Now You Dig
by Zachary Robert Long (3349 words, estimated reading time: 16 minutes)

When they got there two sets of hands were pulling her out of the black Nissan Pathfinder and into the light of the setting sun as it reflected off the shards of rusted metal throughout the scrapyard. Her pale blond hair was disheveled. Her mouth was covered by layers of duct tape. Her left eye was swollen shut.

She had been crying.

“Well, boys,” Jason said as he parked his Civic lengthwise across the only track into the belly of the scrapyard. “Let’s have ourselves some fun.”

“What the hell’s going on?” Parker asked from the backseat as Jason’s door closed.

Kody, who had a twenty door bill firmly stuck between his nose and a line of coke balanced on a CD case, answered between inhales. “Looks to me like it’s time for some revenge.”

“Revenge? She’s a fucking nut-case. Her father’s even worse. Now there’s who we should be going after. Sees me bleeding on the floor and kicks my ass anyway.”

“Listen man,” Kody replied handing back the CD case and the bill. “Have yourself a couple lines. It’ll level you out. I’m sure Jason and the boys know what they’re doing.” Kody gave him a pat on the shoulder once the cocaine was securely up Parker’s nose. They got out of the car together.

Kody didn’t walk fast but Parker found himself struggling to keep pace. The bruise that he called a leg shot a sharp pain up through his spine with every step he took. He pressed his hand against his shirt and felt the fresh stitches underneath. They hadn’t stopped aching since he got them put in the night before but, as he got closer to Jason’s lackeys and the girl, he saw the fear in her eyes and the ache seemed to subside. If only a little. It brought a uncharacteristic smile across his bone-thin face.

“You have any problems with her?” Jason asked. The larger of the two goons shook his head. Satisfied with the response Jason waved an arm dismissing them. They dropped the girl and strode towards the Civic. Parker expected them to get into the car and drive away. Instead they leaned against it, one watching over the scrapyard while the other kept his eyes on the lane leading in.

“What now?” Kody asked. His eyes shone with lecherous from behind his glasses. Parker had known Kody for years and considered him a friend. Yet there was something that showed in his eyes from time to time. Something that froze Parker’s soul.

“Now, little brother, we ask some questions. Would you like to be first, Parker?” Jason’s eyes, unlike his brother’s, were chillingly calm. Parker couldn’t tell which of the brothers unnerved him more. He couldn’t keep Jason’s gaze. He turned towards the girl.

She had the eyes of a cornered raccoon darting between the faces of the strangers and Parker. The ferocity they had held the night before was lost a thousand miles off on a one-way trip.

“No.”

“Alright then, I’ll go.” Jason knelled down so he was at eye level to her. “You don’t know me and I don’t know you, so don’t take this personally. But you do know Parker. Can you say hi, Parker?” Jason paused for a response but she made no noise. “No? Well that’s just mean because he’s a good friend of my brother and, by extension, a good friend of mine. So you can see why I’m concerned to hear you’ve been spreading lies about him. Why I’m just completely torn up inside to hear the things you fucking did to him.” Jason clenched a boulder-like fist as he spoke. “You have one chance to tell the truth here. Did you lie about him?”

She shook her head in a frantic motion, her blue eyes bounding from side to side in search of escape, a friendly face, or simply to avoid staring the boogeyman eye to eye. But there wasn’t anything nearby that suggested even the hope of help. They were surrounded by nothing but discarded metal and debris.

“Wrong answer.”

Jason’s fist struck her square on the nose. Blood burst from her nostrils like an avalanche. Parker had never seen so much blood from a single strike. He stared in amazed disgust while Kody laughed gleefully beside him. She fell over backwards, fresh tears spiraling through the air after her in an arc.

“Now come on, sweetheart. Don’t be like that,” Jason grabbed her shirt with one arm and pulled her back onto her knees.

Something inside of Parker screamed for him to end this. This was psychopathic. It was a small child sticking a knife into a kitten to hear the sound it made. She was terrified. Tears mixed with blood and dripped over her tattered shirt leaving stains that could never be removed.

