The night was very still and eerily quiet. That wasn't a complete surprise because I was the only one left working at the body shop, well after the posted closing hours. The place was usually as quiet as a mausoleum after all of the guys went home for the day. That was the main reason why I had talked our boss about staying after hours to work. I had a client who wanted a lot of custom work done on his 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Normally it wouldn't be an issue for me to get the work he wanted done with the usual organized chaos going on around me at the shop, but I was having issues with some of the wiring and some of the other custom fittings I had to fabricate, so I wanted to work in silence. Silence meant I could hear myself think. Silence meant I could work without any distractions. Silence meant I actually might be able to figure out a solution to my problem.
I tucked my near waist length dark brown wavy hair into a messy pile at the nape of my neck and pulled the hood on my sweatshirt over my head. It was my lazy way of keeping my hair from getting greasy while I worked. (And yes, it also kept it from becoming a victim of the wheels of the creeper I laid on to work underneath the car.) During the day I took more time to pull my hair into French braids or a proper tight bun along with a baseball cap, but it was after hours and having my hair pulled back so tightly for extended periods of time gave me a headache. Since I was wanting a distraction free work environment, that also meant any unnecessary physical pain that could be more than easily avoided.
Another reason for the laissez-faire hairstyle was that I wasn't just working on the car. I was jumping between looking at the mess I had made on the underside of the Monte Carlo and jotting thoughts down on a diagram I had on a clipboard on my rolling toolbox. Having my hair loose was part of allowing my creative juices to flow. Yeah, I couldn't even think that with a straight face, but it sounds good on paper.
After I had my hair secured under my hood, I pulled the drawstring ties and laid down on my creeper. I was close to have a solution figured out and was confident that after a couple more hours I would have my diagram completed so that I could get started on the hard work (the actual fabrication of new parts, etcetera) over the next couple of days.
Finally! I thought to myself. I might actually get this job done on time now. Tino will love that!
As I started to slide under the car, I was stopped abruptly by someone grabbing my shoulders. I was too stunned to react, so I wasn't able to do anything to stop him (I assumed it was a guy by his vice-like, crushing grip he had on my upper arms) as he pulled me out from under the car and slammed me face first against the passenger side door. The impact of my body slamming against the metal beast of a car forced all of the air out of my lungs. If I had any breath to make a sound, I would have cursed him for nearly denting the car or scratching her paint. Instead, I just settled for an inaudible groan.
I think he said something against the side of my face once he had me pinned to the side of the car. I wish I could be sure, but between the disorientation from his assault and his slurred speech, all I could make out was "boss" and "warning". He then landed a battering ram of a bow into my lower back that would have brought me to my knees if he hadn't been using his legs to keep me pressed against the door.
"Did you hear me?!" He shouted more clearly at the back of my head.
Was he kidding me? I couldn't have answered him even if I wanted to! That punch into my back knocked out what little breath I had left in my lungs, so I was focused on relearning how to breathe at the moment.
That logic obviously hadn't occurred to him because he punched me again before he violently turned me around and slammed my back against the car door. Really could have done without the door handle digging into the spot in my back that he had been tenderizing with his fists. But this time I had enough air in my lungs to let out a low, pain-filled groan. I'm pretty sure he didn't hear it because he growled out an angry noise as he ripped the hood off my head. I'm also fairly certain that he took a handful of my hair out of my skull along with the hood.
"Did you hear me, asshole?" He screamed as he pulled my head back by my hair.
You'd think the long, waist length hair would tip him off to the fact that I wasn't who he thought I was supposed to be, but no. Many of the guys who worked here followed the 80's Rock Star's guide to masculinity so a lot of them had luscious locks that rivalled the length and volume of my own. Plus, in this lighting and my bulky work clothes (hoody under my coveralls) that concealed all of my curves, it wouldn't be hard to mistake my identity.
"Did you...?" He started as he cocked his right arm back to launch another assault on me.
