a/n: thank you for the reviews, i hope you enjoy this chapter as well
"Mikey, MOVE IT!" Raph bellows behind me, holding off two guys. He snarls at one and head butts him before he punches another in the throat. I wince.
I hear something whistling in the air and turn to see a chain coming down at me I move to the side and grip the chain, yanking him forward before saying in my best Terminator-Arnold voice, "Hasta lavista, baby," before I grab his shoulder and knock him against a pole. He slides down and moans, clutching at his head. I hear a shoe scuff behind me and I send out a wicked mule kick. Pliable muscle, like heated rubber, gives under my foot and I hear a bone snap. Whoops. Didn't mean to do that much damage buddy.
I turn to see him groan and slide down the side of the building, holding his middle.
I see a flash of light and see Leo off in the corner with like five guys; there's my big bro aka demented ballerina with swords. A man close to him cries out in pain when a sword slashes across his arm. Leo's spinning and spinning right 'round right 'round like a record baby – I duck down to avoid being clocked by a baseball bat. It splinters on the wall. The man yells out and that is one dislocated shoulder. I grip my nunchakus and beam him in the back of the head. His eyes roll up and he's down for the count.
Raph's facing off with more and so's Leo while lil' ol' me is looking for Donny. He was off looking for the little girl these scum bags kidnapped from the rich part of town. Her name was Susie Brown. We saw her on TV, her parents were making a city wide plea and they showed her picture. She was a little blond girl with high curls like Shirley Temple and big, big doe eyes. She wore a pink dress with brown lace trim, little black Mary Janes and a big polka dot bow in her hair when she went missing four days ago. Then, apparently, they never went back up on TV and they took their reward money down. Donny suspected something so he hacked in the police files.
The Browns had been sent a ransom demand. Go figure; never saw that one coming, seriously.
A guy snarls in front of me and wields a knife, long and serrated. He comes at me, sloppy and off, but he slashes, I dodge and hook my ankle in the back of his knee and push forward. Both his knees give out and I side-step to let him fall face first. He falls and I hear something crunch – like a loose tooth. Ouch. Sometimes, you have to feel sorry for the average, everyday Joe bad guys when they're against mutant turtle ninjas. He coughs, sputters and spits out something that lets out a wet 'chink' when it lands on the cement. Oh ew, knocked out tooth right next to my foot. I back away, grip my nunchakus and hit him in the back of the head.
I think for him, "Augh the front of my face! Augh, the back of my head!" Heh nobody likes Grif.
Everyone in the building is down for the count 'cept me and my bros, though I should find Donny while Raph and Leo question some poor schmuck in the corner. I walk towards the part of the building where Donny disappeared to, behind the staircase.
Donny comes out from behind the staircase and he's shaking. I've never seen Donny so pale and there's blood on his hands and his plastron, thick and black. His eyes are wide and he zombie-walks towards Leo, like he didn't even see me, "Donny, Donny-boy? Don-man you there?" I ask but he's still making way to Leo.
I turn back to the place from behind the tall staircase. There's an obvious cut in the wall from what was probably a chainsaw. It forms a door. I hear dogs barking all crazed-like behind it. I blink. They have dog-fights here? The door's ajar so I push it just a little bit, just to see what Donny saw. I step in something near the handmade door in the plaster – wet and slick and cold.
It's a room made in the walls of this place and in this room, I think the devil must've owned.
There's two dogs, both ear-and-tail snipped Rotties that are snarling and snapping at each other. They're playing tug-o-war over a long bone. The bone's got meat hanging off it. It also has a tiny little shoe on it.
The nausea comes fast and the dogs take no notice of me when I back out and slip, slip on whatever was by the door.
I fall and feel it on my fingers. I hold them up to my face and see that it's blood. I turn to see a pile of stained red pink and brown. It's a part of what was left of Susie Brown. Her little shoulder, an arm, some of her chest and her chewed up, gnawed on head without a face. A shadow falls over my head but I don't do anything except stare at little Susie Brown and her pretty little dress without her matching little shoes.
"Mikey, the hell are you - fuck me." It's Raph and he snarls at the mutts and kills them, which I didn't do and neither could Donny. I think Donny was the one who piled up Susie Brown away from the dogs fast as he could but he must've missed her leg. Raph, I don't think, picks the leg up, covered in dog slobber and teeth marks just like the rest of Susie Brown.
Nausea is still there, but as I stare at her, the last nerves of little Susie Brown do the jitterbug and her head lolls to the side. Her bow falls out and lands on my finger.
"Mikey! Mikey, Jesus, Mikey get the fuck up!"
Blood rushes in my ears, drowning me and my heart goes; ba-bum, ba-bum, she-is-DEAD, she-is-DEAD, ba-bum, ba-bum, ash-es, to, ash-es.
…
The lair is quiet. Like drop a pin and you'll hear it like a gunshot kind of quiet. When we came home, Donny headed straight to Splinter to tell him what he saw of little Susie Q. How he managed to only salvage parts of her. How he dragged those parts away from the dogs. The rest of us went to our own rooms. No more roomies since we got older. Privacy n' all that.