But the pain in his side spoke louder.

“Let’s try this again, shall we?” Jason bent over and took her face in his hands. He held it firm to force her to stare into his eyes. “Did you lie about my friend Parker?” He enunciated each syllable like he was speaking to a moron.

She nodded slowly.

“Good. See, there’s hope for your kind after all.” Jason let her face drop as he stood back up to full height.

“What is this supposed to accomplish?” Parker asked. “We already know she lied. I got a bruise the size of Thailand to prove it. Not to mention enough stitches to make a sweater.”

“We’re going to show her that no one fucks with a friend of our family.” Jason pulled a switchblade out of his pocket. The sound of it springing out echoed through the still evening air.

“Christ, isn’t this going too far?” Parker always knew that Jason wasn’t somebody to fuck with. He’d heard the stories about him since as long as he was friends with Kody. Some part of him never truly believed them. Not all of them. Yet clearly he believed enough to reach out to him through Kody for help scaring the girl. But from the moment they’d arrived Parker knew that things were already out of hand, even if he couldn’t admit it to himself consciously.

“Not nearly far enough,” Kody answered.

Jason pointed the knife at Parker and snapped, “I’ll tell you when it’s too fucking far. Lift up your shirt.”

He obeyed, careful to avoid the shirt sticking and pulling at the stitches. The skin under his gall bladder was folded over and bruised purple. Five stitches held an inch of flesh together.

“Hard to believe you let that bitch stick ya,” Kody said.

“Fuck you, man.”

“Shut up you two,” Jason demanded. “Put your shirt back down.”

Parker gladly did as he was told. He didn’t like looking at the wound. Seeing it made it real to him, made it stink and hurt in a way that was almost certainly psychosomatic.
The last rays of the sun were settling along the horizon. The light that had painted the scrapyard in reflected blues and tender whites was quickly becoming too little to see by. Jason called for his lackeys who retrieved work lights from the Civic and set to getting them positioned.

“Time for another question,” Jason continued when the lights were turned on. He settled the knife against her stomach.

“Come on, is this really necessary?”

“Don’t fucking interrupt him,” Kody barked.

Jason ignored them. He pointed at Parker with the knife. “Did you do that to him?”

She nodded. Jason smacked her across the face with the hilt. The metal opened a gash on her cheek. The scream of pain that contorted her face was silent beneath the layers of tape.

“What the fuck man!” Parker shouted. “She told the truth!”

“Aw come on, Parker. We’re just having fun. Aren’t we now?” Jason said. He grabbed a handful of her hair and forced her to nod. “See? Just a load of fucking fun.”

“Yeah, Parker. Layoff…” Kody was interrupted by the sound of an engine approaching. Twelve eyes turned together to see headlights engulf the Civic.

“Goddamnit! I thought you were watching the road,” Jason yelled to his lackeys.

“Sorry, boss.”

“My bad, boss.”

Jason spun around to face Kody. “You watch the girl. Keep yourself between her and the car.” Kody licked his lips as he grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her after him.
“Parker, you’re with me.” Jason headed towards the Civic. He only slowed briefly to point his lackeys towards the Pathfinder. Parker limped after him. “Do try to keep up.”

Parker bit the inside of his cheek to stop himself from saying anything.

They got to the Civic just as a white Ford F-150 XL came to a stop ten feet away. A balding, rotund middle-aged man stepped down from the cab with a groan.

“What’s going on here?” the man demanded as he approached them.

“Private party.” Jason grinned.

Leave it be old timer, Parker silently begged as he found himself whispering a prayer he half remembered from his youth. Jason was a fucking psychopath, through and through, and Parker had no idea how he’d react if things went badly. He could feel beads of sweat welling to the surface of his skin. They stung as they rolled over his wound.

“This is private property,” the man said. From his tone it was impossible to tell if he actually cared or not.

“Come on man, we’ve been coming up here to party for years. Hell, I learned about it from my pops. Give it a break. Why’s it even matter to you?”

“Night shift security. It’s my job to care.” The man looked at Parker. “What’s wrong with him?”

