Judas: Indignant Few MC Book 1, page 3
7
Judas
“You have a visitor,” the officer said, standing in the doorway of my dorm. I’d been on good behavior, the best behavior, the whole time I was here. I was never a bad kid, but someone charged with ‘attempted homicide’, no matter the fact they were only twelve, no matter the fact that the asshole was out of the hospital by the end of the weekend, had to be treated with a certain amount of cautiousness. I got it. I always did what I was told. Always played their little games. Kept my nose buried in books and stayed away from the thugs and wannabe gangsters. I didn’t know what the next year was going to bring, only that I was sixteen and fixing to get out of this place any time now. What came next was completely out of my control, just like what time I was allowed to go to the bathroom or what I was going to get to eat.
“Who is it?” I asked. Nobody really came to visit me here. Only visitors I was allowed were family, and it was pretty clear they were done with me after the incident. Even my own brother only visited once in all four years, and he barely said three words in the whole twenty minutes, staring at me like I was some kind of monster.
Twelve-year-old me thought he was the monster. He was the one that testified against me in court, told the judge and jury how I was yelling “I oughta kill you” when I attacked Burt. I could’ve been off on a misdemeanor charge if it weren’t for him. He was the fucking Judas in this situation.
Sixteen-year-old me, I’ve had plenty of time to sit with this shit. Plenty of time to realize he was just protecting what he knew. He had a roof over his head, the love of his family, everything a boy could ask for. I was the one who was going to ruin it all for him. I was the problem. So, he got rid of me. I made peace with it long ago.
I was surprised to see him in the visitor’s room, waiting there for me nervously. He looked worse than I did. Skinny as hell. Still weak. His clothes were dirty and his hair was long. I reached out to hug him and he flinched.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Haven’t heard from you in a long time.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “You know they don’t like it when I… well… you know.”
I knew exactly what he meant. Obviously Aunt Millie and Uncle Pete weren’t my biggest fans. “It’s alright, Isaac.”
“I feel guilty,” he said softly. “I did this to you.”
“That’s just something you’re going to have to live with,” I said nonchalantly, immediately regretting my choice of words. It sounded bitter. It sounded like I was holding a grudge. I wasn’t. “It’s fine. I swear. Juvenile detention hasn’t been so bad to me, to be honest. Wish there were some better-looking bitches around here, but I’ll survive. Besides, I’m getting out soon.”
“That’s why I’m here,” he said, pulling out a couple of folded-up sheets of paper from the pocket of his jeans. “Aunt Millie wanted me to give these to you.” I unfolded it and shrugged, looking over the petition for emancipation. “She said she’d pay for whatever court-wise.”
I had long assumed I wasn’t going to be greeted with open arms when I got out. The paperwork solidified that, forcing me to face the fact that soon, I was going to have to start a whole new life, on my own.
“She doesn’t want ya to have to go into the system,” he said. I laughed. It was funny. I was already in the system, and she didn’t seem to worry much about it for the last few years. Maybe she’s just trying to make herself feel right about the choices she’d already made for me. I’d give her that. It was the least I could do for jacking up her son. Maybe it was the opposite. Maybe she wanted to send a sign that, no matter what happened, I wasn’t to be coming around the family anymore. I was on my own in this world.
“Thanks,” I said. We had this weird little stare off for a while, and even though the years had changed us both physically, even though I was big and jacked out of lack of anything better to do in here, and he was weak and tiny, our eyes said the same thing. He looked lost. I was lost. I often wondered what life would’ve been like for the two of us if Momma and Daddy never died in that shooting. Would we still be here, like this?
The guard entered the room, twirling his finger, urging us to wrap it up. I nodded to Isaac and made my way to the door.
“Where are you gonna go?” he called after me. I just shrugged and let the officer put my cuffs back on. “Is there something I can do?”
“Be good,” I said. “Don’t get yourself mixed up in this shit.”
