20 Weeks – Chapter 2 (Part 3)
 
 
    "safety – like light – is a façade.”   C.J. Roberts


​ 
“You’re late.”
 
At the sound of the words she’d dreaded her whole drive in, Bijuu cringed as if she’d been physically struck.
 
But it was just the middle-aged Deedra, who was only happy when she was making someone else miserable.
 
Still… Bijuu just happened to be her favourite target, and just then… well… Bijuu didn’t quite feel as if she had the strength to take it.
 
“I had a flat,” Bijuu answered, just as flatly.
 
“Well, I hope you’re prepared to stay late then, because I don’t think I should have to do my work on top of yours.”
 
“No ma’am, you should not.  And I can stay as late as I’m needed.” Bijuu answered, ducking under the large woman’s tray, and scurrying out of the way just as quickly as she could.
 
“Oh, and Bijj…” Deedra hollered, just as Bijuu had thought she’d escaped.
 
“Yes?” she inquired, without turning.
 
“Don’t you think you should try to find some better fitting clothes?  I mean… you’re falling out, dear.”
 
Deedra’s eyes stared meaningful holes in the back of Bijuu’s head.
 
“Yes ma’am,” Bijuu answered, just as her mother had taught her… before she had died.
 
“Your mother’s not dead,” her ghost hollered at her, from the sofa in the breakroom.
 
Not that Bijuu cared to listen just then.
 
“She’s late again,” a weasel-faced man said from behind a stack of dirty glasses.
 
“Deedra’s late all the time,” James, the handsome bartender reminded him.
 
“Yeah… But, Deedra has other… assets,” Gary, the owner of the bar said. 
 
“Sure…” James began, in a hesitating fashion, as he himself couldn’t really see the draw the large woman with the sagging tits and permanent menthol breath had on his boss.
 
“But… Bijuu works twice as hard, complains a hundred percent less, and has never actually missed a day…”
 
Gary adjusted his mask so that he could speak over it clearly, so there would be no misunderstanding.  “Yeah… but Deedra comes with other perks.”
 
James, the five-foot-nine dark-haired, dark-souled, bartender rolled his eyes and thought for a second about knocking his boss upside his head.  But then he recalled he was one of his few friends who still had a job, and went back to washing glasses instead.
 
“Bijuu!” Gary called, as he went by the breakroom.
 
“I want to see you in my office.”
 
Like a cold Northern wind… it was… screaming in through an open door in the middle of the night.  That’s what it felt like any time her boss wanted to speak to her.  Or so at least it felt, in her veins.
 
“Is it just me, or is Bijuu’s ass really getting big?” Deedra asked of the good-looking bartender, even though she knew it would be a rhetorical question, as James wasn’t the kind to partake in that kind of gossip.
 
But really… Bijuu’s ass was enormous… and if he couldn’t see that… then heaven help him, the eternally-jealous woman thought.
 
“I couldn’t help it, I had a flat tire,” Bijuu began, the second she had stepped into his small-cramped office.
 
She held her apron in her hand.
 
“Shut the door,” he told her, his smile sliding off his face and slithering across the floor.
 
Bijuu had to take a step back to keep from stepping on it.
 
“Don’t do it!” Nyx, her ghost, intoned in a meaningful way, from the top of the filing cabinet in the corner.
 
Bijuu though, against her ghost’s advice, and her gut instinct… shut the door, and then stood right up against it.
 
Gary just looked at her, and smiled again, another one of his throw-away smiles that meant anything but what he would have it imply.
 
“Look Bijuu… with the pandemic… things are tighter than ever, and the truth is… I’m gonna have to let somebody go.”
 
The man eyed the sixteen-year-old in a way, that nobody would think was appropriate.
 
And then he patted his lap.
 
“Of course,” he said, reaching out his hand to her.
 
“If you were willing to work with me, on some of my other… needs…”
 
Gary pulled off his mask, and once again reached for the girl that was thirty-five-years younger than him.
 
“You’re willing… to work with me… Bij… aren’t you?” he asked, this time his voice working its ways into more of a demand, than a question.
 
Reluctantly, Bijuu took a light seat on his knee.
 
“There… there… that’s not so bad… now, is it?” he asked, one hand going to the small of her back, and the other… to the side of her face.
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 
 
 
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 2 (Part 2)
 
 
“Ain’t you supposed to be cleaning the kitchen before work?”
 
“Ain’t you supposed to sprout a second head and die?”
 
“Bijuu…” her father’s voice chimed in from his art room.
 
“Can I speak with you please?”
 
That was her father… the eccentric… people called him, the artist with the unruly kids that took terrible advantage of him.
 
Bijuu looked around the room for help, but the only one to even notice her distress was the unfamiliar boy sitting next to her.  All the rest were pretending to be busy with anything else.
 
The boy… well, he smiled down on Bij… just like he understood, and well… that was all the encouragement she needed to pull herself from the depths of the old sofa, and then trudge into the other room.
 
“What did we discuss about inside and outside chores?” her father, with the long white ponytail asked, without looking up from some magazine image he was dissecting with a small blade.
 
“But…” Bijuu began, in a perfectly reasonable tone, as she looked out the back window onto an overgrown lawn that was completely littered with every manner of city-living detritus one could possibly imagine.
 
“I don’t want to hear it Bij.”
 
Bijuu looked about the filthy ‘art room’ and then back to her father, who rarely left his chair unless it was to collect another beer, or to go to the bathroom.
 
For everything else, he had someone.
 
