Dark Rider -- Part 11
by Martin H Slusser

Johnny Karick’s tiny eyes popped, looking at the sensuous form from Cindy’s open toe sandals up the shapely calves to the silk covered thighs and onto the high, pointed breasts.

Out of the corner of his sweating eyeballs he saw the glimmer of white teeth and blushed.

Stammering an apology he tugged at the greasy neck of his tee shirt. She nodded, gracious as always.

“Mrs. VanTur, Grey ain’t, I mean isn’t, guarded . . . in school. Not any more,” he said in a breathless rush, his gaze straying to the heavy straining breasts. “I got ten of my dudes watching him alle time. You say the word-”

Handing the seventeen-year-old a fifty dollar bill, Cindy nodded, smiled, and contemplated the possibilities.

“Ten score and thirty years ago,” Benny read aloud, “Our forefathers were pushed to the extreme by cruel and vicious local governments. As a People, our ancestors were cast out of their ancestral homes by the very colonies they had seen son and daughter die to defend from aggression by the foreign powers of Europe.”

He threw a flawless grin at Todd. “This is great, cuz. What about yours?”

“That is mine.” Todd cocked an eye at Benny with a dry bark of laugher at the hurt expression on Benny’s face. Todd leaned back in his chair and snapped the paper from Benny’s fingers. Car grease stained it, leaving murky finger prints along the sides.

Tapping a few keys on his console, Todd watched a clean copy slid out from the Comp-Rooms’ laser printer. He balled the smudged copy and bounced it off of Benny’s head. Taking the clean one, he folded it neatly and lay it in his history book.

Glaring at Todd, Benny cried, “Yo, what about me?” He could see himself working for hours and hours over a stupid report. Thank the Tsi:ge:Yu:i Mrs. Ritter’s class was last tomorrow, so that meant he had an additional six hours to get it done. Or to talk cuz into doing it for him. He sighed and lay a hand on Todd’s shoulder.

“Come on, bro-Toddy. How about it? You do this crap like I breathe, man. Please? I’ll do for you some day.”

Todd closed his eyes and shuddered at the thought.

“My right hand to God, dude.” Benny solemnly raised his right hand, fingers crossed in the Uohali-Sun Mother’s power symbol. For dramatic effect, he crossed himself.

“Man, you know I would. I can’t. Mom would kill me if another teacher calls the house and gripes I’m doin’ your home work. You want my mom to tell yours? Aunt Anna would ground you till you’re thirty.”

Benny was more than willing to take the chance. Todd groaned and lay his head on the table.

“Take it.”

“Thanks-”

“Shut it and beat it. Please? Or I’m gonna have to pound you one.”

Benny scowled at Todd. Dude was def-finitely around the corner if he thought the day had come for him to even try. Shoot, he taught Toddy what Carl taught him, but the dude did not have the right instincts to kill.

A bloody, mutilated corpse sank into his mind. A knife, snapped off in the breast bone-

Closing his eyes, Benny’s fist snapped shut. Almost, he could feel the haft of an ornate blade, hot sticky blood flowing over the hand. A faint smile eased the tension on his face. Death before dishonor. Better to die than return to the collar and the shame of being mere animal again. A fancy stallion, owned and well trained.

Family comes ahead of all of the all.

He shuddered deeply and took a breath, filling the corners of his lungs.

Todd was royally POed . . . Benny’s eyes popped open. Toddy? Angry?

Come to think of it, he had never seen bro-Todd get POed with anybody. Not even the time his crazed adopted sisters - Benny winced - the Twins from Hell, had blown up his one and only computer.

He glared at Todd’s bowed back, debating if he should tell his cousin just where the dude could stick this report. Then he flexed his hand and thought about having to write a whole thousand words by himself.

The report was stuffed into his back pocket.

“Got to go. I told Mr. Callahan my back teeth were floating.” Benny stepped away, puzzled and a little worried. The du’e hadn’t moved . . . .

“Uh, thanks, bro. I mean it. I won’t ever ask again. Ok?”

Todd growled and Benny scurried from the class room.

A skinny face popped over the back of the school bus seat. The braids on the small girl were a carroty orange. She had a spattering of freckles over the bridge of her pug nose and high cheek bones. A slim, pointy chin stuck out from below her lower lip.

A mirror apparition popped up to kneel beside the first.

Sweet, pixie faces grave, they stared at Benny. As one they glanced at each other, then back to Benny.