"Yes!" I screamed out once I could see him through my hair. His arm reared back even further, so I frantically called out as quickly as I could, "Please! DON'T! Please! I'm pregnant!"
Just as I had prayed that it would, that declaration gave him a moment of pause. His right hand fell limply to his side while his brain tried to make sense of what he was now seeing and hearing.
Trust me, if I wasn't about to shit bricks, I would be laughing at the look that I had put on his face. I swear that you could practically smell the friction from the wheels attempting to turn in his puny brain.
I thankfully recovered faster than him, so I was able to lean in forward to pull the knife out of the sheath on his waist before he realized what I was doing. By the time he did notice what was happening, I was moving the knife's blade into position. As I thrust the blade forward, he lunged at me to wrap his hands around my neck. I had hoped that I had put enough force behind my attack to hurt him and scare him off, but his action made my strength a moot point.
After he practically impaled himself on his own knife, I gave the blade a forceful twist.
"Bitch!" He cursed out with the breath I was forcing out of his lungs.
I could feel my lips curl back in a cruel smile as I continued to twist the blade slightly out of his flesh. That movement gave me the leverage to drive the knife's blade upwards to slice through his body until it hit his ribcage. He stared at me with wide eyed disbelief as his body crumbled and he slumped forward towards me.
His knife was sharp enough that I could feel it cut through more of his gut and into his organs before I caught his shoulder with my left hand.
Now that his ear was close to my lips, I quietly hissed out "¡Vete al diablo! You piece of shit!"
After I felt him expel his last breath against my neck, I shoved at his shoulder until he fell to the ground. I was forced to let go of the knife because it was embedded too far into his gut to pull it out. I watched in silence as he fell to the ground like a sack of potatoes with a resounding thud.
I stared down at his lifeless body and felt completely numb. The adrenaline that was coursing through my veins stopped me from fully digesting and computing what I was now looking at down at my feet.
As I stood there, I started to feel his blood cooling against the skin on my hands and arms. Worse than that, it was starting to turn into a dry, crusty layer over my hands and forearms. That image stabbed through the fog in my brain like... well like his knife into his abdomen and I immediately started to panic.
"No... no... no..." I repeated as I frantically tried to scrub his blood of my skin onto my coveralls that I still had on over my jeans and hoody.
The only problem with doing that was that he had bled out all over the front of me. So, the more I scrubbed my hands against my thighs, the more I spread his blood over my skin. Now the wet blood that had soaked into my clothing started to form a new layer of gore over the blood that had already dried on me.
"No... no... NO..." I continued to repeat with escalating volume and panic.
I then ran over to the sinks we used to clean the grease off our hands at the end of our work day. By this time, I was so frantic that I couldn't coordinate my limbs and I dropped the bar of soap into the sink and fumbled while trying to turn on the tap.
After struggling with that for a couple of minutes another thought hit me. While giving me the tour of the shop, Jax had shown me a panic button that could be pressed in times… well I guess basically in times like this. Unlike other businesses, our panic alarm wasn't connected to an alarm company or the police. Instead, Juice had set it up, so it would send out a 911 text to all of the ranking members of the MC.
Once I knew the Calvary was en route, I was able to catch my breath. After taking in a few slow, deep, deliberate breaths, I finally felt calm enough to try to clean myself up. This time I turned on the tap first and wetted my hands before I reached for the plastic container of cleaner. It immediately slipped out of my hands and through my fingers. I then tried to grab the bar of soap again, but it too wanted to play the role of my nemesis. Only it didn't flop into the sink again. No, instead it made its escape to the floor under the sink.
Great! I sighed out silently to myself as I got down on my hands and knees to try to retrieve it. I swear to any god that would listen that the bar of soap was actually an evil demon sent from the deepest bowels of hell. Every time I got my fingertips on the damned thing it would slip away so that it was just out of my reach. Finally, it got to the point that I'd have to actually crawl under the sink on all fours instead of reaching like I had been doing before, so I stopped and while I tried to decide if I should abandon that plan of action.