“One too many shots,” Jason replied without looking away from the security guard.

“How old are you, son?” He was staring hard at Parker as if the answer might bubble to the surface of his skin.

“Nineteen,” Parker lied.

“Bullshit.”

Jason stepped in front of Parker. “Look… why don’t you let us be? Here’s…” he reached in his pocket and took out some cash, “…fifty bucks. We’ll be gone in an hour or two.”

The man looked at the money then strained to look past them into the clearing. Parker prayed that Kody was still blocking the girl from view. He wanted to look himself but didn’t want to give the guard any further cause for suspicion. “What’s going on back there anyway?”

“Just a party. Brother turned eighteen. We’re showing him a good time.” Jason waved the money again. “So what do you say? Just a couple hours?”

The man looked at the money then at the clearing then back at the money. He grabbed the cash. “Alright. You got ninety minutes tops. Got it?”

“You got it, boss.” Jason shot a grin at Parker.

Parker let out a sigh of relief as the guard turned his back on them, opened his truck’s door, and began the struggle of stepping up into the cab. He was just closing the door when a shout from the clearing froze him in place.

“You fucking bitch!”

Parker turned in time to see the girl run forward. It was an awkward movement. Whether from pain or the tape restraining her, Parker could not say. Kody chased after her with a look of pure rage across his face. He grabbed a handful of her hair and yanked her off her feet backwards at the same time the guard’s feet hit the gravel.

“Fuck,” Jason muttered to himself. Parker tried to take a step back but Jason grabbed him by the shoulder. “Don’t you fucking move.”

The guard panted as he ran at them. “Now just what the fuck was that?” he yelled, his eyes moving from Jason to Kody and the girl.

“Nothing. Just turn around. You’ve already got your money,” Jason replied coolly as he stepped into the guard’s path to block his way into the scrapyard.

“Fuck your money.” The man was at them, pushing between them with all his weight when Jason pulled a hand from his pocket and struck him in the neck with something Parker couldn’t see. The man crumbled into a heap and started to convulse. The hilt of the switchblade stuck out of the guard’s throat. Blood leaked slowly from the wound. It didn’t look that bad. But the sounds he made as he fought for air told Parker otherwise. They told him the man was already dead, even if his body hadn’t realized it yet.

“Should have just let it be you fat sack of shit!” Jason yelled as he kicked the man across the jaw. The guard tried to raise himself to his feet by first rolling onto his stomach to push himself up off the ground. But every time he got a knee under him Jason would lash out again and the guard would hit the dirt.

“Jesus!” Parker yelled. “What the fuck! Why the fuck did you do that!?”

“Shut up!” Jason grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the clearing. Parker stumbled on his bad leg and would have went down if Jason wasn’t pulling him along. His shirt was sticking to his side.

“He dead?” Kody asked as they approached.

When they were close enough Jason open hand slapped his brother. It sounded like a shotgun blast in the sweltering night air. “No thanks to you, asshole. The fuck happened?”

Kody was stunned for a second, his face turning red. Then he studied the ground by his feet. “Bitch tried to make a run for it when I had my back turned.”

“When your back was turned? Didn’t I tell you to fucking watch her? Do you have eyes in the back of your head?”

A moment of silence stretched into an infinity before Kody realized his brother was staring at him. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. “No,” he muttered softly.

“You’re fucking useless,” Jason said as he turned his back on his brother.

“Come on man, it was only for a second.”

Jason had started to signal the goons but in a heartbeat he spun back around with a right hook that cracked his brother’s jaw. Kody went down. Tears welled in his eyes but didn’t spill.

“That second just got a man killed. I didn’t know him. I had no problem with him. And now I have to bury his fucking corpse somewhere deep. So from now on, you shut your fucking mouth and do as you’re fucking told,” Jason growled. He reached into his pockets and removed two black gloves and started putting them on.

“What the hell are we going to do?” Parker asked. All his talk the night before about revenge and payback seemed a lifetime ago. He regretted the boisterous attitude he nursed over drinks with Kody. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Put a scare into the crazy ex that stabbed him. But now she wasn’t just scared. She was bleeding all over herself and a completely unrelated man was dead. “This is too fucking much.”