“I still say,” the first hissed to her twin, “that he ain’t near as handsome as ol' Unca Carl.”

A shudder passed through Benny, some horror disturbing his dreams in the warm autumn sunshine flooding the homeward bound bus.

Benny hiccuped.

An eye rolled open. Benny snapped up in his seat.

“Chrisake,” he sputtered. “What’re you two doing on my bus?”

They blinked.

“What’s a matter, Unca Benny,” they ask in soft southern drawls, distinctly different from the every-day Pennsylvania Dutch twang. “Doncha love usuns no more?”

He scowled at them. They looked so innocent. Sweet and guileless. When Aunt Mara saw the twins, she jumped at the chance to take them until Conn, the administrator-slave of the Manse’s breeding farm, was released from prison and able to make them a home. Aunt Mara claimed they were angels come to earth.

Benny shuddered all over.

Their gentle, almond shaped green eyes could turn cold and bloodless at the very idea of making trouble. They were pests, and should have been burned at the stake at birth, then locked away in the deepest cave imaginable. Then chained and-

“Our reg'lar driver, he’s kind o’ . . . mad at us.”

“Wasn’t our fault that ol' bus engine caught a fire, Unca Benny.”

Trixie-or was it Dixie?-nodded vigorously.

“Again,” the first added.

“Gee, we didn’t mean to.”

“Honest.”

They held up right hands and looked for a place to spit.

On pure instinct, Benny snapped, “Dixie, uncross your eyes, and take off your shoes-” He slapped himself on the head and immediately regretted it. He groaned at the pain shooting through his battered skull. Why the freek did Todd have to stay and help Mrs. Arnier for?

“Just sit down, shut up, and stay out of trouble.” As if that were possible, ha. Benny glanced around, his face darkening. No one appeared to be looking.

They plopped down on the hard seat of the bus, stared at each other and sighed.

A few seconds later they popped back up.

“We seen it.”

“Sure did.”

They nodded, held up their hands and looked for a place to spit.

“Si' down. You want the driver to throw you off?”

They tossed their heads and smirked.

“He wouldn’t dare.”

“Remember what happened to the last one what did?”

Benny groaned. “You two try jumping on him and screeching ‘Pervert, pervert,’ again, and I’ll nail you both so hard your father will fall down.” Teeth bared in an inhuman leer, Benny made vicious paddling motions.

They blanched.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the one on his right declared in a heated voice. The other one nodded.

“We’ll tell Unca Carl on you!”

“He’ll massacree you!”

“You won’t never,”

“Ever,”

“Be able to walk,”

“Ever again!”

“Yeah!”

“Pow!” She stabbed a skinny fist in the air.

“Ker-pow!”

Benny growled deep in his throat and tried to ignore them.

“Really, Unca Benny!”

“We did see it.”

“Yeah.”

He gave them a bleak, pleading look.

“That ol' bit-”

“Carl, Sis!”

Trixie's eyes widened. She rubbed her bottom. “I didn’t s-say it, Sister! ‘Swear, I didn’t,” she squeaked in mortal agony, “So help me, sweet Jesus.” She closed her eyes and burst into repentant tears.

Dixie patted her twin in sympathy. “No, but it was a close one!”

The crocodile tears evaporated.

“Yeah, sure was.”

“Yep.”

“Thanks for catching it!”

“You’re most welcome, mi lydee,” she was answered in imperious tones.

“So what happened?” Benny snapped.

“We really, really, really did seen it!”

“Don’t you take that tone with me, Un'ca Benny, or-”

A kid in a foot ball jersey sneered a laugh.

“Those the little pigs that were at the Manse with you, Grey?” He turned and snickered something in his friend’s ear.

“How much do they charge?”

Benny half closed his eyes. He glanced at the driver and smothered a grin. Mr. Daniel was trying, unsuccessfully, to navigate a series of pot holes and last year’s crumbling winter springs.

Crooking a finger, he motioned the kid to come to the back.

Red of face and wary, the kid nonetheless puffed up his chest and swaggered to the back of the bus.

With a docile smirk, Benny shyly ducked his head and nodded at him.

“Yeah.” He sighed, his face bleak and red with shame. “These are the girls. They, ah, made movies there. Carl calls them the Twins from Hell.”

With a close but lecherous scowl, the kid stared at the twins.

“Why?”

Benny smiled, tamely. “Sure you want to know?”

The kid gave a slow nod.

Benny turned to the girls.

“Sic 'em.”

©2002 StoriesByEmail.com

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