Page 9 of Whiskey Shivers

“What about him?” he demanded.

“You wanna get a lick in on your way out go ahead. I ain’t see shit,” I said.

“Fuck, man,” he muttered and to his credit, he kicked the unconscious fucker in the kidney area on his way out.

It felt like fucking forever before help arrived and when it did, it was old Curtis.

“Aw, hell!” he cried and went to check on the kid I beat the fuckin’ brakes off of. I let him. If the kid died, it’d be my fuckin’ ass. I didn’t think I’d gone that far, but shit – I’d lost control. I knew that.

A moment later, the principle showed her ass up, on a phone, barking into it.

“Oh, God!” she cried, a hand over her mouth at the scene in front of her.

Shit went fast after that. Like all the time had stretched and then snapped, events rocketing forward at the speed of sound to the point I couldn’t be sure what was what.

I seemed to come back to myself at the double doors in the front of the school, on the first floor, a hand on my shoulder holding me back as they loaded Cor into the back of the wee-woo wagon.

“She’s in good hands. You got to her. They’ll take care of her.”

I swallowed hard and turned to look at the pig with his hand on me. I shook it off and said, “You want anything or can I go?”

“I need to take your statement, find out what happened here, then you can go,” he said.

I nodded, and swallowed hard, reining in my adrenaline, my rage, and hiding the shaking in my hands.

You’re a good citizen,I told myself.Act like it, you fucking fool.

“Sorry,” I said, after getting it together. “She’s my friend…”

The cop nodded solemnly, pity in his eyes.

“I understand. Not many people encounter this level of awful in their lives.”

I swallowed hard and asked, “What about him?” All the while I chanted rhythmically in my head,don’t be sus, don’t be sus, don’t be sus… do what the normies would do, do what the normies would do, do what the normies would do…

The cop, to his credit, was a good man. He looked over at where the kid was handcuffed to a gurney and being wheeled out – headed for the back of an ambo of his own.

“What about him?” he asked dryly, voice deadpan in that ‘I don’t give a fuck’ tone.

I gave him a look, a grim set to my mouth and gave him a nod of respect that he deserved.

“Ask your questions,” I said and swallowed hard.

“Let’s go back inside.” He put a hand on me and I stiffened, but I let him lead me back inside.

No telling if I would need the club’s attorney or not, but you better believe, I was gonna contact him.

CHAPTERFIVE

Corliss…

Everything was fuzzy. Everything was a blur, a rush, a barely there blush of light and sound. Movement and frenzy, pain, and a haze of wild energy that I couldn’t quite grasp what was here nor there… and then nothing again.

I was in and out, aware I was in a hospital. Breathing was hard and I didn’t want to wake. Still, people and voices persisted, touching me when I didn’t want to be touched, yelling questions over and over until I tried to bat them away like the annoying pests that they were.

Then there was a gentle touch to my hair, a rough hand smoothing it away from my face, soft lips to my forehead, then next to my ear. A pleasing voice, at once familiar and unfamiliar, and then there was nothing more again.

I was lost to the underworld of warmth and dark, drifting along the River Styx made of pain killers and drugs, and I worried vaguely about that.

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