He hung his head, and I pretended like I didn’t notice him crying as I walked out of the room. I don’t know why the fuck he would cry over me. He got everything he wanted. In a way, I did, too. I never wanted to live on that farm, never wanted to pretend Millie and Pete were my parents, I’d rather go through this life alone than have to live a lie. The paperwork tucked into the pocket of my jumpsuit would guarantee me that. My golden ticket to complete aloneness.
8
Judas
The guards were sad to see me go.
So were my cellmates.
If I was good at anything so far in this life, it was being in jail. Looking back on my time served, I was kind of impressed at everything I’d accomplished. I got my GED. I lost my virginity to some sweet little blonde bitch on my fifteenth birthday while the guards pretended like they heard nothing, best three minutes of my life so far. I worked out hard, doing push-ups, pull-ups, and squatting and bench-pressing anything that wasn’t bolted to the floor, my muscles bigger than I’d ever imagined them being. I learned to cook. Learned to barter. Learned to get by with nothing but my personality and smarts.
I had a feeling the real world wasn’t going to be so easy. My free ride was over. I was sixteen, a convicted felon, and emancipated. I had nowhere to be and nothing to do but figure shit out.
I never expected Quentin’d be waiting outside juvenile detention for me the day I got freed. He was sitting there in this neon green hooptie, a cloud of pot smoke rolling out the slightly cracked window, Slipknot blasting so loud the side mirrors looked like they were about to rattle off the frame.
The passenger door flung open and Athena, his little sister, hopped out, rolled her eyes at me, and got in the back seat. I stood there with my hands in my pockets and a grocery bag of my belongings, consisting only of one felt red vest and a white turtleneck, slung over my arm.
“You gonna get in?” he asked, his smile looking like something a comic book villain wore. Of course I was going to get in. I had no other option, right? This was the only choice in front of me right this second, the only future for me. I had no idea what kinda hell he was going to be dragging me to, but as of today, Quentin Fisher was my only friend in the world. I’d go wherever he took me.
I hopped in the car, pulled the door shut, rested my head back on the seat, and sighed.
“I missed ya, buddy,” he said. “The fuck did they feed you in there? You look like a tank.”
“He looks like a man’s supposed to look,” Athena said, cracking her bright pink bubblegum up against her cherry red lips. She’d definitely grown up in the last four years. She looked like a woman was supposed to look. I didn’t have much going for me, though, and trying to get in my best friend’s sister’s pants probably wasn’t going to help my situation. “Now drive, asshole. I told Dylan I’d be at his house an hour ago.”
He gunned the motor of the weird old car. It’s nothing I’d ever expect to see him in, between the orange shag carpet and the fuzzy dice hanging on the rearview, but I guess times had changed. “Where’d you get this thing?” I asked.
“Old Q-Tip won it in a bet. He wouldn’t be caught dead in it, but the bitches seem to like it alright,” he said, shrugging.
“The bitches do not like it alright,” Athena said. “At least, the kind of bitches who don’t walk around with chlamydia. I feel like I need to hose myself down with bleach whenever I get out of this piece of shit.”
“You need to hose yourself down with bleach before you get into this, sis. I don’t want the kind of crabs you carry around getting in a fight with the native species.”
“You’re fucking gross,” she said with a snort.
“Well I’m fucking hungry now,” Quentin chuckled. “What do you want for your first meal as a free man?”
“Not seafood.” I made a fake vomit sound and we all cracked up. “And not because I’m a vegetarian.”
“Still on that, eh?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. I was on it for life. How could I not be? I’d sacrificed my childhood for my beliefs, as twisted as it was. If I quit now, I’d have damn near killed my cousin for no reason. That wasn’t me. I was always a man of principles. “What the fuck do you eat then? You want me to take you out to a field so you can chew on some grass?”
“How about you take me somewhere I can get some fries and a milkshake? Somewhere that has real ketchup, not the generic shit.”