I sat back on my haunches to reassess my situation when it finally hit me. The soap I had been chasing had a dark pink trail of suds behind it, like a macabre lacy train on a goth inspired dress. And the soap suds were dark pink because they were colored by blood. Blood of the man that I had just…
"Killed," I whispered to myself as I fell back onto my ass.
Now when I looked to my right, I could see his body laying there in a growing puddle of blood. When I turned my head and looked to my left, I could easily see the soapy blood trail that led up to the bar of soap that refused to do its job and cleanse the gore from my bloody, murderous hands.
Now, everywhere I looked I saw something that was going completely wrong and so far out of left field that they were nowhere near what I had planned. I pulled my knees up into my chest, but I wasn't even able to find any comfort in curling up in the fetal position. As soon as my cheek touched my knees, I heard a sickly squishing noise. That was quickly followed up by the vomit inducing feeling of cooling blood being transferred from my clothing to my skin.
"Oh God!" I cried out as my legs dropped to the floor.
I tried to move away from it all, but the blood on my clothes followed me every inch that I tried to gain to freedom. The only solution I could come up with to try to lessen the horror was to take off my coveralls. Great plan of action… in theory. In reality? Not so much. The cooling blood had congealed just enough that my coveralls were now stuck to my jeans and clung to the sleeves of my hoody. My arms soon got tangled in the cotton prisons that most people called shirt sleeves. They were so tight and constricting that they were starting to feel more like a straitjacket. The more I fought them to get free, the tighter they seem to become until I just had to stop moving completely.
I'm not sure how long I tried to free myself from the bloody fabric before Chibs found me with my back against a wall, hyperventilating in quick, shallow breaths.
I barely felt his left hand cup my cheek while he tried to force my eyes away from the body laying in a pool of dark blood on the other side of the room. "Darlin'," he started softly with his rough Scottish brogue. "What happened to you? Sweetheart… Mia… Luv… look at me. Sweetheart, please look at me."
He held my head in both of his hands and gently shook it from side to side to try to get me to refocus my gaze on his face, but my eyes wouldn't move. I could hear his kind words, I could hear him begging, pleading with me to turn my eyes to his face, I could hear it all, but I couldn't force my body to comply. I wanted to turn my eyes away, but they refused to move an inch. I barely noticed if I blinked or not. Nothing would move except for a now steady in and out of my breaths that matched the new erratic rhythm of my beating heart. My brain was functioning enough to keep the involuntary motions of my heart and lungs to keep me alive, but that was about it.
At least that's all that was happening until I heard a raspy voice gasp out, "What the hell…? Mia!? MIA?!"
My eyes finally moved when I felt a familiar rough, calloused hand touch the right side of my face. When my eyes met his intense dark brown, nearly black gaze, all I could do was feel my bottom lip start to quiver. He tenderly touched a cut across my left eyebrow that I hadn't even noticed was there until I saw the bright red spot of blood on the tip of his index finger.
"Did he do this?" He asked in his usually comforting, gravelly tone as he moved his fingers to make sure that I could easily see the blood staining them.
I tried to find my words, but my ability to speak completely failed me. As the first tears of the night started to spill down my cheeks, I turned my eyes away from the evidence and simply nodded my confirmation of the facts while I cast my eyes down to my hands.
I barely had a chance to turn my eyes back to the new comer's face before he was up and at the body. Jax entered the garage with Tig and Juice not far behind as Happy landed the first swift kick into the corpse's side. That's when all hell broke loose. Happy did everything in his power so that he could exact his own special form of wrath on the body that had bled out on the floor while his brothers call out and tried to get him to stop.
After Chibs joined the melee, I finally came out of my haze and stupor. When my eyes refocused on the room, I saw Jax, Tig, Chibs, Bobby and Juice trying to hold Happy back and away from the pool of blood. I struggled to get up to my feet as I almost frantically called out, "Stop! STOP! Daddy! You have to stop!"
That plea froze everyone in their place.
