The Unhinged Read online

  One of the reasons he decided to be a cop was for the respect he’d receive. As a cop, he knew who he was supposed to be and how he was supposed to be treated.

  Now, he was hanging with a group of nasty, drunk women, save the one, his soon-to-be bride. His acting tonight was difficult, nauseating, but essential.

  Eventually, the torture ended, Kyle’s head about to explode.

  Kelly stood and accompanied Barbara to the bathroom. Females always pissed together, so it was a relief when she asked if he had to tinkle too, so he wouldn’t have to sit at the table and bullshit with the others while Kelly was gone.

  He relieved himself quickly and waited at the end of the hallway that led to the bathroom. When Kelly strolled by, he grabbed her from behind, spun her around and pulled her close.

  “Whoa,” she said, clearly surprised. She looked into his eyes, then felt his arms and chest, her face serious. “You’re strong.”

  “Hey,” Barbara said, coming up behind Kelly, but speaking to Kyle. “You stealing my girl again?”

  “Just want a little alone time,” he said, keeping his eyes locked onto Kelly’s. “If that’s okay with you, Mom?”

  “You two can go screw your brains out for all I care,” Barbara said, then staggered away.

  They stood there, arms around each other. He worried that she was too drunk. He couldn’t have that.

  “So, what’s the occasion?” he asked.

  “Occasion?”

  “Girls’ night out. Just blowing off some steam or is this a regular thing?”

  She touched his nose with her finger and giggled. “We do this every so often. Why, you think I’m some kind of drunk floozy?”

  “Not at all,” he lied. “Just conversing.”

  “Enough conversing,” she said, and pulled his head to hers. Their lips touched and they kissed. Hands slithered about, touching, rubbing. Their breathing grew heavy. Even through the alcohol, her breath was sweet. If she wouldn’t leave her friends for him, then it was his job to get her to leave for herself. Get her so horny that she couldn’t stay. He was afraid if they didn’t leave soon, she’d get sloshed, too wasted to leave with him. Her friends would forbid it. Packs were protective like that.

  “Hey,” he said, between kisses, “what do you say we get out of here?”

  “Sounds good to—” She stopped, her eyebrows coming together in a look of confusion, and then he felt it—the gun he kept tucked in his pants at the small of his back had come free.

  “What the hell is this?” Kelly said, holding the gun like she’d picked up a dead rat.

  Kyle snatched the weapon from her and shoved it back in place. He looked around, making sure no one had seen it.

  Kelly’s face was scrunched up. She looked baffled. “Is there a reason you’re carrying?”

  “It’s not what you think,” he said. “I’m a cop. It’s my service weapon. I always carry it with me.”

  She shook her head. “You’re a what?”

  “A cop.”

  She closed her eyes, lips pursed. Her shoulders sagged. Letting out an audible breath, she said, “I knew you were too good to be true.”

  She turned to walk away.

  He grabbed her by the shoulder and spun her around.

  “Take your fucking hands off me, pig,” she shouted, and shoved him.

  Pig, he thought. She called me a pig. He’d screwed up. This one didn’t like cops. But there was no way he could’ve known.

  “I don’t understand. What did I do?” he said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Yeah,” she said, hands on her hips. “I don’t date cops. You’re all the same. Dirty assholes who think you can do whatever you want. And when we need you, you aren’t there. But you have no trouble using people. Holding shit over their heads. Badges with licenses to do whatever the hell you want.”

  “I’m not like that,” he said and stepped toward her, arms reaching.

  Kelly batted his hands away. “Don’t come near me. We’re done. You hear? Done.” She turned and hurried away.

  He chased after her, panicked. He loved her. It couldn’t end. Not like this. He was trembling. Losing himself. He couldn’t be so timid. He needed to be the cop. Show this bitch he was strong and wouldn’t be denied.

  He caught up with her when she reached the table. “Kelly,” he shouted.

  She turned on him. “Get the hell away from me, creep.” She slapped him.

  Gasps erupted from the table.

  Kyle could only stare in shock. She’d hit him. Embarrassed him.

  “Kelly,” Barbara said, shooting to her feet, “what’s wrong?”

  “What happened?” asked another.

  “This creep won’t leave me alone,” she said.

  “I just want to talk, explain,” he pleaded, keeping his voice in check. Cops were solid, didn’t show weakness or fear.

  Barbara stood by Kelly’s side. “What the hell did you do to her, asshole?”

  Kyle ignored the wench. He only cared about making things right with Kelly.

  “Please, Kelly. Come talk with me.” He went to grab her arm, and she slapped him again. Then someone threw a drink in his face. He wiped the liquid from his eyes and saw Kelly’s friends encircle him like a pack of starved wolves.

  “I told him to leave me alone and he won’t,” Kelly said.

  The women started hollering at him, their faces angry scowls.

  “Get lost, scumbag,” a redhead said.

  “Yeah, who do you think you are?” said a tall blonde.

  “Get away from her,” Barbara said, and shoved him.

  The beast within erupted and he shoved her back. Barbara tripped over Kelly’s foot and tumbled to the floor.

