the dirt of the campsite.
 
However, the bulk of him missed the small area that had been leveled, so the body quickly rolled down the embankment, shedding itself of the filthy rug in the process.
 
“Fuck!” Bijuu hollered, and then clasped her hand over her mouth, as Ben threw her and admonishing glare of his own.
 
“Sorry,” she mouthed more than said, as the two of them stood there staring at the blood and dirt covered man that now lay in a heap amongst the ferns.
 
“This is not you, Bijuu,” her ghost said then, from a small space away.
 
“You’re not a murderer,” she told the girl she felt she needed to protect.
 
“I am now,” Bijuu said in a dry voice, one the ghost did not recognize.
 
“I’ve never had a choice.  I was made the person I am.”
 
And with that, the young girl turned back to the body, but by this time Ben had already slung Uncle Gary’s lifeless form over his shoulder.
 
And he was looking at her now, as if she’d suddenly lost her mind.
 
“I suggest we don’t stand around under the lights arguing with ourselves.  Ya?  What do you say?  Wanna go burry a body with me?”
 
Bijuu stared at the young man who suddenly seemed quite chipper about putting a man into the earth.
 
“Please.  Bij.  You don’t have to be…” Nyx the ghost started to say, but Bijuu interrupted her.
 
“Be what?  What they told me I have to be?  What they made me?  What they can tolerate, understand, quantify, put into a box, label, and control?  Be that?  Well, I’m sorry.  Because I don’t know how to be any of that!  But what I can be… for once in my goddamn life… is in control.  And I say, ‘no more’.  Besides… he deserves this.”
 
“Damn straight he deserves this,” Ben said then, as he charged past the five-foot-two pregnant girl with the disturbingly painted face.
 
“Now, stop talking to yourself and get moving.”
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 

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.
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 8 (Part 1)
 
 
 
 
“What the hell is taking so long?” Ben asked, as he slid into Bijuu’s room without even knocking.  As if he’d done it a hundred times before.
 
“Revenge,” the red lip-sticked ghost said with a sadistic smirk, though neither Bijuu nor Ben paid her any mind.
 
“I told you to wait with the Jeep,” Bijuu hissed from beside her dresser.
 
‘With the dead body’, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
 
“What the fuck is that?” Ben asked as he peeped the glowing-red leather brand Bijuu was holding over a flickering candle flame.
 
“Revenge,” the specter said with a sneer, from just over Ben’s left shoulder.
 
“What she said,” the pudgy half-Asian girl remarked coyly with a beautiful smile.
 
“Hide,” the ghost said then, suddenly, and real loudly right in Benjamin’s left ear.
 
“What?” he barked as he put a hand over his ear and pulled away.
 
“Hide.  They’re coming,” Nyx told the tall boy with the broad shoulders.
 
Bijuu looked into his face and silently begged his compliance, which he quickly gave, and then he sighed and climbed into Bijuu’s extremely messy closet.
 
“I swear,” he mumbled as Bijuu slid the door shut, and a moment later in walked Cory with Adam and Steve in tow.
 
“I got it offa some punkers down in the valley, it’s what my ma calls ‘the strange strain’,” Cory remarked loudly, as he led the two bigger boys into the cramped room.
 
“Yeah, leave it to your mom to get the good ganj,” Adam said with a smirk, just as Bijuu came out from behind the door and bashed him in the head with a candlestick.
 
“What the…” Steve began, but Bijuu didn’t waste any time, as she caught him too upside the head with the large brass candlestick.
 
And then suddenly she was standing there looking down on the two boys who had raped her, at their crumpled bodies that lay at her feet on her garbage-strewn floor.
 
“You can’t be serious,” Adam said when he finally looked up from his lap, where he’d been staring sightlessly for the past couple of minutes, as he slowly regained consciousness.
 
“What?  You don’t like playing games?” Bijuu asked with a dark twist to her normally sanguine voice.
 
“Untie me,” the dark blonde with the reddish beard barked angrily.
 
“What the fuck?” Steve asked, as he too finally came round.
 
“What the fuck is…” Bijuu began, though she could almost hear Nyx’s voice instead of her own when she spoke.
 
“…is us having a bit of a chat, is all.”
 
“You can’t be serious.”
 
“Serious as a heart attack.  Ya?” the half-Brit, half-Taiwanese girl with the deep mahogany eyes and vacant look said, with a smirk that could cut glass.
 
