Page 114 of Strange Lad

He’s not getting Jorge.

It might be too late for the kid, but I’ll die before he gets my kitten.

“Well, this is fucking peachy,” Phoenix drawls, sitting beside me and Jorge in a holding cell.

Yeah.

We got arrested.

Morgan did, too, since he fought back once Phoenix showed up. It was apparently the first and only bar fight that security had seen, and we were all in big fucking trouble. The metal bars are the only things separating us from Morgan; the cops thankfully had the foresight to keep us apart. I’m sure we’d still be trying to kill him if he was in here with us.

Morgan nurses his broken face. He looks like hammered shit. Good. Fucking rapist piece of shit.

I scoot closer to Jorge, who has a black eye forming. Phoenix is missing one of his plugs, and the thin skin of his earlobe is split and bloody. I’m sore everywhere. I probably don’t look any better. When we got arrested, the cops took my phone and the little microphone in my shirt. I don’t know what was said, and I don’t even know what it recorded.

“I’m pressing charges,” Morgan says, glaring at us with an ice pack on his face.

“So are we,” Jorge growls.

Morgan scoffs. “Like you could ever afford a lawyer. Does your gardener dad also sell drugs?”

I hold Jorge back as he surges to his feet, forcing him back onto the bench beside me. “The fuck you say about my dad?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t think you spoke English.”

“Are you fucking high?” Phoenix snaps. “Rapist, yes. But racist, too? You’ve really flushed your life down the drain, Morgan.”

“Shut up bitch boy.”

“Fuck you, you pedophile ass fucking monster!” Phoenix roars.

Yeah, he saw the kid too.

“SHUT UP!” A cop yells at us, and we all pipe down.

The hours tick by as we sit there, stewing. Jorge eventually starts crying because he’s so angry, so I tuck him to my side. Morgan makes nasty comments under his breath, but we all ignore him. The kid got taken away in an ambulance, and god, I hope they test his blood. I hope he presses charges for getting drugged and almost date raped. Eventually, light filters in through the window as dawn approaches. We all perk up when the door separating us from the rest of the station whips open.

I blink through the blur, coating my vision, and blink some more because I don’t understand who I’m looking at.

“You…assholes,” some tiny ginger man groans.

He’s wearing silk purple pajama pants with white lace at the hem, fluffy black slippers, and an oversized black hoodie with a lace coffin stitched over the front. With his hands on his hips and auburn hair sticking up this way and that way, he glares at us with ember eyes. Even his freckles look red.

A cop comes in behind him. “That them?”

The short man nods in exasperation. “Lex…um…nice pjs?” Phoenix says.

“That’s our manager,” Jorge slurs sleepily. “He’s…really angry.”

“You made bail. Up and at ‘em. See the officer at the front desk.”

We all stand, and as a collective whole, we send death glares to Morgan, who stares with parted lips. I feel immense satisfaction that Daddy hasn’t come for him yet. Standing taller, we all hobble out, groaning as the night’s beatings shoot through our bodies.

Lex, Dreadful’s band manager, apparently contacted an attorney on our behalf and is lecturing us all the way out of the police station. The light is blinding as we step outside, and suddenly, the tiny tyrant stops scolding us and gasps.

“Oh. My. God.EW! Your ear!” He points a dainty finger at Phoenix and gags.

“It’s not that bad, just a tear,” Jorge offers, but Lex isn’t having it. He bristles and marches away from us.

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