I flopped on the bed and rolled onto my shell. I closed my eyes and a lump rises to my throat when all I see a leg bone with Susie's shoe attached being fought over by a couple of starving, mean mutts. The sound of teeth grating over bone almost like when Leo grates carrots for a salad.
I curl in the fetal position and I can't help it. I start to cry. None of that wet sobbing like in Splinter's soaps; it's dry and it feels like my throat is being scratched out. It burns. I sound like I'm dying and I think I am, 'cause cute little Susie Q is going to have a closed casket funeral.
I'm choking and drowning even if there inn't any water.
The bone with strips of meat hanging off it like jerky waiting to be dried out like, like, like she was food. Like she was dog food. Two anorexic dogs fighting over what was left of a little rich girl who had parents who loved her.
There I'd been, trying to be careful with the bastards, to make sure I didn't puncture a lung or hit too hard that they wouldn't wake up and they had a little girl locked away in a secret room with two starving, mean, mean dogs. She was five years old. How must she have felt, being in that room?
Leo couldn't tell if they left her in there alive or whether she'd been dead before, because she was too torn up. If she was alive, when she saw those dogs and heard the door close, did she scream for someone, anyone to help her? For her mommy and daddy? Did she cry? Did she even get the chance to before she was taken down?
Someone touches my arm. It isn't three fingered, it's got five. Grip it and spin, landing in a crouch over the body. I see dark brown hair and a tight white shirt. The tan arm I've got in my hand twitches. "Ow," she says. I let her up without any wisecracks on my part. I guess I cried myself to sleep. Very manly.
Her arm doesn't bruise despite the grip I had it in and she doesn't rub it likes it hurts. She leans closer, chin on my shoulder. I try to move away but her hands wind around my arm like tentacles. Or a Grip Of Doom. I look down at her, she looks up at me. I smell almonds. "If you want to talk…"
"I don't. Not really. Just, just leave it alone." I manage before my face goes in my hands. My chest tightens and tears fill up my eyes. I feel her shift on the bed, then added weight leans on my shell. Her arms come up in my peripheral sight and they go 'round my neck. She presses her cheek against mine. She's curled over me.
We sit like that, a moment, before she turns her lips to my cheek, nose bumping against me. She nuzzles. I don't feel it, not really. I just keep replaying it over and over. A little girl, cute as could be, and her leg was a good treat for a couple of dogs, mutts.
She whispers then, "No one knows about me but you. If you're got anything to say…" she says it so softly that I have to stop breathing for a minute just to listen. "If you've got anything to say, no one will know." Her voice is deep and dark and sounds like a femme fatale from a movie. I stare back at her blankly before it all bubbles up.
It just keeps a comin'. My hands grip my knees now. "They fed her to their damn dogs like she was a, a, a, steak or something. I saw what Donny saw – a couple of mutts fighting over a little girl's leg. Those sons of bitches didn't need to make her dog food – the money was already delivered! Bu they DID. They did 'cause they could. They coulda let her go home. That's all she ever wanted." It gets harder to talk – my voice is coming and going in between the tears. "They didn't though did they? And there was stupid me making sure I didn't accidentally kill one of 'em when they killed her and fed her to their dogs like she just didn't matter. Who knows if she was alive when those dogs got into her. We don't." The rage comes in, black and it fills me up.
"If-if she was alive when they did, do you know what she probably wanted more than anything? To just go home and see her mommy and daddy. She wanted them to save her, but they weren't there." 'Cept we were and she still died. We were just too fucking late. And now she's dead." She's still leaning against me with her arms around my neck. I wait for her to say something. She doesn't.
"You wanna know something? You wanna know what I think? They deserve to be eaten alive. Just ripped to shreds, screaming for their mommies and daddies and God. Just like her but it'll be worse, 'cause they know that when they're dead, no one will give a damn." Rage keeps on a coming and I can see it happening; those grown men being eaten by big, mean Rottweilers. My hands make fists and I grind my teeth.
"An eye for an eye." She whispers.
Yeah, damn straight, an eye for an eye. Images come in, dogs going after soft stomachs and throats, then ripping them to pieces and fighting over which dog gets what.
"An eye for an eye," I repeat. I turn it over in my head, over and over, just like Donny and Leo do all the time.
"Make them hurt like they hurt that little girl," she murmurs. I listen. "Who knows what they did before the dogs got to her." Her arms tighten and I can't breathe. "They deserve it, don't you think?" her arms loosen.
"Yeah they do," I say back, "that and more."
"I wonder how long they'll get, for kidnapping her." She says and my fists tighten. "They may not be able to stick them with murder since it was the dogs who ate her."
I shudder.
Her voice gets lower, "They may just get a few years unless they walk with just court ordered therapy and community service."
I'm still filled to the top with anger for little Susie Q. "She deserved more than that," she whispers, her arms tighten. "She didn't deserve being eaten up like that." Her lips move against my skin. "Too bad that they're still not going to get what they deserve."
I keep listening, feeling nails scrape over my plastron and lips mouthing words in my skin.
