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BLOOD AND WHISKEY
Seth drives away from the Titty Twister at 80
miles an hour. Top down, wind in his hair, a couple of tax-free million in the
seat beside him, and he can almost forget what he had to go through to keep
that extra five percent. What he had to lose. Can almost forget that some of
this blood on him is Ritchie’s.
On his hands, for instance, from cupping the sides of Ritchie’s neck, trying to
keep the blood from pouring out onto the dirty, beer-drenched floor. Some of
the spots, dry and nearly fading away into the black fabric by now, are even
from yesterday afternoon, when he’d gently rewrapped his brother’s hand and
then wiped his own on his jacket and pants.
And its that memory, that tenderness, oddly enough, that makes him close his
eyes and press his foot down on the gas pedal. Because why not? Why not go up
in flames like the rest of the corpses back there, why not go through the
windshield and crack open his fuckin’ skull, spill all those memories and the
blood he shared with Ritchie onto the hot cracked pavement? All he has left now
are those memories and that blood.
That, and the money.
If he were a better person, that might not be enough to keep him alive, but
he’s not, and it is. He opens his eyes, eases up on the gas, and ignores the
look that Carlos shoots him from the other car. Its not that he really cares if
he dies now, he just doesn’t feel like bringing it on himself. He’d expected to
die—god, was it only minutes? Felt like days—ago, when they’d come through that
door. Final fucking showdown. Kind of funny who came out on top, too. Not the
guy who lived through ‘Nam, not the badass gangsters, not even the guy who had
God on his side. Just Seth.
Well, and Kate, but Seth doesn’t exactly know what to make of her. She seems
strong, and Seth thinks she’ll survive, even in the middle of fucking nowhere
with the dust of her father and brother blowing in her hair. He doesn’t know
how she’ll explain what happened to them when she gets back home, though.
Doesn’t even know if she has a home to go back to. He certainly doesn’t know
how she’s going to explain the couple of thousand bucks Seth handed over to
her, as though that made up for her entire family being murdered. Hopefully she
knows not to spend it in the States, but that’s out of Seth’s hands now.
Seth can maybe explain away the rest of it, but the one thing he can’t explain
away is why she wanted to come with him. Why she wanted to come to a criminal’s
paradise with Seth, a murderer, the guy who kidnapped her and got her father
and brother killed. Lack of options, maybe. Or maybe she just wanted to get
Seth alone and put a bullet through his head, because if anyone put Seth in the
same situation and gotten Ritchie killed, even a couple of thousand wouldn’t
stop him from killing the bastard.
Of course, that’s a lie, because Carlos is still alive, but he needs to think
that way. Needs to think that he didn’t let someone responsible for Ritchie’s
death walk away, just for a little extra cash.
But anyway. Kate, Kate, Kate. She’d wanted to come along with him. Be his
partner, she’d said. It was a tempting offer. She could shoot, she was fast,
and after what happened in the bar, she’d never be afraid of anything again in
her life. Seth had considered it—in the time it took to blink, yeah, but that was
time enough—and maybe it would’ve worked out. A partner, someone to fuck,
someone to come home to at night. Someone to take Ritchie’s place, basically.
But like Seth had told her—he’s a bastard, but he’s not a fucking bastard. He
couldn’t do to Kate what he did to Ritchie. Couldn’t make her into a
cold-blooded killer. Couldn’t fuck her up. Couldn’t fuck her.
Because that’s what it comes down to, really. The guilt he feels, has always
felt, for turning Ritchie into what he was. Thief, murderer, rapist, and
all-around crazy fuck. When they were younger, Mom always told him, “Take care
of your brother, Seth. You’re all he has.” Yeah, he’d taken care of Ritchie,
all right. In every way possible.
Seth’s been through the system. He knows the party line. “Its not my fault. I
was abused as a child.” And when he heard that, Seth always shook his head and
smirked, because it was bullshit. Seth may be a thief and a killer, but at
least he knows what made him that way. A quick mind, without the education to
put it to use. An innate ability to sniff out criminals and get in good with
them. Yeah, maybe being raised without a father in a poor neighborhood full of
thieves and criminals had something to do with it, but mostly? Seth just wanted
to. He wanted to become a thief, and then when he had to become a murderer to
stay a thief, he did. People are what they are. Sometimes things happen that
bring true character to the front, but people never really change.