“Just get it done, before you go to work,” he said, again, not bothering to look up from his… art.  Art that would never be finished.  Art that would collect dust on shelves overfilled with crap already.
 
“I hate it here,” Bijuu said, as she turned on her heel to storm off towards the kitchen.
 
“Don’t we all?” her father replied dryly, just as the band kicked off their next song.
 
An hour-and-a-half later, and Bijuu was finally headed off to work.
 
Or… at least she’d hoped she would be.
 
However, the moment she stepped out onto the driveway she realized that was not going to be so easy.
 
“Excuse me!” she shouted over the lead singer who was crooning wicked into the mic, “I ain’t nobody to fuck with, ain’t nobody fuck with me…”
 
“Excuse me!  Mr. Outside Chores!” she yelled at her brother.
 
“I have a flat tire I need you to fix.” 
 
But the band just played on.
 
“Bijuu… your brother is busy.  You can see that.  Figure it out yourself.  You’re not helpless,” her father’s voice called to her, on a flat note that seemed to pervade the room, though, once again, everyone else pretended not to hear.
 
“God Damnit!  Fucking unfair!  Every time I need something or… god forbid… somebody…  Argh!!” she hollered as she stormed from the room, letting the screen door slam on her way out.
 
Out onto the driveway she allowed herself a moment to cry.  And them, wiping the tears with the back of her hand she took a deep breath and considered her options.
 
It was a good paying job, in a shitty area with few enough of them.  And… it was the only way she knew of to get enough money together to finally leave this goddamn house…
 
She turned and spat on the driveway, a bit of venom… she hoped with curse the unholy ground.
 
“Need some help?”  A voice she didn’t recognize called from the doorway.
 
Bijuu, the sixteen-year-old with the 100-year-old eyes, warily assessed the unfamiliar face.
 
It was the boy from the sofa.
 
“I don’t even know you…”
 
“I’m Ben…”
 
“Well Ben… Do you know how to change a tire?”
 
The six-foot tall, dark-haired, dark-eyed, hunk of pure muscle smiled with the most baby-face-smile Bijuu had ever seen.
 
“I think I can figure it out.”
 
And together… it took them ‘bout twenty minutes to get the spare tire on.
 
“You’re lucky, it’s a full-sized one.  Then again… I guess Jeeps are meant to off-road, so… getting home on one of them donuts, when you’re stuck up in the mountains, would be kinda tough…”
 
The boy was rambling on now, and Bijuu desperately needed to get to work, and pee.  But she just couldn’t cut off here one-and-only savior.
 
Finally though, when he was done trying to impress her, she reached up on her tip-toes and gave him a small peck on the cheek.
 
“Thank you!  Without you… I’d have absolutely zero faith in this world.”
 
And with that… the bouncy half-Taiwanese and half-British lass was jumping into her Jeep and speeding away.
 
 
  
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.
 
 

20 Weeks – Chapter 2 (Part 1)
 
 
    And everywhere she went… the Fates followed.
 
 
“Check this out man, it’s called Wowey Zowey.  I got it when I was down in the Valley.  They just brought it up from Mexico last weekend,” the Latino lead-singer with the blue mohawk and silver eye teeth said, as he handed a heavily laden bong to the tall, thin blonde sitting next to him.
 
It was a living room filled with what looked like polar opposites. Corn, the sporty black dude who plays drums, Ritchie the bookish Korean kid that plays guitar and keyboard, Chad the Nazi-skinhead looking dude – who was also her brother… oh… and the dreadlocked-hippie-chick Sarah, who was their one-and-only groupie.
 
“Didn’t you get arrested?” Chad asked, just before taking a hit.
 
“Ya, man.  But I didn’t have it on me then.”
 
“You got arrested?  What for?” Corn asked, as he took the bong from the now sputtering and coughing Chad.
 
“Man, it was silly.  There was a party and I ended up naked,” Candi said, taking the bong back at his turn.  “That’s why I didn’t have it one me, man.”
 
“Naked?” Bijuu asked, walking into the room and squeezing between Ritchie and some new guy she didn’t recognize.
 
Ritchie, not sure what to make of her sudden nearness gave her a curious look, but then decided to not look a gift-horse in the mouth, and smiled profusely.
 
“Is that why they arrested you?” Chad inquired, once again taking the bong.
 
“It’s empty, let’s pack more.”
 
“Nah, I got arrested for trying to kiss a horse.  Here, pack this,” he said, tossing Chad the bag he’d just brought up from the Valley.
 
“Wait,” Corn chimed in then.  “You can get arrested for kissing a horse?”
 
“Apparently, if it’s against their will,” Candi said, with a straight face.
 
And the room erupted, as-one, into a giant fit of laughter.
 
“But, it’s totally okay that your schlong was hanging out, the entire time?”
 
“Yeah, they’re very liberal down in the Valley.  They just got a thing about protecting horses… I guess…” Candi said, again without any hint of a smile.
 
“So, do you gotta go back, to court?” Bijju asked, trying her best not to snicker.
 
“Oh, nah.  It’s not like that big a deal.  They just made me pay a fine, and then they drove me home.”
 
“They drove you home?” Ritchie asked, sitting forward now, ever-eager for more tales from the Valley.
 
“Well, that’s the sweet thing about living next to the police station… ain’t it?”
 
 
 
 
© Raena Exe 2020
ISBN   978-1-7332979-8-1
 
*All characters, places, and events are completely fictional.
*All rights reserved.