King of Her Desire

1

Those of you who've been reading me for a while may notice that some of his backstory, etc., is from other "bad boys" I've written about here. But most of it is brand new and this time he's exactly as I always wanted him to be. OH, and EXPLICIT chapters are duly noted at the very top--just in case you're not quite ready for the deets...

He was like a little alien, the tiny blue crab that sidled up to me on the sand—sideways, right? You know how they scuttle like that.

And when I held out a piece of tortilla he snatched it in one of his little claws and skittered right off again.

I wished I'd brought the sibs with me. They would've gotten such a kick out of that little critter.

I could almost see them doing wonky little cartwheels on the beach. The littlest ones running away from a big wave.

They never got to do anything, those kids. It's always been that way for us. Couldn't afford to do anything. Go anywhere. Couldn't go outside, even, hardly. Too friggin' dangerous where we live.

And now they were living 'way out in "Dogpatch." That's what they called it back in the day. Because it reminded people of that real old Lil' Abner comic strip about a bunch of "hillbillies." How people imagined they lived.

They made them talk all dumb and country. Wear worn out jeans with rope belts. Beat up "brogan" boots with holes in the toes. Had chickens and goats and things indoors with them.

Yeah. Real funny.

It's not so comical in real life, of course. Living in a death trap doublewide full of bitter, meth heads. That's where they were now, the littlest ones. CPS had given them to Mima, my grandmother, finally, after our mother got busted.

It was the guy she was with that had the drugs. My mother wasn't capable of doing anything like that. She's about my 8-year-old sister's age, mentally and emotionally. But she was there when the cops came. And being like she was, she couldn't speak up for herself.

That same guy is why I wasn't there, either. He beat me so bad once that I had to be hospitalized. And I just never went back. The social workers "overlooked" that fact, too. For once, they did what was right instead of what was "supposed" to be done.

I crashed on many a couch, but it was better than never knowing when that asshole was going to get high and start "seeing" things. Demons. We all turned into demons when he was high enough. Demons he had to kill, to save humanity or some stupid assed thing like that.

I was the lead demon. And when he wasn't high, he just hated me undermining his "authority." Because my mother listened to me over everybody else in the whole world. I'd saved our lives lots of times, so she trusted me. And he hated that. Liked lording it over her because she was so helpless. Perfect victim for a guy like that.

Anyway—oh. My name is Shoshoni King. I'm about to be 19. And no, I'm not Native. They don't even spell it that way, the real Shoshone people. There should be an "e" on the end.

But like damned near every family in America, mine had this fantasy about having a little bit of Indian blood from 'way back in the day. Pisses off my real Indian friends no end. I mean, if it's not an Indian princess it's some warrior akin to Geronimo or Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse.

Yeah, we love Indians. Now that there aren't hardly any. But it's not all ancient history to them. They live among the ghosts of all the people that got massacred and the bits and pieces of the cultures that were schooled out of them over all that time.