“I don’t know what sort of game you’re playing here…” one of the boys began, though Bijuu hardly knew which, cuz she had turned just to pick up the glowing leather brand.
 
“What the fuck is that?” Steve, the greasy dark-haired boy that looked strikingly like a young Keanu Reeves asked, in an almost equally oily voice.
 
“Why… it’s sumpin my Gran left for me.  She always did want me to take up crafting,” Bijuu told them, as she swirled back around, leather brand in hand.
 
“We haven’t done anything.  You can’t do this to us.”
 
Bijuu looked at Steve, and then at Adam and smiled.  Because there really weren’t no words she wanted to hear just then.
 
No, cuz just then all she wanted was to stand there a moment - knowing she held their futures in the palm of her tiny little hand.
 
And then she sighed, and then set the branding iron back over the flame.
 
“You’re going to admit, in front of that camera,” Bijuu said with a nod towards her dresser, where her phone had been set up to record the two boys who’d been tied to her bed, “what you’ve done.”
 
“We haven’t done nothing,” Steve said again, though this time as more of a pathetic begging than any declaration of truth.
 
“You both raped me.  That’s whatcha done. The night of my brother’s birthday party, you came into my room when I was passed out and you raped me.  And you’re both gonna admit that.  Or… I’m gonna make sure everyone sees you from now on - for the cowards we all know ya really are.”
 
“No way in hell are you coming anywhere near me with that,” Adam said then with more backbone than Steve had ever shown.  Though Bijuu could tell easy enough it was the backbone of a snake that would bend, and twist, and contort itself into any position required in order to save its own skin.
 
“You’re going to admit what rotten, no-good, pieces of shits you are, or I’m gonna use your faces as my personal canvases.”
 
And it was at this precise moment, when Bijuu considered the years-and-years of her life she’d have to spend looking back on this moment – on the decision she made now.  And she knew she’d never be okay with regret.
 
“Yeah?  You and what Army?  Just cuz I’m tied up, you stupid bitch, don’t mean you can do whatever you want to me.  I can still stop you.”
 
And that’s when a six-foot-four man unfolded himself from Bijuu’s filthy closet.
 
“Yeah, I guess that army would be me,” Ben growled dryly.
 
And before anyone could do anything he was bashing Adam’s head off of Bijuu’s headboard.  Once, twice, and then a third time – with about three-times the force.
 
Steve, recoiling from the sudden explosion of violence only had a second to bob out of the way before an elbow caught him in the nose, causing it to instantly erupt into a spray of blood.
 
“Steve saw you go into your room.  We didn’t expect to see you passed out,” Adam finally confessed as he glared into Bijuu’s blood-shot eyes.
 
“Go on,” Ben growled, as he bounced the young man’s head off the headboard one more time, for good measure.
 
“What did you do?” Bijuu asked, her voice shaky and almost inaudible.
 
With a snarky smirk, the cocky boy who looked more like an Irish rugby player than anything else, simply replied, “What didn’t we do.  And you liked it too.”
 
“Is that what you think?” Bijuu asked after a small contemptuous laugh.
 
“You were moaning,” the freckled-face boy told her, as if it excused all of his behavior.
 
“You raped me.  You, and Steve,” she said, gesturing to the boy who was still trying not to drown in his own blood, “raped me.”
 
“You didn’t say 'no'.  You didn’t fight back.”
 
“How could I?”
 
“So, what are you going to do now?  You’re going to burn an X into my face if I don’t say what?  Exactly?”
 
Bijuu looked over at her phone, at the flashing red light, and then back to the bed which held tight her two pathetic rapists.
 
“Admit, on camera, that you raped me.”
 
“So what if we did?” Adam asked then, his ego suddenly shining in full regalia.
 
“You’re not going to use that to prove anything, because all it proves is that you’re a kidnapper, and if you touch me with that thing… a torturer too.  You’ll be in way bigger trouble than we ever will be.”
 
Adam had said the words with such conviction Bijuu knew he believed them to be true. 
 
Believed them because they’d all seen it time and time again.  When the victims do time while the villains go free… to Stanford, and the Senate, and the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
 
And so, for a quick second, she paused to consider her last night of freedom.
 
And then she smiled a smile ain’t neither of them ever gonna forget.
 
“No!” Adam screamed just as Ben pushed his head back against the headrest. 
 
“Stop!” he screamed again, as Bijuu shoved her scorching hot branding iron straight into his face.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2021
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.