Madeline Sheehan - Unattainable

“A fat fuckin’ bitch,” Tap said as he pulled a cigarette from behind his ear and brought it to his lips. Lighting the cigarette, he inhaled deeply and blew the smoke out slowly. “Is still a fat fuckin’ bitch,” he continued. “No matter which way you’re lookin’ at her.”

“We don’t smoke in here,” Pamela said slowly, eyeing first Tap, then Bucket, then him, all with distaste.

Tap grinned around his next drag. “That so?” he murmured and let the cigarette drop to the carpet. Pamela shot to her feet with a gasp at the same time the toe of Tap’s boot came down over the lit tobacco and he twisted his ankle first right, then left, grinding the cigarette out.

“You disgusting, filthy gang of—”

“Pamela!” The mayor was on his feet faster than Dirty thought was possible for such a fat fuck, and grabbed hold of his wife’s arm.

Subsequently Deuce, Mick, and Bucket had all shot to their feet as well. Dirty followed suit, more than ready to get the fuck out of this awful place.

“We’re done here,” Deuce growled, his hard eyes narrowed on the mayor. “You’ll have half the cash, all clean, on Tuesday. Shipment’s due in town on Wednesday. If I don’t have your boys in blue on board, all you’ll be seein’ of the second half of that money is the brand new shovel I’ll be buyin’ to bury your fat ass. You feel me?”

“Could just feed ’im to the dogs, Prez,” Bucket drawled. “Wouldn’t have to feed ’em for a whole fuckin’ month after that.”

Dirty rolled his eyes. Bucket was full of shit; the club didn’t have any dogs.

The mayor lifted a shaking hand to wipe the sweat that had beaded across his brow.

“Y-yes,” he mumbled. “Of course, everything will go as planned and everyone will be on board. You can count on my son and his men.”

Dirty’s upper lip curled. Daniel Mooresville was the Miles City chief of police who hadn’t just grown up the son of a wealthy and corrupt pair of assholes, but he loved to harass the Horsemen, already knowing full well the dirty business they were all swimming in, knowing he was just as involved, hell, half the town was involved. Yet the fucker still loved to test the boundaries with everything from parking citations and speeding tickets to building code violations at the clubhouse, just to see how much Deuce would tolerate before blowing a gasket.

He was a first-class motherfucker who thought his badge could protect him, his badge and his wealthy, influential parents.

And Deuce let him think so despite it not being true. The Horsemen were dangerous enough on their own, but ever since Deuce had brought Eva back to Montana with him all those years back, the Horsemen had been working side by side with the Silver Demons, and the Demons weren’t just nationwide, they were worldwide. Preacher had more power and connections than the goddamn president of the United States.

One by one the Horsemen headed past the royal couple and out into the hall. As Dirty passed Pamela, his gut seized and he skirted as far around her as he could get without walking into a wall. He didn’t breathe again until they’d finally stepped outside where Jase and Ivy were sitting on the front steps, Ivy playing a game on her cell phone and Jase staring off into the distance. Brother never spoke anymore. Not since Dorothy had woken up from getting shot and didn’t remember him, didn’t want anything to do with him. All he did was eat, sleep, and booze it up. Heavy on the booze.

A hand came down hard on his shoulder and he jumped, but caught himself before he took off running. Looking over, he found Deuce standing beside him, looking straight ahead. Dirty let out a relieved sigh.

“Brother,” Deuce said quietly, so not to alert anyone else to his words. “You need to be ridin’ pavement? Just say the word.”

No. He was fine. He just…he couldn’t…he needed…

“Yeah. I do.”

With another slap to his shoulder, Deuce headed down the steps, scooping Ivy up as he went. Together, all six of them straddled their bikes and headed off the mayor’s long stretch of property. But when his brothers turned right, headed back toward the clubhouse, he went left, toward the mountains.

His brothers were used to him disappearing; he was often alone, liked it that way. He couldn’t be cooped up, couldn’t sit still for very long, couldn’t spend too much time with himself or his memories.

Deuce knew. Deuce was the only one who knew anything about his past, and not even Deuce knew the half of it. And what he did know, he only knew because he’d seen it firsthand, had for some reason decided to turn down the dimly lit Manhattan alleyway where Dirty had been bent over a pile of stacked shipping crates, forcefully taking it in the ass.

He’d been fifteen years old. A foster home runaway who lived off the streets stealing what he could, selling it to whoever would buy it. It wasn’t an easy life, but even being homeless had been better than the life he’d run from.

Until one day he wasn’t strong enough to fight a guy off him.

That’s how Deuce found him. Badly beaten, bent over a stack of shipping crates, his pants around his ankles, crying out in pain, begging to be released while some dirty motherfucker ass-raped him.

It was the first time he’d seen a man die at the hands of another. He’d lived on the city streets long enough to have seen people die. Homeless people succumbing to the weather, gunshot victims, drug users OD’ing.

But this was the first time he’d seen a man kill another man…using his own two hands. Deuce first beat the asshole half to death, then snapped his neck.

If Dirty could have, he would have run from Deuce. Compared to him, tall but scrawny, Deuce was the size of a fucking superhero. But after Deuce had pulled the guy off him, all he’d been able to manage was a halfhearted slump to the ground. Where he stayed until Deuce had walked over to him, yanked his pants up, lifted him up and over his shoulder, and headed back down the alleyway during which Dirty passed out from either blood loss or fear, or quite possibly both.

The rest was fucking history. Barely. If one could call his life “history.” The first half of it was more like a series of unlucky events all piled on top of one another, and the second half was just a struggle.

