3
Robin
Natchez, Louisiana
October 31st, 2014
Time: 6:00 AM
____________________________
"Oi!"
Cursing in Cuban Spanish, Robin jolted awake with a startling fright – and slammed into the steering wheel of her 2011 Chevy. Grabbing a half empty bottle of Jack Daniels, Robin rubbed her eyelids and listened to her phone sing with a piercing screech and groaned. Sleep came with the ebbing of light ʼround these olʼ parts. As Robin listened to the recession of a babbling brook, foaming at the mouth like the grand olʼ Mississippi, the warmth of the world began to fade and sleep grew more and more enticing. Not even the naked selfies of l*sbian chics she wanted to hook-up on her phone roused her from her exhaustion. Tragic, really.
"Pick up, pick up, pick up the phone b*tch..."
Robin cursed.
Lafayette changed her ringtone. Again.
Robin looked at the passenger seat of her Chevy, the ripped up seating and the quilt Olivia, her youngest daughter with down syndrome, made her in a crocheting class with Lafayette and sighed with impatience.
Sleep would have to wait.
"This is Robin DeMarcus," Robin grunted into the phone, rummaging through her purse for a packet of Marlboros or Lucky Strikes or anything to pass the time and make the mascara streaming down her face a bit more grunge-y and presentable.
"Lafayette, gimme the phone d*mn it–"
"Hey-y-y, baby girl. How you doing? What you doing?"
Cigarette plumes flowed from Robin's mouth like ink from the Gods as she stared at the streets that faded like her smoke rings. The black sky framed by a mirage of anger – rage and hate – and soon enough, LʼAmant de Nid, the Loverʼs Nest motel (™ʼd, of course), swallowed her smoke. Wincing as her head pounded, the shadows seemed to dance. Robin tried to block out everything: her baby boyʼs death, the pr*stitution, the r*pe. But no matter how much she tried, it bled into her mind – dripping into her brain like a leaky faucet. Etched there in stone.
She was losing her mind, g*ddamn it.
"Nothing. Iʼm good, Lafayette, really," Robin muttered starkly.
Lafayette snorted.
"B*tch, donʼt lie to me. I saw you with a big-*ss bottle oʼ Jacks Daniels with some ganja on the side. Mine. Now listen, donʼt you go drinkinʼ that sh*t. Do somethinʼ more proactive. Get mad. Tear into something. Sebastian is a dumb piece oʼ sh*t, same with that sidepiece oʼ yours, Scott. Robin, baby, take it from me: men ainʼt sh*t and you ainʼt gotta waste time being sad on them."
Crimson bundles of moonlight sunk their jagged teeth into her tattooed body, dissecting every calligraphic curve. She smoked like a chimney: furious, steely-eyed, hardened like a rock. The edges of her eyes, once dark brown, were now rimmed in red. She stared at her phone hopelessly, feeling almost...guilty. Adulterous. Horrible. The rain swept over the land in unison; not cleansing, or baptizing like the clichés would describe, but suffocating. She was suffocating, and she couldnʼt focus. Couldnʼt concentrate, couldnʼt –
"Sorry about that, love," Wil Harris – her handler – said into the phone breathlessly, British accent bleeding into the receiver.
A Vietnamese man and a Black man walk into a bar.
Robin needed another d*mn drink.
"Lafayette was being a pompous fool," he reiterated.
"The pompous fool in the room is you, homie. Leaving that fine-ass country oʼ yours with their fine-*ss men for a sh*t hole- like Catahoula County. Talkinʼ about pompous fools. F*ck you."
There were a bunch of seedy little apartments and cheap motel rooms sandwiched together. Scanning over the impoverished district, getting a sense of her surroundings, Robin took another drag and continued to eyeball the scenery. The moonlight lashed at the houses in molten brass lashes, framing wooded valleys with the first tides of sunlight. The farmland stretched as far as the I-can-see, and Louisiana was hungry for morning. Flitting her gaze towards her engagement ring, a chic Prince family heirloom studded with solitaire and champagne colored diamonds, she listened to Lafayette and Wil continue their b*tch-fit idly and hardened.
Robin wasnʼt sad because of Sebastian cheating. Robin wasnʼt sad because the man she was sleeping with decided to leave. She didnʼt chase after men and women – didnʼt desperately cling to their memories and fervently to their bodies. She didnʼt linger on the high; she plundered it. Drank them in and spat them out like a sour, succulent wine.
She replaced men and women, always, so when Lafayette insinuated she was stricken with grief over men, her grief cut into her with a Machiavellian coldness. Robin was far from sad; she was mad. Furious. Anger boiled in her with vengeance in its damn tears, and as it filled her, it brought back every bruise from the past.
Robin wanted to tear their heads off: Sebastianʼs and Scottʼs.
And then?
She wanted to tear her head off.