  The redhead helped Barbara up. The women attacked, hitting and kicking him. Barbara lunged in, nails clawing at his neck. He had a choice to make: fight back and make a scene, or flee to fight another day.

  He couldn’t risk the exposure.

  Kelly slapped him again, shoved him, spat in his face. He cocked back his arm, needing to put her in her place, but then he saw the onlookers, the crowd. Cell phones held up, recording.

  He needed to leave.

  Kyle managed to dodge and block many of the attacks, but not all. There were too many arms and legs. A hand from the swarm slapped him across the face. Another punched him in the gut. His shin exploded in pain from someone’s foot. A drink splashed across his face. Something solid clobbered him over the head. He heard the sound of shattering glass and knew it was a bottle. White light flashed across his vision for a second. A fingernail poked him in his right eye. Pain exploded into his brain. He cried out. If he didn’t leave now, he’d have to use force. He’d fuck all of them up. There would be consequences; the cop would be dead. He might even serve jail time.

  He knew he could kill them all, swat them like flies, but for now, it was best to leave. This was all Kelly’s fault, that rotten cunt. She’d flipped out on him, and why? Because he was a lawman? He’d make her sorry, so fucking sorry. But in order to accomplish this, he needed to flee. He hated himself for turning coward, but he spun and ran.

  He danced around the crowds of people, hiding his face as best he could. The bouncer at the front door moved aside. He burst through the doors and hightailed it across the parking lot and into the woods, not wanting anyone to see which car was his.

  He stopped a few feet inside the tree line and turned around. The gloom of the woods swallowed him whole, leaving him unseen from the parking lot or bar entrance.

  The women came from the door, heads turning, looking this way and that. They were ravenous, needing to pounce on him and finish the job they had started. The bouncer came outside and ushered the women back inside, then glanced around before heading back in himself.

  Kyle remained where he was for a while,
catching his breath and gathering his wits. A few people came and went from the bar. Finally, he exited the darkness and dashed to his unmarked gray Chevy Impala. From where he was parked, he had an unobstructed view of the bar’s entrance, and he waited.

  His body was riddled with minor aches and stings from being punched, slapped, kicked and scratched, but it was his head that throbbed from the bottle’s impact. Glancing in the rearview mirror, he parted his hair and saw a small cut. A trickle of blood oozed down his scalp. Furious, he punched the steering wheel.

  “You’re going to pay, bitch,” he said.

  He’d done nothing wrong. In fact, he’d been a gentleman. Treated her kindly, bought her drinks, was nice to her friends. He’d been so sure she was the one. Her beauty had tricked him, spelled him into thinking they were meant to be. She used him. It had happened before, but like all times previous, he wasn’t going to let it go. She didn’t like cops, but that was no reason to act like an unappreciative cunt. He was an officer of the law. People were supposed to respect the law and the men who put themselves on the line to protect them. He himself didn’t like all cops, but that didn’t mean he treated them unfairly. It amazed him how quickly Kelly had turned on him. He knew she was a firecracker; that was something he liked, because it would have made the challenge of taming her that much more special once they were married. But she was white trash; a foul-mouthed bitch who needed an attitude adjustment.

  An hour after climbing into his car, he saw Kelly and her friends leave the bar. He crouched low, making sure to keep an eye on them. They were laughing, clearly having moved on from the memory of him. Good, he thought, as they all piled into a Toyota Camry and pulled out of the parking lot.

  Kyle followed.

  The car didn’t swerve, and maintained the speed limit. He wasn’t sure if the driver had been drinking, but he wasn’t going to pull her over, though he ached with desire to see the looks on their faces, especially Kelly’s. He’d threaten to lock up the driver, make them beg, but things might get out of hand if they saw him. Besides, he would deal with the bitch on his own terms, later.

  He followed the car, the vehicle stopping at various residences, dropping off passengers. He made sure to write down each address, for the future, if he ever needed it. When there was only the driver, a dyke-looking bitch if he’d ever seen one, with manly arms and a military-style crew cut, and Kelly remaining in the vehicle, his stomach tingled with excitement—he was about to find out where the cunt lived.

  Five minutes later, the car pulled into the driveway of a cedar-sided, bilevel house out on Angola Road. The area was heavily wooded. Houses were separated by a couple acres of forest and only lined one side of the street.

  He drove by, slowly, taking in every detail of the house and yard. In his rearview, he saw Kelly get out, wave goodbye and run up the steps to her house. He turned the car around when he was out of view and drove by again, taking in the scene. He imagined the bitch taking her clothes off and needing a good fuck. He’d make sure she got one. That was for sure. He thought about breaking in tonight; torturing her, making her beg and bleed. But that would be hasty, and being hasty was never a good idea when dealing with prey. Patience and planning were always the best course and paid off in spades.

  He wrote her address down, grinned and drove away.

  Chapter Two

  Aaron awoke to the familiar, yet despised, blaring of his alarm clock, the annoying sound like a sonic knife piercing his brain. But similar to most early morning risers, he needed the awful sound to fully wake him.