Every day he struggled. He struggled with remembering, he struggled with forgetting, he struggled with all the fucked-up, perverted bullshit that went round and round his head, knowing that he shouldn’t be thinking these thoughts, knowing those thoughts weren’t his own but instead the thoughts of the motherfuckers who’d made him this way, but also helpless to turn them off…helpless to stop…to stop what he did to make the images, the whispers, the ugly, depraved urges that caused him to do ugly, depraved things…JUST FUCKING STOP.

Once again in town, Dirty pulled off to the side of the road and cut his engine. Toeing his kickstand down, he swung his leg over his bike and stood up straight. While looking around the dark and quiet street he lived on, he reached into his cut and pulled out his smokes.

Miles City had been perfect. The polar opposite of New York City and all the nightmares that place held inside of it. He could breathe here most of the time, and ride for hours, just him and the road.

A shrill, terror-filled scream followed by the distinctive thump/slap of fist meeting flesh broke the small-town silence, tearing through the empty streets, emptying into the surrounding mountains, and Dirty felt his skin pebble with goose bumps.

Another scream, this one garbled, more choked than the first, then another pounding of flesh, and then…silence.

Dirty had a well-practiced poker face. Aside from Deuce, no one, not one motherfucker out there, could see through his bullshit. He could throw down with the best of his brothers, beat a motherfucker senseless, kill him without a second thought, his stare as coldhearted as the rest. He’d done deplorable things to a shit ton of people, men and women alike, and never once did he so much as bat a fucking eyelash at his actions.

Until he was alone. Because when he was alone he could shake, he could tremble, he could scream and yell, he could punch the walls, he could punch himself.

Alone, he could cry. Alone, he could let the fear out and, Jesus fuck, there was so much fear. He lived and breathed fear…every day, every night, all the motherfucking time.

It was fear ruling him that had made him what he’d become. That had turned him into the sort of monster he’d most hated. And it was all that fear inside of him, coursing through his veins, pounding in his heart, making him sweat even more fear.

It was fear that had him tossing his cigarette aside, fear that had him running down the desolate sidewalk, fear that had him turning down a dimly lit alleyway. It was fear that had him skidding to a stop, taking in the scene in front of him.

And it was fear that had him pulling his piece and, with shaking hands, trying to blow a hole straight through someone else’s nightmare, a nightmare that was a fuck of a lot similar to one of his own.

The bullet cracked through the air. Missing his target, Dirty tried again, only this time the asshole had been alerted to his presence and was on his feet, pulling up his pants as he ran in the opposite direction, hooked a quick right, and was gone before the second bullet had left the chamber.

Dirty lowered his shaking hand, his entire body trembling, his mind a mess of all-consuming scrambled adaptations of both the past and present.

That wasn’t him lying on the street, that wasn’t him with his pants around his ankles, bleeding, crying, begging.

He tried to breathe. In and out, slowly, faster, slow again. NOTHING WAS WORKING.

That wasn’t fucking him, it wasn’t, it wasn’t—

“D-dirt-ty…?”

The raspy, garbled, distinctly feminine-sounding mutation of his name caused his head to swivel left and his eyes landed on the bloodied heap of quivering flesh that lay no more than fifteen feet from him.

Dirty blinked. He blinked and he breathed and his eyes refocused.

Shit.

Shit, he knew her. Sort of. She was…Emma? Erin? Ella?

Ellie. Ellie the mulatto hottie. Friends with Danny from way back when.

“P-p-please…” she continued and her arm moved, her fingers extended. She reached for him.

He could do this. He just couldn’t think about what he was doing while he was doing it. But he could do it. He had to do it.

Danny was the closest thing to a friend he’d ever had, the only woman who willingly hung around him, and this was her friend. What the fuck would he do if it were Danny lying half-naked on the street, badly beaten?

He moved forward, jogging quickly toward her, bent down beside her, and froze just before his hands could come in contact with her body.

“Hey,” he said hoarsely, trying to keep himself calm. “Anything broken?”

She blinked up at him through swollen eyes. “No,” she whispered. “Just…m-my head…hurts.”

“Fuck,” he muttered as he retracted his hands, reached inside his cut, and pulled out his cell phone. “I got you covered, I’m calling the cavalry.”

“No!” she cried as her arm shot out and her hand gripped his wrist. The feel of her, her tight grip on him, her skin on his skin, caused a nauseating ripple effect throughout his body, ending with a violent shiver.

“No police,” she whispered, her grip loosening as the last of her strength faded. “Please…no one…nobody…can know.”

Dirty pressed his lips together. He hadn’t been talking about the boys in blue, he didn’t roll that way. But Ellie had said it first. No police, huh? He understood “no cops,” it was a way of life for him and his brothers, the unspoken code that anything that needed handling, they would take care of it themselves.

But a good girl like Ellie? Why the fuck not?

Still not wanting to touch her, he contemplated calling Deuce for help until Ellie’s eyelids began to flutter closed. He let loose a large breath of relief. She was out. He could handle her unconscious. Gently, he rolled her onto her back and tried as best he could to pull up her pants. Then, with the trepidation of a grown man handling a baby for the very first time, he lifted her up into his arms, cradled her against his chest, and headed out of the alleyway.

Unblinking, I stared at the desktop monitor in front of me, at the e-mail attachment I’d just opened, and skimmed over the title:

“Animal Rights Activists Protest the Excessive Use of Leather at Biker Rally in Los Angeles.”