Page 14 of Night Blind

“Don’t worry. I asked him straight up if he had any intentions of fucking me,” Helen said to Abi, who snapped her head around. “He said no. He is happy with you and doesn’t plan to ruin his family, besides, he told me he didn’t think I was that cute.”

“Helen, if he makes a move…”

“He’s not going to, Abi. He loves you and his daughter. He loves coming home to his family,” Helen said. She paused. “Do you think he knows?”

“Of course, he knows, you twit! He was testing me to see if I would draw down on him over you, and he knows I will in a heartbeat,” Cherry replied.

“Then he must also know you killed a man to protect me,” Helen said.

“Probably,” she answered. “I’m tired. Sleep in the guest room tonight. I have a bad feeling, and I think he does as well, which is why he’s changing tactics on you.”

“Abi?”

“Yes, Helen?”

“This is your time and your life. I won’t mess this up for you,” she said, wishing her cousin goodnight.

“Abi, don’t mess this up for yourself either,” Helen said softly, looking at the backdoor. She didn’t need to stay in their home; she had her own.

Helen set the alarm on the cabin, easing out of the back door and walking in the darkness to where she now called her sanctuary. He was right; the time for cowering was over. She’d fought back against The Collector and gotten free. Now, she had to work on getting free of the other Bogeymen and demons who haunted her sleep at night, like Smiley Robertson.

****

2002,

Smiley Robertson was a good-looking man, with a wide smile, dancing eyes, and lascivious nature. Shenita’s mother Anita loved the man and saw no wrong in him, at least until she noticed the way he looked at her daughter. Already having lost Shenita’s father to her sister Stephanie, she wasn’t about to lose another man to her daughter. Stephanie had run off with her husband, leaving her daughter Abigail for Anita to take care of and making her go from a single mother of one to a single mother of two very pretty young ladies far more attractive than Anita, and she resented both girls for it. She resented the way Smiley looked at Shenita. For Cherry, the idea was ludicrous considering Smiley was a forty-something-year-old man and Shenita a fourteen-year-old child who still played with Barbie dolls.

No one was dumb. Smiley was never left alone with either of the girls, and Cherry made sure to stay close to Shenita, even sharing a bed with her on the nights Smiley stayed over. It wasn’t enough.

The man lied. He told Anita he’d be out of town for the weekend, and everyone relaxed. As much as Cherry tried to warn her Aunt about allowing a snake in the chicken coop, she never tried to protect her chicks.

He must have been watching the house.

Smiley saw when Anita left to go and play cards with her friends on Friday night.

Smiley must have been watching the house and waited for Cherry to leave to go the market for a Pepsi and a pack of peanuts. It was something she snuck off to do, and tonight, she didn’t take Shenita with her because she must have planned to hang out a bit after with her friends.

Smiley must have been watching the house.

The moment both Anita and Cherry departed the home, Smiley Robertson let himself inside. In the twenty minutes, Cherry was away, he did enough damage to ruin Shenita’s life; therefore, Cherry had no qualms about taking his. The two switch blades she carried at all times were in her pocket when she came through the back door and heard the scream. She heard the open-handed slap. She heard her cousin’s cries, the pleas, the wails from the pain.

He must have been watching the house when she left. He must have been watching the house and waiting for his opportunity. He wouldn’t hurt anyone else ever again. Cherry used the blades to cut him wide, to cut him deep, and to watch him bleed as she yanked his nude body from her aunt’s bed. She wrapped his throat in Aunt Anita’s favorite satin sheets she put on the full-sized mattress when Smiley came over on Thursday nights to make her aunt moan like a whore. She placed thesheets on the bed where Smiley was hurting Shenita. He would hurt her in this bed, dare her to tell, then come back, smelling her scent in the covers while he relived the fantasy in his sick head. He even had the nerve to pull out the special sheets for his time with Shenita. These were the same sheets Cherry wrapped around his waist to cover his nakedness.

When the police arrived, Cherry simply told them, “He must have been watching the house.”

Aunt Anita never openly said she hated Cherry, but she did. Aunt Anita never openly said she resented her daughter, but she did. Aunt Anita never denied them the little they received, but Shenita’s medical bills from the damage Smiley did to her bankrupted Aunt Anita.

The crappy house with the two hundred dollar-a-month mortgage was no more, and Aunt Anita resorted to placing the next apartment in Shenita’s name, along with credit cards and utility bills. At the age of 18, Shenita’s credit had been ruined.

Cherry, at the age of 18, joined the military. Already on the radar of The Company for taking care of Smiley, a small-time pimp who was trying to become a major player, they considered Cherry an asset, and she had received specialized training to work for her government. The special training came with a housing allowance that afforded her the ability to bring her cousin to live with her.

She saved every dime she could. They lived poorly, drawing no attention to themselves. The plan was to do ten years and retire to the mountains to live a simple life off the grid. All was going to plan until the call came in for a job in Mexico. A few Homeland Security agents were taken by the Cartel, and Cherry and a few others were sent in to bring the agents home. She came home from Mexico, changed inside from what she’d seen. She was changed by three days and nights with a man whomshe’d known casually but spent the weekend getting to know him intimately. Michael Isaac Neary changed her life.

Now, Cherry, a married woman with a child, needed to change once more. He was right. She couldn’t spend her entire life looking after her cousin. Helen needed to charge up, level up, and become a badass. She could shoot and work a knife; Cherry taught her those things. She would leave it up to her husband to show Helen how to hone the skillsets to become a weapon.

She entered the bedroom quietly, pulling back the covers to slide in next to him. The warmth she sought he provided by pulling her close. There were words she wanted to share with him, but he silenced Cherry with a brief, but hot kiss.

“When I said my arms were wide and my shoulders strong enough to carry the weight, it is what I meant,” he said to her.

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