  Blindly reaching out, he swatted the snooze button, a practiced maneuver he had perfected. The alarm was always set ten minutes ahead of when he actually needed to be out of bed. Knowing he had more time to sleep, or to just lie there, was essential to starting the day properly. Everyone had a process for waking; this was his.

  He had been out of prison for six months, and it had taken him a while to get used to life on the outside. Normal had a different meaning now, and was something he needed to adjust to. And as long as he was on parole, he knew things would never be completely normal, but he would make sure his life was as regular as possible.

  As a parolee, he had to abide by certain rules, one of which was a curfew. He had to be in his residence—his mother’s house—by 9:00 p.m., and remain there until 7:00 a.m. A weekly check-in with his parole officer was also required. These were the abnormal parts of life he had to deal with, things that kept him feeling different, apart from society, but they were better than remaining in prison. He rarely complained to himself or his mom. He had quickly come to grips with the fact that he would not be completely free until his parole was over. But even then he understood he would have a criminal record that would follow him for the rest of his life.

  At the age of eighteen, Aaron was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for his part in the armed robbery of a gas station. He served six years before he was released for good behavior. He had a long list of offenses, including multiple counts of marijuana possession, two drunk and disorderly charges and two assault charges that were pled down to misdemeanors, and he had been suspended a number of times for fighting at school. The judge who presided over his case of armed robbery was hard-nosed on crime, and as his lawyer put it, “didn’t have a liberal bone in his body”.

  The judge had thrown the book at Aaron.

  “Young man,” the judge said, intently eyeing Aaron from his perch at the head of the courtroom, “one day you’re going to kill someone, so I’m going to lock you up for a good long while and give you the time you need to think about your actions.”

  The reality of prison hadn’t hit him until his cell door slammed closed, but that wasn’t when Aaron decided to turn his life around.

  Prison had been brutal, something he never got used to, but learned to accept.

  His first night back home on a real bed—the same bed he’d spent his youth sleeping on—was heaven, like resting on a soft, cottony cloud. But sleep had eluded him that night. He lay there until the sun came up, listening to the quiet of the house, its creaks and moans and the swish of trees outside his window as the wind blew. These were sounds he never heard while in prison, but remembered from the past like some distant dream.

  Prison conditioned him to listen for specifics: the guards’ shoes echoing off the walkway, prisoners chatting during the day and catcalling the newly arrived—the fish—when the lights went out. But the most expected sound, the one he hated with a passion, the one that broke him out of any kind of daydream he was caught in was the clanging of cell doors at night and the clinking of them when they opened in the morning. These sounds were tattooed into his psyche, things that were familiar, expected, that he’d grown accustomed to and sounds that he’d have to forget. It had taken a good month for him to become used to the old, yet new, environment of his bedroom and the house.

  He’d often wake—whether in the middle of the night or in the morning—still thinking he was in his cell. Opening his eyes, he’d see the truth—the Megadeth and Slayer posters hanging on the wall, his desk with the new laptop his mother had purchased, his youth soccer trophies lining his shelves. All items letting him know he was home.

  He wasn’t sure why his mother had left his bedroom untouched, but she had. Maybe it was because she wanted him to be her little boy again, or maybe to make him feel like he had before he went to prison. She expected him to come home one day, and would let him take care of change.

  His partner in crime, the man who had done the actual holdup of the gas station, received twenty-five to life and was serving time in a different prison. Aaron had gone to prison alone.

  He quickly found out that many prisoners liked to spend their free time either sleeping or working out, even playing card games as they lifted weights.

  Sleep allowed for freedom, his dreams almost always taking place outside prison, with friends and family. Now that he was out,
comfortable in a real bed, sleeping sucked, his dreams usually taking place in prison. He found the reversal almost comical and wondered when he’d dream of normal life again.

  Since Aaron was an eighteen-year-old, good-looking, blond kid, his first months in prison had been terrible, a living nightmare. He was tall, but lanky, and thought it would be best to make a name for himself. He gave the guards a hard time, disrespecting them, along with smaller, seemingly helpless inmates. His plan didn’t work, and he wound up getting beaten on a couple of times by the guards and prisoners.

  Eventually, he learned how things worked. Respect was earned. He needed to stand up for himself, not go out of his way to make waves and pin a target on his back.

  Prison was fickle. Making eye contact with the wrong person, walking in the wrong section of the yard, showering with the wrong crowd, eating at the wrong table were all dangers a prisoner needed to realize and be aware of—especially a newly arrived prisoner. The wrong move, no matter how slight, could make an inmate’s life hell.

  As time wore on, he made acquaintances, even a few friends. He stayed even-keeled and walked upright—posture was an important thing in prison, as slumped shoulders or a sunken chest portrayed weakness.

  He’d been approached numerous times for sexual favors, protection in exchange for them, but he always refused, getting the stare-down or verbal warning. He was, unfortunately, a target. There was a group of three men in particular who wanted his services. He’d repeatedly turned them down, going so far as to punch one in the balls when the man whipped out his penis.