“Generic ketchup,” he said, shaking his head. “You poor thing.”
He stopped in front of a tattered old trailer and Athena hopped out of the car. I couldn’t help but admire her long tanned legs and her round ass, just barely covered by her worn-out cutoff jean shorts, as she walked away and disappeared inside.
“I want details, brother,” he said, turning down the volume on the radio. “Did you drop the soap?”
I laughed. “A boy never kisses and tells.”
His face turned white as a ghost and he clenched the steering wheel.
“I’m fucking with you, brother,” I said. “Nobody wants to fuck with a guy who almost murdered his kid cousin. Except all the crazy broads from the girl’s center.” I shot him a wink and he relaxed. “What the fuck have you been up to?”
“Working. I got kicked outta school and now my old man says I gotta earn my keep. Gonna take over the family business someday. Gonna be the boss of the club someday, too. I got it all planned out. Now that I got my business partner back, shit can start happening.”
At the moment, I had no aspirations for my life, and it sounded like a good enough plan for me. He had a job lined up for me and everything. Maybe someday I’d figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up, but for now, easy sounded good. Business partner. Brother. Only person who showed up the day I got outta jail. He promised me he’d always have my back, and now, he was making good on that promise.
I didn’t realize I’d spend the rest of my days making good on my part of the deal.
9
Judas: Age 20
We were celebrating Rudy, our enforcer’s, sixtieth birthday in the best way we knew how. Colt’s old man, Q-Tip, president of the Indignant Few MC, rented out the good tit joint, the one that was a little bit out of the way, tucked up in the woods, an ‘anything goes’ kinda place where all the bitches had all their teeth. The owner had no problem accommodating groups of guys like us who had the kinda cash to keep their lights on and put their dancers in brand-new cars. Bitches here were always happy to see us. They were extra happy today because it was only the twenty or so of us.
Colt, Q-Tip, and myself were in the VIP room, walled off from the rest of the place. I didn’t give much thought to my best friend and his dad’s boners right next to me in the darkened room. Shit like this was normal. It was who we were. Ain’t no shame in the pussy game so long as it weren’t attached to anybody else’s property.
“I gotta get back to the house, boys,” Old Man Q-Tip said. The topless brunette writhed in his lap, her desperation for his undivided attention almost endearing. Quentin’s father, his attention was always divided all over the place. One eye on the club, one eye on the road, his heart with Quentin’s mom, his dick in a club slut’s mouth, both his hands firmly steering the family business. I definitely admired the old fucker, the closest thing to a dad I’d had since I was a kid. I definitely wanted no part of following in his footsteps. That was Quentin’s job anyway.
Quentin was called Colt now. Myself, they called me Judas still. The old times thought it was funny somebody could be so cruel as to name their kid after one of the most hated men in history.
We were the newest patched members of the Indignant Few MC. It seemed like a logical progression for me. Colt had taken me in as a brother before I even knew what it meant. Now, I had a real family. A family I was willing to do anything for.
“Your momma’s having problems with Athena,” he said to Colt, reading the texts as they popped up on his phone. “Honey, get down,” he said to the stripper, who hopped off his lap with a whiny grunt and stood there with her arms crossed, pouting. “You’re a sweet girl, Bella.” He kissed her hand and she smiled at him. Q-Tip was the kind of man who really knew how to smooth things over with the bitches. Every woman I knew loved him—the girls at the strip club, the lady that did the taxes for the business, random women we came across walking down the street, they’d drop whatever they were doing and make excuses to talk to him. Every damn time.
It’s not that he was that good-looking. Years of hard manual labor, years of drugs, sex, and violence, years of sleeping with one eye open, it all showed in the creases on his face, the gray of his beard, the wrinkles and sun spots on his forehead, but for some reason, he had this thing, this unstoppable charisma that made him the best possible president for our club, this aura that made people just want to do whatever it took to be a part of his world.