“No, no, no,” Jason said as he reached behind himself. “Now we finish this.”

He brought his hand back out holding a gun.

The girl’s eyes became full moons.

“No fucking way,” Parker said. “No fucking way. We’re not fucking doing this.”

Kody just laughed.

“Sorry doll,” Jason turned to her. “But it’s time for the actors to take a bow and the curtain to set. Finish this.” Jason forced the gun into Parker’s hands. Parker tried to refuse it but he couldn’t.

“I…” He’d never held a gun before. It felt like two pounds of terrifying power. Life and death on the scales and he was the judge. He looked it over in his hands, sleek and black. It looked like the toys he played with as a kid only it didn’t have the orange cap on the end that his toys always did. That and it was heavier. Like death had to weigh something to really count.

“Shoot her,” Kody whispered in his ear.

Parker looked at her. For the first time that night he remembered why he had thought of her as beautiful. Her blond hair shone in the light despite the splatters of sticky blood. In her wide eyes he could see the spiral of yellow that made the blue iris stand out. He wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek, not shoot her.

But last night she had run a knife through his gut. This girl who had followed him around for weeks on end. This girl who called him at all hours of the night just to hang up without saying a word. This girl that told her father that he had attacked her and who had gotten him beaten even as he bled from the stab wound she’d inflicted when all he did was try to confront her about the stalking.

He raised the gun.

All he could see when he looked at her now was the fear in her eyes. He looked at Kody and Jason. He saw something else there. He saw eagerness. Parker fingered the trigger. It was time to put an end to this.

Parker spun and turned the gun on Jason. Kody stopped laughing. Jason’s eyebrows shot up. Parker squeezed the trigger. But there was no gunshot. There was no anything.

Nothing happened at all.

“You stupid piece of shit.” Jason backhanded him hard enough to lift him off his feet. Parker struck his head on the ground as he landed on his back. Jason knelled over him and pried the gun from his fingers. “You’re goddamn lucky the fucking safety was on.”

Jason thumbed the safety and pointed the gun in Parker’s face. “I should fucking kill you no…ugh.”

The air was knocked out of him as the girl threw her head into his stomach. Jason whirled the gun away from Parker and backhanded her across the face with it. The force of the blow knocked loose the tape, slick with blood and sweat, from around her mouth.

Parker caught her blue eyes as Jason leveled the gun on her. For a moment he felt connected to her in a way he’d never felt with anyone.

“I love you,“ Amanda said.

Then Jason pulled the trigger and crimson butterflies exploded from the back of her skull.

Parker screamed and tried to throw himself at Jason but the barrel of the gun caught him in the side of his head mid lunge. Pain blacked out his vision. Everything was blurry when it returned.

“You’re lucky I don’t just kill you now.” Jason grinned.

“Why the fuck don’t you?” Parker spat out along with a mouthful of blood.

Jason laughed. Kody joined him. “Cause if we catch heat for this, someone has to take the fall. That was always the case, but I figured I’d pin it on one of the thorns in my side. Do a favor for my little brother and set up a rival at the same time. Should have been a blast. But you fucked that up for me, didn’t you?” He kicked Parker in the ribs between each sentence.

“Fuck you. I’ll never,” Parker grunted from behind gritted teeth.

“Ah, ah, ah. You’re forgetting your prints are already on the weapon. And besides, who would have wanted her gone the most? Two guys that never meet her before? Or you? The guy she stalked. The guy she attacked?” He tapped the side of his head with a finger. “Think about it.”

Parker shook his head. Blinked away dots from his vision. The realization of how fucked this had gotten, of how fucked he was, slowly dawning on him through the haze.

Jason walked out of his vision. Kody crouched down and pointed at him. “You’re bleeding, sucka.”

Parker looked down and saw the blood that was soaking into his shirt. The stitches in his side had opened up at some point.

Jason came back into view and threw something metal next to him: A shovel.

“Now you dig.”