Robin took another swig of Jack Daniels and it burned like an acidic fire. The regal bitch that was the source of her pain, and when she came into view, Robin remembered everything. Her exorbitant and expensive fur coat, her hair like smoke...ominous smoke that trapped the incandescent moonlight in the songs of wolves and the syrupy cries of murder. She was the mother from hell, a mother of madness, with eyes colored onyx and her heart cold and dark, but Robin would hit her hard. Hit her back. The b*tch killed her son, and one day, sheʼd rot six feet under, too. Rot the way her Virgillo did. Rot the way Robin did back in C-uba.
She drank some more, and her f*cking name rang in Robinʼs ears. Shrill in its punishing cadence.
Desdemona Prince.
Sheʼs the reason Iʼm like this.
Ella es la razón por la que soy como este.
Sheʼs the reason I lost my Virgil.
Ella es la razón por la que perdí mi Virgillo.
My baby boy.
Mijo.
"Robin?"
Robin, overwhelmed, unscrewed the bottle of Jack Daniels and chugged until her throat burned. Her head pounded, pulsing against her temple in strong, churning waves – her throat dry with the aftertaste of her heated whiskey. Pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead, Robinʼs body grew light, dizzy, but heavy all the same. The howls came back and she was suffocating. She was drowning.
"Iʼm here," she whispered shakily.
"Iʼm sorry for what happened with Virgil," Wil murmured. "But you need to step up, love, or theyʼll skin you alive. They want you to kill, hunt, f*ck, whatever...you do it. Shoot first, ask questions later. If you donʼt, weʼre both screwed, man. The Hellbenders say youʼre distracted. Off your game. Do not forget...they wonʼt take it lightly if you show them theyʼre right."
The Hellbenders; Robin recoiled at their name, too.
The covert mercenary group that worked as private eyes and assassins, "all for the greater good," as they claimed.
Robin stared at the bottle of Jack Daniels longingly.
She was going to need some more booze.
"Distraction? For what, Wil, what...distraction? My son is dead. He has been dead for all these years."
"You know what, Robin."
A beat.
Robin stopped cold in her tracks.
Their plans for December 15th.
A breath, cold and damning and laced with hard liquor, crept out of her lips.
The Hellbenders wanted to release Hiroshima on the South and raise their apocalypse, their front lines, their war.
She raised the lingering Jack Daniels to her lips, laughing at her misery.
Bottoms up.
"I need time. J*sus, Wil. I need to bury my son. I need...time."
Hollow, she stared at the bartender of the Loverʼs Nest window and she felt exhumed when she did so: a corpse without a conscience; a being detached from their soul.
Maybe Damon has some vintage in storage. Maybe a good f*ck in him, too.
Wil interrupted her reverie, and to that, she continued drinking alone.
"You know whatʼs at stake here, Robin," Wil told her. "Donʼt shoot the messenger. Iʼm just trying to relay some info. We have twenty-four hours. Iʼm just calling to let you know."
Snapped.
Robin snapped.
Whipping the Jack Daniels at the windshield, Robin screamed when it shattered. Hysterical as she clawed the seats, punched the windows, bled as the shards of glass sunk into her knuckles. As her tears suffocated her, she wished to choke, to gasp, to feel her lungs peel in her ribcage. Torturously, agonizingly. She craved violence, craved the impulses of alcoholism, was hungry for the nicotine that would stab her heart and for whiskey that burned a hole in her liver. She needed an anesthetic, something to numb the pain, because today she couldnʼt play the role of a dutiful housewife or a doting mother or a dubious daughter-in-law. Not when sheʼd seen the rotting, blackened, shrunken remains of her Virgil.
Her baby; her baby boy.
"Eat sh*t," Robin snarled. "You hear that, William? Eat sh*t, you son-of-a-b*tch!"
Hanging up, Robin stared at the rain tear down her window and inhaled sharply.
The screams, and the whispers, and the cries from her dreams hung in the air, dancing together erotically, like smoke and fresh air. Blood began to smother every crevice; growing on the walls, moving with more versatility, spreading like a disease. She watched as the tears of blood trickled down her arms – bittersweet, stinging couplets of it thrashing around...
Hallucinating. Youʼre hallucinating.
Taking another shaky drag of her cigarette and a sip oʼ whiskey, Robin concentrated on Virgilʼs grave back in New Orleans. The dawn-colored saw dust on the header, the cursive inscription, and as she did this – she bitterly downed another mouthful of Jack Daniels and cringed at the mixture of nicotine and booze and let her thoughts run wild. Repeating, on a loop. No more distractions.
Desdemona Prince.
Sheʼs the reason Iʼm like this.
Ella es la razón por la que soy como este.
Sheʼs the reason I lost my Virgil.
Ella es la razón por la que perdí mi Virgillo.
My baby boy.
Mijo.
Robin snuffed out the flame of her cigarette, her eyes darkening under the bloodthirsty moonlight.
"No more distractions."
This is not a threat; itʼs a promise, amor, she told herself.
"Iʼm coming for you, Desdemona."
Y cuando lo haga, Dios salve su maldita alma.
And when I do, God save your f*cking soul.