Still, when Ritchie was first sent up on a rape charge, Seth had been the first
to look inside himself and say, “Ritchie’s a rapist because I made him that
way. Because I raped him.” Was the only one to say that, really, because no one
else knew. It was Seth and Ritchie’s little secret.
Not that he’d ever thought of it as rape at the time, of course, and not that
Ritchie’d ever referred to it that way, either. They’d been kids the first
time—Seth 15, Ritchie 13—just fooling around, jerking each other off beneath
the covers of their one bed. Ritchie was the one who initiated it, really.
Ritchie was always the one to initiate it, from that first tentative hand on
Seth’s cock, to that last fast fuck in the back of their car, with the hostage
still in the trunk. And look what happened to the hostage—dead, too, just like
everybody else. Seth fucks Ritchie, Ritchie rapes hostage—boom, dead hostage.
Say it isn’t Seth’s fault. Maybe Ritchie would’ve been a rapist whether he’d
had his brother’s mouth on his cock or not. Maybe Seth’s really the victim in
all this, because he’s the one who could never say no to Ritchie. But Seth is
the older brother, so he gets the guilt, even though they’re grown fucking men
now, and Ritchie could’ve said no at any time. He gets the guilt because he
didn’t say no, either. Because he could have stopped it. Because he was
supposed to take care of Ritchie, and look how the bastard ended up—a rapist, a
murderer, a vampire. A pile of ashes on the floor of a Mexican titty bar.
Maybe he could have saved everyone a lot of pain if he’d just killed Ritchie
the moment he realized he was truly, no-turning-back crazy, because that moment
had been a murder spree and several rape victims ago. But he couldn’t. Couldn’t
give his brother that final peace, and couldn’t give up his own selfish wants,
either. Because he always wanted Ritchie. Wanted him to coddle, to make Seth
laugh, and yes, to fuck, because it was always so good between them. Ritchie
always fucked with a loud, blatant desperation, like Seth could make everything
better with tongue and cock and fingers. Like Seth could give him peace, just
with that.
Its ironic how it ended, with Ritchie once again impaled by Seth, this time
straight through the heart. He wants to think that maybe, maybe that sexless
penetration will make up for everything else. That, even though Seth couldn’t
kill Ritchie for so fucking long, when he finally did it, it was selfless. He’d
like to think that he saw peace in Ritchie’s eyes as he died. Right before they
popped out of his skull.
He’d like to think that, is the point, but he doesn’t, really. Right now, with
the wind in his hair and the sun on his face, he can think that way, but he
knows that in the nights to come, with the space next to him empty and his
blood running through his veins with no parallel heartbeat to echo it, he’ll
regret it. He’ll review his options, think that maybe having a vampire for a
brother might not’ve been so bad. Let Ritchie kill them all, and walk out of
there. Find a hotel room, see how a vampire fucks. They’re both murderers
anyway, so what would it matter if Ritchie drank the blood or just let it spill
out onto the floor? What’s the fucking difference? No difference. None at
fucking all. They all ended up dead, anyway. All of them but Kate, and is her
life really worth Ritchie’s? Seth doesn’t know.
That’s option number one, regretting that he staked Ritchie. Option two is
wondering whether it even happened at all. Vampires aren’t real, everyone knows
that. So how could Ritchie be a vampire? Maybe Seth just got fucking drunk, or
maybe someone slipped him a tab of something and he murdered his brother in
cold blood, fed up once and for all with his idiocy, with the constant guilt he
lived with for turning his brother into this…monster.
If it was all a hallucination, Freud would have a fucking field day with that
one.
But that’s for later. All the doubts, all the regrets, they don’t matter right
now. Right now, Seth has his brother’s blood on his hands and the taste of
whiskey in his mouth, along with the memory of the taste of Ritchie’s mouth.
Right now, Seth knows that vampires are real, and that compared to that
supernatural evil, the evil that Seth and Ritchie did together, that Seth did
to Ritchie, is barely comparable. After all these years, Ritchie is finally,
maybe, at peace.
So Seth saves his regrets for later. Right now, he just keeps his eyes on the
road, takes a sip of warm Mexican beer, and knows that no matter what, he’ll
always keep the taste of Ritchie’s mouth on his tongue.
END