He put us young bucks to shame, landing the kind of pussy we only dreamed of, and at the end of the day, he went home to Reena, the queen of the club, toughest woman I ever met and drop-dead gorgeous, not just ‘for her age.’ If it weren’t for the fact that Q-Tip and Colt would both toss my ass in a woodchipper, I wouldn’t think twice about doing things with that woman.
Instead, I got this blonde twit who was bouncing on my lap so hard, I was lucky she didn’t get me hard because she probably would’ve snapped my dick in half about two songs ago. She had those big old fake titties that kind of had a mind of their own, always moving about three seconds behind the rest of her body as she gyrated, defying the laws of physics. Yeah, I was timing it in my head. Staring not so much in admiration, but fascination. I definitely wasn’t feeling like this was the kind of bitch I wanted to take back to the clubhouse with me.
“You need a hand?” I asked Q-Tip.
“Do I need a hand with my seventeen-year-old daughter?” He laughed and stroked his beard, shaking his head at me. “I’ve seen where your hands have been, son. If you want to keep ’em, you better keep ’em far far away from my Athena.”
Colt chuckled. “Old man, if only you knew,” he said. Q-Tip shot him a daring look and he turned his attention back to the two women in black g-strings.
“You think she’s okay?” I asked, once his father left the room. Athena was a smart girl, but she had a mind of her own, to a fault. More stubborn than Colt, she was going to do what she wanted to do, when and how she wanted to do it, even if it wasn’t in her best interest. She was quick to throw the fact that Q-Tip and Reena weren’t necessarily the most hands-on parents in their face. “You let me raise myself as a child,” she’d say, point-blank, emotionless, “don’t pull that mommy and daddy shit on me now.” And, “Blade got emancipated when he was sixteen. Are you trying to say he’s more mature than I am? Or is it because he’s a boy?”
Always pushing the power dynamics of the club. I knew she didn’t like the way her old man ran around on her mom; she’d confided that much in me. I knew she hated the whole ‘club slut’ thing, because a constant point of contention was the fact that it was okay for us to screw around with whoever we wanted, it was just what men did, but everyone was quick to judge her actions.
Even under the guise of ‘she’s just a teenage girl,’ anyone could read between the lines.
She was just doing what her old man and her brother did, and was constantly getting punished for it. It was an unfair world for Athena, and every day I felt her slipping further and further away, looking for any reason to escape the life she’d been born into. I didn’t want her to go, but I’d never beg her to stay. I tried to find a happy medium, tried to help her apply for colleges nearby, and helped her with her homework whenever I could. Probably it was selfish. Probably I just wanted to keep her around because I liked her. I liked being around her, at least. She had the looks of her momma and the charisma of her dad, and Colt’s sense of humor. She wasn’t like these fake-titted bitches who wanted us bikers for what we were.
She was the kind of person who was satisfied with who I was. Not the patch I wore, or the bike I rode. Me, as a person, not as a collective. Selfish me, and there was nothing I was ever going to do about it.
“She’ll be fine,” Colt said, peeking his head out from behind the dirty duo sandwiching his body. “Now shut up. I’m not trying to think about my sister right now. Family shit don’t belong in the strip club.”
It was a man’s world we were living in. You could grope tits next to your dad, and nobody’d think anything of it. Athena wasn’t a person, she was a woman. No matter how much we loved her, she was just the same as these broads we used for our pleasure, except she was off-limits to all of us. I understood perfectly fine why she was sad all the time.
Out of nowhere, screams began to echo through the entire building, loud enough to permeate the thick steel door separating us from the main room. Screams of a hundred strippers, it seemed.
“Old Rudy probably took his pants off,” Colt said with a chuckle. The music stopped suddenly. I jumped up from my seat, pushing blondie aside. The lights overhead went from dimmed to full blast, and a fire alarm began to wail. The hair was standing up on the back of my arms. My heart raced. This was definitely not Rudy flashing his dick to some unsuspecting girl. Shit was going down.
